Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbrewster1
I don't see movement penalties as combat penalties, if a character has a relatively high health, he can fight pretty much normally until he keels over dead. That seems very unrealistic to me.
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It's what Kelly Pedersen said. The person at negative HP is now not only on the clock much more than their opponent (they will fail a HT roll at some point even with high HT's) but as pointed out is less able to keep up due to reduced Mv.
So if they want to increase their chances of positive outcome they're going to have to take risks. And taking greater risks means they're more likely to get hit again, and so on.
The opposite is true for their opponent who can sit back and fight defensively or play "keep away" and wait for the inevitable collapse. This of course further reduces the chances for the person with negative HP's getting a positive out come here. A nice tactic here when playing "keep away" is depending on relative Mv scores to also build up evaluates for when you do want to attack the target
However there are a couple of optional rules out there that can add additional penalties in this situation, that you might want to look at. But they do add more complexity ("Realistic injury" from Martial Arts, and "Last Gasp" from Pyramid 3/44)
However I do suggest you use the rules from Campaigns as is first to see how they run but taking the points above and from other posters in mind.
Tl;dr 0 or less HP means something different in GURPS than it does in a lot of other systems, but in play the various knock on effects on combat choices will give you want to want.
As an aside this is an area where GURPS' reputation for lethality is wrong as unless all combatants are out to kill it allows for a lot of combats to establish winners and losers but without death being the default status of losing!