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Old 09-15-2016, 12:20 AM   #11
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Originally Posted by GodBeastX View Post
You don't scale the rest of the world, you scale your threats! Everyone else is forced to stand back and let you deal with the problems because that's what your points make you good at. When the police show up, they might end up puddles on the ground in their whole department.
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Why doesn't the rest of the world do the PCs job? Because then the PCs would have nothing to do =)
These two statements are Accurate As...Fudge. You can always use the rules from Sidekicks to scale down the champions...but why? The point is to kick butt and nothing says kicking monster butt like being your own Van Helsing.
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Old 09-15-2016, 12:23 AM   #12
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

I have to wonder what would happen if the bad guys used some basic tactics to counter their own weaknesses or play to their own strengths. Like how would the PCs fare against an ancient vampire who wore a metal plate on his chest to negate staking. Or demons would break out assault rifles with AP ammo and body armour with water resistant clothing.

And all of this assumes the PCs have the right tool for the job. Most of the equipment the PCs will need to slay the monsters are illegal and you can't exactly carry it around everywhere you go. All you have to do is get flat-footed once by a werewolf wearing a bulletproof vest and there is a good chance for a TPK happening.

But it just might be the genre convention. The PCs are powerful so they need powerful enemies. And no one finds it unusual a group of heavily armed people are wandering around a seemingly abandoned warehouse.
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Old 09-15-2016, 01:31 AM   #13
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
These two statements are Accurate As...Fudge. You can always use the rules from Sidekicks to scale down the champions...but why? The point is to kick butt and nothing says kicking monster butt like being your own Van Helsing.
An entire team of Xanders and pre-magic Willows against minor threats starts to sound a bit like Jim Henson's Muppet Babies or A Pup Named Scooby Doo rather than Monster Hunters.
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Old 09-15-2016, 01:33 AM   #14
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
An entire team of Xanders and pre-magic Willows against minor threats starts to sound a bit like Jim Henson's Muppet Babies or A Pup Named Scooby Doo rather than Monster Hunters.
Agreed. Which doesn't really sound fun to me.
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Old 09-15-2016, 02:31 AM   #15
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Agreed. Which doesn't really sound fun to me.
I might find it fun if properly lampshaded. But it would most certainly NOT be "MH".
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Old 09-15-2016, 05:19 AM   #16
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Real people are so bad at things that playing them feels bad. Cultists in the source material are competent at combat, if not as much so as the protagonists, so that's how it is in MH. Part of the problem is you're comparing cinematic cultists to real SEALs. SEALs in MH would be also cinematic, and much more competent than cultists. Look at the Gunman sidekick template. Guns 18, which is 3 levels higher than the SEAL template. If a SEAL shows up in MH, I'd start with the Gunman and add about 100 points of hard-as-nails to back it up.

Plus, some of the templates are built around wildcard skills, and it takes a certain number of points to have a wildcard at a satisfying level while also having other competence in other areas.

In short, I don't think it's an issue.
What source materials are you referring to here? In the fiction I'm familiar with, cultist minions don't tend to be depicted as being as capable as real world navy SEALS. The Cultists get far more than just what is needed to make them competent at combat.

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Similarly, having enemies that actually have skills high enough to make decent attacks is also fun, because then characters actually can do cool things like dodge, acrobatic dodge, or use acrobatic movement to be harder to hit etc. If enemies most of the time are missing to begin with its not so fun
The skill levels are way beyond what is needed for that. Slow Zombies always All Out Attack, so they would only need a skill of 8 to hit ~75% of the time. However they have 13 which brings their effective skill above the point where you get no further effect on hit probability.

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And too the monsters need to be a credible threat to non-heroes. If a typical monster has to be careful not to accidentally pick a victim who is a martial arts hobbyist or happens to be carrying a pistol, and can be easily taken down by any competent local police force, it becomes really hard to explain how they are not already extinct, or why anyone needs to call in specialist monster hunters.
You could significantly scale down the monsters without that becoming the case.
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Old 09-15-2016, 05:24 AM   #17
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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The skill levels are way beyond what is needed for that. Slow Zombies always All Out Attack, so they would only need a skill of 8 to hit ~75% of the time. However they have 13 which brings their effective skill above the point where you get no further effect on hit probability.
While I agree in broad principles, note that grappling the head is -2 and biting the face is -5. Also, Slow Zombies are often going to want to All-Out Attack (Strong) to tear flesh with a will or All-Out Attack (Double) to grapple and wrench in the same turn.
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Old 09-15-2016, 05:37 AM   #18
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Originally Posted by GodBeastX View Post
The very first paragraph of non-fluff in Chapter 1 answers this question:



And Monster HUnters 2:



You're supposed to be Blade or possibly even Hellboy (Vampire and Half-Demon templates?), walking through swathes of overpowered enemies, not too concerned with humans being a threat around you.

When you deal with 400+ characters, you can whip out some truly heinous entities with over the top situations.

You don't scale the rest of the world, you scale your threats! Everyone else is forced to stand back and let you deal with the problems because that's what your points make you good at. When the police show up, they might end up puddles on the ground in their whole department.
I don't really see how those paragraphs answer the question. The issue is not having extraordinarily powerful PCs. The issue is the abilities of the opponents being scaled up to compensate. While he is extraordinarily powerful, the human opponents Blade fights do not tend to have navy SEAL combat skills . Even many of the vampires that appears in the movies would probably lose to an MH Cultist equipped with weapons effective against vampires.

You don't need threats that powerful to make them too dangerous for normal people or even normal police officers to confront and as you noted in a later post, the scaling up has not prevented a large scale police or military response being enough to reliably defeat almost all threats in The Enemy.

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
These two statements are Accurate As...Fudge. You can always use the rules from Sidekicks to scale down the champions...but why? The point is to kick butt and nothing says kicking monster butt like being your own Van Helsing.
There is nothing wrong with being your own Van Helsing, but it seems to me that your character won't seem quite that competent if even Slow Zombies and Cultist minions have stats and skill levels that high.

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
An entire team of Xanders and pre-magic Willows against minor threats starts to sound a bit like Jim Henson's Muppet Babies or A Pup Named Scooby Doo rather than Monster Hunters.
You could significantly scale down MH without getting anywhere close to that.
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Old 09-15-2016, 05:44 AM   #19
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

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Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
There is nothing wrong with being your own Van Helsing, but it seems to me that your character won't seem quite that competent if even Slow Zombies and Cultist minions have stats and skill levels that high.
I kind of see what you are saying. In general, drop all skills by 3-5 level, reduce damage and DR by half, drop attributes by 1-2, reduce Active Defenses by 1-2, and other effects by abotu 50%. That's what I've done in the past anyways.
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Old 09-15-2016, 07:15 AM   #20
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Default Re: [MH] Point Inflation

There is some of what could be called "point inflation" going on here, as well as some genre convention: they have the elevated Hit Point total like everyone else in those books.

It should be realized though that while 10 is said to be an average score in gurps, every game actually plays NPC traits to have its own range. You have the true stat-normalizers who use 12 as a good score for a PC to have and make them look good by making sure the NPC's have 10's or worse. You have folks like me who run 10 as a low score but really don't give NPC's 14's unless they really know what they're doing, and then you have Monster Hunters, where part of the point total is a total scaling.

And that's OK. Gurps is generic game, and unlike many other games, the rules exist to make the fluff possible. Having the different scaling options is a good thing, and I wouldn't call it point inflation, I'd call it having a higher NPC scale. Just be aware of it. Its a genre convention and campaign tweak, nothing more.

But yes, the cultists are a little high, even for that.
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