Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[Seneschal]

Heh! Glad Sumo is getting some love. A properly statted character's slam can potentially be the most damaging move in GURPS grapple-dom (aside from a throw-from-head-lock), both in raw damage and general impairment. Especially since Move and HP, its two components, are so cheap.

EDIT: Actually, can I ask if slam damage should be curtailed when one is using "Rescaled Melee Damage" in one's campaign? It seems to me that slamming would quickly out-damage even swing damage, especially with Sumo training bonuses. In fact, such a full-body attack should really have no penetration, and quite a bit more knockback (unless we're imagining it differently).

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

Heh! Glad Sumo is getting some love. A properly statted character's slam can potentially be the most damaging move in GURPS grapple-dom (aside from a throw-from-head-lock), both in raw damage and general impairment. Especially since Move and HP, its two components, are so cheap.

EDIT: Actually, can I ask if slam damage should be curtailed when one is using "Rescaled Melee Damage" in one's campaign? It seems to me that slamming would quickly out-damage even swing damage, especially with Sumo training bonuses. In fact, such a full-body attack should really have no penetration, and quite a bit more knockback (unless we're imagining it differently).

Yeah, slams and shoves should probably use the same mechanic, or something similar, with maybe a shove doing no damage but double knockback, and the slam doing regular knockback (or half knockback) and damage. I'm off pondering new mechanics there, but if slam were easy to fix in a playable way, someone would have done it.

[DouglasCole]

Another session of Jade Regent. Our GM decides that a "boss fight" needs to be ALL boss monsters, because otherwise it's no fun. Cadmus the Warrior Saint does very little, but the session makes a great read.

It even ended on a more-or-less literal cliffhanger.

[DouglasCole]

I spent about 90 minutes chatting with Leonard Balsera, lead designer of FATE Core, and covered his concept of Fiction Forward, discussed FATE Core (and whipped out a character in FATE Accelerated), and talked about complexity and the false dichotomy between "simulationism" and what he termed his "fiction forward" approach.

[DouglasCole]

I have added the text transcript to the interview, for those who don't have an hour and a half to watch me talk to Leonard Balsera.

Thanks and kudos to Christopher R. Rice for getting me this in two days.

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPS-Day, and thanks to the digital format of e23 releases, there have been some fixes and tweaks to Technical Grappling. Three, to be precise. Also some discussion on why lots of discussion on Bite ST did not qualify for errata.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Thursday is GURPS-Day, and thanks to the digital format of e23 releases, there have been some fixes and tweaks to Technical Grappling. Three, to be precise. Also some discussion on why lots of discussion on Bite ST did not qualify for errata.

Another related thing that might warrant some clarification (at least pre-emptive ones), with at least some relation to issues of bites and NFM, would be Bad Grip (separate thread).

[Aneirin]

I may be having a bit of a brain aneurysm, I was wondering what the benefit of using sumo with a weapon was?

With a two handed weapon (of reach two), you get +2 to slam damage anyway (the same as sumo) and shoves...unless they stack (that would seem massively overpowered though)

And can you use sumo with a weapon, or would you need to drop it, unless you slammed.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Aneirin

I may be having a bit of a brain aneurysm, I was wondering what the benefit of using sumo with a weapon was?

With a two handed weapon (of reach two), you get +2 to slam damage anyway (the same as sumo) and shoves...unless they stack (that would seem massively overpowered though)

And can you use sumo with a weapon, or would you need to drop it, unless you slammed.

With the two-handed weapon and the rules for adding to slams and shoves from Martial Arts, you may be right. Were I to actually address Slams and Shoves with TG (Hmmm), that "add reach to damage" would probably be more like "add reach to Trained ST" or just "yeah, you get the same +2 per die for any rigid weapon" since I can't see why a 6 or 9 foot pole is any better at slamming than a three-foot pole if you're using the middle.

If you're swinging it like a weapon, that's likely a strike or a sweep.

But yeah, with a two-hander, you can still do an armed grapple, execute ST or DX based moves (but not many skill-based ones), and sweep, plus the bonus to slam/shove. So there's a lot of overlap with a two-handed weapon.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Thursday is GURPS-Day, and thanks to the digital format of e23 releases, there have been some fixes and tweaks to Technical Grappling. Three, to be precise. Also some discussion on why lots of discussion on Bite ST did not qualify for errata.

Thank you for the post. I wondered what the changes were.