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Old 07-11-2014, 07:26 AM   #1
Arith Winterfell
 
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Default New to GURPS and concerned about combat

I feel I'm relatively new to GURPS and I'm coming mostly from a D&D 3.5 / d20 experience of gaming. I'm really excited by GURPS's flexibility and creative freedom. In this post I'm going to probably make a number of references to d20, not because I'm being a fan of it, but because I'm trying to gauge differences in game systems as I adjust to GURPS from my previous experiences.

However I'm still getting down the combat system and am concerned about how to approach it when creating threats to the players characters. In D&D and d20 gaming character levels and Challenge Rating acted as guidelines to gauging whether or not a threat in combat was going to simply challenge or overwhelm your players. I'm mostly concerned about challenging players in a cinematic fantasy combat type game play, challenging them without overpowering them.

1. I'm having trouble grasping how the differences in GURPS game system effects survivability? Or how elements of combat rules shape the likelihood of getting hit and how hard?

For example, in d20 you roll to hit and if you beat an armor class number you hit. I've noticed in GURPS you not only roll to hit to see if you hit, but then your opponent defend rolls as well. How does the added die roll (for defending) shape combat? Overall are you more likely to see characters hit less often on both sides of a fight?

Second to this is the power and effect of actually getting hurt. I've noticed a number of rules regarding damage reduction, how damage gets multiplied depending on if it penetrates DR, and the various elements of shock and wound related penalties. This strikes me as a lot more realistic/brutal in terms of wounding effects than the system I'm used to. How does that play into how combat plays out overall?

To put it into other terms. Compared to things like D&D, it feels like in GURPS that combat is such that players/enemies are less likely to actually score hits against each other, but when they do a single hit can be crippling or take you out of a fight very fast. Am I getting a sense of this correctly?

2. How to adjudicate enemy design when taking into account section 1 above? Assuming I'm interpreting the feel of combat in 1 correctly, how can I approach enemy/monster creation in order to both threaten the PC's without overwhelming them in fights? For example what elements of character design do I need to pay close attention to when gauging how hard of a fight things will be? How much does a skill with a weapon shape how hard an enemy will be to deal with as a threat? How much do hit points serve as "protection" from death? (By this I mean in D&D losing hp didn't matter until you hit 0, I get the impression from shock rules etc that this isn't the case in GURPS as losing hit points before reaching 0 does have serious effects).

I've got setting I'm working on, so I can go into more details about the setting if needed/desired/required as we go on in discussion. As a final note, I'm aware of Dungeon Fantasy line of products which is relevant to the discussion here. However, what I'm aiming to do is learn how to adjust to using default basic GURPS rules to rather than how to use those rules to simulate a D&D like game play. Though I suppose at the same time I am aiming to create cinematic fantasy game play, but I'm aiming to use GURPS rules to create cinematic play and see the flexibility and power of the GURPS system rather than simply trying to mimic another gaming system.
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Old 07-11-2014, 07:38 AM   #2
Nereidalbel
 
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

1. In general, you are less likely to see successful hits in GURPS than you are in D&D. Shock effects can be brutal, but, the High Pain Threshold advantage negates that particular death spiral. Hits to the head can still KO you instantly, though.

2. Adjust enemy skills to match the hit chance you want before active defense is taken into account. For most combat skills, 12 is more than enough to be a little scary, but, it doesn't leave much room for NPCs to use Deceptive Attacks and get by active defense.
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Old 07-11-2014, 07:49 AM   #3
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

I did some work on this a while back for new GMs just like you. Check the link in my signature for game balance pointers.

Generally, Set the monsters Skill to PC Active Defenses.
Set the monsters Damage to PC's DR.

Accept the fact that your only going to get close.

If the systems new to you, its new to your players as well. Gonna need patience on both sides of the table.

Have Fun,
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Old 07-11-2014, 08:45 AM   #4
Kromm
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Perhaps the hardest thing to get used to is the fact that while the essential combat model of D&D is "attack N times to whittle away the target's HP by 1/N of the total each time, until the Nth attack takes out the target," that of GURPS is "it takes N attacks on average to score the lucky hit that takes out the target, but it could happen on the first hit or never." Players have to get used to their PCs regularly whiffing and occasionally being taken out in one shot. There are less-than-lethal hits in GURPS, and thus some chipping away, but that most often applies when one side grossly outclasses the other – it isn't typical.

Complicating this is the fact that in GURPS, a lucky hit from any opponent worth fighting rather than ignoring (as you could, say, an ordinary rat or a small child) can end anyone's fight. Being powerful isn't in itself insurance against someone rolling a 4 to hit, randomly striking your skull, getting a 3 on the Critical Head Blow Table, and taking you out. You could avoid that one specific fate by having Luck to negate the fluke rolls or Injury Tolerance to make headshots less deadly, but those are specific, low-cost defenses that even weak combatants might have. Strong ones may well lack both!

This last point underlines something crucial to realize about GURPS, which is that often, what wins the fight is a smart tactical choice and/or a lucky roll that exploits the target's weakness . . . or the target having some countermeasure that just happens to oppose the attacker's best and luckiest effort. It's like a thousand games of rock-paper-scissors going on at once in a hopelessly convoluted way, yielding a net result that's all but unpredictable and making it extremely difficult to judge the effectiveness of combatant A vs. combatant B.

Complicating matters further are "spoilers." For instance, foes with high HT scores can linger and remain dangerous when by rights they should be dead. Those with Luck can wave off their opponents' one highly improbable chance to defeat them. A robust set of grappling rules lets even moderately capable grapplers tie up foes who otherwise outclass them. And so on.

And complicating matters even further are battlefield conditions. More than most games, GURPS makes the surroundings as crucial as the combatants. Someone who's untouchable if she can run around is doomed in a small room, while an oaf whose clumsiness makes him ignorable is death on wheels if he's the only one who can see in the dark. The ability to exploit the environment costs points but the environment itself does not, so there's no way to predict combat outcomes averaged over "all possible battlefield conditions." Some countermeasures to deadly situations are surprisingly cheap (like Night Vision for the dark room), others are expensive (like Warp to teleport out of the tiny room), and these costs reflect realism or dramatic appropriateness, not the relative frequency of circumstances.

Ultimately, all you can say for sure in GURPS is that the warrior with more points in combat abilities and defensive traits is more likely to be the winner. When the gap gets big enough, "more likely" becomes "almost certain," but there are no guarantees. And points in noncombat abilities don't matter, which means that overall point totals aren't useful for judging combat performance.

Points don't rate gear, either, and that's a big deal. A low-grade thug in heavy armor, with a very nice weapon, can murder high-grade heroes who happen to be escaping naked from prison without any of their kit. Being worth all those points doesn't help the prison-breakers . . . Equipment is an overwhelming advantage, and there's no system in place to gauge the sum-total effect of abilities plus gear because there are just too many possible combinations. This adds another thousand games of rock-paper-scissors.

In short: For a fair fight, match points in combat abilities only, match gear, and if fights are set in environments that favor one side's abilities and/or gear, tone down that side some. For PC survival, strongly recommend that PCs take high HT and the Luck advantage. For both, exploit the PCs' weaknesses only to the degree that the PCs do the same to their enemies. This last point means than an experienced GM with players new to GURPS should hold back a little until the group learns the system, as player skill matters more than character skill in the realm of tactical choices.
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Old 07-11-2014, 09:08 AM   #5
Kromm
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Looking at my last post, I realize it's quite long! Let me reduce it to a few pithy concepts:
In a fight . . .
  1. Whiffing is the rule, not the exception; be patient waiting for the winning hit.
  2. Points in combat abilities matter; overall points do not.
  3. Gear is as important as innate abilities.
  4. Player skill at game tactics is as important as character ability at fighting.
  5. The environment is your best ally and your worst enemy.
  6. Being taken out in one shot happens – don't let it get to you.
  7. Expect the unexpected, part 1: Some combo of the above will surprise you!
  8. Expect the unexpected, part 2: Luck is as important as all of the above!
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Old 07-11-2014, 10:29 AM   #6
Peter V. Dell'Orto
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
[*]Whiffing is the rule, not the exception; be patient waiting for the winning hit.
I'd personally rephrase that to "Expect to hit often, but the opponent to defend often- be patient waiting for the winning hit."

But otherwise, what he said.


Beyond that, Douglas Cole has assembled a bunch of articles some of us have written on GURPS combat. They're a bit past "how does it work?" but they might be useful once you start giving the combat system a go. They're linked here:

Melee Academy

I also highly recommend Mook's combat examples.
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Old 07-11-2014, 10:46 AM   #7
Kromm
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto View Post

I'd personally rephrase that to "Expect to hit often, but the opponent to defend often- be patient waiting for the winning hit."
In GURPS, "hit" = "you succeed at your attack and your enemy fails at his active defense." That's spelled out in the rules. From p. B374:
If you make your attack roll, you have not (yet) actually struck your foe, unless you rolled a critical hit. Your attack is good enough to hit him – if he fails to defend.
Which is actually my point . . . a GURPS attack roll is not equivalent to a D&D to-hit roll, and can succeed without any kind of hit being indicated. New players assuming that "success" = "hit" is a common difficulty when switching to GURPS. Missing because enemies defend is still whiffing. In most players' minds, so is rolling damage and having it bounce off of DR.

To sum up, the GURPS equivalent of a successful roll to hit in D&D corresponds to:
  • the attacker succeeding at an attack roll; and
  • the defender failing at an active defense roll; and
  • the damage roll exceeding DR.
This takes some getting used to.
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Old 07-11-2014, 07:56 AM   #8
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell View Post
To put it into other terms. Compared to things like D&D, it feels like in GURPS that combat is such that players/enemies are less likely to actually score hits against each other, but when they do a single hit can be crippling or take you out of a fight very fast. Am I getting a sense of this correctly?
Pretty much, yes. Because getting hit matters a lot, tactics become very important. There's a strong incentive to control the environment: use surprise, strike from a greater distance than your enemy, avoid fights where you won't be at an advantage, and even avoid battles you don't absolutely need to fight because something can always go wrong. As the Italian proverb goes, distance is the best armor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell View Post
2. How to adjudicate enemy design when taking into account section 1 above?
It's more an art than a science. As a rough guideline, you can compare the average damage to expected DR and relative skill levels and go from there. For example, if most of your PCs are wearing DR 4, weak monsters only doing 1d-1 damage are exceptionally unlikely to hurt them even if they do manage to hit. You can also compare skills and HP. However, because tactics matter and GURPS gives you a vast number of approaches you can take, it gets very complicated very quickly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell View Post
As a final note, I'm aware of Dungeon Fantasy line of products which is relevant to the discussion here. However, what I'm aiming to do is learn how to adjust to using default basic GURPS rules to rather than how to use those rules to simulate a D&D like game play. Though I suppose at the same time I am aiming to create cinematic fantasy game play, but I'm aiming to use GURPS rules to create cinematic play and see the flexibility and power of the GURPS system rather than simply trying to mimic another gaming system.
I think you actually do want DF. It doesn't change the rules in any meaningful way. Rather, it points out those parts of GURPS most relevant to a dungeon-crawling campaign and presents lots of worked examples. For example, rather than creating rules for character classes, it presents orthodox GURPS character templates for warriors, wizards, thieves, and so on, showing how to build character with those occupational descriptions according to GURPS rules.
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Old 07-11-2014, 08:51 AM   #9
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Off the top of my head, a few key things about designing combat encounters:
  1. Numbers matter. Much more so than in d20, in GURPS being outnumbered gets dangerous fast. This applies on both sides: a swarm of relatively weak NPCs/monsters can be a major threat -- likewise, if the PCs get to gang up on a single monster, it will be at a serious disadvantage.
  2. HT rolls - Assuming a fight to the death, the 3d6 bell curve means that a moderately high HT score (14+) can often stay in a fight all the way to -5xHP, whereas a HT 11 combatant is likely to fall unconscious or die much earlier. High HT can help PCs survive the adventure environment. High HT scores for foes can mean long grinding combats, and should perhaps be reserved for special combatants.
  3. Run some trial combats, either by yourself or with your group. Try out different weapons (Reach 2 weapons, missiles) and maybe some animals from Basic like bears, big cats, or wolves. This will help get a feel for situations like defending against multiple opponents, what it means to be knocked down (bad!), etc.
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Old 07-11-2014, 08:43 AM   #10
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: New to GURPS and concerned about combat

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell View Post
1. I'm having trouble grasping how the differences in GURPS game system effects survivability? Or how elements of combat rules shape the likelihood of getting hit and how hard?
Let's get into this in a little detail.

In D20 if a 1st level fighter with a +4 total attack bonus is trying to hit AC15 he needs to roll an 11 or higher to hit. 50% chance to hit.

In Gurps a fighter could easily start at Skill-14. That's roughly a 90% chance to hit if his opponent doesn't defend. If his opponent has Skill-14 and a ?Medium shield his chance to Parry is 3 (a constant)+ (Skill-14/2) + 2 for the Shield or 12..That would have about 75% of all hits being Parried.

There's a but in here. Like in D20 when a 20 always hits, in Gurps a Critical Hit can't be Parried or Dodged or whatever. For skill-14 this is a roll of 3 or 4 but it becomes a 5 at Skill-15 and a 5 at Skill-16.

Maybe it's only about a 25% chance of a hit all things considered but the enxt thing to grasp is that changing Skill or other mods to success by 1 or 2 has a much bigger effect on Gurps 3D6 rolls than on a D20.

For example just taking away that Medium shield and its' +2 bonus drops Parry from 12 to 10. that's only 50% successful Parries instead of 75%.

Then maybe the opponent is an Orc with lower Skill levels and poorer equipment. Maybe eh only has Skill-10 and just a spear or a club with no Shield at all. He's down to a Parry of only 8 for a 20% chance.

Given that the Orc (who may not care that much about whether he lives or dies anyway) might choose the All Out Attack Maneuver. If he does this he can attack at +4 to Skill but can't defend at all.

Such a fight might go quickly one way or the other. The Orc could get lucky but will not last long if he doesn't.

Then there's the effect of things like armor that can help PCs survive failed Defenses.

So, fights between skilled opponents with good equipment can easily last longer but low skilled and poorly equipped foes can still be defeated quite quickly.
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