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Old 02-25-2012, 09:08 PM   #11
chandley
 
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by Faolyn View Post
I'd say just give creatures like that extra skull DR because they'd be born chargers and need the protection. Or extra DR to the horn. OK, I saw what Kromm wrote about how Strikers don't take damage, but it seems to me that in any game where you have (a) an attacking creature with a bit horn on its face and (b) a party that includes a PC with an axe, someone's going to try to lop it off.
Hence the gadget limitation. Per Kromm, a striker is infinitely tough. Being finitely tough is thus a limitation, and Gadget is the best way to go about it. Pick a DR, add in inconvenient to repair (reattaching takes regeneration spells or like the recovery power, pretty inconvenient!) and must be forcefully removed and voila, all set. The Unicorn I present has, for example, DR 15 on its horn if someone where to try to lop it off (as everyone seems to want to do, though getting access to immunity to disease and possibly, if you could somehow appease the Faerie gods, a pretty powerful healing totem might explain that)

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Every time I've seen deer spar, they seem to...duel? with their antlers, as opposed to oxen and, presumably unicorns and other similar beasts, who charge. Hence lack of extra skull DR: deer seem to mostly just try to push each other away. I'm not a biologist, and my exposed to deer fights is limited to documentaries and the like, so I could be wrong. (And according to this, their antlers can be pretty tough, so maybe they should have extra DR there?)

...Since deer just push each other away, does that mean they should have the skill Sumo Wrestling?
Deer, at least the ones I see, basically parry with their strikers. And they can put some serious force behind those hits. I think Brawling and the normal knockback rules are plenty for them. They definitely dont just push each other away, around here when they crack heads, it sounds like gunshots.
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Old 02-26-2012, 06:44 AM   #12
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
The Unicorn I present has, for example, DR 15 on its horn if someone where to try to lop it off (as everyone seems to want to do, though getting access to immunity to disease and possibly, if you could somehow appease the Faerie gods, a pretty powerful healing totem might explain that)
Your faeries have gods, or you have faeries so powerful as to basically be gods?

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
Deer, at least the ones I see, basically parry with their strikers. And they can put some serious force behind those hits. I think Brawling and the normal knockback rules are plenty for them. They definitely dont just push each other away, around here when they crack heads, it sounds like gunshots.
Well, as I said, I haven't been lucky(?) enough to watch a deer fight in real life (question mark because I know enough to not get near rutting wild animals, but still, it'd be cool to witness). TV documentaries don't do justice to the sounds, apparently. Most of the websites I went to said "pushing," but I was mostly just joking about the Sumo Wrestling. It'd be funny, though.
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Old 02-26-2012, 09:16 AM   #13
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by Faolyn View Post
Your faeries have gods, or you have faeries so powerful as to basically be gods?
Hard to say, it being DF. But cutting off a unicorns horn is pretty much guaranteed to violate whatever strictures surround the "Faith Healing" part of its healing ability. Im not at all sure what you could do to get back on the good side of that if you where the one who lopped off the horn.

But the healing is still useful for putting the horn back ON (though whoever did it would have to make the IQ roll and spend the FP), and if you had recovered a horn someone else had chopped off, and where otherwise in good standing with Nature, you could use it... though you'd have to make a point of trying to return the horn if possible.

I had originally toyed with making the horn actually have Magery in it, instead of healing (and the unicorn would know a lot of healing spells), kind of like how the unicorn horn in Legend worked. But from a DF perspective, that seemed to stomp on to many PC niches, so I went with this build.

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Most of the websites I went to said "pushing," but I was mostly just joking about the Sumo Wrestling. It'd be funny, though.
Aye, and a supernatural version for a Druid could have it.

Now Im struggling with strikers defined as tails. You can lop off a horn and not cause any real damage to the thing with the horn, so Im okay with a gadget limitation on the horn and calling it done. But lopping off an alligator (or Lizard Man) tail is gonna hurt... but its not particularly elegant to buy, say, Extra Arm (Weapon Mount -80%) [2], and then Crushing Striker (Clumsy -2 to hit, -40%; Limb -20%) [2], increasing the Lizard Man template cost by 1 point for the privilege of having a tail that can be lopped off... Seems like we do need a limitation on Strikers that lets them parry but get damaged like a limb might. Not necessarily for DF, where its probably out of genre, but for other uses. Probably a -80%, given a DR 2 or less gadget is -65%.

Perk (Cosmetic Tail) [1] and Crushing Striker (Tail; Limb -20%) might work... it would then be treated as an Extremity rather than a full blown Arm (you need prehensile Tail, and thus Extra arm, to get the full Limb treatment).

Seems like there is a (minor) disconnect between buying a scorpion tail as a pure striker and the time honored tradition of chopping said tail off to keep from being stung. Not a problem if its a monster write up (treat it as a limb, dont worry about points, move on). More of a problem for someone who wants to play a Manticore. Or even the Lizard Men.
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Old 02-26-2012, 10:40 AM   #14
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
Hard to say, it being DF. But cutting off a unicorns horn is pretty much guaranteed to violate whatever strictures surround the "Faith Healing" part of its healing ability. Im not at all sure what you could do to get back on the good side of that if you where the one who lopped off the horn.
I suppose it would depend on the mythology you're using, but yeah, if unicorns of servants of good and use a sort of faith healing with their horn, then yeah, that would mean that cutting it off would be an act of evil.

If unicorns are just creatures (even if intelligent), then it wouldn't matter so much. Lots of settings have unicorn horns as powerful magical/alchemical ingredients. Like I said, it depends on setting. When I make up fantasy worlds, I tend to have unicorns as fantastic beasts, rather than exemplars of goodness. I might do something different for my DF game, should the need arise.

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
I had originally toyed with making the horn actually have Magery in it, instead of healing (and the unicorn would know a lot of healing spells), kind of like how the unicorn horn in Legend worked. But from a DF perspective, that seemed to stomp on to many PC niches, so I went with this build.
How so? IIRC, lots of GURPS fantastic creatures are said to store mana in various organs, for use in whatever their natural powers are, to justify the creatures having spells or special abilities (the creatures listed in 3e Fantasy Bestiary didn't have their abilities statted out completely).

Unless you're allowing unicorns as a PC race?

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
Seems like we do need a limitation on Strikers that lets them parry but get damaged like a limb might. Not necessarily for DF, where its probably out of genre, but for other uses. Probably a -80%, given a DR 2 or less gadget is -65%.
It seems to me to be perfectly in-genre.

Actually, I can't figure out why they can't take damage. They are specifically described as body parts that can fight but not manipulate. It even lists a heavy tail as an example. Not having them be able to take damage seems like an oversight to me, although it was probably done to avoid having to track the damage they can take.

Under "Winged Flight," it says to treat wings as arms for the purposes of taking damage to them. I'd say do the same thing for a tail.
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Old 02-26-2012, 10:54 AM   #15
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by Faolyn View Post
How so? IIRC, lots of GURPS fantastic creatures are said to store mana in various organs, for use in whatever their natural powers are, to justify the creatures having spells or special abilities (the creatures listed in 3e Fantasy Bestiary didn't have their abilities statted out completely).

Unless you're allowing unicorns as a PC race?
Worse, I stated this Unicorn up as an Ally (for a shaman, but would work just as well for a Nature cleric or a druid). Magery on Allies is something Id figure most Dungeon Fantasy GMs are going to step on pretty hard.

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Under "Winged Flight," it says to treat wings as arms for the purposes of taking damage to them. I'd say do the same thing for a tail.
Well, Basic p421 is where you go to see how tails take damage (prehensile tails take damage as a limb, other tails as an extremity). Whats missing is the conversion from infinitely tough striker defined as a tail to something that can take damage appropriately.
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Old 02-26-2012, 10:58 AM   #16
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

Strikers can take damage if attacked, but they attack and parry as weapons, not unarmed attacks, thus protecting them from the nasty unarmed attack and parry rules.

Anyway, I think that the rules there err on the side of cinematic reality. After all, if attacked by 3 wild animal, a swordsman could potentially attack 4 times if he makes all his parries, and all attacks would be full powered...
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Old 02-26-2012, 11:23 AM   #17
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Strikers can take damage if attacked, but they attack and parry as weapons, not unarmed attacks, thus protecting them from the nasty unarmed attack and parry rules.

Anyway, I think that the rules there err on the side of cinematic reality. After all, if attacked by 3 wild animal, a swordsman could potentially attack 4 times if he makes all his parries, and all attacks would be full powered...
Reread Kromms post, point 3. Strikers are weapons that do not take damage. Even if you attack them directly. Also unlike real weapons, they dont break if they parry really heavy weapons. Or participate in slams.

So, things with horns can slam without worrying about breaking their horns, a slightly wonky simplification that passes muster mostly for ease of play reasons. However, things get decidedly strange when the PC with the Lizard Man character opts to parry the giants maul with _his tail_ so he doesnt risk breaking his sword... or sticks it into a guillotine trap to deliberately set it off, and takes no damage (because Lizard Men buy their tail as a simple striker, and theres no way to damage it...). Infinitely tough things are going to get abused by munchkins, and are there any other kind of player in a DF game? :)

None of these are insurmountable problems. Im just musing on what the fair value is for a limitation that takes a Striker from "infinitely tough" to "finitely tough, AND acts like any other limb or extremity". I like the gadget rules for straight up horns, the gadget being the horn itself. That makes perfect sense to me. Cut off a horn, and you could reasonably use it as a poor quality stabbing knife of some sort, say. And it doesnt really hurt the previous owner to do that, short of being deprived of its striker.

So, being able to be damaged as a limb should be even more restrictive than that. Possibly, as another category on the gadget (ie: pick DR, difficulty of replacement, whether its a limb or extremity, add in difficult to repair and remove by force, voila, done).

As Kromm says at the very end of his post, there is a small issue with determining strikers exact DR and HPs, for those Strikers where its important to know that. I think Lizard Men tails with infinite DR are enough of an issue to mull it over here on the boards at least. Being able to have its tail hurt like a limb shouldnt cost the Lizard man MORE points (even if, in the end, it doesnt really SAVE him any points either). So Im looking for a good, generic, way to write up strikers like this.
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Old 02-26-2012, 02:37 PM   #18
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Originally Posted by chandley View Post
Reread Kromms post, point 3. Strikers are weapons that do not take damage. Even if you attack them directly. Also unlike real weapons, they dont break if they parry really heavy weapons. Or participate in slams.
I didn't get the 'even if you attack them directly' part from what Kromm posted at all. Just that they were effectively invulnerable, or conferring invulnerability upon their wielders, in the same way as weapons or shields, which I assume covers the following things:

1) No free attacks on you resulting from a defender's successful parry (the nastiest part about unarmed attacks, to my mind)

2) No special nasty rules about parrying other's attacks with them, whether you have Karate or Judo or not. Not sure whether he intended them to be immune to breakage from heavy weapons, or to BL-based limits on what you can parry or not, or what.

3) No damage, not to you at any rate, on a Slam, just as there is not if you shield rush or use a thrusting weapon.

But the lizard man putting his tail in the guillotine, or even having somebody specifically target it in combat? No more invulnerable than any other body part for that purpose, I would think.
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Old 02-26-2012, 03:20 PM   #19
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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Worse, I stated this Unicorn up as an Ally (for a shaman, but would work just as well for a Nature cleric or a druid). Magery on Allies is something Id figure most Dungeon Fantasy GMs are going to step on pretty hard.
Yeah, that could be a problem.

Perhaps you could say that, for some reason, unicorns who choose to leave their home area lack some of the abilities that normal unicorns do. Sort of how PC nymphs aren't bound to anything: I'd imagine that bound nymphs have extra powers (well, they will in my game, at least).

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Whats missing is the conversion from infinitely tough striker defined as a tail to something that can take damage appropriately.
Maybe a Link or a Follow-Up?
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Old 02-26-2012, 04:18 PM   #20
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Default Re: [DF] Unicorns, Karkadann, Bulls... and charging

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I didn't get the 'even if you attack them directly' part from what Kromm posted at all. Just that they were effectively invulnerable, or conferring invulnerability upon their wielders, in the same way as weapons or shields, which I assume covers the following things:
Dont need to assume anything, re-read Kromms post. He explicitly says they act as indestructible weapons, specifically. When you make a slam with a weapon, it is the weapon and not the user that takes damage. Strikers are indestructible, and so it doesnt matter how much damage they take when used as weapon to slam. He doesnt say they are only indestructible when used to slam.

An indestructible weapon can parry any other weapon regardless of size and not break. It can be used in any speed of slam safely. And it can be used to wedge doors, intercept guillotines, etc. without risk. Striker is an ability, like TK. You cant damage TK with a guillotine either. To make it so that you have a thing that acts like a striker but can be damaged like a limb, you need a limitation, because it makes the ability less useful.

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2) No special nasty rules about parrying other's attacks with them, whether you have Karate or Judo or not. Not sure whether he intended them to be immune to breakage from heavy weapons, or to BL-based limits on what you can parry or not, or what.
Seems clear, at least unless he comes back and says otherwise, that immune to breakage is exactly what he means by saying they are indestructible. As they act as weapons, I think the BL-limit on whether the attack just blows past your Parry still holds. It wont damage the striker, you just cant use it to parry. Presumably, since you cant drop most strikers, you are knocked back one yard.

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3) No damage, not to you at any rate, on a Slam, just as there is not if you shield rush or use a thrusting weapon.
Aye, AND no damage to the striker. He says that in direct response to my question about how tough a unicorns horn needs to be to resist slam damage. It doesnt need anything, because it is infinitely tough if bought as a basic striker.

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But the lizard man putting his tail in the guillotine, or even having somebody specifically target it in combat? No more invulnerable than any other body part for that purpose, I would think.
And I think that too, but if the Lizard Man has bought a Striker without any limitations, thats not how it works. So his Tail striker needs something else.

A Striker with Limb -20% lets you use an arm or leg as a weapon for attacks and parries, but doesnt spell out what happens if you parry a giants maul with that arm or leg. An arm is usually considered to have 1/10th your ST as weight for breaking OTHER weapons purposes, but what happens to said arm if you fail the roll to resist breakage? Crippled? What if you bought DR for that arm? Ablative DR?

And -20% is a really bad deal for going from unbreakable to all too breakable. Your saving 1-2 points on the Striker advantage but if you wanted a tough but not unbreakable Striker, youd have to spend many points to buy enough DR (Striker -40%) to compensate.

With the Unicorns horn, I went with Gadget, which is nice because gadgets ALSO start with the assumption of unbreakable, and then give you a graded set of limitations for various levels of breakable. I think the solution to the Tail problem lies in there somewhere, even if its a little strange to treat a non-arm/leg striker as a gadget. If that is indeed the solution, than a Lizard Man should buy his tail thusly:

Striker (Tail; Crushing; Gadget, DR 2 or less -20%, normal repair (it heals), SM -2 -20%, must be forcefully removed -10% = -50%; Clumsy -2 to hit -40%) [1].

That saves him 2 points, which I suppose has the drawback of breaking the nice pentaphillic 30 point value of that template. To avoid that, remove the Clumsy limitation.

Now Mr. Lizard Man has a tail that if he uses to stop a guillotine, well, its got DR 2 (throw in Tough Skin as a special effect, to match the rest of his DR except his eyes of course...) and since its a tail, Basic p. 421 gives it the same crippling threshold as an extremity, like a hand. There is still the problem of what happens when he blocks a giants maul, which surely weighs more than 3x the notional ST/10 weight of his tail... Which I dont have a good answer to. If the tail "breaks" according to the Parrying Heavy Weapons rule, consider it to have been hit by an attack with the weapon it parried? That is probably a pretty good rule, and might be what Id go with off the seat of my pants as a GM... but is it worth more as a limitation then? One of the big advantages of a Striker, after all, is that it DOESNT take damage when parrying... and slapping gadget on there may not be worth enough to take that away from the advantage.

You see my conundrum. I guess I just dont like the idea of a Striker being breakable for only -20% (the Limb limitation) especially since technically you have to buy yourself a limb to apply that too, almost certainly costing you more points than that -20% saves. I also dont think that is what the Limb limitation DOES. In fact, I think what Limb does is make your arm or leg or whatever _indestructible when used as a weapon_, but can otherwise be crippled like any other arm or leg, and thus deprive you of your striker, which is worth -20% on the Striker ability. So we need something else for those strikers that represent body parts (tails, usually, but there are others) that could be hurt, but shouldnt be TOO easy to hurt, cause they get used to attack, like a striker should be.

And if you really want your head to hurt, consider this: Blunt Claws are effectively a crushing striker that can be hurt, costing 3 pts. So, the other 2 pts of a Crushing Striker is what buys you "acts as a weapon" and "unbreakable to boot". Given that, Striker (Limb -20%) on as many limbs as you have starts to look like a pretty good deal. 3 pts for +1 with all your limbs (Blunt Claws) vs 16 pts for the same damage bonus and the ability to attack targets in plate and not hurt yourself, or suffer damage when parried, and can parry like a weapon to boot? Of course, outside of using it on a Shin, Striker (Limb) is cinematic, so its not something just anything can get at. So thats a consideration. But I know what Im buying for the next Brick super I build... and it aint Blunt Claws :)

Okay, so Im overthinking this a _little_. But hell, itd be nice to have some clarity anyway.
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