11-03-2020, 01:49 PM | #11 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
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I've had it come up in very technical fights in gurps... usually as part of an arena scenario. I've had a couple of PC's who got the magical two steps from move 11 and tried to use it heavily.
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11-03-2020, 02:17 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
The rules for runaround attacks (B391) mostly negate that.
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11-03-2020, 03:12 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
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Catfall is very useful if you have a game with a lot of things at high places like chases on rooftops. It is the halved damage part that makes it specially good in some cases. Falling damage scales up to scary levels fast and will quickly go through most armor. The halving of damage after 5 yards makes you armor work for much longer(though you still take the blunt damage). But if the campaign does not feature such elements then obviously that is not useful. Peripheral Vision is again dependent on how commonly you are being fought by more people than own party in a place where they can flank. If you find yourself often being flanked then it is a life saver. If the fights are such that you cannot usually be flanked, then it is basically fairly low use. Very fit is indeed not very useful usually and would require a rare type of campaign where the ability to run 400 kilometers a day is a useful skill for the campaign. The other very niche case is a campaign with very low limits on attributes and you want higher HT rolls. But yes, there are a lot of advantages that are wrong price for a lot of campaigns. I have thus toyed at the idea of creating an frequency of appearance multiplier for all advantages for a given campaign based on how often such elements come up in the game. |
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11-03-2020, 03:22 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
I love the variation here. In most of my games, from AD&D through 25 years of GURPS, falling has often been a significant threat. The bard in our current DFRPG group nearly crippled a limb when she fell while climbing up a rope over a wall. Long falls have probably been responsible for more outright PC deaths in my experience than any other threat. I admit that I do like to use the 3rd dimension liberally in my scenes. Lots of ledges, balconies, rickety ladders, rope bridges, and the like.
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11-03-2020, 03:52 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
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11-03-2020, 04:03 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Jan 2015
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
I avoid tweaking trait costs if I can because I'm sure the people who wrote it knows better than I do.
However, I tend to be quite liberal in handing out bonus for relevant traits. For Peripheral Vision I'd give +2 to several vision related tasks, like rolling against Per or Observation in a contest against enemy's Stealth or Shadowing, and Very Fit would give +1 to most physical skills (it would essentially double as single level talent). Catfall is an exception, I didn't like it since the first time I read GURPS Basic so nowadays I just treat it as an immunity to fall damage. The player gets their bang for the buck and I don't have to calculate fall damages. Win-win. |
11-03-2020, 04:06 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
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In a normal setup, the effect of attempting a runaround is: "I run in and get an attack from behind, that is treated as a side attack, and might be a wild swing unless I'm super fast; overall low chance of being effective. Then one of the people I ran past to get in position turns and stabs me in the back and I die". Peripheral vision is great for solo fighters, but for PCs on a team, covering your back is what teammates are for. |
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11-03-2020, 04:25 PM | #18 |
Join Date: Jan 2015
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
It's useful but I wouldn't say great. A solo fighter would likely try to avoid melee fights as much as possible, if they get surrounded they can't retreat and might get forced to deal with close combat, and the threat of a critical hit is always there. It's much better to either abuse stealth and/or engage in ranged combat. For such characters Peripheral Vision doesn't add much value by RAW and other 15 point advantages like Danger Sense and See Invisible works better to avoid getting ambushed/backstabbed.
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11-03-2020, 05:09 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
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For example, a HP10 person without Catfall or Acrobatics falling 5 yards onto 'soft' ground takes 1d damage, which can cripple a limb. Falling even 1 yard onto concrete can too. With Acrobatics these heights become 10 yards and 6 yards. With Catfall and passing the DX check (and I'd be inclined to allow Acrobatics in place of it) this becomes 23 yards and 9 yards. When falling, especially when the ground isn't too hard, Catfall makes a big difference to your chance of avoiding crippled limbs. 10 yards probably means a broken limb for a normal person (5 yards onto hard ground). With Acrobatics that's 15 yards and 10 yards. With Catfall that's 60 yards and 15 yards. The same applies to avoiding death checks. Assuming they don't doesn't land on head or neck, that same example person probably has to make a death check if they hit soft ground at terminal velocity (166+ yards), and if hard ground if they fall from 40+ yards. With Acrobatics this becomes 171+ yards and 45+ yards. With Catfall it becomes never (terminal velocity 'only' does 3d damage), and terminal velocity onto hard ground. So, the higher the fall, the more useful Catfall is, and the softer the landing the more useful, but if falls of over 5 yards are a not too rare experience for your PCs, Catfall is pretty good. If they're almost all under 5yards, then Acrobatics alone is generally sufficient. EDIT: weby's point about armour is significant as well, and further enhances the utility of Catfall.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." Last edited by Rupert; 11-03-2020 at 05:14 PM. |
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11-03-2020, 09:00 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: [Basic] Catfall, Very Fit and Peripheral Vision Cost
I would say that it's reasonable for Fit to give a +1 to each of Sex Appeal and Erotic Art, and Very Fit to give +2 to both. Of course, the bonus to Sex Appeal might depend on the target and culture (not everyone likes fit people, and some cultures tend against it at specific social levels or categories), but without going into details, Erotic Art would noticeably benefit from the advantage in most or all circumstances.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
Tags |
advantage, catfall, house rule, peripheral vision, very fit |
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