Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Thursday is GURPS Day, and I continue my series on grappling, winding it down with half of the finale - the RAW options for finishing the fight. This one is more of a survey, with less "how to," largely due to being a tad exhausted.

One thing caught my eye:
"Choke holds are nice, because if your foe has the proper anatomy, you can do FP damage per second, which can put a foe out pretty fast."
This phrase seems ambiguous, it sounds like it means 'a FP per second lost', while MA67->B370 says that the Blood Choke does Margin of Victory damage (FP for blood chokes) per second and the target starts to suffocate for a FP per second.
I it just me reading too much/wrong into the sentence, or was it intentional?

Also, I've been thinking about Pins.
While often considered scary, they actually have a very low success rate:
A 10 vs. 10 has a 25% chance of succeeding. Even 16 vs. 10 has only 49%, and that's a huge ST discrepancy (relevant if you always adjust to x-vs-10).
Something more typical like 13 vs. 11 is 31%, 11 vs. 11 is 23%, 13 vs. 13 is 13% etc.
This is something that your post also says. But I'm just seconding it, because it seems like like a good argument against people saying that Pins are instant IWins. (Also, always norming to 10 seem to actually make it closer to an instant IWin than the RAW ruling of doing it at 14+.)

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

One thing caught my eye:
"Choke holds are nice, because if your foe has the proper anatomy, you can do FP damage per second, which can put a foe out pretty fast."
This phrase seems ambiguous, it sounds like it means 'a FP per second lost', while MA67->B370 says that the Blood Choke does Margin of Victory damage (FP for blood chokes) per second and the target starts to suffocate for a FP per second.
I it just me reading too much/wrong into the sentence, or was it intentional?

It's to mean "you do 1 FP each second you maintain the choke." This post is a lot less specific than my previous ones, due to time constraints and sheer exhaustion - been getting only 3-4 hours of sleep per night this week.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Thursday is GURPS Day, and I continue my series on grappling, winding it down with half of the finale - the RAW options for finishing the fight. This one is more of a survey, with less "how to," largely due to being a tad exhausted.

Okay, I think that covers the whole topic as far as the Basic Set is concerned?

(a) Aren't there grappling Feints? Does Feint fall under any of the four heads, or is it prior to Grab Him?

(b) The high-level view of the process looks to me like there are three steps, of which the first, Grab Him, can be repeated to gain a more effective grab. Are there moves under Grab Him Better that can't be attempted without having previously done Grab Him?

(c) Suppose that I simply want to grab someone and hold on—either I'm going to let someone else hit him while I restrain him, or my only goal is to keep him from leaving. Does that make sense in the defined sequence?

I think from my perspective the real organizing question is more, What are the possible end states that I could have as a goal? and secondary to that, What are the routes to getting to them? I'll have to reread the whole thing backward, I think.

Bill Stoddard

[DouglasCole]

Lowell Francis over at Age of Ravens threw down a mighty post: "33 Things I Want From Combat As a Player" a few days ago. I read them, and had thoughts. I will share them, because that's what I do on this blog.

This is the second part of a three-part response - you can find a link to Part 1 in the blog link below if you missed it the first time.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Okay, I think that covers the whole topic as far as the Basic Set is concerned?

I think so.

(a) Aren't there grappling Feints? Does Feint fall under any of the four heads, or is it prior to Grab Him?

Feint applies to everything combatish, and is a thing unto itself unless you want to invoke Setup Attacks. There's nothing uniquely grappling about Feints, which is why I didn't include them.

(b) The high-level view of the process looks to me like there are three steps, of which the first, Grab Him, can be repeated to gain a more effective grab. Are there moves under Grab Him Better that can't be attempted without having previously done Grab Him?

Note this isn't really true of the Basic Set. Grab him is done once, unless something you want to do requires grappling a specific hit location. So if you need a neck grab to do a Choke Hold, you can just grab the neck (if you can).

Munging "grab him" and "grab him better" into one "get a suitable grip" category is not wrong, however.

(c) Suppose that I simply want to grab someone and hold on—either I'm going to let someone else hit him while I restrain him, or my only goal is to keep him from leaving. Does that make sense in the defined sequence?

I talk about this in the RAW Win post - if your goal is to make him not go away, "Grab him" and "Win" are the same thing.

I think from my perspective the real organizing question is more, What are the possible end states that I could have as a goal? and secondary to that, What are the routes to getting to them? I'll have to reread the whole thing backward, I think.

Likely - the "end state" organization is how I did the "win" post, after all.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I talk about this in the RAW Win post - if your goal is to make him not go away, "Grab him" and "Win" are the same thing.

Unless he's twice your ST, at least, but if you're grappling someone twice your ST he's also not going to have a lot of trouble breaking free.

[McAllister]

If I were Lowell Francis, and I said "per item 14* on my list of 33, GURPS does not give me what I want," what would you say to that?

You address the point at some length, but I'm not sure quite what conclusion to draw. Except from the second paragraph, which quite rightly states "there are games in which this is not the right thing for the tone." But the rest of it seems to say that turtling is no fun, but it might be effective, and it's important to encourage action over inaction, therefore...?

Is the conclusion "in games where damage and armor are fairly evenly matched like swords against plate, the PCs need only a small advantage over their enemies, but in games where every attack is potentially lethal like modern firearm combat, the PCs need a larger advantage"?

*Item 14 states "At the same time the system shouldn't be so risk heavy as to make me afraid to take chances. One hit shouldn't take me out of the fight." Thought it was probably polite to mention, rather than make everyone pull the list back up.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Lowell Francis over at Age of Ravens threw down a mighty post: "33 Things I Want From Combat As a Player" a few days ago. I read them, and had thoughts. I will share them, because that's what I do on this blog.

OK, Lowell Francis wants D&D combat. That's fine. But why does he feel that every RPG should have D&D combat?

Different rules systems have different natural styles of combat. Some of them are customisable to various degrees, GURPS quite highly so. But nothing forces anybody to use a rules system that doesn't do the right things for the game they want to play.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by McAllister

If I were Lowell Francis, and I said "per item 14* on my list of 33, GURPS does not give me what I want," what would you say to that?

GURPS works for that if you use some optional rules, but unfortunately you need to go beyond the basic set by combining 'only a flesh wound' with some rule that gives a pool of points that are not character points (burning character points is a terrible mechanic).

Points 18, 19, and 21 are not part of a game system, they're GMing style issues.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Unless he's twice your ST, at least, but if you're grappling someone twice your ST he's also not going to have a lot of trouble breaking free.

I cover that directly in the post.