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Old 06-16-2012, 10:55 PM   #1
Valadrim
 
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Default Realistic Vampire Potence

I keep pondering if GURPS might do a better job of Vampire The Masquerade than the WoD system, but I do find the published GURPS attempt to be occasionally cringe worthy. I have been enjoying the other threads but rather than wait for this one I am starting it myself.

Without concern for balancing points against other disciplines, Potence should make vampires noticeably stronger at lower levels and clearly supernaturally strong at higher levels.

I am thinking a breakdown like this

1: 3 levels of Striking and Lifting ST
2: 6 levels of Striking and Lifting ST
3: 12 levels of Striking and Lifting ST
4: 18 levels of Striking and Lifting ST
5: 27 levels of Striking and Lifting ST

Does this seem like a good progression? I had originally thought about half of that, but I see vampires with five levels of Potence as being able to hurl smaller cars and this looks to be more on the mark for that.

Elder levels may allow for super effort options, but I wanted the first five to be pretty basic. I figure there should be a power modifier for kindred powers, but am not sure how best to adjudicate it off the top of my head, plus I would probably feel inclined to give the uncontrolable limitation to some elders who just can't ever seem to answer their phone without crushing it to bits.

Last edited by Valadrim; 06-17-2012 at 06:30 PM. Reason: Making my write up easier to read, fixing errors
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Old 06-16-2012, 11:11 PM   #2
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Yeah the whole WoD conversions all pretty much sucked. Mage was the best of the lot and they would all be better in 4E.
I think the trouble was 3E tended to make new advantages too much rather then modify existing ones in a consistent way. 4E is much smoother about that.
Another part of the problem was in trying to convert something the original source wants creative input and control and I do not feel they really understood or even cared to understand how GURPS works and thus wanted things to happen that just came out unbalanced.
There are numerous conversions of the system around, not just the most recent threads. I made one myself, though it is far from true to the original. WoD was just an inspiration I did not care for the system enough to need a mirror image.
A big chunk of them are posted on these forums under WoD
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Old 06-17-2012, 01:20 AM   #3
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Assuming you take four seconds and use both hands (for x8 lifting capacity) picking up a small car of ~2000lb requires effective ST35 or better, with that they can throw it three yards.

Based on a fit vampire with ST15 you'd need a progression like:
4
8
12
16
20

If vampires are closer to the human baseline of ST10:
5
10
15
20
25

Last edited by lexington; 06-17-2012 at 01:24 AM.
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Old 06-17-2012, 05:47 AM   #4
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Quote:
Originally Posted by lexington View Post
Assuming you take four seconds and use both hands (for x8 lifting capacity) picking up a small car of ~2000lb requires effective ST35 or better [snip]
The levels in the OP are cumulative, so (assuming a base ST of 8+) a 5'll already get you ST 35+ total.
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Old 06-17-2012, 08:55 AM   #5
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

I think the best approach is to be "inspired by", especially since White Wolf eventually abandoned the original WoD setting themselves. So instead of reproducing the original system, we create mechanics which fit together with themselves and give us roughly the same kind of gameplay and setting feel.

Disciplines should be balanced against one another, for example. Celerity was always much more powerful than other disciplines, for example.

Some later ideas helped stem the tide of "grab-bag" powers like Serpentis, by retconning them into Thaumaturgy Paths. Thaumaturgy itself needs to be calibrated against conventional GURPS magic and reality-warping.

It's a lot of work, but I think it's made easier and the end product more effective if we aren't straitjacketed by WoD mechanics.
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Old 06-17-2012, 09:17 AM   #6
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Quote:
Originally Posted by lexington View Post
Assuming you take four seconds and use both hands (for x8 lifting capacity) picking up a small car of ~2000lb requires effective ST35 or better, with that they can throw it three yards.
There's a very limited number of cars around or under 2000. I found a Smart for around 1600lbs but a Mini Cooper was 2500. There are a lot of cars over 3000.

For a serious "throws cars" you might want ST40+.

To the OP:make you write up as total bonuses and not increments.

Also, the Gurps sT table ahs a thing for increments of 2 or 4. It takes +2 levls of ST to boost you +1 Thrust damage. 4 levels would give +2 Thrust.

I'd make my table look like

1.+4
2.+8

...and so on to +40 at level 10 (if Vampire disciplines still go up to 10). ST 50 still only lets you lift 4000lbs without Extra Effort and there are plenty of SUVs heavier than that.
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Old 06-17-2012, 10:43 AM   #7
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Quote:
Originally Posted by wellspring View Post
Some later ideas helped stem the tide of "grab-bag" powers like Serpentis, by retconning them into Thaumaturgy Paths.
What do you mean? AFAIK only 3, maybe 4 with some bloodline rare, disciplines are purely numeric. The rest are qualitatively different between levels.
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Old 06-17-2012, 12:40 PM   #8
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Thank you all for your thoughts. I fixed my numbers at the top so that each level stood on its own rather than asked you to add each previous level to it. Wellspring thought I should pay more attention to discipline balance, admitting that he is right I thought about how I want this to play against Fortitude.

In the original system the damage benefit form Potence was that each level of Potence caused an automatic (not rolled) level of damage, and each level of Fortitude soaked one level of damage automatically (not rolled).

Potence further had the benefit of an ill described but apparently exponential increase in lifting strength, while Fortitude was rounded out with the ability to soak aggravated damage (Sunlight, fire, supernatural claws, etc).

If I want to balance the two I should settle on a unit of damage. 1d seems like an easy choice. Then basing my model off of an already strong vampire with ST 15 (swing 2d+1), I find the following chart provides exactly one extra die of swing damage per level.

1 4 Striking and Lifting ST
2 8 Striking and Lifting ST
3 12 Striking and Lifting ST
4 20 Striking and Lifting ST
5 30 Striking and Lifting ST

This also give our sample vampire effectively 45 ST for the purpose of picking up cars and such. With this in mind it should be easier to build Fortitude that is both useful and a comparable choice to Potence.

Fred asked about scaling the powers out to 10. The original material did allow for up to 10 levels (with sufficient generation), and the physical powers could simply scale linearly. However only elders could access powers beyond 5, and rather than a set power there were a number of powers on each level along with the possibilities of collecting multiple powers on each level. Such that someone with Potence 6 might have 40 Striking and Lifting ST, or the benefits of Potence 5 plus some odd power to forge unbreakable swords, prodigious amounts of hand ST, or all three. This feels like a great place for STs to make unfair stuff up and not be tied down to it, and I feel like it is unnecessary to worry about codifying these powers for players.

As far as level 10 powers go they were occasionally written up (often as something a bit silly) in the very early books. They weren't mentioned again until the very end of the line. Each (revised) level 10 power had the exact same write up. Plot Device The character does absolutely anything they want so long as it is thematically tied to the power. I have little desire to explore this end of the power scale.
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Old 06-17-2012, 01:22 PM   #9
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Quote:
Originally Posted by Valadrim View Post

If I want to balance the two I should settle on a unit of damage. 1d seems like an easy choice. Then basing my model off of an already strong vampire with ST 15 (swing 2d+1), I find the following chart provides exactly one extra die of swing damage per level.

1 4 Striking and Lifting ST
2 8 Striking and Lifting ST
3 12 Striking and Lifting ST
4 20 Striking and Lifting ST
5 30 Striking and Lifting ST
OK so point balancing this as well might be a goal.

Assuming base costs, no limitations on the above as both probably will wind up with about the same.
Potence 1 [32]; Potence 2 [64]; Potence 3 [96]; Potence 4 [128]; Potence 5 [160]
Fortitude 1 DR 4 [20] +12?
Fortitude 2 DR 8 [40] + 24
Fortitude 3 DR 12 [60] +36
Fortitude 4 DR 16 [80] +48 Maybe IT:DR1 (50)
Fortitude 5 DR 20 [100] +60 Maybe IT:DR2 (75)

First 3 levels of Fortitude could be ablative DR that i later replaced with IT:DR
Both could have limited defense so they don't work against aggravated damage.
Using this as your base line you could calculate your other disciplines as well, Celerity should come out point balanced but wont be as tough as it was in VtM.
Each Discipline could also use the Alternative Ability mechanics to come up with different but related powers for that Discipline.
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Old 06-17-2012, 02:19 PM   #10
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Default Re: Realistic Vampire Potence

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
Assuming base costs, no limitations on the above as both probably will wind up with about the same.
Potence 1 [32]; Potence 2 [64]; Potence 3 [96]; Potence 4 [128]; Potence 5 [160]
Assuming that Striking ST and Lifting ST is 8 points for one level I get the following prices.

Potence 1 [32]
Potence 2 [64]
Potence 3 [96]
Potence 4 [160] (20x8)
Potence 5 [240] (30x8)

The last two are different from your prices, I am not sure how you came up with them.

If each of these levels of Potence adds 1d of damage then each level of Fortitude would only need 4 levels of DR to keep up. Keeping things simple (for the moment) that would look like this.

Fortitude 1 [12] (DR 4, tough skin -40%)
Fortitude 2 [24] (DR 8, tough skin -40%)
Fortitude 3 [36] (DR 12, tough skin -40%)
Fortitude 4 [48] (DR 16, tough skin -40%)
Fortitude 5 [60] (DR 20, tough skin -40%)

Three problems become immediately obvious to me. First this is far cheaper than Potence. Perhaps I should consider alternative means of making Potence work. Maybe scrapping Striking ST for levels of Innate Attack with the follow up modifier so they can be added onto brawling and melee attacks, and perhaps super effort is something I should consider to make the lifting ST cheaper at the top end but I don't want to make it so that vampires get exhausted by using their Potence, I guess I can always add an enhancement that negates FP expenditure.

Second this is a little boring, Potence at least has the benefit of really impressive lifting as it goes, level 5 at least needs some zaz, perhaps IT: DR, but then I risk making fortitude even more powerful relative to Potence.

Third while Fortitude needs to keep up with vampire Potence it can't be proof against sun and fire, and I don't want sun and fire to do so much damage to vampires that vampires without Fortitude go up like petrol soaked kindling. So most of these levels of DR need to have the limitation that they don't apply to sun or fire, although I am not sure what the limitation is there, perhaps -20% for the DR that doesn't protect against fire and sun?
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