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Old 01-18-2021, 10:56 AM   #41
Anthony
 
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
When armor makes you harder to hit rather than reducing damage (which is, IMO, a weird design choice to begin with).
Armor that is adequate to the attack being defended against does reduce hit probability, because the only way to get damage through is to go around the armor. It's not actually a terrible approximation if all you care about is attacks from swords/spears/bows/etc, but it breaks down at the point you're dealing with anything more exotic, because they may have attacks that are powerful enough to punch through even in protected areas.
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Old 01-18-2021, 11:03 AM   #42
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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The logic is basically armor is inherently protective. There's a pretty good argument - backed up by grave finds - that by and large folks mostly didn't get killed THROUGH armor, they got wounded and incapacitated by hits going AROUND armor, and then finished off later. Or just right then with a well-aimed bypass. So the conceit here is that if you're wearing armor, it protects what it protects, and doesn't what it doesn't, and so your "hits" [1] go around the protection [2]

[1] A hit, at least according to the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, was always a combination of defenses, endurance, luck, favor of the gods, and lots of things. The final blow that ran you to zero or negative HP was the one that actually drew blood. The cognitive-mechanical dissonance in this - because people want "hit" to mean "hit," not "near miss" or "you made him nervous" - has been a source of friction in the system for as long as I've played it.
One of the real weird artifacts of this system is when using weapons that deliver poison. For that to work, every hit must include some contact and breaking of the skin, even if the guy still has 100 hp.
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Old 01-18-2021, 11:13 AM   #43
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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[1] A hit, at least according to the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, was always a combination of defenses, endurance, luck, favor of the gods, and lots of things. The final blow that ran you to zero or negative HP was the one that actually drew blood. The cognitive-mechanical dissonance in this - because people want "hit" to mean "hit," not "near miss" or "you made him nervous" - has been a source of friction in the system for as long as I've played it.
Yeah, maintaining this at the table is really hard. Healing returns... what now? It sometimes feels like the abstraction is made and then... it's forgotten what, precisely, it abstracts.
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Old 01-18-2021, 12:06 PM   #44
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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but then why wouldn't you always target the weakness, and if so why isn't it's AC just the worse AC of it's more vulnerable location?
Because you have to know about the weakness to use it. Monster stats were secret information to be kept from players and to be discovered by them through play.

The bulette has a hard armored shell that is AC -2. If you can get to the soft underside, it's AC 6. But you have to know that, and you have to succeed in exposing it. Its eyes are AC 4, but you have to have the insight to strike them when it raises its crest. Its eyes aren't exposed until it does this.
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Old 01-18-2021, 12:06 PM   #45
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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This is the big distinguisher for me. There's also the fact that I can take Administration, Politics, Propaganda, Strategy, etc.,--the greater breadth of potential foci.

My first D&D game, I played a Cleric who was--rather opportunistically--trying to establish a theocracy. I succeeded, but there were several points where I looked at the character sheet and went "Hmm... what do I roll against to rule the little town I'm in charge of? How about to spread my theocratic fundamentalism?"
While D&D tried to add these in the 1e-2e days it always came off as a kludge.

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There were also moments I missed some of GURPS more utility-level spells. We had a mad mayor on whom I could have used Relieve Madness...
This was the main reason I wrote (and have updated) GURPS magic systems in D&D (its first iteration was way back in the 1990s...gads I am old)

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The final combat was rather dynamic, but we had several which were "find mooks to help us, run them at BBEG, sling ranged attacks from afar until BBEG dies." Another began with the rogue attacking the foe in chinks in the armor... but there was no game mechanic to back that up... we just slugged it out with them.
Armor was weird even before the Unearthed Arcana (or as my group called it the Munchkin Manual) which added what amounted to DR to D&D armor.

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It was a fabulous game, but I came out of it with a pretty clear notion that D&D focused on combat, but didn't make even that all that interesting, whereas my character was focused on knowing what was up and manipulating things at a larger scale than D&D is accustomed to.
If you can find the old CD-rom of Dragon #1-250 you will find you aren't the only one. So many of the ideas in that magazine for improving D&D would reappear in GURPS but with far better implementation and flexibility.

"He’s Got a Lot to Kick About" Dragon #53 (Sept 1981) for example is very primitive compared to either of the Martial Arts books but the fact it even existed shows how unhappy people with dreams of being Bruce Lee in a dungeon were.

The combat issue is no surprise as it was effectively Chainmail (a medieval themed miniature wargame) with very loose RPG elements kludged on.

Armor didn't so much make you harder to hit (Classic GURPS had this with PD but thought better of it for 4e) but rather harder to take damage (DR) which is what made Plate Armor which absorbed damage so unbalancing.

More over D&D Hit Points were to quote the DMG1 "not actually a measure of physical damage" and in fact "a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors".

There were many Murphy Rules on this. "Maybe more if it is loaded" with the image of a fighter taking a cannon ball to the stomach and not even stumbling.

Another one showed people trying to execute a barbarian but thanks to his huge hit point total they couldn't do enough damage to decapitate him. IIRC the executioner was checking to see if his ax was sharp.

One needed a host of instant kill kludges to fix this.
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Old 01-18-2021, 12:10 PM   #46
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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The cognitive-mechanical dissonance in this - because people want "hit" to mean "hit," not "near miss" or "you made him nervous" - has been a source of friction in the system for as long as I've played it.
It was less of an issue for the early players, because they come from a wargaming background in which "hit" meant "remove figure from the table." It still basically means this in D&D, just with the added subtlety of "you've heroically avoided dying from an attack that would have killed someone else, but your luck will eventually run out."

The "problems" of D&D combat have always been semantic. The system does what it's supposed to do. GURPS doesn't solve D&D problems; it pulls away the abstraction and gives you the details. That's entirely a matter of preference.
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Old 01-18-2021, 05:01 PM   #47
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One of the real weird artifacts of this system is when using weapons that deliver poison. For that to work, every hit must include some contact and breaking of the skin, even if the guy still has 100 hp.
That's one of the "sources of friction" to which I was alluding, yep. Absolutely.
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Old 01-18-2021, 05:03 PM   #48
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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The "problems" of D&D combat have always been semantic. The system does what it's supposed to do. GURPS doesn't solve D&D problems; it pulls away the abstraction and gives you the details. That's entirely a matter of preference.
I happen to concur. I wrote Dragon Heresy in no small part to bridge some of the mechanics-to-narration gaps between a game like a GURPS and a game like 5e.
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Old 01-25-2021, 08:56 AM   #49
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Default Re: GURPS pitch to d20 players

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Because AC is a rather poorly named hit modifier, which often has little to do with armor.
First off Gygax and Arneson never explained the idea well either the initial release of OD&D or Gygax 2nd bite of the apple in AD&D. But thanks to the research done in recent years like in Jon Peterson's Playing at the World. Folks have a better idea of how it came about.

The key concept to remember that Armor Class was developed for Miniature Wargaming. It wasn't a numerical rating then but rather a description that formed one entry on a cross-referenced chart.

For Man to Man combat the cross-reference was between the weapon the attacker used and the armor worn by the defender. You roll 2d6 to see if you KILLED the defender.

This section of the Chainmail rules was used for skirmish level combat such as siege assaults.

In the Fantasy supplement, it took four hits in order to kill a Hero, and eight hits to kill a Super Hero. Whether it was on the field of battle using mass combat resolution or Man to Man combat.

Dave Arneson quickly found that starting out with 1 hit to kill makes for a pretty deadly and worse boring mechanics for his Blackmoor Campaign. So hits to kill became 1 Hit Dice where you roll 1d6 hit points, and 1 hit to kill became 1d6 damage.

When Gygax wrote D&D with Arneson this idea was carried over and persisted to the present as a central mechanic of classic D&D and newer editions.

What this means? Well it meant that hit points more accurately represents combat endurance of which injury is only a part. Heroes (4th level) were expected to last four times longer than a veteran warrior (1st level). While Super Heroes were expected to last 8 times longer.

Armor one wore extends how long you last in combat by make it hard for opponent to "kill" you or in later iteration harder to whittle down your combat endurance.

The virtue of the system, at least for classic D&D, is that it resolves combat quickly with a minimum of steps. The disadvantage is that it is not as institutive as system that use Armor as damage reduction like GURPS and Runequest does.

For me personally the way I handle it is as follows.
From my recently released Majestic Fantasy RPG
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In a detailed system, armor is about mitigating and resisting damage. Due to how the classic editions were developed, Armor Class in the Majestic Fantasy RPG incorporates damage avoidance as well as resistance. This is a legacy of the system’s origins in miniature wargaming, and the need to quickly resolve combat for dozens of units. When you need to consider whether an attack truly missed or was resisted by armor or shield, use the following guidelines.

Armor Class 9[10] means that the target has no form of damage resistance. Any failed to-hit roll literally misses the target. If the target has a better Armor Class as a result of their Dexterity bonus, then this number is adjusted by that Dexterity bonus. For example, Luven Lightfinger has a +2 Dexterity bonus. Any to-hit roll that fails to hit Armor Class 7[12] is considered a complete miss.

If the target is wearing armor, then they will get a bonus to their Armor Class that makes them resistant to injury. A to-hit roll that fails as result of the character wearing armor actually hits, but the damage is resisted by the armor. The character doesn’t suffer any injury as a result.

Finally, if the character is wielding a shield or two weapons and the to-hit roll is missed by one, then the blow was successfully parried by their shield or off-hand weapon.
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Old 01-25-2021, 09:29 AM   #50
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[2] I played games with Rob Conley for a while where he had "knight-killer" crossbows that added to your hit roll or subtracted from the foe's AC (using a Swords and Wizardry 'high AC is harder to hit' paradigm). This was a nod that punching through armor was modeled with 'easier to hit' not 'more damage.'
So the Knight Killer Crossbow that Doug refers too started out in my GURPS campaign as a max Strength Crossbow. Yes it took forever to reload. Effectively so long that you just used it once and didn't use it again in combat.

It was adopted by my players after a GURPS campaign where everybody played a 50 point city-guard (3rd Edition) in the City State of Invincible Overlord. They developed a operational procedure where everybody in a patrol would carry a loaded Knight Killer and shot it at the beginning of combat toward the biggest threats.

The odds were low of a successful but usually one or two were scored. With their high impaling damage this was effective in taking down one or two of their opponents and made the odds better. Especially when their opponents were 125 to 150 NPC adventurers.

As for my campaigns in 5th edition and OD&D. Once I had a handle on Armor Class as relayed in my previous posted. I felt that Crossbows of all kind in my campaign needed a substantial modifier to represent their ability to pernitrate armor. And as ranged weapon with a stock and capable of being sighted have an accuracy edge as well. So this bonus ranged for +2 for a light crossbow to a +4 for the knight killer.

This can be seen in D&D's history in the infamous Weapons versus AC stable. Which made its first appearance in Supplement I Greyhawk for OD&D.

That table in Greyhawk as a straightforward translation of the Man to Man table found in Chainmail. Instead of a 2d6 target, a modifier was calculated instead.

As relayed earlier, with the addition of hit point this meant that combat endurance was whittled down faster when certain weapons were used against certain armor types. And some weapons were worse at affecting combat endurance.

In OD&D AC had a direct one to one relationship with the armor worn. The numerical AC was a short hand for the different armor types and whether one was using a shield or not. In AD&D, additional armor types were introduced and the Weapon vs AC chart became more muddled as a result.

Personally in my take, I incorporated the idea that some weapons are more effective against certain armor types, like crossbows that Douglas Cole relates. However I opted to not use a cross-referenced chart but put a modifier in the description of the weapon.

For example
Mace, Small 9d/ea. 3.0/lbs.
Damage: 1d4+1
A weapon with a ball of metal affixed to the end. 18-24 inches long. It gets +1 to hit versus opponents wearing chainmail or gelatinous creatures like ochre jellies or black puddings. It is usable in the off hand when dual wielding.
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