System Fatigue: d20 and Gurps

[borithan]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Have you thought about trying a totally different system for a while? Something in a really different paradigm? Something rules light and Narrativist? Something like FATE, or Ashen Stars (GUMSHOE), or something Powered By The Apocalypse? You know...something to *really* put you in a different space before you decide what you want to do with regard to GURPS vs. d20?

I am wondering if Savage Worlds might work. Not narrative, but designed to be easy to run combat, quite easy to wing with compared to D20, no class limitations, and guns are generally not overpowered compared to melee weapons (I think they are on balance better than melee weapons, but not so overwhelmingly so as in GURPS).

It is still very centered around human scale things (one of my issues with it is how it deals with large creatures, as the damage mechanics do not scale in a way I find satisfying), and it is definitely designed for a sort of "pulp" level of gameplay, which does mean it can be both very heroic but quite lethal at the same time. It is also quite light, which has the advantage that it is easy to run both combat and non combat elements, but could be a little bit too much of a step down in complexity from GURPS and D20.

Oh... I guess I also don't think its vehicle and heavy weapons rules interact fantastically well with the rest of the system, but if you are primarily focused on fantasy that isn't going to be a big deal. Just results in weird oddities like the best anti-tank gun of WW2 apparently being the 40mm Bofors gun.

[Lord Azagthoth]

The differences in reach and step is somewhere in GURPS, but the rules itself doesn't refer to it anywhere.

Instead, they've should have replaces distances in steps and reaches (e.g., so a reach 1 for an human combatant is 1 meter, but for a SM-1 being it's only 70 cm and for a SM+1 being it's 1.5 meters). But for a lot of people, it's easier to read meters (or yards) than reach. Because of this, GURPS seems very human centered.

[Whyte]

Some of my suggestions and experiences...

Originally Posted by Algarik

- The one second rounds. I've tried really, really hard to make combat take longer by encouraging player to actually role play in combat ,but even then i rarely get past the 8 second combat. Character move way too fast and there reaction time is a bit too fast.

In one of our fantasy campaigns, we just arbitrarily changed 1s = 3 seconds, as far as combat and spells were concerned. Naturally, you'll have to tweak running move (sprint), but simply "Move = quick walk in 3 seconds" worked well in battles. Not only did this make bows (Fast-draw and Speedload) a bit less like medieval machineguns, but it allowed the fights to continue a bit longer than your stated 8 seconds.

- I the end i feel like Gurps is really good, but i always get some grip with some rule and i end up having to write my own house rule, which take times.

What I have found that it is generally best to have as few houserules as possible, unless there is a clear exploit/mistake to be corrected. :) There usually is a reason why the rule is in the rulebook, and why play-testing is a thing. But it is your game. Once you have made the houserule, it should be good and done, since there shouldn't be any need to remake it for the next campaign?

- Guns damage. I get it guns are better than swords, and they should be, but i never found any support for mixing both in an effective way. (Maybe i'm just bad at searching).

Historically, the reason swords were still a thing in 19th century was that you started out the century with single-shot pistols and even with the advent of revolvers, you might miss, the chamber might misfire, or the crazed fuzzy-wuzzy was still coming at you despite having been shot. Or his mates were, since the colonial oppressors were generally outnumbered by the natives. Having a sword was a very nice thing to have as a backup, and it is a much better weapon for defending against other melee weapons than an empty pistol is.

Now in the 20th century, you had semi-automatic pistols and good revolvers, and the modern rifles meant that you seldom if ever had to close to hand-to-hand ranges (save when assaulting the trenches or strongpoints in cities). So sword became much more ceremonial, and unnecessary encumbrance in the field.

So if you set your campaign in a period where firearms are single-shot each, engagement ranges are short (boarding, city streets, inside buildings), and the PCs might encounter more than one enemy each, you will find that most PCs will want to carry a melee weapon just in case. Especially if it is more of a civilian setting which might frown upon large firearms (muskets) being carried around the city, but considers rapiers to be tres chic. Then you just have to deal with a hidden pistol or two, and they are usually hard to get to in a hurry (that hidden part).

In a advanced tech setting, the only way is unfortunately to 'cheat'. If you can make a 'laser sword', it is very likely that it is easier to make a laser 'sword' that shoots the 'blade' off. Containing energy is usually more difficult than just letting it go 'thataway'.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Algarik

Any Advices, solutions, counter arguments or insults?

This is the internet so to start with: Generic insult.

Then an agreement on one of to minor points to not seem unreasonable: Gurps is indeed too human centric. Scaling by RAW breaks badly in both larger and smaller things.

Then some useless advice:

On preparation: I cheat.

That is: I use Pathfinder monsters mostly as such with about 10 second conversion each in my games.

"Conversion" is as follows:
All skills and weapon skills are 10+pathfinder skill/attack bonus.
DR is the sum natural, enchantment and armor bonuses from the AC.
Dodge is the calculated dodge from HT/DX+deflection, dodge, intuition, morale and other special bonuses from the AC.
Attributes are used as such.
Hitpoints are used as such as "effective total HP", that is the number of total hitpoints they take until dropping.
Damage of attacks is the given damage for most things, but things like spells with large number of dice, I occasionally lower it and instead give the monster more uses or similar.
All special attacks use their DC-10 as the save penalty. For fort save I use HT mostly, with very few working better as ST. for will save I use will. FOr dex save, the attack has to be dodged or blocked at that penalty.
All other special abilities basically work as in Pathfinder.

On the monster and other things scaling so to not make large objects/creatures too brittle: I use injury tolerance Damage reduction for all large objects that scales on the object size. Note that this is not used with converted monsters, as the "effective HP" being easily very high for such.

On house rules: If you end up using them, you should rejoice and embrace the thing. I have dozens of wiki pages with house rules in our current game.. :)

One second rounds: yes, they are too fast, thus I do not use them as such, instead a round is a short time where everyone can do their actions, as in most cases it does not matter. Where "exactly how many seconds did the combat take" matters I use a multiple that seems right for the things done normally around 3. For the few thins where it matters while in combat like falling near the ground I tend to use 2 seconds of falling for each action they can take.

On Guns and Swords: Yes they do not mix in a realistic game if you have TL 6+ guns and range is more than a few yards. At few yards being able to parry the gun itself makes melee weapons work somewhat.

It should however be noted that at high enough power levels just leaving out the optional predictive shot rule makes melee weapons normally much better that guns as with melee weapons you can do deceptive attack so people cannot so easily dodge them, whereas with gun attacks the only way to reduce the dodge is with multiple hits and recoil means that it normally scales slower than the skill and tends to make you run out of ammo fast.

If you really want to make them work together at lower power levels you have to include unrealistic rules. The simplest method is giving guns some penalty, like allowing "TV Action Violence" against any attack doing over a given number of dice damage or just directly only against any attack by gun.

Other methods are allowing people to buy lots of dodge(only against ranged attacks).

[Algarik]

First i want to thank you all for the response, i appreciate you all taking time to reply to me!

* I originally quoted a lot of text and i then realized i was way over in term of allowed characters... So i've put ''[…]'' symbol on where i cutted the quote, but i think i've answered to pretty much everything.
** Even with the cuts there isn't enough space, i apologize in advance for the double post!

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

First, go more for "strong, slow" monsters, rather that "skilled".[…]

That’s… actually really smart, i’ll shamely admit that i had totally forgot about high strenght/low skill oponent. I was probably too focused on basing myself on gurps animals type of skill were each animals have something like 14 brawling skill minimum. Although i guess i’ll have to be careful if the thing get too much SM because it adds on bonus to hit for grapple, but i guess it could make things even more interesting!

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Second, pour even more HP on than ST. 50% higher than the creature's ST is a good rule of thumb, I find. […

I think gurps normally limits hp over strenght to 30% for realistic purpose, but i guess monster aren’t that much realistic to begin with, so i’ll probably start using your trick. Although for low TL, yes i defenitely think this works an extra 5-10 hp probably mean the monster will be able to witstand an extra sword blow or an extra arrow, which is perfect. Although for TL5+ where guns start being common i don’t know how much survability that would add when guns hit for 5d+ with pi+ or pi++ damage modifiers available.I also think i will need to be careful with extra hp because hp is used to make slam rule and thus roughly imply some kind of mass, i just need to make sure it does not become silly. And i do agree, fighting monster to -5xHp can be really tedious, which is why i avoid making monster and ennemies with more that HT 13, and that’s generally reserved to the though guy.

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Third, give it some defensive advantages of its own, besides HP. DR is the obvious one, […]Besides DR, another good trait for really large creatures is Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction). […]I like to give very large monsters IT: DR at the 1/2 level or better, only against small weapons, where "small" is defined by exactly how much larger the creature is than the PCs.

Yes i knew about injury tolerance, but i admit i did forget about it, so thanks for the reminder! I think it’s a good way to reduce guns damage, although i think ennemies got to be a little bit special to possess this kind of advantage and it generally imply so kind of weird morphology or biology or lack thereof.

The injury tolerance scaling on size is idea i did not thought a second about, and frankly that’s brilliant. Although i don’t think small weapon are really the problem when it comes to monster toughness.

About DR, i totally agree that it’s a wonderful defense to increase a monster durability but i’m having hard balancing it when the party damage is so diverse, maybe this have more to do with somewhat balanced group building, but when a player swing a greatsword for 2d+4(avg 11) and other one swings a rapier for 1d+2 (av 5.5) it’s hard to balance. When bringing guns into the matter it just make things worst because pistols tend to do 2d~ and rifles tend to do 5d+. I do agree it is realistic and pistol shouldn’t outdamage rifles i just don’t know what to do about it.

But still overall your advice were really solid and i really appreciate you taking your time helping me, thank you very much!

Originally Posted by Magic_Octopus

The same Pyramid issue that has the Last Gasp rules has rules for Survivable Guns. That might be of interest to you.

To think the solution was that simple all along… I feel really dumb :P

Thank you very much that’s exactly what i’ve been looking for concerning gun damage! That mixed with vibroblade in high setting could really shift the scale!

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

In my system I have replaced FP (because I use FP for Force Points) with 4 levels of mental fatigue and physical fatigue. […]

That’s an interesting way of making fatigue rule a bit more abstract and simpler, it’s a cool idea. This is also really interesting tied with the magery system as you could do a shadowrunesque drain system. Lets say you cast a 4 fatigue spell that mean you need to succeed at an appropriate skill/attribute roll to avoid getting fatigue backlash. Now that put to shame the shadowrun drain conversion i tried to implement in gurps a while ago :P

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

I was also switching from D20 Star Wars to GURPS to WEG D6 back and forth, and now there is also the FFG Star Wars system....
But for the roleplying part, GURPS is the best. The others are mostly concentrated on combat

Yeah that’s kind of my problem here, i love gurps versatility and the depth of the game and i hate the gamist approach D20 system takes. D20 do make really good games and i won’t say it’s less ‘’roleplay’’ than gurps because technically it depends on the group, but the mechanic defenitely mostly support combat and little else. There’s also the whole other bunch of problems i mentionned in my OP that always brings me back to gurps.

Anyway thanks for your input, it’s appreciated!

Originally Posted by borithan

I am wondering if Savage Worlds might work.

I’m not sure if this was adress to me because you quoted the Trooper6, but i’ll still answer it.

I took a quick look at savage world yesterday and felt like it was too simple for me. The thing i don’t like about gurps isn’t it’s complexity but rather it’s lack of support for bestiaries, pre-written adventures and anything that doesn’t deal with human sized and shaped thing. I know there’s some rules for giant thingy but they don’t work that well. Example: The Slam rule work really well for man-sized people, but when you include shield they start getting clunky. A small 7 str halfling with a large shield could slam down an immobile 20-25 str giant with a good chance of success. Well i also used to hate the fact that guns and sword were really hard to balance, but before saying it’s still the case i’ll have to try the survivable guns rule mixed with some high TL melee weapons modifications.

Still thanks for your suggestion!

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

The differences in reach and step is somewhere in GURPS, but the rules itself doesn't refer to it anywhere.
Instead, they've should have replaces distances in steps and reaches (e.g., so a reach 1 for an human combatant is 1 meter, but for a SM-1 being it's only 70 cm and for a SM+1 being it's 1.5 meters). But for a lot of people, it's easier to read meters (or yards) than reach. Because of this, GURPS seems very human centered.

The size modifer reach modifier rules is on page 402 of Basic: Campaigns. The step rules are on page 368 of Basic:Campaigns and it’s tied to move. A step distance is equal to 1/10 of basic move.

I don’t know if i’d change anything regarding that, because gurps size modifier isn’t linear.

Originally Posted by Whyte

In one of our fantasy campaigns, we just arbitrarily changed 1s = 3 seconds, as far as combat and spells were concerned.

Yeah i think that’s what a lot of people end-up doing. Between round that last 6 second in d20 games and round that last 1 seconds in gurps it seems like a good compromise. It might be a good solution to the time frame in combat. I think i’ll try the lulls rules and if i don’t like it i might switch to 3 second round and fiddle a bit with the actions.

Originally Posted by Whyte

What I have found that it is generally best to have as few houserules as possible, unless there is a clear exploit/mistake to be corrected. :)

I totally agree with you the less houserule anyone brings to a table the less complicated things get and the less the risk of breaking your own games. Although, there’s almost always somethings i stumble own that i feel isn’t realistic enough according to some real life evidence (like the basic overland traveling speed being 50 miles per day or the 6DR fullplate) and then i get obsessive over finding a way to make it more realistic either by looking on the forum or crafting my ownrule. It’s unhealthy but it seems i can hardly get over it.

Originally Posted by Whyte

Historically, […]
In a advanced tech setting, the only way is unfortunately to 'cheat'. If you can make a 'laser sword', it is very likely that it is easier to make a laser 'sword' that shoots the 'blade' off. Containing energy is usually more difficult than just letting it go 'thataway'.

That is all very true, guns beat sword in TL6+that is undeniable, otherwise swordmen soldier would still be popular. And you gives very good solution on how to manage bringing sword together and that’s perfect for realistic kind of setting, or historical settings were sword were still used but i find the lack of rule support to make sword&guns blend well together a bit annoying since there’s a lot of genre that mix both. (Shadowrun,Warhammer,Star wars, Final Fantasy, Starfinder, etc). I guess i’ll have to try the survivable gun rule and see how it goes.

Thank you for your advice!

[Algarik]

Originally Posted by weby

This is the internet so to start with: Generic insult.

Then i’ll reply in internet fashion: Angry emotional and inflamatory response!

Originally Posted by weby

That is: I use Pathfinder monsters mostly as such with about 10 second conversion each in my games.

"Conversion" is as follows: […]

That’s an interesting way for quick conversion, but i’m wondering how high powered are your campaign? Because basic CR 5 Trolls wound have something like 18 brawling skill, which is really high for a troll and a cr 13 Banshee would get 36 in brawling, that’s very high! Same thing goes for the skills. The DCs seems like they get really high quickly, a d13 wich is something rather easy to resist in pathfinder becomes a -3 on HT rolls, that’s harsh for 11-12 HT characters. I like the idea though i could see what i can do with it and play with the numbers a bit to fit my level of play.

Originally Posted by weby

On the monster and other things scaling so to not make large objects/creatures too brittle: I use injury tolerance Damage reduction for all large objects that scales on the object size. Note that this is not used with converted monsters, as the "effective HP" being easily very high for such.

Yeah i’ll probably start using that too, you’re not the first to suggest this in the thread, and it might really be a good solution.

Originally Posted by weby

On house rules: If you end up using them, you should rejoice and embrace the thing. I have dozens of wiki pages with house rules in our current game.. :)

Yes i generally keep the house rule, because once i change a rule it’s generally for realism’s sake.

Originally Posted by weby

One second rounds: yes, they are too fast, thus I do not use them as such, instead a round is a short time where everyone can do their actions, as in most cases it does not matter.[…]

I don’t know how i feel about relative time round, i know some systems use that but i prefer when things are precise and consistent. Not that having a more laid back system is wrong, just that i prefer when it’s well defined.

Originally Posted by weby

On Guns and Swords: […]

Yeah, i probably shot myself in the foot when i added a deceptive attack on ranged attack aswell, because i thought crossbow were incredibly boring in 1 second per round low tech games. Having to load for 3-4 second, then aim and finally shooting on the fifth round for having someone dodge your bolt 50% of the time was tedious.

Originally Posted by weby

If you really want to make them work together at lower power levels you have to include unrealistic rules. […]

Yeah to make that work i have to find some unrealistic rules but i generally prefer having unrealistic technologies than physics it tend to break my immersions a bit less. Things like having vibroblade and keeping guns 2 TL behind with the survivable gun rules for exemple would probably suit my playstyle.

Thanks for your reply!

And thank you again everyone, all may not be lost for gurps and me! :)

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Algarik

I think gurps normally limits hp over strenght to 30% for realistic purpose, but i guess monster aren’t that much realistic to begin with, so i’ll probably start using your trick.

Remember, too, that the "+30% HP over ST" rule is really about realistic humans, not all creatures everywhere. If a monster just naturally has thicker, tougher flesh than a human does, it can reasonably have higher HP than its ST would indicate.

Originally Posted by Algarik

Although for TL5+ where guns start being common i don’t know how much survability that would add when guns hit for 5d+ with pi+ or pi++ damage modifiers available.

Yeah, guns start greatly reducing the lifespan of monsters. Once you get guns involved, you've got to either start throwing "realistic biology" out the window (things like eyelids with DR 10, combat-speed regeneration, and so forth), or you've got to start having the creatures use much more cunning tactics (lying in wait and springing out to start the fight in close combat helps against non-gunslingers, for example).

Originally Posted by Algarik

The injury tolerance scaling on size is idea i did not thought a second about, and frankly that’s brilliant. Although i don’t think small weapon are really the problem when it comes to monster toughness.

True, I don't think many people are attacking giant dragons with paring knives! Still, I think there's something in the idea of reducing weapon damage based on huge size. Offhand, I think I'd reduce impaling and all forms of piercing damage. Say, every three SMs above 0 would move all the damage multipliers down the "scale" (so, pi+, normally X1.5, would become X1, pi would become X0.5, and so forth.). I think I'd make the very small damage types drop to first X0.25, then X0.1, and stop there. And you'd probably have to set some breakpoints where very large pi++ weapons didn't drop, like, for instance, a 20mm artillery shell would still have the full X2 damage against an SM +3 monster.

Originally Posted by Algarik

About DR, i totally agree that it’s a wonderful defense to increase a monster durability but i’m having hard balancing it when the party damage is so diverse, maybe this have more to do with somewhat balanced group building, but when a player swing a greatsword for 2d+4(avg 11) and other one swings a rapier for 1d+2 (av 5.5) it’s hard to balance.

That's where my suggestion about making sure the monster has weaknesses come in. If you give it DR 10 over its whole body, the greatsword-wielder can just hit it normally, and keep whittling it down. Meanwhile, the rapier-wielder can target chinks in the armor, to reduce it to DR 5 against their hits, and thus get some damage through themselves (often doubled, for impaling, or even tripled or quadrupled, for vitals or brain hits). Basically, encourage the characters with lighter, less damaging weapons to invest in higher skills with those weapons, to ensure they can take advantage of higher-value targets.

[Algarik]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Remember, too, that the "+30% HP over ST" rule is really about realistic humans, not all creatures everywhere. If a monster just naturally has thicker, tougher flesh than a human does, it can reasonably have higher HP than its ST would indicate.

That is very true, thanks for the reminder :)

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Yeah, guns start greatly reducing the lifespan of monsters. Once you get guns involved, you've got to either start throwing "realistic biology" out the window (things like eyelids with DR 10, combat-speed regeneration, and so forth), or you've got to start having the creatures use much more cunning tactics (lying in wait and springing out to start the fight in close combat helps against non-gunslingers, for example).

I'll see what i can do with the survivable gun rule and adding option for melee character.


True, I don't think many people are attacking giant dragons with paring knives! Still, I think there's something in the idea of reducing weapon damage based on huge size. Offhand, I think I'd reduce impaling and all forms of piercing damage. Say, every three SMs above 0 would move all the damage multipliers down the "scale" (so, pi+, normally X1.5, would become X1, pi would become X0.5, and so forth.). I think I'd make the very small damage types drop to first X0.25, then X0.1, and stop there. And you'd probably have to set some breakpoints where very large pi++ weapons didn't drop, like, for instance, a 20mm artillery shell would still have the full X2 damage against an SM +3 monster. [/QUOTE]

Downgrading damage multiplier with increasing size modifier really seems like a good idea, although i don't know how that would compare with large creature that already high strength and high hp. But yeah, maybe it would make sense not being able to kill a 160 hp 70 210' long Kraken with a single round of full auto fire. The more i think about it, the more it would really help big monster, i like it!

Although i'd probably start the down scaling around SM 2, because 9' isn't that much of a difference and i'd prefer player not having easy access to impaling and piercing injury tolerance through gigantism.

But honestly i think it's a brilliant idea worthy of starting another thread to work on the math.

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

That's where my suggestion about making sure the monster has weaknesses come in. If you give it DR 10 over its whole body, the greatsword-wielder can just hit it normally, and keep whittling it down. Meanwhile, the rapier-wielder can target chinks in the armor, to reduce it to DR 5 against their hits, and thus get some damage through themselves (often doubled, for impaling, or even tripled or quadrupled, for vitals or brain hits). Basically, encourage the characters with lighter, less damaging weapons to invest in higher skills with those weapons, to ensure they can take advantage of higher-value targets.

I already feel like i'm incredibly arbitrary at character creation, i rarely permit stats over 13, beside strength, or non combat skill over 14 when i want to stay in the gritty range. Because i think having 95% chance of success on almost all dangerous rolls kinda kills the fun. I guess i could be more permissive to small weapon holder so they can increase skill higher, or buy the targeted attack (armor chink) technique to circumvent some of the penalty and prevent heavy weapon from doing it for balance sake. It just feels kinda of wrong to tell yes to someone and no to the other. I'll think about it.

Thanks again you're great help :)

[weby]

Originally Posted by Algarik

That’s an interesting way for quick conversion, but i’m wondering how high powered are your campaign? Because basic CR 5 Trolls wound have something like 18 brawling skill, which is really high for a troll and a cr 13 Banshee would get 36 in brawling, that’s very high! Same thing goes for the skills. The DCs seems like they get really high quickly, a d13 wich is something rather easy to resist in pathfinder becomes a -3 on HT rolls, that’s harsh for 11-12 HT characters. I like the idea though i could see what i can do with it and play with the numbers a bit to fit my level of play.

The exact numbers used depend of course on your campaign. But minor comments:
In general the equivalence I see is about 50-100 points=1 level mostly depending on optimization as Gurps characters tend to be skilled in many more things than Pathfinder. (that is a very rough number but good for general estimation)

As example if you take the 100 point Soldier of Fortune in B260 and convert it "backwards" you end up with a pathfinder character that has +4 to hit, with things like will +1, fort +2, reflex +0/+3(once/rd) and 11 hitpoints. Those numbers are fairly close to what you would expect for level 1 fighter.

And it should be noted that in play that 100 point character feels definitely like low level fighter, as one to three hits will have you rolling every second for going unconscious and you do not have any special things to do in combat.

Taking the Dungeon fantasy knight at 250 points(that is really a combat only character and thus at low end of the scale so 50 points/level seems reasonable) and it is a +10 to hit, that is fairly close to a level 5 pathfinder fighter. (+5 bab, +1 weapon training, +4 attribute). And so on.

Also the DF characters definitely feel like they are below level 10 pathfinder characters in play, but the exact level how much below is much harder to say, but far below the superheroic feel you start to get at about level 8-12 onward depending on build/class, so the level 5 character feel is actually fairly close.

Further a HT 11-12 character without fit is pretty low for going against any monsters that are not really low power in Gurps and DC 13 is actually fairly powerful against level 1 characters if that is not their primary save. As example a DC 13 will attack will succeed more than half the time against a likely low level pathfinder fighter. You would expect a level 1 Path finder fighter to fail it more than half the time.

On the skills: A cr 5 troll converted is thus a really high challenge to 100 point characters the same way it is to level 1 characters in pathfinder. But just a normal encounter that is not meant to use much resources to a level 5 group. So the skill of 18 attacks are thus normally parried by the knight with skill 20, but there is a fairly high chance of being hit. The same way a expected AC of 20-22 or slightly higher at level 5 for the Pathfinder fighter is normally missed by the +8, but you do get hits in the long run. So again the general feel is about the same.

But in my feeling the scaling is about the same with my approx thing provided you give the characters about the same level of magic equipment as you would give in Pathfinder.

Of course you can scale differently, if you do not wish to see the troll as as effective as it is in Pathfinder and wish to have low power level regularly fight such.

Yeah to make that work i have to find some unrealistic rules but i generally prefer having unrealistic technologies than physics it tend to break my immersions a bit less. Things like having vibroblade and keeping guns 2 TL behind with the survivable gun rules for exemple would probably suit my playstyle.

Leaving guns at low/middle TL 5 level solves a lot of the problems and even a late TL 5 weapon tends to often feel questionable against armored foes if the range is close enough that you do not have all the time in the world to aim and shoot multiple times. So also keeping action inside houses, in dense vegetation and such helps a lot too. Further even a moderate level of armoring forces people to aim at harder to hit body parts or take a really slow firing weapon to get higher damage.

At higher TLs weapons like rifles doing 7d damage and having a magazine feed just become too effective against melee weapons.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Algarik

I already feel like i'm incredibly arbitrary at character creation, i rarely permit stats over 13, beside strength, or non combat skill over 14 when i want to stay in the gritty range.

Those limits work well for such, and create the same feel as below level 5 characters in Pathfinder generally. Except that Gurps characters tend to be slightly skilled in way more things than the Pathfinder.

If you have hard time balancing challenges for higher power characters there are two specific Gurps supplements that help.

Action 2 -exploits is generally one of the more useful supplements with things like chase rules and how to resolve many of the basic adventuring tasks. But it also discusses how to make things challenging for action level characters that tend to have primary skills in the 17-20 range and the same method actually scales well to higher levels.

And for truly much higher power levels the Supers is a great resource even if you are not actually running superheroes.

I use both a lot for my stuff in my very high power Fantasy campaign I have been running for 300 sessions and 7 years now..