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Old 07-14-2018, 01:01 PM   #1
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

So, I was wondering how people dealt with sending 250-point normal protagonists (PCs) against 500-point superhuman antagonists (NPCs)? In general, I think that five 250-point normal PCs are capable of taking out a 500-point NPCs with difficulty if they have a good plan and a decent amount of luck. In any case, I do not think that the fight between the PCs and the NPCs should be easy when there are such discrepancies in capabilities (and it should probably be the focus of an adventure or even a campaign).
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Old 07-14-2018, 01:25 PM   #2
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
So, I was wondering how people dealt with sending 250-point normal protagonists (PCs) against 500-point superhuman antagonists (NPCs)? In general, I think that five 250-point normal PCs are capable of taking out a 500-point NPCs with difficulty if they have a good plan and a decent amount of luck. In any case, I do not think that the fight between the PCs and the NPCs should be easy when there are such discrepancies in capabilities (and it should probably be the focus of an adventure or even a campaign).
I am much worse. I usually throw players with characters between 50 and 100 points against npcs of 1000-1500 points. Needless to say, these npcs usually have great social skills and a lot of money. It's not a bad way to play extremely realistic stories in which players know they are destined to lose from the start as soon as they try to embark on any purpose that is too big for them.

As most are regular players of silent hill and resident evil, they really love it when even without having tried anything too far out of reach they find themselves in the middle of where they should never have been. Their usual actions are running, hiding, screaming and begging for someone else to die for them, although the characters experienced in martial arts or shooting with firearms (policemen, soldiers...) that from time to time try to face the problems violently are not unusual either.

Last edited by Alonsua; 07-14-2018 at 01:35 PM.
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Old 07-14-2018, 02:00 PM   #3
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
So, I was wondering how people dealt with sending 250-point normal protagonists (PCs) against 500-point superhuman antagonists (NPCs)? In general, I think that five 250-point normal PCs are capable of taking out a 500-point NPCs with difficulty if they have a good plan and a decent amount of luck. In any case, I do not think that the fight between the PCs and the NPCs should be easy when there are such discrepancies in capabilities (and it should probably be the focus of an adventure or even a campaign).
This sounds like sidekicks in monster hunters. Actually, most of monster hunters features enemies that outclass the players in terms of points. It works because the enemies have large disadvantages to exploit, because the PC's are doing the hunting, and because the monsters aren't particularly optimized.

Gurps responds well to outnumbering your foe. I don't think five 250 point PC's should have too much difficulty with a 500 point foe, just due to numbers. Exact circumstances will change that though.
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Old 07-14-2018, 02:12 PM   #4
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

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This sounds like sidekicks in monster hunters. Actually, most of monster hunters features enemies that outclass the players in terms of points. It works because the enemies have large disadvantages to exploit, because the PC's are doing the hunting, and because the monsters aren't particularly optimized.

Gurps responds well to outnumbering your foe. I don't think five 250 point PC's should have too much difficulty with a 500 point foe, just due to numbers. Exact circumstances will change that though.
Have a nice budget to constantly keep a small battalion (so commanding a force of about 500-2000 personnel) at your service, which could be easily paid by any company worth 3.12-12.48 billion dollars (Multimillionaire I or Multimillionaire II), and you'll see how quickly the situation turns around.
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Old 07-14-2018, 02:21 PM   #5
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

Research, research, and research. You attack enemies' weaknesses with your strengths and pick the time and place to give even more advantages.
Supernatural monsters almost always have loads of unusual handicaps too.
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Old 07-14-2018, 02:23 PM   #6
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

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Research, research, and research. You attack enemies' weaknesses with your strengths and pick the time and place to give even more advantages.
Supernatural monsters almost always have loads of unusual handicaps too.
Hopefully the enemies, being much more capable than the protagonists, would be able to research easier into their weaknesses, specially if the npcs are smarter, and the protagonists may aswell not bother with researching anything at all if they have "recommended" disadvantages such as Impulsiveness or Overconfidence. And you better not have Charitable or Pacifism too or else the big bad evil will play the innocent, lonely* and unlucky stranger.

*Lonely is not actually necessary.

Last edited by Alonsua; 07-14-2018 at 02:34 PM.
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Old 07-14-2018, 03:08 PM   #7
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

The terms of engagement matter. Who is hunting who matters. How the points were spent matters. However...

If I look at a group of characters with 250 and a single character with 500 points, I expect the 250's to out perform the loner is almost every aspect. Why? specialization. The 500 point character has a very limited budget to beat the wealth, combative power, social and technical skills, and exotic powers of a bunch of 250 point characters. The 500 may be good in all of those categories, and he may beat the alliance in some of the categories, but he's going to be weaker in more of those categories than he is stronger.

The second reason he's going to loose is because the 250's are PC's and the 500 is an NPC. That means the NPC has 1/10th of the processing power dedicated to strategy. The GM may be able to out strategize any given player (or he may not), but he's got a world to run and player actions to adjudicate. He doesn't have the time to think through actions for the NPC the way the players do. I've seen NPC's loose what should be equal fights time and time again to this imbalance. And that's without getting into the fact that a lot of GM's have to consciously or unconsciously pull their punches.

As for a specific tactic:
A small army of 500 soldiers has some major drawbacks. For one, money doesn't really buy loyalty. Two, 500 soldiers can't follow you around everywhere, and they draw a lot of attention. Three, properly built PC's will blend in, subvert, and sneak past your thugs. This is a game, not reality, and PC's tend to be good at that sort of thing, and every genre convention in the book works in their favor in this scenario.

A multibillionaire with a personal army is not really what's implied by "500-point superhuman antagonist". Wealth is arguable the most broken of all advantages, and most GM's have a formal or informal limit that characters stay below.
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Old 07-14-2018, 03:13 PM   #8
Alonsua
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
The terms of engagement matter. Who is hunting who matters. How the points were spent matters. However...

If I look at a group of characters with 250 and a single character with 500 points, I expect the 250's to out perform the loner is almost every aspect. Why? specialization. The 500 point character has a very limited budget to beat the wealth, combative power, social and technical skills, and exotic powers of a bunch of 250 point characters. The 500 may be good in all of those categories, and he may beat the alliance in some of the categories, but he's going to be weaker in more of those categories than he is stronger.

The second reason he's going to loose is because the 250's are PC's and the 500 is an NPC. That means the NPC has 1/10th of the processing power dedicated to strategy. The GM may be able to out strategize any given player (or he may not), but he's got a world to run and player actions to adjudicate. He doesn't have the time to think through actions for the NPC the way the players do. I've seen NPC's loose what should be equal fights time and time again to this imbalance. And that's without getting into the fact that a lot of GM's have to consciously or unconsciously pull their punches.

As for a specific tactic:
A small army of 500 soldiers has some major drawbacks. For one, money doesn't really buy loyalty. Two, 500 soldiers can't follow you around everywhere, and they draw a lot of attention. Three, properly built PC's will blend in, subvert, and sneak past your thugs. This is a game, not reality, and PC's tend to be good at that sort of thing, and every genre convention in the book works in their favor in this scenario.

A multibillionaire with a personal army is not really what's implied by "500-point superhuman antagonist". Wealth is arguable the most broken of all advantages, and most GM's have a formal or informal limit that characters stay below.

If as GMs we must subject ourselves to all those limitations then that NPC is dead before we start. The only real question that remains to be asked is how long we want it to last (what we will achieve as long as we keep it away from the human crushers that will shatter it in less than a minute).
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Old 07-14-2018, 03:15 PM   #9
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

The thing to worry about is less whether the protagonists can beat the antagonist, but whether the antagonist will obliterate one of the protagonists. 100 points of +3 ST [30] +2 DX [40] +3 HT [30] is going to play very differently to Innate Attack 15d [75] with the skill Innate Attack (E) DX+7 [24].

A sniper rifle to the blaster-antagonist will still take him down very quick, but if the heroes are exposed to a single blast their chances of dying are pretty high.

This is almost one of the 'disadvantages' of a point system vs a level-system, there's no neat comparison in ability.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
This sounds like sidekicks in monster hunters. Actually, most of monster hunters features enemies that outclass the players in terms of points. It works because the enemies have large disadvantages to exploit, because the PC's are doing the hunting, and because the monsters aren't particularly optimized.
On the subject of large disadvantages, this can also just be a missing advantage. For instance, a monster highly resistant to direct damage or too dangerous to get close to could still be disabled by flash-bangs and cattleprods.
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Old 07-14-2018, 03:16 PM   #10
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Normal Protoganists versus Superhuman Antagonists

I do not know if a battalion works against antagonists with supernatural powers and point budgets of 500+ points (and it definitely does not work against antagonists with supernatural powers and point budgets of 1000+ points). At that point level, the members of the battalions should either not be able to detect the antagonist or should be making fright checks at a minimum of a -10 penalty (meaning that all of the members of a battalion fail automatically their fright check when they hear or see the antagonist, the only question is how badly do they fail). I generally use sight, as anyone seeing the antagonist in a live video feed when Terror is active must also make a fright check, though using hearing-base terror is also possible through a live audio broadcast (unless modified with Active or Presence).
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