Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[DouglasCole]

Citadel and DFM2 Stretch Goals: Falling Fast!

[DouglasCole]

The Last GURPSDay before the two Dungeon Fantasy RPG Kickstarters Close

[DouglasCole]

$20,000 Stretch Goal PILLAGED!! (Also: check your pledges and add-ons)

We just pillaged the $20,000 stretch goal for 128 pages. This makes me happy. Not the least reason for which is the unfinished draft lays out at 115 pages on a 112-page budget. So . . . I don't have to cut anything. Thank you all for making this my strongest Kickstarter ever.

As both Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 and The Citadel at Nordvorn enter their final hours (fewer than 12 for DFM2, about 60 as I type this for Nordvorn), it's time to check and see if what you've got listed is really what you want, and (if it's not) push the proejct to the offset print run by adding what you want NOW rather than in Backerkit.

[Plane]

Found an old thread about clmbing on foes referencing the "Weight Advantage" rules in Technical Grappling http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=124131

Page 10 had a rather hard cap

If you are beneath your opponent (see Weight Advantage, p. 9), a limb used for stability may not be used to perform any action that counts as an attack

If I am All-Out Attacking a mouse, he might easily win a "Change Position" contest to get on top of me. It doesn't seem like having a mouse on top of me should prevent me from throwing kicks though.

Or does this not matter because when you throw kicks, you are briefly opting not to use that leg as a Stability Point (it's not in contact with the ground) meaning you can throw the kick?

I guess I'm not really sure what this hard cap actually restricts. Are there attacks you can do with stability points that don't involve breaking contact with the ground?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

Found an old thread about clmbing on foes referencing the "Weight Advantage" rules in Technical Grappling http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=124131

Page 10 had a rather hard cap

If you are beneath your opponent (see Weight Advantage, p. 9), a limb used for stability may not be used to perform any action that counts as an attack

If I am All-Out Attacking a mouse, he might easily win a "Change Position" contest to get on top of me.

It's not quite as easy as all that, even assuming that this is a situation for which you want to even break out the rules.

In a change position, even if you have AoA'd, the mouse will have to beat your ST as a proxy for mass (p. 20), AND because you're probably 8-9 size modifiers bigger than the mouse, human gets +8 or +9 to DX and +12 to +14 to Trained ST, which because it's a proxy for mass, DOES apply even on an AoA.

So ST 10 guy will start with a base of -4 for AoA, but add +13 or more for a resistance vs Trained ST of 19 even for ST 10 guy.

Mouse will need to roll and win by an average of 9 or more, which is extremely improbable unless they're DX 13 or higher.

And that's assuming they're not massively penalized for being grappled by the human; certainly the control maximum means Mr Mouse can't put more than 1 or 2 CP on said human anyway, leaving him effectively unhindered.

Even beyond the rules, which probably imply a near-unbeatable advantage on the part of the human, as a GM I would be inclined to rule on this by fiat. Rules and dice are for situations in which there is both uncertainty and interesting outcomes given success or failure.

Treating something that probably weighs less than pocket change (most mice are less than an ounce, the weight of five American quarters) as an *adversary* worth breaking out grappling rules for doesn't pass my sniff test unless the genre is superheroes.

In that case, "Mighty Mouse" is a thing and such a reversal is legit. This also applies to a human (SM 0, 6' tall) going after a 120' tall giant or wrestling a dragon. If our human is a demigod, they'll have the DX and Trained ST or Control Points that can be spent to counteract the big advantage the foe's size gives him.

[Plane]

You might say, have some ability which temporarily gives the mouse +100 to DX for a couple seconds so they win Change Position and establish that advantage, but then it fades away and they are still in that position unless the human attacks back with their own Change Position to remove that advantage and establish their own.

Once the advantage is established, it's essentially passive to maintain it so long as the victim doesn't actively try to remove it, which would require the human using up an attack.

Rather than the hard cap of "cannot attack with a stability limb if beneath an opponent" would there be a way to instate some kind of soft cap of accruing penalties to DX for attacks made with a limb being used for stability based on the weight of the opponent on top of you?

B17 "Encumbrance and Move" only appears to penalize Move and Dodge (apparently your Kicking is not penalized when wearing a suit of platemail carrying your pal on your back? Am I missing something?) except in the case of Judo/Karate/Fencing. Brawling-based kicking or kicking at DX is fine?

I wonder if it would be a good house rule to penalize DX for actions done with weight-bearing limbs (legs, not arms) scaling with that dodge penalty, and just add the Karate/Judo on top of that to make it even more serious.

It seems like the ingredients are on page 9:

A grappler who is beneath a foe loses any benefits from
weight differential if using these optional rules. He still suffers
any penalties

What if as a general rule, the Grappling Weight Modifier penalties on page 8 were also DX penalties to attacks made with support limbs when there is a Weight Advantage established by opponents of an appropriate Grappling Encumbrance Multiple (GEM)?

The only difference in that since the "Weight of Foes" assumes an enemy standing on the ground who is grappling you (only applying PART of their weight) so it should be more extreme when a Weight Advantage is established.

There seems to be one guideline here:

when attacking to Bear Hug or pick up a foe, temporarily
add 3 to the grappling encumbrance multiple (p. 8) for all purposes.

If you do +3 to the multiple when someone is picked up (100% of their weight is on you) then if you wanted to design the soft cap to emulate this, do you think it should be the same for when someone establishes a Weight Advantage on you (100% of their weight is on you) or perhaps something lesser like +1 or +2 to the multiple?

To begin suffering penalties (-1 at GEM 7) if using a +3 to the multiple, it would happen at GEM 4, or 80 pounds encumbrance for someone with ST 10.

What throws me off about adding to the multiplier for pickups is that it doesn't just affect calculation from "Weight of Foes" but also the other 2 things GE is summed from: Carried Weight and Intrinsic Encumbrance.

Someone "Very Fat" (1/2 their weight is Intrinsic Encumbrance) could in theory fail a "Pickup" of a 1 pound foe moreso due to the contribution of their own mass to GE's calculation of GEM, rather than that of the foe's. Whereas they might easily use a 'Ready' maneuver to pick up a 20 pound object at no penalty.

The idea of increasing the GEM for picking up foes (rather than ones bearing a portion of weight grappling on the ground) makes total sense, but I think rather than adding to it, I would instead apply a multiplier (at least double) to the "Weight of Foes" factor before summing up "Grappling Encumbrance" to calculate what the GEM modifier is.

Since a +3 to GEM can make GEM 1 into GEM 4, perhaps a x4 to WOF could be appropriate for pickups, and either a x2 or x3 to WOF for someone who's merely established a Weight Advantage.

Or maybe something like have 3 tiers of Weight Advantage where you have x1 intrinsically from grappling (25% of your weight) get x2 on your first victory (50% of your weight) and can roll a 2nd time to get a x3 (75% of your weight) and a 3rd time to get x4 as if someone had picked you up because you now have 100% of your weight on them.

Assuming a lack of "Carried Weight" or "Instrinsic Encumbrance" this would mean that using WOF*4 you would get the -1 to DX at GEM7 (140 pounds for ST 10) when carrying a 35 pound person.

-4 to DX at GEM 8 (160 pounds) would happen when carrying someone 40 pounds though, so it seems to change very quickly, so I'm not sure how to solve that.

Maybe instead treat load-bearing limbs as if they were grappled for Control Points equal to the HP of whoever you are carrying or who has established a weight modifier on you?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

You might say, have some ability which temporarily gives the mouse +100 to DX for a couple seconds so they win Change Position and establish that advantage,

I don't think we're in the realm of possibility here. What I'd probably do is say "you can't establish a weight advantage at all if you're less than the Basic Lift of the foe."

[Plane]

A "weight advantage" which incurs no penalties has that effect, except that if suddenly you become much heavier/stronger for whatever reason, you have already established a position to have it be immediately advantageous.

Using a soft cap like CP=HP, you wouldn't get a -1 to ST until someone with ST 2 was atop you (I think mice were ST 1) and that's all even a ST 3 falcon could produce, while carrying a ST 4 cat (weighing ??... "Weight Range by Build" on B18 doesn't cover) only could only give you -2 to ST by establishing a weight advantage.

Gradual penalties like that to throwing kicks (rather than not being able to throw them at all) seem better than no penalties at all because cats/falcons weigh less than 20 pounds and then suddenly infinite penalties (can't kick at all) for 20+ shoulder-perchers. ST 0 of course would be when you can't do it at all.

[Refplace]

FYI I miss the weekly blog updates. I know your busy and all but it does drive attention to your site, at least from me. I find it handier than going through all the blogs one by one to see who posted anything new.

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay! March 15 to April 4, 2019