A full meal of blood

[Anders]

Would this post by Ghostdancer be any help?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Not all batteries are the same. Some will store joules, some kilojoules, and others megajoules, but Gurps sweeps that under the rug. Only how often you need to refuel matters, not how much energy you need.

Robots written up in Gurps do not accept any and all sizes of batteries at random. They accept only one specified size. When Reduced Consumption is added to a robot Template it reduces the number of those batteries used over time.

[Railstar]

Thanks for all the answers so far.

General questions.

1: Does Very Fit help with fatigue loss from starvation and dehydration?

2: How do you normally handle vampire feeding requirements in your games?

Originally Posted by Varyon

Blood is roughly 1 kcal per mL, and GURPS characters eat 3000-3600 kcal/day (of those rations that can be calculated, only the pemmican and jerky in LT fail to meet this level, but jerky rations in all other supplements do). Thus, an SM+0 creature with Restricted Diet (Blood) and no Reduced Consumption or similar would need to consume 3 liters of blood every day. That's more than half the blood in a typical person's body, and above 40% blood loss is a Class IV hemorrhage, which is basically guaranteed death without immediate medical assistance. Based on some old work I did for bleeding in GURPS, every liter is worth somewhere around 12 HP in injury. On the bright side, with blood being mostly water, 3 liters of it should cover your daily water needs.

Unless you want your vampires to basically need to kill someone every day (assuming they need human blood, as otherwise they can use cow blood or similar), you'll either want to go ahead and give them Doesn't Eat or Drink and some relevant Dependency or similar, or you'll at least want to give them several levels of Reduced Consumption. In order, from Reduced Consumption 0 to Reduced Consumption 4, this is 3 liters (~36 HP), 2 liters (~24 HP), or 1 liter (~12 HP) per day, 1 liter per week (~1.7 HP per day), and 1 liter per month (~0.4 HP per day).

On the bright side… that really cracked me up. :D

I’m a little hesitant to apply kcals because it seems more harsh than expected from the “standard” vampire templates (from Basic, Fantasy or Banestorm, Monster Hunters...) – don’t have Reduced Consumption or Doesn’t Eat or Drink, so either they are supposed to eat normal food in addition to blood, or they are supposed to consume that much blood every day, which I would assume is not the intention.

Originally Posted by Anders

Would this post by Ghostdancer be any help?

A spoonful of blood makes the undeath go round alone made it worth reading. However, I feel like it doesn’t really make clear where the “standard” vampire templates are left.

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I think you're right, 15 HP seems a bit too severe. That means draining a single human, if not to death, than at least to serious, weeks-long recovery injury, every day.

I wouldn't assume that a typical vampire has both Draining and Dependency for human blood - that seems like overkill. I'd figure most have just Draining, meaning they lose 2 HP per day, and have to drain 6 HP worth of blood to counter that. I'd call that a full day's worth of "meals" for a vampire, so every 2 HP of blood equals one "meal".

So your vampire with Regeneration could drain just one HP every day and recover the HP lost to Draining, but they'd have to take 5 more HP or risk starvation (which, incidentally, sounds like a good reason to penalize self-control rolls for Uncontrollable Appetite, if they've got that too). That means that feeding from a single human every night would leave the victim damaged, but not dead or dying, and suggests that if the vampire wants to maintain a "herd" of humans that they can feed from without over-draining anyone, they should be getting about 10 people. (That lets them drain 1 HP each from 5 people, then do the same to the other 5 the next day, giving the first batch better odds of healing before they have to be drained again.)

I had been using that as a working theory, although this exchange - http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...55&postcount=3 - seems to imply that as soon as you drink blood you get the HP from Draining back; specifically “The latter is a bigger disad in general because the HP loss is standard injury and not some sequestered pool of HP that regenerates instantly if you drink a little blood or whatever.”

I could rule that not having Doesn’t Eat or Drink simply out cancels the instant-heal effect of the Draining. It would save on how much keeping track is necessary.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Railstar

Thanks for all the answers so far.

General questions.

1: Does Very Fit help with fatigue loss from starvation and dehydration?

2: How do you normally handle vampire feeding requirements in your games?

.

1: No. FP lost to exertion and FP lost to all other causes are handled differently.

2. The last vampire PC I saw got his blood out of the ship's replicator so we didn't worry about details. If that hadn't been available we would have chosen the next simplest solution. This HP to FP Draining v. Regeneration system is far too complicated for my group's tastes.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Robots written up in Gurps do not accept any and all sizes of batteries at random. They accept only one specified size. When Reduced Consumption is added to a robot Template it reduces the number of those batteries used over time.

How much do those batteries store? That's my point about consumption requirements. Whether they use 1 megajoule per day or 1 terrajoule, only the frequency of refueling matters for Gurps.

Whether they can hold 1 ounce of batteries or 100 pounds per refueling, only how often they need to refuel matters.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

How much do those batteries store? That's my point about consumption requirements. Whether they use 1 megajoule per day or 1 terrajoule, only the frequency of refueling matters for Gurps.

Whether they can hold 1 ounce of batteries or 100 pounds per refueling, only how often they need to refuel matters.

That's not true at all - cost and weight are very important for games that track such things (Dungeon Fantasy is a classic resource management mode, but military games are also very traditional, and of course any genre can be played that way). Cast Iron Stomach reduces cost without reducing weight or frequency.

Restricted Diet is also pretty darn interested in more than how often you eat, as is Slow Eater.

The Reduced Consumption advantage (unmodified) is about frequency of the same sized meals - which reduces overall weight/cost of food. GURPS very much cares about more than just frequency.

[Flyndaran]

There is no agreement on what those (dis)advantages do in any thread on the subject I've seen. Everyone, player, GM, and author, says different things.
I really should just give up and accept that everyone uses houserules even if they say it's R.A.W.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

1: No. FP lost to exertion and FP lost to all other causes are handled differently.

Err, actually Very Fit most definitely helps against FP types other than exertion:

Originally Posted by Kromm

FWIW, I give pretty much all career combat soldiers Fit in my games (and I give most special operators Very Fit and Combat Reflexes). This reflects the effects of marching around all the time with heavy loads, not sleeping much, and so on. If you don't wash out – which is antithetical to "career" – then you're Fit. I give most amateur athletes Fit, too, and anybody better than amateur Very Fit. This treatment makes these types of characters tougher survivors without automatically making them all sexy singers with excellent drinking skills.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I wrote this last week and posted it Tuesday - seems relevant.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Err, actually Very Fit most definitely helps against FP types other than exertion:

Very Fit almost always creates "Batman" level superhuman. I prefer The Last Gasp rules for enhanced fitness for trained skills. So the long marches mentioned in the quoted section would get help from high skill in Hiking.
With a point or two of increased Ht and St, of course, but of more restrained levels than the over the top improvement of Very Fit.

I prefer the superlative of fitness to remain very rare.