ST-Based Skills

[whswhs]

Forced Entry is affected both by ST and by DX. The accuracy with which you hit, measured by your skill, is based on DX. But if you hit, the amount of damage you do is based on ST, and can get a bonus from your relative skill, which is NOT enhanced by high DX.

A lot of combat skills work the same way.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

but I could also see an upgrade of the Running skill that gives you Trained Move, for example (though the rules would need some tweaking to account for Move being centered on 5 rather than 10); and I'd definitely consider reworking Jumping to provide Trained Move instead of the current rules, with Jumping rolls being used for accuracy rather than distance.

Probably best to just make it 'Move-based' and allow substituting it for move. At [4/level], that's extremely expensive compared to just Move [5], and the rolls aren't used all that often anyway, as, for example, Running doesn't stack with Fit and so it's better to just have HT14 and Very Fit if one wants to be able to run Marathons in GURPS.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I would definitely take a look at tbone's GULLIVER rules, specifically the 3e ones: TG's Intrinsic Encumbrance was anticipated by tbone's Natural Encumbrance, and tbone carried the implications through much more thoroughly.

Hi, dataweaver! Let me add some words so any forum non-old-timers know what we're talking about:

1) This GULLIVER thing was an old 3e-era fan project to generally overhaul (perceived) non-universal GURPS rules stuff, mainly in the area of physical stats, performance, dangers, etc. Or, stated less vaguely: to address the many problems with ST, inject some order into gaming creatures of non-human size, pick apart all kinds of rules for damage and physical feats and stuff that only worked well as human scales, etc.

2) Other than me, the main reviewer and contributor of ideas was dataweaver himself! So if anything good came out of the project, be sure to thank him. (Other contributors are noted in the project, with eternal gratitude.)

3) The 3e project offers your choice of dense HTML pages, or a denser PDF "LITE" version. (That's two tasty flavors of TL;DR!)

4) Many, many of the "wish list" items in the project are nicely baked into GURPS 4e. (Which is not to make any claims that 4e took this or that from the project. The bulk of the ideas were things that'd be blatantly obvious to the 4e team ("Why use an odd calculation for animal Dodge?" "Why have a separate biting damage table when thrust damage works fine?") or common-sense things long floating around in online discussions ("quadratic ST", SM as a size stat, switching the bases for HP and FP, eliminating skills based on ST, etc.).)

You can read more about 4e's "wishes granted" here. (Spoiler: For the most part, my many wishes were granted. 4e contains all kinds of awesome.)

5) "Natural encumbrance", an unlovely name for the idea of trait mods for power-to-mass ratio, was indeed part of the project – but that really comes straight from GURPS. Treating weight beyond some base amount as encumbrance was precisely how 3e handled excess weight from Overweight/Fat or high gravity. All the GULLIVER project did was extend that to any excess weight – and, in the opposite direction, it invented mirrored bonuses for particularly low weight relative to strength. Voila, instant ponderousness/agility for large/small creatures. (Nifty, if not exactly necessary. : )

6) The above is all GURPS 3e talk. Much of the project is irrelevant to 4e, as 4e addresses many of the same topics (whether in a similar way, or a better way, or whatever).
(One thing 4e didn't take up is the "natural encumbrance" idea; in fact, 4e dropped 3e's trace of it, i.e., the use of encumbrance for overweight characters.)

7) There's a newer GULLIVER Mini for 4e. It's just a PDF page (with a bonus page of miscellanea) that addresses how to build odd-sized creatures – summarizes it, really, since 4e largely has the topic covered. It also offers optional trait mods for the power-to-weight thing. But by contrast with the older project, Mini is less about setting traits for size and weight and all that, and more about suggesting traits for these factors, to be purchased normally. Which is more in line with the 4e spirit of things (and, IIRC, more in line with dataweaver's original ideas on how things should be handled).

8) I think I'm done now. Back to talk of ST-based skills (and why they're not a good idea).

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Probably best to just make it 'Move-based' and allow substituting it for move. At [4/level], that's extremely expensive compared to just Move [5], and the rolls aren't used all that often anyway, as, for example, Running doesn't stack with Fit and so it's better to just have HT14 and Very Fit if one wants to be able to run Marathons in GURPS.

The problem with making it Move-based is that Move is, as Kromm puts it, extrinsic: it doesn't fit nicely into a 3–18 range (even for normal humans, though that's trivially addressed by basing it on 2×Move instead), and can vary wildly for non-human characters — especially odd-sized ones such as giants or Borrowers. Better to base it on Speed instead, as Speed is “intrinsic”.

When I made my initial suggestion though, I was operating off of the assumption that Running is more or less worth the points as written, so any boost to movement should be modest. Having it provide Trained Move isn't cost-effective if the primary reason for buying Running is for additional ground Move; but as a fringe benefit, that's a different story. (Also, where does it say that Running and Fit don't stack? I'm not finding it.)

Another possible approach would be to model Running on Lifting: that is, have the margin of success give you a percentage increase to your Move.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by tbone

5) "Natural encumbrance", an unlovely name for the idea of trait mods for power-to-mass ratio, was indeed part of the project – but that really comes straight from GURPS. Treating weight beyond some base amount as encumbrance was precisely how 3e handled excess weight from Overweight/Fat or high gravity. All the GULLIVER project did was extend that to any excess weight – and, in the opposite direction, it invented mirrored bonuses for particularly low weight relative to strength. Voila, instant ponderousness/agility for large/small creatures. (Nifty, if not exactly necessary. : )

6) The above is all GURPS 3e talk. Much of the project is irrelevant to 4e, as 4e addresses many of the same topics (whether in a similar way, or a better way, or whatever).
(One thing 4e didn't take up is the "natural encumbrance" idea; in fact, 4e dropped 3e's trace of it, i.e., the use of encumbrance for overweight characters.)

I mentioned it in the context of Technical Grappling and its introduction into 4e of “intrinsic encumbrance”, which once again brings in the notion that one's own mass counts as Encumbrance, if only in a limited way — in particular, it explicitly cites Fat and Overweight as the source for intrinsic encumbrance. (That said, it makes no mention of Skinny; a logical extension of said rules would be that skinny characters would in effect have “negative encumbrance” for these purposes — which, in general, would put skinny characters at a disadvantage when grappling.)

Also, 4e still has the bit about high gravity causing extra Encumbrance based on body weight (though it explicitly rejects the notion that low gravity would cause “negative Encumbrance” and improve your Speed or Move, aside from enhancing your jumps). This makes sense, as your mass doesn't change in different gravities; just your weight. Jumping is dependent on ST-to-Weight, whereas Speed (and, by extension, most forms of Move) would be related to ST-to-Mass.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

https://gamingballistic.com/2013/01/...olls-must-die/

ST rolls must die

One of my first blog articles (I started GB in Dec 2012) was basically a retread of Sean's answer above. I'm a big fan of ST (included in GURPS) to weight (not really an important thing in GURPS) ratios giving bonuses to things.

In a notional new edition or something that takes the GURPS concepts and does my own thing with them, I'd probably have a core component of the game be purchase either mass-based-HP directly, and then ST can vary around that (so your ST costs based on your ST/HP ratio) or something like it. Having that ST/HP ratio (and both ST and HP being on the same scale) provide a modifier to stuff has much appeal in at least a design methodology; whether it can be made to work in play is unknown.

Does this change anything about the active defense of "Brute Parry" and resistance roll of "Strength as a Proxy for Mass"? Phase them out?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

Does this change anything about the active defense of "Brute Parry" and resistance roll of "Strength as a Proxy for Mass"? Phase them out?

Brute Parry is just a damage roll, IIRC, not a strength-as-skill roll. So that doesn't change. I don't have a problem with damage rolls.

I would LOVE to re-jigger stuff on Strength as a Proxy for mass and mass and hp and strength scaling, but that's an edition-level change.

By and large, though, the best way to handle mass is probably to treat it as a flat-out penalty to the attacker's skill roll, probably based on the Grappling Encumbrance Table, rather than invoke it for quick contests.

[AlexanderHowl]

ST should not be a proxy for mass, as I have known plenty of people who are stronger than me who are less massive than me and plenty of people more massive than me who are weaker than me. Since most of the damage in GURPS seems to be shock rather than trauma (which is why First Aid is so effective), HP is more tolerance to shock than tolerance to trauma.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

ST should not be a proxy for mass, as I have known plenty of people who are stronger than me who are less massive than me and plenty of people more massive than me who are weaker than me. Since most of the damage in GURPS seems to be shock rather than trauma (which is why First Aid is so effective), HP is more tolerance to shock than tolerance to trauma.

Should or should not, when I'm writing GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling and in quick contests, ST is used where really you'd want to use mass, I have to use ST as a proxy for mass. I recall asking about using HP instead and being told "you don't roll against HP."

I should add, in case you don't have TG, that the section in question is about giving you some sort of defense or resistance roll after you've made an All-Out Attack. The alternative to using ST (or ST-4 in this case) is "you lose, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Sorry, T-Rex . . .the mouse just did a takedown on you."

[dataweaver]

Instead of ST as a proxy for mass, how about a mass-based bonus or penalty to the various muscle-centric attacks (bear hugs, forcing a change in position or posture, lifts, throws, shoves, and sweeps)? Base it on how the target's mass compares to the attacker's BL. The mouse will fail to do a takedown on the T-Rex not because the T-Rex makes a saving roll against it, but because the mouse can't possibly overcome the penalty imposed by the truly massive discrepancy between its BL and the T-Rex's mass.