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Old 08-14-2014, 05:35 PM   #1
Raekai
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Default GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

Hello, hello!

I would like to show you my attempt at fixing ST and ST-based damage. Douglas Cole did so on his blog here and here, but I wanted to take it another step further, and I wanted it to feel more comfortable. Please don't expect anything extraordinary or fantastic! I just wanted to take a dip in the water because of this thread. There was a lot of talk about fixing ST-based damage, the problem with swords destroying armor, and spears doing too little.

As a .xls file for older versions of Office.
As a .xlsx file for newer versions of Office.

Enjoy! I have attempted to summon Douglas Cole here to see what he thinks of these things.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to working on a serial novel and other unrelated GURPS Projects (like Project G!). One of these days, I'll get back to my Magic to RPM conversion.

EDIT: Whenever I make posts like these, I feel like a little kid presenting some hodge-podge artwork from school to my parents (in this case, Kromm and Douglas Cole). Here's to hoping that they'll stick it to the fridge and give me a pat on the head.

UPDATE: I added a whole bunch of new stuff, and I took another crack at balancing out damage without completely rehauling the way that GURPS works (like with scaling or wound tables).

Last edited by Raekai; 03-18-2015 at 07:55 PM.
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Old 08-14-2014, 05:45 PM   #2
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

Looks decent at first glance. One thing I notice is that swing damage is consistently double thrust damage. I feel like that's exaggerating the benefits of leverage. In fact, I'd be in favor of removing the swing damage column entirely, instead giving swung weapons a ST multiplier based on their length and balance. Swinging a dagger isn't going to be significantly better than thrusting, regardless of the user's strength; a claymore or halberd is a different story.

Of course, that's not an issue that started with your damage table.

Last edited by vierasmarius; 08-14-2014 at 05:48 PM.
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Old 08-14-2014, 05:50 PM   #3
Raekai
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
Looks decent at first glance. One thing I notice is that swing damage is consistently double thrust damage. I feel like that's exaggerating the benefits of leverage. In fact, I'd be in favor of removing the swing damage column entirely, instead giving swung weapons a ST multiplier based on their length and balance. Swinging a dagger isn't going to be significantly better than thrusting, regardless of the user's strength; a claymore or halberd is a different story.

Of course, that's not an issue that started with your damage table.
Yeah, that's true. It's a function of Douglas Cole's work, which my work is based off of. And I agree... In the long run, it might be better to get rid of one column or the other, but that's a whole other monster to tackle.
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Old 08-14-2014, 06:27 PM   #4
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

I like a lot of it on premise. I particularly like the willingness to tackle damage types.

A couple of things that jump out at me:

1) Swing damage below ST 14 is actually worse (by which I mean a worse offender of the problem) than it is by RAW. At least based on your calculations, but your calculations contradict your descriptive text (you're using ST/7.5 for Swing damage and ST/15 for Thrust, but the text says ST/15 for Swing).

2) Taking the changes to damage types in isolation of the calculation discrepancy, the (2) armor divisor and ×1.5 wounding multiplier makes a spear a phenomenally outstanding anti-armor weapon. Using your calculations, in two hands that would be 1d+1 imp (average 4.5). Against Fine Mail (DR 4/2), you're looking at an average injury on a regular Attack maneuver of 3.75 (a pretty stiff blow for one of the most common battlefield weapons against one of the most long-lived types of armor). Maybe that was your intention? Hard to say.


I don't have a pretty spreadsheet to lay it all out there, but lately I've been mentally tinkering with something like ST/20 for Thr, and Swing gets a flat +50% (which makes it effectively ST/13.33). It avoids having to fiddle around with the (completely understandable) whole "Get rid of Swing altogether and reassign weapon damage bonuses to account for swinging motion and leverage," mostly because I just don't know enough about the mechanics behind it.

I'm not really sold on it at this point, though... now I'm starting to get into Kuroshima's whole "Rescale DR/HP" idea...
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Old 08-14-2014, 06:41 PM   #5
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Originally Posted by Landwalker View Post
I like a lot of it on premise. I particularly like the willingness to tackle damage types.

A couple of things that jump out at me:

1) Swing damage below ST 14 is actually worse (by which I mean a worse offender of the problem) than it is by RAW. At least based on your calculations, but your calculations contradict your descriptive text (you're using ST/7.5 for Swing damage and ST/15 for Thrust, but the text says ST/15 for Swing).

2) Taking the changes to damage types in isolation of the calculation discrepancy, the (2) armor divisor and ×1.5 wounding multiplier makes a spear a phenomenally outstanding anti-armor weapon. Using your calculations, in two hands that would be 1d+1 imp (average 4.5). Against Fine Mail (DR 4/2), you're looking at an average injury on a regular Attack maneuver of 3.75 (a pretty stiff blow for one of the most common battlefield weapons against one of the most long-lived types of armor). Maybe that was your intention? Hard to say.


I don't have a pretty spreadsheet to lay it all out there, but lately I've been mentally tinkering with something like ST/20 for Thr, and Swing gets a flat +50% (which makes it effectively ST/13.33). It avoids having to fiddle around with the (completely understandable) whole "Get rid of Swing altogether and reassign weapon damage bonuses to account for swinging motion and leverage," mostly because I just don't know enough about the mechanics behind it.

I'm not really sold on it at this point, though... now I'm starting to get into Kuroshima's whole "Rescale DR/HP" idea...
1. Oops. That was simply a typo. As for how the damage actually scales, yes, it's overall worse than RAW because RAW isn't realistic (according to Douglas Cole).

2. Not my intentions. Simply a byproduct. I haven't playtested this whatsoever, but that doesn't seem too bad. There isn't exactly a (1.5) armor divisor, but I would have gone with that if there was by RAW. I guess I could... Add one? Would that be better? I dunno. I'm off to dinner.
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Old 08-14-2014, 06:44 PM   #6
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Originally Posted by Raekai View Post
1. Oops. That was simply a typo. As for how the damage actually scales, yes, it's overall worse than RAW because RAW isn't realistic (according to Douglas Cole).

2. Not my intentions. Simply a byproduct. I haven't playtested this whatsoever, but that doesn't seem too bad. There isn't exactly a (1.5) armor divisor, but I would have gone with that if there was by RAW. I guess I could... Add one? Would that be better? I dunno. I'm off to dinner.
Well, I say "worse than RAW", not the in sense of "Lower-damage than RAW", but in the sense of "higher damage than RAW." And RAW isn't realistic because it's already too high[1]. Making it even higher just isn't striking me as the ideal way to resolve that issue.

I've toyed with a (1.5) AD as well... and I think it would work fine if armor (and DR in general) had a finer resolution to accommodate it. Which maybe it would have if DR and HP were scaled upwards by some multiplier.

[1] Edit: Pursuant to zoncxs's observation, this sentence would more properly read, "And RAW isn't realistic because it's already too high relative to RAW DR values.

Last edited by Landwalker; 08-14-2014 at 06:57 PM.
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Old 08-14-2014, 06:52 PM   #7
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Well, I say "worse than RAW", not the in sense of "Lower-damage than RAW", but in the sense of "higher damage than RAW." And RAW isn't realistic because it's already too high. Making it even higher just isn't striking me as the ideal way to resolve that issue.

I've toyed with a (1.5) AD as well... and I think it would work fine if armor (and DR in general) had a finer resolution to accommodate it. Which maybe it would have if DR and HP were scaled upwards by some multiplier.
Its not that the damage is too high, it's that HP and DR is too low. I have tried my hand at this and I like my results. Most of what I did is open for view in my game over at rpol.net

I out a link to it in the game finders thread.
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Old 08-14-2014, 07:01 PM   #8
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
Its not that the damage is too high, it's that HP and DR is too low. I have tried my hand at this and I like my results. Most of what I did is open for view in my game over at rpol.net

I out a link to it in the game finders thread.
IMO, single-hit lethality is generally fine. The problems arise when damage accumulates - in reality, wounds don't add together like that. There are a few proposed solutions to this (such as lwcamp's Semi-Cumulative Wounds houserule). Doubling armor DR, or giving all muscle-powered weapons a (0.5) armor divisor, may also be appropriate.
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Old 08-14-2014, 07:15 PM   #9
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

You can't fix ST based damage while maintaining an Sw/Thr table, the world doesn't work like that unless damage is logarithmic(with opens another big can of worms when you combine with HP).

A better way is to add ST with the weapon bonus and consult the value on a table or to let weapons give bonus per die(or per 2d)
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I've revised the Low Tech weapons table:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=112532
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Old 08-14-2014, 07:27 PM   #10
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Default Re: GURPS Project Strength (Fixing ST and ST-based damage and more!)

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Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
IMO, single-hit lethality is generally fine. The problems arise when damage accumulates - in reality, wounds don't add together like that. There are a few proposed solutions to this (such as lwcamp's Semi-Cumulative Wounds houserule). Doubling armor DR, or giving all muscle-powered weapons a (0.5) armor divisor, may also be appropriate.
Even if nothing else comes out of this thread, that link makes it worthwhile.

It also does a great job of improving the utility of armor—in a reasonable damage-to-DR-ratio environment, the majority of blows to an armored location will probably be "minor wounds" from blunt trauma, and thus not even accrue a wound (but would still stagger the target, which is both handy and apt).

Quote:
Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos
You can't fix ST based damage while maintaining an Sw/Thr table, the world doesn't work like that unless damage is logarithmic(with opens another big can of worms when you combine with HP).

A better way is to add ST with the weapon bonus and consult the value on a table or to let weapons give bonus per die(or per 2d)
Incidentally, if you're willing to say "HP = 2×ST" and increase armors' DR values appropriately, making weapons give a bonus per-die or per-2d would seem like a perfectly reasonable position.
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