Repricing Striking ST (but not HP or Lifting ST) in modern campaigns

[Michael Thayne]

Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes suggests that in a TL8 game you reprice HP, Lifting ST, and Striking ST to be 1 point, 2 points, and 3 points, respectively. Which isn't a terrible suggestion. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to reprice just Striking ST (and traits that contain it, like full ST) while leaving HP and Lifting ST alone.

When the same book discusses making HP cheaper, there's no suggestion HP might be overpriced, just that you might make it cheaper to enable characters to have piles of it to replicate certain genres. There's no discussion at all of altering the price of Lifting ST and Striking ST in isolation, except for a mention that you might basically ignore Striking ST and make HP and Lifting ST worth both 5 points/level. But it seems like technology devalues Striking ST much more rapidly than it devalues Lifting ST. Being able to carry your loadout is important at any TL, and Lifting ST in some ways is more important in modern games, since it's used to me ST requirements for guns. So I think there's a case for making Striking ST 1-3 points per level, keeping HP and Lifting ST the same, and making ST worth 5 points + whatever Striking ST is.

If you do this, what should Striking ST be worth? I've built supers using the alternate "Knowing Your Own Strength" rules before (from one of the "Alternate GURPS" Pyramid issues, I think), and I have to say Striking ST for 1/level is nice for making it easy to give speedsters the Striking ST they logically "should" have. It's arguably a bit cheap for games where swing damage plays any significant role, though. 2 points/level makes a dice of swing damage cost the same as a die of Impaling Attack, which seems like a fair benchmark. Though arguably, given access to a wide enough range of weapons, Striking ST is more flexible than any one Innate Attack, so you could argue for 3 points/level if you're being quite conservative. On the other hand, even in Kill Bill-esque game where modern assassins use katanas for some reason, ST-powered weapons start off so much worse than guns that 1 point/level for Striking ST might still be reasonable even if it scales up faster than Innate Attack dice. What do people think?

[johndallman]

I think you need to nail down your concept of "modern game" a bit.

In reasonably realistic ones, knifing people who aren't in armour is quite effective in the ST10-13 range, but trying to go through armour that's meant to protect against guns is foolish.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes suggests that in a TL8 game you reprice HP, Lifting ST, and Striking ST to be 1 point, 2 points, and 3 points, respectively. Which isn't a terrible suggestion. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to reprice just Striking ST (and traits that contain it, like full ST) while leaving HP and Lifting ST alone.

With ST priced at 10/level the pricing of the "components" made sense:

Lifting ST: (+3 per +1 ST)
Striking ST: (+5 per +1 ST)
Hit Points [HP]: (±2 points per ±1 HP)

The thing is the cost of Strength also changes with TL and with ST suggest as being [6] at TL8 that would make Striking ST +1 for +1 ST which IMHO is way too cheap.

Also the logic kind of breaks down if you are dealing a divergent TL like TL (4+4)

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by maximara

With ST priced at 10/level the pricing of the "components" made sense:

Lifting ST: (+3 per +1 ST)
Striking ST: (+5 per +1 ST)
Hit Points [HP]: (±2 points per ±1 HP)

The thing is the cost of Strength also changes with TL and with ST suggest as being [6] at TL8 that would make Striking ST +1 for +1 ST which IMHO is way too cheap.

Also the logic kind of breaks down if you are dealing a divergent TL like TL (4+4)

Yeah—in case I wasn't clear in the OP if I made Striking ST worth say 3 points/level the the proposal is only lowering ST to 8 points/level rather than going all the way down to 6. Or maybe do 2 points and 7 points.

[Donny Brook]

I'm wondering what the objective of lowering the cost is. When technology changed away from horse-drawn vehicles, the demand for buggy whips declined. When technology makes Striking ST less valuable, the demand for it naturally declines. What is the impetus to reprice it to make it more attractive?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I'm wondering what the objective of lowering the cost is. When technology changed away from horse-drawn vehicles, the demand for buggy whips declined. When technology makes Striking ST less valuable, the demand for it naturally declines. What is the impetus to reprice it to make it more attractive?

Based on what Power-Ups 9 says it isn't so much as making it more attractive but to "reduce the cost of ST to match its decline in importance".

ST goes down to 9/level at TL5 and gets 1 point cheaper with each higher TL until TL12 where it is only 2 points per level.

My main issue is that this effectively breaks the "Universal" part of the game. Besides with it limited to tools must be available to PCs, decisive in adventuring situations, and there being a lot of combat

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I'm wondering what the objective of lowering the cost is. When technology changed away from horse-drawn vehicles, the demand for buggy whips declined. When technology makes Striking ST less valuable, the demand for it naturally declines. What is the impetus to reprice it to make it more attractive?

Lots of fiction set in the modern world has characters whose shtick is, at least in part, "big strong guy"! This of course includes supers games, especially lower-powered ones where throwing cars and tipping over tanks isn't the point (and so Super-Effort or Knowing Your Own Strength isn't really the thing you want). Using RAW players who want to play such a character almost always get punished outside the very specific case of Monster hunters that has both (1) lots of enemies with Unliving or Homogenous and (2) a shortage of damage-dealing superhuman abilities that don't have their price inflated by Malediction or some such.

By themselves, those issues would be solved by the suggested rules in PU9, but I'm looking for another approach for the reasons described in the OP.

[Tyneras]

It really depends on genre, striking ST can be really valuable in an action heavy no/rare-guns game, grappling and throws work great even if you can't punch through a goons body armor. On top of that, even as the value of striking ST drops, the value of lifting ST rises due to the sheer amount of potentially handy stuff a character might want to take with them, plus armor is heavy so being able to run that much faster and dodge that much better can make the difference.

Edit: This is one of the reasons I love Knowing Your Own Strength from Pyramid #3/83, it shifts the lions share of the value of ST to lifting and brings String ST in line with Innate Attack.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

But it seems like technology devalues Striking ST much more rapidly than it devalues Lifting ST.

This is rather campaign-dependent, and also dependent on exactly how you interpret MinST for firearms. For the latter, I personally feel there should be two components to MinST - there's the minimum Lifting ST you need to comfortably position the weapon for an attack, and the minimum Striking ST you need to actually control the weapon during an attack. For muscle-powered weapons, typically Striking ST is the deciding factor, but in extreme cases Lifting ST could be a limiter - a character with ST 100 can probably use a 40 lb sword fairly readily, but one with ST 10 and Striking ST +90 couldn't, as he can't even lift the weapon without using both hands and spending extra time on it. For firearms and the like, typically Lifting ST is the deciding factor, but for weapons with high recoil (not GURPS Rcl, but the actual "kick" when firing them) Striking ST may well come into play. You can see this when comparing the TEC-9 to the Desert Eagle - they each weigh about the same amount (4.5 lb vs 4.6 lb), yet while ST 10 is enough for the former weapon, the latter calls for ST 12. Indeed, the HT rules for things like +P ammo implies that recoil is generally the primary deciding factor for firearm MinST (+P ammo obviously isn't going to make any real difference in how heavy the weapon is, but will certainly increase felt recoil, and we see it increases MinST), and IIRC options to reduce a firearm's weight never reduce MinST, but in some cases can increase it (as a lighter weapon has higher felt recoil, given there's less mass to absorb it). Once beam weapons enter the mix, however, the weight of the weapon (and thus Lifting ST) is probably the deciding factor, as such weapons typically have negligible recoil.

For campaign specifics, ignoring the question of how prevalent combat is (a low-combat game about traveling merchants or disaster rescue is probably going to have Lifting ST be markedly more useful than Striking ST, for example), there's the question of what form combat will take, and how DR factors in. A campaign where foes are numerous but generally lightly-armored at best, and you are generally stuck in melee, Striking ST is quite useful, as it increases the chance for each attack to incapacitate an enemy. In a setting where foes are encountered in smaller groups (or even alone) but tend to be heavily armored, yet you are again restricted to melee, Lifting ST may well be more useful - getting through the foe's armor may be largely out of reach, but high Lifting ST lets you be more armored (to buy time to accomplish something) as well as enhances your ability to grapple (which is a good way to incapacitate a heavily-armored foe, particularly when said enemies don't outnumber you). Of course, there can also be campaigns where ST itself isn't really worth much - if you spend the bulk of the campaign in the pilot seat of a humongous mecha with high hardened DR, a morbidly-obese character who can barely support his/her own body weight may well be just as effective as a super-high-ST, incredibly fit ubermenschen - Lifting/Striking ST is purely dependent on your mecha, and anything that punches through to your cockpit is almost guaranteed to turn you into chunky salsa regardless of HP.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

What is the impetus to reprice it to make it more attractive?

Some character concepts call for high ST, even if it's not terribly useful in the setting. I think the idea behind repricing it is to make those characters more competitive, so a player doesn't feel punished for having a cyborg or uplifted bear or whatever for their character.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

This of course includes supers games, especially lower-powered ones where throwing cars and tipping over tanks isn't the point (and so Super-Effort or Knowing Your Own Strength

I'm not sure if I understand why you wouldn't want KYOS for realistic settings? You just use lower values of ST for non-super strong characters, right?

I use Knowing Your Own Strength for all settings. Striking-ST is just flat out misspriced in the regular GURPS compared to Innate Attack/DR/Etc. Though I personally go for 2 points per level, but that is mostly because I think KYOS underestimates the versatility of Striking-ST. (melee/ranged weapons, martial arts, power blow...)

If you want to make Striking ST move expensive than what is in KYOS then you want to make IE/DR/... more expensive as well, so it makes sense to just use that scaling.