Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay! Apr 26 to May 17, 2019

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay! May 2 to May 24, 2019

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay: May 10 to May 30, 2019

[Plane]

I was mulling over how close grappling could inhibit punching and drawing weapons...

When I imagine grappling someone, I figure something like a solid neck-on-neck pressing would inhibit a lot of punching. Even if you aren't touching the arms, they simply can't do full extension punches (their arms would reach right past you) so they'd have to do wrap-around punches.

If you're locked up and resting your face/neck on someone's clavicle, they pretty much can't hit with the bony tip of the elbow (it would reach right past) the head/neck, maybe it could still hit in the bony scapulae (upper back, rear torso) but for the most part if you could hit with the upper arm it would have to be with the softer tricep meat with less leverage, for less damage, to the point where it's more grappling/shoving than striking.

You could still by really bending the elbows do some awkward head-slapping / ear-clapping but I don't see how it could be done at full power.

The -4 to DX that Basic Set gives didn't penalize damage, that's why I like the Control Points system of Technical Grappling since it penalizes ST too (plus it varies proportionate to strength of grappler, and DX varies according to strength applied by grappler vs strength of target)

Referred Control gets part of the way there, but the universal 1/2 effective CP (though simple to work with) on other locations doesn't seem to react to how parts relate to each other. Page 7 recognizes "Adjacent Locations" so maybe locations which are adjacent should have better referred control than non-adjacent ones: 1/2 the CP in referred control ONLY to adjacent locations, and then other ones non-adjacent (but adjacent to the adjacent) get half of that, so 1/4, then 1/8, etc.

You might use "Binding" to web a hand irrevokably suck to a wall, but if someone walks up within striking distance that's not exactly going to take much power or accuracy away from punching, is it?

I see that as part of why (aside from it being easier to target, though -0 v -1 or -2 isn't that big a difference compared to striking) you would grapple an enemy's torso instead of just grappling an arm or a hand: because it would give you better referred control against BOTH arms (both arms are connected to the torso).

If you view punching as "hand AND arm" action, then it should take full penalties for CP vs the arm, rather than the hand, explaining why it should give 1/2 CP against punches instead of 1/4. But if you were grappling the opposite arm, it seems like the non-grappled arm should be better off than if you were grappling the torso: 1/4 CP (1/2 the 1/2 CP referred to torso from other arm)

This would also explain how it might make it harder to do something like draw a gun/knife from concealment to stab someone who is grappling you, since it would be awkward to reach down, maybe even taking full or even 150% Control Point penalties (it's not just an arm action, but a coordination of your arm to your torso).

I think that would be a big threat when grappling someone: being close-up you get some blind spots as to what their hands are up to (ie it might be hard to see if a friend came up and put a knife in their hand, or if they already had one concealed in a sleeve) and would better get an idea of impeding the use of weapons by looking at what their upper arms are doing (since their forearms might be outside your peripheral vision, with your own body blocking field of view).

The threat would be less about the hands themselves, since their line for striking the upper body is compromised, and if you have your arms underneath theirs I think that would also impede doing stuff like crouching down to try and punch/grab the groin or punch in the leg/abdomen.

That's one major difference I think, between the idea of grappling the abdomen (your arms are under your opponent's) vs grappling the chest (which might imply arms higher than opponent's maybe palms down on the clavicles, not quite around the neck) between how you would restrict targets of opportunity for a grappled opponent.

Do you think a lot of this would fall under "Pass Limb" with the idea being "put their limb where I'm controlling what it can do even though I'm not actively grappling it anymore" ?

I really like PL and it has a lot of potential (build up control points using your limb, "pass" off that CP so that you never reach the maximum, repeat until everywhere is pinned) and was wondering if you could buy off that basic -2 to skill as a technique if that would be easy (1/2 for -1/-0) or hard (2/3 for -1/-0)

Supplementary to posture penalties (which could be bought off separately via Ground Fighting) is the "-4 if standing or crouching, or -2 if kneeling, sitting, or crawling" but rather than treating that as an intrinsic technique penalty to buy up to 0 (after all, you're not buying off anything at all when you attempt this when lying down) I was thinking maybe don't allow people to buy that off at standard cost, but instead just have them take "Technique Mastery" so they could buy Pass Limb up to skill+4 which would allow them to absorb the penalties.

Do you think you could buy "Technique Mastery" multiple times, and subsequently just treat it how the TM perk works on above-skill techniques like Arm Lock (increase maximum by 2) to get it super high?

Given how some techniques do more than one thing (like for example, when you buy Ground Fighting, it removes both the penalty to your attacks AND the penalty to your active defenses) I was wondering if doing this could also count to reduce the bonuses to break free that people get (+4 standing/crouching or +2 sitting/kneeling/crawling) when trying to remove those control points shifted via Pass Limb.

I guess penalizing Break Free might be too powerful, I guess the fairer way would be to improve Active Defenses or maybe if there was a way to enhance Control Resistance (Cosmic +300%?) so it not only subtracted Control Points being added to you, but also subtracted against Control Points being subtracted from your Grapples.

Also wondering about the spending of Control Points to influence contests: page 5 mentions you can reduce TO (but not below) the HT score, but there's presumably no limit there. I was wondering, if you are scaling the passive DX penalty for applied (not spent) CP (pg 9, bigger and stronger: strength) then could we also scale the active DX/HT penalties for spent HT?

It seems like, for example, a creature grappling a ST 10 HT 10 guy for 1 CP, and another grappling a ST 200 HT 10 guy for 1 CP, shouldn't be equally able to inflict -1 to DX or -1 to HT in a contest by spending that Control Point, shouldn't it take spending 20 control points to get that -1 to DX/HT against the guy whose ST is 20x as much?

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay! May 17 to June 7, 2019

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay! May 24 to June 13, 2019

[Plane]

I was wondering what you might think of a "nothing is truly separate" approach to damage vs. control points which recognizes that it's hard to hold onto a punching hand and hard to grapple (or break a grapple) without risk of harm to your opponent.

Some kind of ratio, I thought maybe 1:10 for simplicity:

1) for each 10 points of basic damage an attack does, remove 1 control point from a grapple on that location (if multiple sources are grappling, divide between them)

2) for each 10 control points either added to an opponent or subtracted from an opponent, inflict 1 crushing damage.

Fractions would round down, so these wouldn't be applied in most normal situations, the idea is just something like even if a giant isn't trying to break free of you, simply throwing punches with you dangling from his arm is going to shake you loose, while he would have trouble using his full strength to rip you off his arm (or his full strength to grapple you) without doing some harm.

1:10 is much less than the 1:2 ratio of control points to cutting damage that cutting weapons enjoy as a free benefit (or 1:1 for teeth) but if it's still too much it could be 1:20 or 1:100.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

I was wondering what you might think of a "nothing is truly separate" approach to damage vs. control points which recognizes that it's hard to hold onto a punching hand and hard to grapple (or break a grapple) without risk of harm to your opponent.

Some kind of ratio, I thought maybe 1:10 for simplicity:

1) for each 10 points of basic damage an attack does, remove 1 control point from a grapple on that location (if multiple sources are grappling, divide between them)

2) for each 10 control points either added to an opponent or subtracted from an opponent, inflict 1 crushing damage.

Fractions would round down, so these wouldn't be applied in most normal situations, the idea is just something like even if a giant isn't trying to break free of you, simply throwing punches with you dangling from his arm is going to shake you loose, while he would have trouble using his full strength to rip you off his arm (or his full strength to grapple you) without doing some harm.

1:10 is much less than the 1:2 ratio of control points to cutting damage that cutting weapons enjoy as a free benefit (or 1:1 for teeth) but if it's still too much it could be 1:20 or 1:100.

My gut reaction to this is "why you slow game down?! Why?!" :-)

If you want to injure someone, you have many avenues to do so. Accidentally doing so should be the result of a crit fail or something.

Striking to remove control points was mentioned somewhere; in my own games I let punching someone release CP. Having a grapple accidentally hurt someone seems cruel and unusual.

GURPS isn't a reality simulator this way, and there's quite enough going on to worry about accidental spill-over in what might be a raging melee with a dozen or more participants.

I mean: if it makes your game more fun, have at it. But I think there was a good reason to condense TG into Fantastic Dungeon Grappling and it only took 8 pages to do it.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

My gut reaction to this is "why you slow game down?! Why?!" :-)

I figure if there was a simple enough application (thus guessing at 1:10) it wouldn't do that too much, just to be kept in mind for movements to passively degrade grapples (inferior to an intentional Break Free of course) or for grapples to passively harm targets (inferior to intentional strikes/strangles of course)

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

If you want to injure someone, you have many avenues to do so. Accidentally doing so should be the result of a crit fail or something.

It came to mind while trying to catch some baby bunnies. I know if I didn't care about harming them I couldn't just use my full Grip ST to grab their skin but then it might've pinched them, even hurt them. Instead I had to try to avoid using my strength and mostly just used my Size Modifier to wrap around their torso without clamping down hard.

The thing about a crit fail on a grapple is that it means you miss?

If applying CP had an inherently damaging element which applied automatically (brute grabbing) then maybe a penalty could be applied to grappling techniques to avoid that harm (gentle grappling).

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Striking to remove control points was mentioned somewhere; in my own games I let punching someone release CP.

You mean like causing Shock to the grappler?

That makes sense too, but I'm actually talking about if someone is grappling your arm and you keep throwing punches / swinging sword with that arm. It's not a "Break Free" (it's an attack) but it seems like it should upset the grip, cause the grapple potential to degrade.

One way I thought it could be done is that if a location is grappled, any attacks done with that location would have to be a Rapid Strike: Break Free + Attack. But it seems like an automatic -6 on all attacks on some ST 100 giant because some ST 10 human is hanging onto your arm is potentially excessive.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Having a grapple accidentally hurt someone seems cruel and unusual.

Realistic though, when you imaging how we always hold back from using most of our strength when grappling baby bunnies to avoid hurting them.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I mean: if it makes your game more fun, have at it. But I think there was a good reason to condense TG into Fantastic Dungeon Grappling and it only took 8 pages to do it.

This definitely isn't for the low-crunch streamlined campaign :)

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

GURPS isn't a reality simulator this way, and there's quite enough going on to worry about accidental spill-over in what might be a raging melee with a dozen or more participants.

Reality is simulated in some ways, like with taking 1/5 or 1/10 damage from "hurting yourself", or it being impossible to grapple using a Cutting weapon without inflicting damage (TG14, half the basic damage equal to the CP)

To keep cutting (1:2) and biting (1:1) in a special niche is why I'm thinking to use 1/5 or 1/10 ratio (like hurting yourself, or blunt force trauma).

Instead of something like "-1, does not harm foe" another option might be to have something like doing a "Roll With Blow" on behalf of your opponent to reduce the basic damage without reducing the control points (in this case would ignore the "1 damage minimum" and doubled knockback) since intentionally grappling at decreased ST would mean sacrificing control points, which is undesired.

The approach could also be combined, where you need to take the -1 to grapple to get a chance to do the RWB for them. Merely trying to attempt not to hurt them (even if you fail) while still applying maximum potential for Control Points should make grappling harder.

Another option, instead of taking the penalty, would just be to intentionally use lower ST while grappling, with the downside being lower control points.

If there was a basic 1/5 and sacrificeRWB reduced that to 1/10 and then a foe had an option to RWB themself, that would reduce it to 1/20 meaning damage would only be unavoidable when applying 20+ Control Points in a single attack, which is the realm of giants and at that point they could just do a series of low-ST grapples if they wanted to avoid hurting a weak foe lacking DR.

[DouglasCole]

Thursday is GURPSDay. I missed last week, but here's a solid list, and some old faces are back on it. Check it out!

Thursday is GURPSDay! June 7 to June 27, 2019