Knowing Your Own Strength - Tank Smasher

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Bruno

That's a reason why I'm adverse to drastically changing the damage progression - it's a good idea for a 5e-style edition change, not so much for a "Slot this in with minimal effort at character creation" kind of module.



(While we're redoing everything, please for the love of little appleberries, can change it to "Injury Reduction" instead of "Damage Reduction"? Most confusing name choice ever.)

The problem I have with this is the same as the problem I have with Enhanced Move, and I really have with Enhanced Move with Second Nature - there are now two scales for buying attributes again. It smells of the 3e problem where you have an orc with ST 15 and a human with ST 15 and they each paid different amounts for it.

Blech. Blech. Blech. It feels dirty. it feels REALLY dirty because it doesn't have any guidelines about when you buy regular ST vs Super ST, so you end up with situations where you've bought (eg) 6 levels of Super ST, and buying one level of regular ST for 10 points now gives you +100 ST. Should that be right?

Fair enough. Part of the logic behind using a leveled Advantage was to create something that could be bolted on to the existing rules. There's an alternate version that's more granular - basically steadily reduce the cost of ST as ST rises. Something like

From ST 11 to 20: Cost as is.
From ST 21 to 30: +1 ST/5 points.
From ST 31 to 70: +2 ST/5 points.
From ST 71 to 100: +3 ST/5 points.
From ST 101-200: +1 ST/1 point.
From ST 201-300: +2 ST/1 point.
From ST 301-700: +4 ST/1 point.
From ST 701-1000: +6 ST/1 point.

etc.

Basically, costs work out the same as Super ST:

15 ST costs 50 points
20 ST costs 100 points
30 ST costs 150 points
50 ST costs 200 points
70 ST costs 250 points
100 ST costs 300 points
150 ST costs 350 points
200 ST costs 400 points
300 ST costs 450 points
500 ST costs 500 points
700 ST costs 550 points
1000 ST costs 600 points

etc.

I would probably drop the ST cost discount for Size and perhaps make increased Size a leveled Disadvantage.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The problem with that is that it becomes really ugly to try and apply DR. Let's say damage is normal up to 3d6, and then becomes 3d6+log(damage dice)*10-5. This means 10d is 3d6+5, 30d is 3d6+10, 100d is 3d6+15, etc. DR is unchanged up to 10, and then becomes log(DR)*10, so DR 100 becomes DR 20 (which will resist a 30d attack).

Now, consider shooting at someone who has, under vanilla rules, DR 100, and who is also behind a wall with DR 100. Under the new DR, both are DR 20. Under vanilla rules, either by itself resists a 30d attack, both together resist a 60d attack. The problem is, the 30d attack is 3d6+10, the 60d attack is 3d6+13, so DR 20 + DR 20 = DR 23? Or should they add up to DR 40, at which point you can resist an attack that is 3,000d in normal GURPS.

You do it the same as you do with the Size/Speed/Range Table (and, IIRC, EABA). I.e. if someone is behind a wall of a known toughness, in a vest of known toughness, and happens to have innate toughness too, you look up the toughest of the three. If another is half as tough as the toughest, you add +1 (assuming our log goes SSRT-style +1 per ×1½ and +6 per ×10). If both are half as tough as the toughest, add +2. Done.

[Anders]

I think it's appropriate to add some levels of Armor Penetration to your fists if you want to punch through tanks.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Infornific

<snip>
Basically, costs work out the same as Super ST:

15 ST costs 50 points
20 ST costs 100 points
30 ST costs 150 points
50 ST costs 200 points
70 ST costs 250 points
100 ST costs 300 points
150 ST costs 350 points
200 ST costs 400 points
300 ST costs 450 points
500 ST costs 500 points
700 ST costs 550 points
1000 ST costs 600 points

I would probably drop the ST cost discount for Size and perhaps make increased Size a leveled Disadvantage.

I've used that and while I like it better than the regular progression or the SuperST kludge, the unsatisfying thing was how it leaves behind other abilities as it scales up.

Let's say you have a super with ST 500 since that's now quite affordable. Even before considering defensive traits, such as DR and IT:DR, there's 500 HP chew through before you can KO him through damage. That's a lot of damage for Innate Attack. On the offense Mr ST 500 also has amazing damage throwing and punching - better than you can buy with Innate Attack - at the higher ranges of ST.

This sort of log ST is appealing for high lift while keeping the cost, damage dice, and HP values in a very usable number range. Of course it does mean a change in the meaning of what damage the dice reflect since +20 ST would be +5d and represent a x100 increase in force. DR and IA end up numerically the same but now compare favorably since DR will block more force for its cost and IA will be able to to damage high ST (HP) characters in a reasonable way.

The only problem is that existing equipment was assigned ST/HP/DR/damage numbers based on a different force progression, so you can't just pick items from High Tech or Ultra Tech and drop them in with the same stats.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Fair enough. Part of the logic behind using a leveled Advantage was to create something that could be bolted on to the existing rules. There's an alternate version that's more granular - basically steadily reduce the cost of ST as ST rises.

I actually like that a lot better. It's a solution that bolts on the front end (character creation), has one axis (instead of encouraging players to try and solve a two term equation to get the cheapest ST), and more or less meshes with the existing damage/DR values of stuff.

As a bolt-on to a 4e campaign, rather than an overhaul, it meets my needs better.

Originally Posted by Infornific

I would probably drop the ST cost discount for Size and perhaps make increased Size a leveled Disadvantage.

I made small size a leveled (dis)advantage too. I itemized the benefits (including the houserule changes) here. This is not my primary "All About Size Modifier" page as it contains campaign specific houserules.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by naloth

I've used that and while I like it better than the regular progression or the SuperST kludge, the unsatisfying thing was how it leaves behind other abilities as it scales up.

Let's say you have a super with ST 500 since that's now quite affordable. Even before considering defensive traits, such as DR and IT:DR, there's 500 HP chew through before you can KO him through damage. That's a lot of damage for Innate Attack. On the offense Mr ST 500 also has amazing damage throwing and punching - better than you can buy with Innate Attack - at the higher ranges of ST.

Good point, but the same problem exists with Super Effort ST and Injury Tolerance in GURPS Supers - they also increase exponentially for a linear cost and outstrip Innate Attack. A while back there was some discussion of creating an overall scaling Advantage. I priced out one here, meant to work with the ST scale I suggested above. I don't know if I ever came up with an appropriate multiplier for DR.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I actually like that a lot better. It's a solution that bolts on the front end (character creation), has one axis (instead of encouraging players to try and solve a two term equation to get the cheapest ST), and more or less meshes with the existing damage/DR values of stuff.

As a bolt-on to a 4e campaign, rather than an overhaul, it meets my needs better.



I made small size a leveled (dis)advantage too. I itemized the benefits (including the houserule changes) here. This is not my primary "All About Size Modifier" page as it contains campaign specific houserules.

Note a fringe benefit of the new scale is that it makes Growth powers a lot simpler. You can more or less patch in a flat cost Advantage that multiplies ST into a Growth power and costs will sync very closely to what you pay for.

Interesting cost for Size as a Disadvantage - I ballparked around -15/level as well but didn't go into anywhere near as much detail.

In the extremely unlikely event you've never heard of it (and my apologies if I mentioned it in a thread you were in before) Tbone's GURPS Gulliver has an interesting and detailed discussion of size and scaling.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Bruno

With Knowing Your Own Strength, your BL is 2E+72 (or 2 followed by 72 zeroes). The Earth weighs 1.317E+25 lbs - at ST 720 you can carry almost three Earths without being encumbered at all.

Off-Tangent (sorry...): Not sure if anyone has commented on this, but 3 Earths would weigh about 4E+25 lbs. You'd be able to carry roughly 1.5E+47 Earths, if I did my math right.

At least, if I understand what you're saying...

[Bruno]

Oh wow. I can't believe I goofed that badly. *facepalm*

Logarithms on the brain?

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Good point, but the same problem exists with Super Effort ST and Injury Tolerance in GURPS Supers - they also increase exponentially for a linear cost and outstrip Innate Attack. A while back there was some discussion of creating an overall scaling Advantage. I priced out one here, meant to work with the ST scale I suggested above. I don't know if I ever came up with an appropriate multiplier for DR.

Sure, you could try to bolt on fixes for advantages but trying to address the pieces misses some main issues.

1) While huge disparities may be realistic in many cases, they aren't necessarily good for cinematic play. For example, super strong entities usually wound rather than turn people to red mist - the even bad guys that wouldn't pull their punches. That's not exclusive to Supers either. You find it as often in science fiction and fantasy. For that matter you also hear some real stories of survival or accomplishment that would be instant death in GURPS.

So the trick is to find a range of scores that are both playable and good at representing what you want characters to be able to do. IE, if you want Spidey to survive being hit by the Hulk (or Aragon backhanded by a cave troll or even a cat kicked by a human), you need damage values that allow it.

2) Point values are supposed to reflect utility. Diminishing returns on many abilities should mean either less points or packing more into each level.

3) Many if not most things in the system are already quadratic (BL), or diminishing (such as ST dmg), in a bell curve (limited range of practical values), or logarithmic (usually the speed/range table) already. Arguably, we've been drifting towards packing things into a more usable range already.

Of course, reassessing multiple traits into a unified standard might be too much of a change considering the quantity of things out for 4e, but it seems like a good idea to explore.