How lethal is a master?

[weby]

For fun I compared the weakest melee combatant(a wizard) in our current campaign to the posted master. Even in the scenario where the wizard cannot use any of the active abilities or have any buffs on he is still going to win unless things get totally freaky.

The wizard is using the staff he normally carries and not the "I win staff" that is kind of dangerous to him too. I am assuming the master will be using what 250 point characters might well have in having a medium plate armor, large shield and a fine+balanced sword.

At first glance the situation does not seem too unbalanced.

The wizard has skill 24 with staff, the master 25 with the balanced sword.

But the wizard having parry 25 and dodge 22 unbuffed is kind of heavy to bypass. The master would have parry 25/2=12 +3base +1combat ref +3 shield=19 so bit worse and the dodge would be simply too low to count due to encumbrance.

Given the skill levels the wizard could easily parry even the maximum deceptive from the master so the master could only hit on criticals, so would likely go for two attacks/second and go crit hunting.

The wizard has extra attack and could go for three attacks/round critical hunting(thus getting more such) or go for 2 deceptive at 12 dropping defense to 13, trying to get hits that way. Thus the wizard would likely get in more hits regardless of the way, also given that the wizard has luck to re-roll some of the bad rolls.

On the hits, even with the ineffective staff the wizard would do 1d6+13 cr with armor penetration(2), so average of 13.5 injury/hit through the medium plate.

The master would do 2d+6 damage against the wizards unbuffed DR of 19.. uh, no penetration. If using our special combat rules and not generic the master could use chinks in armor even against natural armor and could thus halve the armor but at -8 to attack, thus being forced to only attack once/round dropping the number of hits, but a 2d+6 looks much better against DR 9.. usually penetrating with few hits.

But the wizard has Damage reduction(2), so the total injury would be very low. Then given that the wizard is also unkillable and has more HP 16 than then master and the master seems to be hopelessly outclassed.

And that is against the least melee effective character in the party fighting without any of the abilities and spells that he would normally use and being the only one that cannot simply bypass the low parry with high enough deceptive attack like the others can.

So yeah, campaign power level matters a lot.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by weby

The wizard is using the staff he normally carries and not the "I win staff" that is kind of dangerous to him too. I am assuming the master will be using what 250 point characters might well have in having a medium plate armor, large shield and a fine+balanced sword.

The master, as posted, will have standard starting money, and thus at TL4 $2000 and therefore a good sword and less than complete plate or reasonable mail coverage. At TL3 if they want a good sword they won't have more than leather armour. The alternative is to spend points out of that 20 point pool intended for rounding out the character to gain more gear.

The master would do 2d+6 damage against the wizards unbuffed DR of 19..

The master does not have weapon master, so with a broadsword he's doing 1d+3 cut or 1d+1 imp. Buying Weapon Master with just one weapon uses all his spare points, which means either a crappy sword or crappy armour. He has to aim for chinks or eyes against anyone in heavy armour.

[AlexanderHowl]

How do you have parry 25 and dodge 22 unbuffed? What are you playing? A 1,000 CP game?

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by mr beer

Yeah that's the guts of the matter IMO. If you have Flight in a TL 5 mundane setting, that's a good candidate for an UB. If you sank 200 CP into DX 20 in a 150 CP game, yeah you're unusual but not really Unusual.

Great FSM, 200 pts into DX in a 150 pt game . . . what do they do? I mean . . . depending on disads, they likely have no points left over for anything else. That's unusual to the point that, as GM, I'd want to have a talk with the player and see where their head was. Because whatever they were on, they should be sharing.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How do you have parry 25 and dodge 22 unbuffed? What are you playing? A 1,000 CP game?

Word.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The master, as posted, will have standard starting money, and thus at TL4 $2000 and therefore a good sword and less than complete plate or reasonable mail coverage. At TL3 if they want a good sword they won't have more than leather armour. The alternative is to spend points out of that 20 point pool intended for rounding out the character to gain more gear.

I was assuming that he had adventured to have gear that would be normal for that level of character in our campaign, as the opponent also had their gear.

The master does not have weapon master, so with a broadsword he's doing 1d+3 cut or 1d+1 imp.

Correct, I calculated it wrong.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How do you have parry 25 and dodge 22 unbuffed? What are you playing? A 1,000 CP game?

Well, no, that wizard is currently 3646 points.. :)

But as said he is not melee oriented, only has basic melee skill to allow parrying against mooks with focus on the parry side for that purpose. That includes things like +3 parry enchantment on the staff.

As example his sister who is half melee "rogue type" has skill 47, parry 29f and does 7d+7 damage with armor divisor (3).

The heavy strike type has only skill 40 but does 10d+20 damage with armor divisor (5).

Those are the unbuffed numbers.

Edit: The game started at 100 points+disads in january 2011 and I basically give 1 point/hour of play+average of about 15% in bonus points thus the point totals.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by weby

Well, no, that wizard is currently 3646 points.. :)

But as said he is not melee oriented, only has basic melee skill to allow parrying against mooks with focus on the parry side for that purpose. That includes things like +3 parry enchantment on the staff.

As example his sister who is half melee "rogue type" has skill 47, parry 29f and does 7d+7 damage with armor divisor (3).

The heavy strike type has only skill 40 but does 10d+20 damage with armor divisor (5).

Those are the unbuffed numbers.

But *everybody* knows GURPS can't handle high-point characters. You must be doing everything wrong. :-)

[weby]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

But *everybody* knows GURPS can't handle high-point characters. You must be doing everything wrong. :-)

Well, certain things definitely break at higher point totals:

The magic system started breaking down after 500 points and was eventually replaced when it got too bad at about 900 points and through an intermediate step we currently use sorcery/divine favor/psionics as the magic systems.

Had to definitely jettison the -10=impossible limit.

Extra effort breaks in so many ways at high will.

Many of the things that you only fail seldom, but normal people fail often do not really make sense at even medium power levels, where as example you will lose less FP by running a distance than by walking the same distance..

And so on.

For anyone planning to run a high power campaign: Get "Supers", read it and use the ideas to place limits and for ideas how to handle many things. That is even if you are not planning to run a supers game(our game is high power fantasy as example, with the characters striving to become gods.)

[Maz]

Originally Posted by weby

Well, no, that wizard is currently 3646 points.. :)

[Snip]

Edit: The game started at 100 points+disads in january 2011 and I basically give 1 point/hour of play+average of about 15% in bonus points thus the point totals.

You play an average of 8,5 hours every single week!? :o

...I have time for like 4 hours every other week. (Am envious).

[weby]

Originally Posted by Maz

You play an average of 8,5 hours every single week!? :o

...I have time for like 4 hours every other week. (Am envious).

The normal weekly session used to be about 10-11 hours, but is now down a bit.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by weby

Well, certain things definitely break at higher point totals:

The magic system started breaking down after 500 points and was eventually replaced when it got too bad at about 900 points and through an intermediate step we currently use sorcery/divine favor/psionics as the magic systems.

The thing that "breaks" the magic system IMHO is probably the intent of the user. Late in 3e I used the Magic ssytem at 1500 pts and noticed no problems

In World od d'y'r;t the characters started at 250 pts and if there was any semi-broken element it was soemthing the mage designed with the Powers system. Let's jsut say that it removed any major element of resource management while not blowing up overall control of the power level.