Is GURPS Combat unrealitic deadly?

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by Razgovory

I think in real ancient combat warriors didn't fight constantly. They would fight a bit, and then fall back through their lines and catch their breath. If they took a wound they would probably fall back sooner and stay back for a while.

For a Greek soldier the sentence would read: "They would fight a bit, and then fall back through their lines and run the hell away." The general plan wasn't to fight and kill your target while he's facing you, but to fight until he runs and then pick him off from behind.

[SimonAce]

My issue wasn't the damage rules really. Those are fair on the side of generous. It just seems arbitrarily hard to parry incoming blows -- I often thought would have been better served with a quick contest of weapon skills to represent attacks and parries myself

[Joseph Paul]

Ultimately the question comes down to "do the rules simulate what you want them to?". I think that SimonAce is on to something here that has been discussed in regards to BRP. That is that it is almost too easy to die in these games. There is probably room for a bit more incapacitation being worked in to the rules.

What do the accounts of tourney and war say about the ability of human beings to take punishment?

As for the evidence from Wisby; is there any proof that those cuts to the legs happend while the victim was on their feet? They may have happened when the people got pushed over and that was the target that could be hit.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by SimonAce

This means that unless said persons use all out defense and frantic defense all the time a few engagements will likely main them or kill them with infections or the like -- is this reasonable given the presence of decent armor on the first) and substantial shields ?

Yes.

In some ways, GURPS combat is more lethal than many other RPGs- it is relatively easy to incapacitate a comparable character in combat. In other ways, it is less lethal- combat is less abstracted, so you don't have the d20 situation of a character being 100% effective up to the instant they lose that last hit point and start bleeding out. This is less lethal because characters usually decide to run for it once they realize they are dealing with significant impairment and are unlikely to prevail.

I find this makes combat a good deal more interesting.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

What do the accounts of tourney and war say about the ability of human beings to take punishment?

Mixed bag. Some heroic stuff(man being hit by two simultanous charging knights and surviving unharmed), some guys getting shot in the throat and dying, some guys dying in jousting when slivers of metal flew into their eyes.


And why shouldn't war be a bunch of barely competent soldiers who largely fight defensively? Melee has to be a terrifying thing to do.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

And why shouldn't war be a bunch of barely competent soldiers who largely fight defensively?

Assuming barely competent troops, there's no reason it shouldn't be. Assuming well trained troops, one would think that the point of all that training is to harden the soldiers to the dangers of combat. If your war is two nations throwing levies of peasants at each other, I have no problem with this characterization. If you have two battle tested professional armies going up against one another, I imagine "barely competent" would be a mischaracterization of at least some of the troops involved.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Ultimately the question comes down to "do the rules simulate what you want them to?". I think that SimonAce is on to something here that has been discussed in regards to BRP. That is that it is almost too easy to die in these games. There is probably room for a bit more incapacitation being worked in to the rules.

What do the accounts of tourney and war say about the ability of human beings to take punishment?

As for the evidence from Wisby; is there any proof that those cuts to the legs happend while the victim was on their feet? They may have happened when the people got pushed over and that was the target that could be hit.

Funny enough BRP was my first "real" RPG -- I loved RQ2 and if my group had gone more for it (we were 12 what can I say) I'd have played the heck out of it
Now to satisfy my rules needs I added a bit from Gulliver -- if you miss a parry or a blow by one you get half damage. This increase the defensiveness armored targets and is a push on unarmored ones -- thats good enough for me,

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Mixed bag. Some heroic stuff(man being hit by two simultanous charging knights and surviving unharmed), some guys getting shot in the throat and dying, some guys dying in jousting when slivers of metal flew into their eyes.


And why shouldn't war be a bunch of barely competent soldiers who largely fight defensively? Melee has to be a terrifying thing to do.

I've been in unarmed for real combat combat and its scary as all out -- even with armor -- weapon combat is probably even more scary least till the adrenaline kicks in.

[joncarryer]

Hey there. I'm the GM friend that figleaf was talking about earlier. I agree that the combat system in GURPS is very much like life; the best way to avoid getting killed in combat is to not get hit. That said, the original point that figleaf mentioned me in answer to was that without some kind of game mechanism to control this behaviour, many players will tend to just go balls out and hack away indiscriminately, taking a blow every time it's their turn in the round. I am also of the opinion that a better approximation of the rhythm of an actual fight includes some breathing space; the GURPS rules mention the flurries and lulls thing, but the actual game mechanics of that is left rather vague, imposed by random dice rolls or by GM fiat.

What I wanted to do was put in a mechanic that would have players choose to take lulls because that was the best thing for them to do. All I did was take the idea already mentioned in the section on fatigue from loss of sleep (which takes hours or days to recover instead of minutes) and extended it in the other direction. To keep it at least somewhat intelligible, instead of calling them all fatigue points, I called them breath, fatigue, and exhaustion points. Breath points can be recovered by a second of rest, fatigue as per the rules in minutes, and exhaustion points require multiple hours of serious rest or sleep (I usually have the players make a HT roll for each night of sleep or day of full rest, with modifiers for the quality of the sleep and factors like if they spent the entire previous day hiking or fighting; for every 2-3 points they make the roll by, they get an exhaustion point back).

But back to breath points. You can modify the numbers depending on how tiring you believe combat to be, but the basic idea is that you spend 1-3 breath points for every tiring combat action taken, and get one back for every second of rest or non-tiring action. I started out with the idea figleaf mentioned, about getting back all but one each time you ran out, but found the idea of being refreshed by getting more tired created some cognitive dissonance. So, how it works now is that you start out with a pool of breath points equal to your FP. As long as you spend no more breath points than your FP, they will come back at one per second of rest. If you spend all of your breath points, then you have to start spending them as fatigue points, which will take minutes per point to recover and might involve negative roll modifiers (GM's option). If you fight so continuously that you turn all of your breath points into fatigue points, then you start spending them as exhaustion points, taking hours per point to recover and DEFINITELY involving negative roll modifiers. What I like to do is impose a -1 when you start spending fatigue, up to half your FP, then -2 up to full FP. I then impose a further -1 per 3 exhaustion points or part thereof and start rolling for passing out as per the negative FP rules.

This all got a little hard to keep track of, so I gave each player a number of Go stones equal to their FP and had them keep a sheet of paper with 4 boxes drawn on it next to their character sheets. Box 1 is available FP. As the player spends breath points, they move the stones into Box 2. As they take breaks for rest, they move them back into Box 1. At any time that all the stones are in Box 2, they have to start moving them into Box 3, as fatigue points. If they take a rest, any stones still in Box 2 can be moved back to Box 1, at one stone per second of rest. When they start fighting again, they go back to moving these from Box 1 to Box 2 as breath points, with each action taken. So, let's say a guy with 10 FP has been fighting a while, and has moved all 10 stones into Box 2, then 2 of them on into Box 3. If he rests for 8 seconds, all of the stones in Box 2 will go back to Box 1 and be available for use in further fighting again, but those last 2 stones will require 2 minutes of rest before he gets them back. Let's say he doesn't have 2 minutes to spare and goes back to fighting (at a -1 penalty for the 2 stones still sitting in Box 3), gradually moving the 8 stones back to Box 2. He's still hard pressed, so he goes on fighting, until 5 stones are in Box 3. He's now at a -2 penalty and getting seriously winded, but he keeps on fighting until all 10 stones are in Box 3. Now, even if he rests, it's going to be at least a minute before he starts getting his breath back. Unfortunately, he doesn't have that luxury; he has to continue fighting and starts moving stones into Box 4, which immediately moves him to a -3 penalty and makes him have to start rolling to stay conscious (in my games, depending on the situation, falling unconscious might also be interpreted as simply collapsing in exhaustion and still being awake but unable to make yourself move). And so on...

And that's my combat fatigue system.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Randover

Well one way or other, GURPS allow one shot kill. In sence of aiming for Vitals. And also there is quite wide area of damage dices with combination of critical fauilure on defence roll. I guess it could be interpreted as critical succes(attack) or critical failure(defence) victim definatly could avoided getting killed, but failed to. From this point its just a way how you play-out combat...Player not having a real choice - dices doing everything.

This I don't understand. Both players have a lot of choices.
Let's compare two scenarios.

D&D:
Round 1-
Angry Abe (10hp): I swing at Badboy Bob. I Roll at 19.
GM: That's a hit, roll for damage.
Angry Abe: I roll 12pts of damage.
GM: Bob only has 10hps. He's dead.
Badboy Bob: um...okay.

GURPS:
Round 1-
Angry Abe (10hp): (Thinks: I want to kill Bob, not just hurt him...so I should go for the vitals...but that is a -3 to hit, and my skill isn't that great...) I'll make a committed attack for +2 to hit to Badboy Bob's Vitals. My base skill is 12...so adjusted that is 11. I hit.
Badboy Bob: Hm...a Rapier to my vitals is not so good. Hm...I'll parry, but my parry is only 9...so I'll retreat...boosting my retreat up to 12...hm...and I'll use Feverish Defense to boost my Parry up to 14. Dang! I miss!
Angry Abe: I roll 5...that is 15pts of damage!
GM: Bob, you are at -5, Roll HT for the Major Wound, then also roll to stay conscious.

In scenario 1, Badboy Bob didn't get to do anything at all besides die.
In scenario 2, Badboy Bob had a number of options, he could parry, dodge, or block. He could retreat. He could acrobatic dodge. He could do feverish defense.

And, in my experience, one-shot kills in GURPS are not all that common. Actually death isn't all that common...unless people are using powerful rifles and the people are fighting don't have body armor. On the other hand, at least one person a session dies in the D&D games I play. And sometimes even more. Last session I was in (lots of level 17s), a dragon came in cast Horrid Wilting and the Bard and I were dead before we even took an action. Then we sat around for 5 hours while that fight got resolved.