Bare Bones Basic - Combat

[Nymdok]

The idea of simplifying GURPS for new comers was brought up in this thread

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=133025

and I thought Id look at some of the ways of doing that.

GURPS has a rich, tactical, nuanced combat system, but what if it werent? Would it be less fun or just different fun? How many maneuvers could you remove and have it still be GURPS combat? If you were to assign them levels of complexity, what would they be and what options would you put in where? Which are the 'easy' ones, which are the 'advanced' ones and which are the 'expert' ones?

Lvl 0 : Gurps Ultra lite - Attack and Defense is one roll etc.

Lvl 1 : Attack, Deceptive Attack and Block, Parry, Dodge, All wounding Modifiers = 1, Range Penalties. No bonuses or penalties for Weapon Parry (Staff knife etc). Unbalanced Weapons. Move OR Attack. All crit fails = Dropped Weapon, All Crit Successes = Double Damage. Club, Sword, Shield, Spear, Axe, Mace, Staff, Bow, Rifle, Pistol, Punch, Kick.

LVL 2 : Rapid Fire, AOA, AOD, Full Wounding Modifiers, Weapon bonuses and penalties for parry, Grappling, Normal Crit Fail/Success effects, All Weapons in Basic Set.

LVL 3 : Aim, Bracing, Postures, Shock, Stun, Move and Attack, Slam, Hit locations, Feint,

LVL 4 : Techniques, Weapon Master, TbaM, All weapons from Martial Arts, Handed Grips.

LVL 5 : Commited Attack, Defensive Attack, Bleed Out Wound Locations, Extra Effort


Does that sound like a reasonable division of difficulty? Could it be more granular? Something I miss?

Nymdok

[Mathulhu]

How you want to do GURPS combat depends enormously on the group you are working with.
For example I would rate wounding modifiers and hit locations more important than deceptive attacks because we start with lower powered characters who want to mess people up or cripple them.


Lvl 1 - Basic skills, normal defense rolls
Lvl 2 - Things that are obvious from the weapon table, changes to parry and damage scores
Lvl 3 - Maneuvers, start with the ones people ask for, often all out defense is the first
... keep going in incremental steps until your group is happy.

In my experience steps get merged and blurry as people build up a personal style or area of rules expertise. However there are a couple of more extreme steps that are worthy of mention.

Lvl X - Things that alter characters sheets like techniques and perks that can be used for min/maxing. Not because they are abusive but because they require active choice and that requires understanding. No one likes to feel they have thrown away points.

Lvl X+1 - Things that the forum says require lots of GM oversight, Technique Mastery, Ritual Path Magic etc

[ericthered]

A flatter way of dealing with damage and damage modifiers would be really nice. the large weapons tables are nice, but I'd be wonderful to be able to have a truncated table that offers nice simple options. And it'd be nice to have thrust be something like swing damage-2 or something.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by ericthered

A flatter way of dealing with damage and damage modifiers would be really nice. the large weapons tables are nice, but I'd be wonderful to be able to have a truncated table that offers nice simple options. And it'd be nice to have thrust be something like swing damage-2 or something.

Thats actually something I hadnt thought Of and abbreviated weapon list...... Good idea...let me edit.

Nymdok

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

How you want to do GURPS combat depends enormously on the group you are working with.

No Doubt about that. Thats why Im trying to stratify the difficulty and resolution level. So that GMs can select what level of resolution they are looking for and the players can either agree or dial it up or down.

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

For example I would rate wounding modifiers and hit locations more important than deceptive attacks because we start with lower powered characters who want to mess people up or cripple them.

Whereas I would say the opposite because without DA, then things get to be 'unhittable except by crit' at a certain level of Defense.

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

Lvl 1 - Basic skills, normal defense rolls
Lvl 2 - Things that are obvious from the weapon table, changes to parry and damage scores
Lvl 3 - Maneuvers, start with the ones people ask for, often all out defense is the first
... keep going in incremental steps until your group is happy.

See thats what Im looking to elaborate on. Whats a basic skill? What is obvious is normally subjective, can you elaborate? Different groups will ask for different manuvers, are there some that you think are more 'basic', 'core' or fundamental than others?

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

In my experience steps get merged and blurry as people build up a personal style or area of rules expertise. However there are a couple of more extreme steps that are worthy of mention.

Lvl X - Things that alter characters sheets like techniques and perks that can be used for min/maxing. Not because they are abusive but because they require active choice and that requires understanding. No one likes to feel they have thrown away points.

Lvl X+1 - Things that the forum says require lots of GM oversight, Technique Mastery, Ritual Path Magic etc

Im assuming that these levels of complexity will be applied 'table wide' so no one is throwing away points. RPM isnt exactly combat, so well treat that in a different thread with Magic I think.

Nymdok

[simply Nathan]

Personally I don't use hit locations or DR-by-location. If a player asked to target something specifically I'd probably just tell him to roll at -5, have it face general torso DR, and wing any special features beyond that. I do happen to have eyes memorized (imp and pi only, roll at -9, ignore armor DR, wounding modifier becomes x4).

I have considered changing cutting attacks' wounding modifier from x1.5 to x2 because it's simpler. Not more balanced or more realistic, but simpler while still giving very different feels between using a sword and using a sword-sized club.

On ranged weapons, I only list the full-damage range and not the longer half-damage range. I pre-calculate the range and damage of bows, putting only a few pre-determined models in stores (Shortbow ST 8, Longbow ST 12, Longbow ST 16, Composite Bow ST 20).

I have all critical hits be Max Damage, or Max Damage x3 if using a specifically appropriate magical weapon (Manslayer Sword, Bow of the Hunter, Axe of the Apostles, etc.).

I think I can feel safe limiting maneuvers as such:
- Attack. Move up to half your Move and attack an enemy within reach. Defenses as normal.
- Move. Move spaces up to your Move. Defenses as normal.
- Concentrate. Move = Step.
- All-Out Attack (Determined) and All-Out Attack (Strong). Move up to half your Move score and make an attack with the appropriate bonus. Considering rolling both effects into one move.
- All-Out Defense. No movement and no attack; may make two Active Defenses against any incoming attack before your next turn.
- Ready. All-purpose maneuver for doing things like getting out a potion, drinking, pulling an unruly weapon back into alignment, drawing a sheathed weapon, grabbing something off the ground, and so on.
- Skip Turn (Do Nothing). The effect you are forced into by conditions like Stun, Sleep, Paralysis, and Death. Some of these effects allow you to defend at a penalty and some don't.

I'm generally not going to bother with things like posture, footing, lighting, Major Wounds, knockdown, or the like unless specifically invoked (i.e., "The floor in the room is slippery; all DX rolls and Active Defenses are at -1. Adjacent room extinguishes torches and Continual Light, but has candles; Attack and Vision rolls are at -2.").

[mook]

"How to Be a GURPS GM" takes a stab at this on pp. 41-42, so that's my version of the spectrum. But it is an extremely subjective thing -- I think any five GMs will have five different breakdowns.

[ArchonShiva]

Lv1: Ranged combat has no Acc, and no range penalties within, but you can't shoot anything past 1/2D.

One of the big things when coming over to GURPS is how hard it is to figure out how much damage a weapon does. In d20 a long sword is 1d8 and a magic missile is 1d4+1, whereas in GURPS you get stuff like "sw+1 cut or thr+2 imp", and what does that even mean? Just sayin'.

Especially if eliminating wounding modifiers, try to have a weapon table with base damage (1d6+1) based on ST 11 maybe, then modify for ST score.

Kromm once proposed you always take skill down to 16 and DA the rest, which is a low-decision version of Deceptive Attack. Since the GM can do the math, it's simpler on players.

The main problem with a lot of your granularity stuff is that a lot of it also affects balance.

A silly-ish suggestion for Lv1 is to remove the G4e +3 to defenses:
It makes dodge equal to speed, which is really simple;
It makes parry equal to half skill, which is easier to count;
It makes the result of attacking more predictable;
It allows you to push Deceptive Attack higher, which means a lot less math.

Generally speaking, and I know I'm contradicting some of my own suggestions, avoid having "simplified" rules which contradict real rules. These tend to leave people confused for a long time!

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericthered

A flatter way of dealing with damage and damage modifiers

Flatter in what way? I'm not sure what you mean here. Muscle weapon damage that scales up less quickly with increased ST?

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

a low-decision version of Deceptive Attack

My group independently invented the DA rule back for 1e. We went through a few variants before settling on one just like the current rule. One of the interim variants was to reduce the defense by MoS of the attack roll divided by 3. You might use that for a no-decision rule to prevent high defenses from becoming impenetrable.

(The initial variant was MoS / 2, but that was too powerful. Think of that as the precognitive DA, where you know ahead of time exactly by how much you'll make the roll. So we went to MoS / 3 for a while, which was okay, but then went to pre-declared, attacker-chosen penalty / 2, which worked even better because it does involve a player decision, and lets the attacker "feel out" the (unknown) defense value by getting more or less tricky.)

If the setting involves a lot of ranged weapons -- like modern settings instead of low-tech -- then Aim, Acc, and range mods become important. Perhaps the no-decision version might be to precalculate the effect of one turn of Aim, and just declare that ranged weapons always take one more turn to fire. I suspect players will rapidly want a "Snap Shot" rule. So you could either create SS penalties for weapons (-Acc, basically), or just have an average-ish fixed penalty (like the -4 from 3e).

[doulos05]

A lot of it is the GM pre-calculating things.

Give a ranged weapon 2 ACC stats. The ACC stat from 0-1/2D and the ACC stat from 1/2D to max (the first band is the unmodified ACC stat, the second band is ACC-range penalty for 1/2D). Now you've pre-calculated the effect of range and only have to worry about speed. If unmodified ACC is too generous, take the median penalty for each range band.

If a player likes to use slam attacks (Shield bashes, for example) figure the damage using 75% of his move as the velocity and use that all the time. Then simply declare he has to move that many hexes or more to charge (D&D does that, or at least it did in the versions I played. If you wanted to slam, you had to move straight forward a certain number of hexes).

Pre-calculate the weapons for each character in case they pick them up.