[GM] At last! A combat Matrix is Born(sort of)

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

"In the most general sense, players can fight for 10+FP Rounds, but there are certain limitations and considerations to be made."

Where is this rule?

B426.

And it appears that I have missapplied it! I've been biling those DURING combat not at the end! My players thank you :)

What I was trying to factor in was that after 1 rounds of combat, you start to loose fatigue whether your using extra effort or not.

Can you tell me where that is so that I can change it?

Functionally it changes a key metric for us, but not drastically. When we're trying to figure how long our players can last in an encounter, we can no longer use this as an 'upper limit'. It unfortunate, but estimating the length of the encounter can still be done looking at Average Damage after wounding vs HP the way we did above.

Edit: Changed it on the page.

Nymdok

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

What Follows is an explanation of these numbers.

I realized when I woke up this morning that I although I had talked a great deal about the numbers, I hadnt really presented the process of balancing an encounter in a simple way.

Get the Per Turn Metrics you want:

In the above example, we didnt have to fiddle with them at all as they were set by DAT/Dan ahead of time, all we had to do is find the right number for a challenge.

Get the Encounter Metrics You Want:

We looked at how long it would take the party to erase the Spiders HP and how long it would take the spiders to do the same.

Consider the environment the best you can:

Here, since DAT didnt mention what the enviornment was like, we looked at how his missle trained fighters might fair against a stomping spider stampede.

And voila! We ended up with 4 rounds, 6 to give them a chance to finish off the severly wounded spiders (who can still attack!).

Nymdok

[Landwalker]

Nymdok, in your calculations for the Spider Fight, did you take into account things like Shock?

Is it even possible to account for shock? Sure, somebody's going to be at (an average of) -3 to hit, but who? How does this affect expected damage output?

Considering that the most likely characters to be taking damage (and thus, shock) initially are the fightery folks, would this have a significant impact on the expected damage output of the party?

How did you account for the fact that the mage can do 1d damage to multiple spiders in one turn?

How would things change if the Barbarian's dual-weapon attack targeted separate spiders (thus effectively causing more shock penalties amongst the spiders)?

Did you account for feverish defenses? Mighty blows? Flurries?

*Head explodes from variables*

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

Nymdok, in your calculations for the Spider Fight, did you take into account things like Shock?

Is it even possible to account for shock? Sure, somebody's going to be at (an average of) -3 to hit, but who? How does this affect expected damage output?

You can estimate how much shock is expected, but not how th eplayers react to it so whats the point?

For eample, for most of us, when we get hit, we'll take a round of All out Defense to help us shake off shock since it only lasts for a second anyway. Thats sort of a 'dead round' as the player doesnt attack so it wont hurt the spider, nor is the spider likely to hit him due to his Defense bonuses.

<Unrelated>
Is there a healing spell that negates shock for a limited time? Is there a healing spell that is cast with the speed of a blocking spelll that can negate shock? If not, i should think those would be useful spells and might merit threads fo their own.
</unrelated>

Originally Posted by Landwalker

Considering that the most likely characters to be taking damage (and thus, shock) initially are the fightery folks, would this have a significant impact on the expected damage output of the party?

How did you account for the fact that the mage can do 1d damage to multiple spiders in one turn?

How would things change if the Barbarian's dual-weapon attack targeted separate spiders (thus effectively causing more shock penalties amongst the spiders)?

Did you account for feverish defenses? Mighty blows? Flurries?

*Head explodes from variables*

Simply put, I didnt account for any of it. NOR SHOULD YOU.

Look you can run numbers till you get Arithme-toxemia (I term i just invented for math overload) and it wont tell you a damn thing. There are just too many variables to cover and even then, you cant predict fair dice. The more detail you attempt to factor for and the more assumptions you make, the model becomes more narrowly applicable.

I cant assume that EVERY GAME, EVERY GM, EVERY PLAYER, uses Extra effort....or spells....or ANYTHING. I simply cant becuase every GURPS game is different. what I CAN say is that all those using Extra Effort will spend at least 1 fp per turn, and therefore cant do it indefinately :)

So lets take them one by one and see what we're talking about.

No, I didnt account for the mages Exploding fireball. Although it can be frightfully effective against clustered enemies, its largely offset by its falling with distance. Especially if the spiders arge bigger than a Hex. Once the spiders close, thowing EF into melee encounters is likely to get backlash from other players :) Finally if the MAge throws them BEHIND the spiders, although a clever tactic, due to the fall off, they of course have to put much more energy into it.

No, I didnt account for Barbie attacking seperate targets.

If the barbie used his weapons against 2 differnt spiders then either

1. He's defenseless with his axes and wont last long
2. Unless he has ambidexterity hell be taking a -4 for the off hand (11 v 11 means 25% a HUGE reduction in his likely hood to hit.)
3. He uses rapid recovery for his axes andburns up FP fast.
4. Unless he has some advantage that lets him target multiple enemies, he's taking another -4. (so that makes it 7 v 11..less than 10%).

So heres the moral of the story:

These matrices assume that GURPS is Balanced as a System.

You can argue this all you want till your blue in the face. Magic, Powers, TBAM, Combat Reflexes, IQ! all come up from time to time as being unbalanced. In combat though, the things that you normally have access to generally have things that foil them.

That means there isnt a single 'I win always' spell, skill, technique, manuver or tactic. They all have counters. Explosive Fireball? Deflect Missle, Flurry of Blows? The Penalty and Feverish defense, AOA? AOD!

That means that, largely, the 'little variables' sort of have a way of sorting themselves out, its the big variables we gotta watch.


No amount of Arithmetic gets you a Crystal Ball. Only do what helps you see the most!

The Best you can do is look at how things are LIKELY to turn out, not based on your perceptions, but good old math.

You can plot expectations all day craft clever and robust models, but it wont help you set up encounters accurately because NO ONE can tell you what the dice will show on any given turn.

With that in mind, we look at what I feel are the most important variables that we can measure, do our best to estimate the ones we cant, and then use these charts to speed up the calculations.

Nymdok

p.s. Follow DATs example! Playtest! I can use all the feedback I can get! Try this at home kids! :)

[Nymdok]

Version 2 of the one Sheet is up, I removed the odds of getting thorough DR as I didnt really need it, and instead, it now has Quick Contest odds.


Nymdok

[MrJester]

Being a very lazy GM, and also believing that laziness is why we've invented things like spreadsheets, I added two tabs to the GameBalance spreadsheet. The purpose was to keep me from having to manually go through the charts and what not when designing challenges for the group. Instead, excel does that for me (and now you if you like the sheet).

All you have to do is enter values for anything in green and the monster's values, (in red) will automatically update. Uses values from the sheets that Nymdok was kind enough to create.

Posted here on google docs:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5s...thkey=CLO1nP8G

There are some limitations to the sheet... I've been working on and off to improve but seem to have hit a road block in my excel expertise. Reference comments on laziness. If you're industrious enough to improve upon mine (and by extension, Nymdok's) efforts, please share.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by MrJester

Being a very lazy GM, and also believing that laziness is why we've invented things like spreadsheets, I added two tabs to the GameBalance spreadsheet. The purpose was to keep me from having to manually go through the charts and what not when designing challenges for the group. Instead, excel does that for me (and now you if you like the sheet).

All you have to do is enter values for anything in green and the monster's values, (in red) will automatically update. Uses values from the sheets that Nymdok was kind enough to create.

Posted here on google docs:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5s...thkey=CLO1nP8G

There are some limitations to the sheet... I've been working on and off to improve but seem to have hit a road block in my excel expertise. Reference comments on laziness. If you're industrious enough to improve upon mine (and by extension, Nymdok's) efforts, please share.

Interested in seeing your work, but the link is broken :)

Nymdok