DF: Power Ups at 400+ points

[Azinctus]

My Dungeon Fantasy group has reached 400 points each. In places they have exceeded the templates: the Cleric has Power Investiture 6, the Knight Strength 24, The thief slightly exceeds the disadvantage limit and has reputation. Some of those excesses happened without my knowledge and others were with my consent. I also imposed a hard limit of 25 for skills, if I hadn't the Knight would have skill 40 or 50 by now. Also the fighters have been buying techniques from Martial Arts.

I'm now considering what are reasonable limits, are the DF1 templates+ DF3 power ups meant to limit the characters forever?

In the 400-500 point region what are reasonable levels for: Magery, Power Investiture, skills ands so on. Should the players be able to buy attribute bonuses that aren't on their templates?

[blacksmith]

You are the GM, not anyone here, and there is no cannon answer. You are getting to the point levels were the character are superhuman, would you limit batman to a skill of 25 if you were running him with superman in the party?

They seem to be at the limit of the power level you will allow, and yet you keep giving them points.

[SCAR]

Since Kromm has said on these forums that DF was heavily influenced by his recent fantasy campaign Dawn of Magic, you might want to review this website for the first few hundred chapters, along with background and 4e character sheets (around the 500 point range) for most of the PCs, or Kromms blog for the later chapters.

[Nymdok]

Its an interesting question!

Id hold Magery and PI at 6 untill you get this sorted out, and for what its worth, I dont really see a reason for these to go higher.

Ive been considering a 'scaling system' to really let Gurps take off into the upper limits of Epic. Complete HOuse rule to be sure, but we're all sort of bound by the lvl 25 limit on skills (at least combat skills).

For combat, one of the biggest problems with 25+ is that location penalties dont scale. At 25 even poking people in the armor chinks and eye slits poses no real challenge, its the opposing sides active defense that willl foil you.

It seems reasonable in my head therefore that hit location penalties should be related (mathematically) to hit location to maintain some scale as one progresses but Im not sure what the numbers should be. If someone has an exceptionally high defese, it seems logical that hitting them in a specifc location may be higher than the current scheme suggests.

Maybe something like AD/10 * Hit location penalty? This would allow you to go higher with the skills while still maintaing the challenge level that you have in mind.

So if something has an AD of 20, the penalty to hit the Eyes woudl be at -20. THis would mean that to get a 25% chance to hit, Your players would need
10 to hit (50%)
+20 for eye Penalty
+20 to DA the Defense down to 10 from 20. (the other 50%)
----
50 Skill

That should open thigs up a bit, but It causes problems else where.

Some of the Problems will be
Devaluing Techniques, Over valuing Parry and Block (Getting a Dodge of 20 is tough, but for a cinematic game, not impossible with levels of enhanced defense)

Nymdok

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

For combat, one of the biggest problems with 25+ is that location penalties dont scale. At 25 even poking people in the armor chinks and eye slits poses no real challenge, its the opposing sides active defense that willl foil you.

If you have skill 25 then your primary opponents should have skill in the 20-25 range, meaning defenses in the 15+ range. You can't just go for eye-pokes every shot, because they will successfully defense most of the time.

The system already has mechanisms built in to deal with that problem. Deceptive Attack and Feint allow you to trade your own high skill to lower your opponents defenses. This means that 1) you can't go for the eye slits every strike when you're taking penalties to lower your opponents defenses and 2) high skill vs high defense tends to re-normalize itself anyway. So what high skill really buys you is the ability to target armor chinks or eye slits in mooks and single shot them; against the big boys you need to use a little more panache to take them out.

[RedMattis]

Seems like they've become legendary-grade heroes. At this point I'd start to think about connecting them to to supernatural sources.
The Cleric could become a mortal avatar of his god (Demigod?). [Divine]
The Warrior nears perfection and might gain a variant of Chi abilities, allowing him to empower his weapon and himself. [Chi?]
The Thief would perhaps be empowered to move into the shadow realm, and vanish and reappear where he wished to* [Spirit]

The truly epic heroes often had strange abilities, such as half-divine nature (Hercules), or possessed (possibly Gadget-Built) weapons such as Avalon and Excalibur (Avalon practically granting limited Immortality).

Once they are splitting castle walls like paper is cut with "Caladbolg", and melting the stone with divine power they are ready to challenge the demon lords... or perhaps even the Madness Inducing horrors trying to claw their way into reality: The Elder Gods.
-Or you could just retire the campaign. Anyhow getting from where they are up to this level is going to take quite awhile longer.



*Mostly Suggesting Jumper or Insubstantality here, not Warp.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

The system already has mechanisms built in to deal with that problem. Deceptive Attack and Feint allow you to trade your own high skill to lower your opponents defenses. This means that 1) you can't go for the eye slits every strike when you're taking penalties to lower your opponents defenses and 2) high skill vs high defense tends to re-normalize itself anyway. So what high skill really buys you is the ability to target armor chinks or eye slits in mooks and single shot them; against the big boys you need to use a little more panache to take them out.

I understand that. However it still doesnt change the fact that

at skill 25 to the Eyes
25 -10(to the eyes) = 15 -4 (2 levels of DA)

About 25% vs AD of 12

Comapred to
25 - 14 (7 levels of DA)


At skill 50 to the Eyes
50 - 10 (To the Eyes) = 40 - 30 (15 levels of DA)
50 - 40 (20 levels of DA)

At higher and Higher skills, the hit location becomes less and less of a factor (relatively speaking) by removing MOST of the ability to DA at skill 25 and 1/4th of it at lvl 50.

I was sort of looking for a way to keep those hit location modifiers a bit more 'in play'.

Keep in mind, Im not really asserting this as an alternative at this time, just trying to spitball some ideas that may help with Azincs problem.

Nymdok

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Its an interesting question!

Id hold Magery and PI at 6 untill you get this sorted out, and for what its worth, I dont really see a reason for these to go higher.

Ive been considering a 'scaling system' to really let Gurps take off into the upper limits of Epic. Complete HOuse rule to be sure, but we're all sort of bound by the lvl 25 limit on skills (at least combat skills).

For combat, one of the biggest problems with 25+ is that location penalties dont scale. At 25 even poking people in the armor chinks and eye slits poses no real challenge, its the opposing sides active defense that willl foil you.

Not really as if you are doing that you are not doing things to help you get past defenses like rapid striking or deceptive attacking. As long as you go against similarly highly skilled opponents there is no real breakdown at high skills.


So sure you can hit joe schmoe in the eye, but a skilled opponent you will want to go for an easier target so you can get through their defenses better.

[martin_rook]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Seems like they've become legendary-grade heroes. At this point I'd start to think about connecting them to to supernatural sources.
The Cleric could become a mortal avatar of his god (Demigod?). [Divine]
The Warrior nears perfection and might gain a variant of Chi abilities, allowing him to empower his weapon and himself. [Chi?]
The Thief would perhaps be empowered to move into the shadow realm, and vanish and reappear where he wished to* [Spirit]

The truly epic heroes often had strange abilities, such as half-divine nature (Hercules), or possessed (possibly Gadget-Built) weapons such as Avalon and Excalibur (Avalon practically granting limited Immortality).

Once they are splitting castle walls like paper is cut with "Caladbolg", and melting the stone with divine power they are ready to challenge the demon lords... or perhaps even the Madness Inducing horrors trying to claw their way into reality: The Elder Gods.
-Or you could just retire the campaign. Anyhow getting from where they are up to this level is going to take quite awhile longer.



*Mostly Suggesting Jumper or Insubstantality here, not Warp.

Agreed. It sounds to me like you're ready for a shift in the campaign that can be coupled with a reason (re: excuse) to open the doors to new, expensive abilities the players can spend points on. Maybe the gods tap the PCs to be emissaries of their divine will in the mortal world, allowing them to have access to super abilities.

Or maybe this is when the PCs wake up in their neuro-link stasis chambers and realize that this whole time the campaign had been a computer-generated fantasy and they are 100-point convicts in a 22nd-century cyber prison... and now have to figure out why they woke up and where everyone else is...

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

I understand that. However it still doesnt change the fact that

at skill 25 to the Eyes
25 -10(to the eyes) = 15 -4 (2 levels of DA)

About 25% vs AD of 12

First, if you're going to compare like skill levels skill 25 has defense 15, 13 with a -2 DA. Second, with a -4 DA that brings effective skill level to 11, the chances of actually hitting are only 62%, vs 84% chance of defending. That's a real hit probability of 10%. The numbers get worse if the defender has even a Small Shield or you are taking range penalties. Or if there are other adverse penalties such as darkness or terrain.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Comapred to
25 - 14 (7 levels of DA)

Effective Skill 11 vs Defense 8. 62% attack vs 25% defense, real hit probability of 46%.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

At skill 50 to the Eyes

Skill 50 is an extreme silly example. That represents over 100 points in one skill; there are a LOT of things you can buy for over 100 points that represent some serious whoop-ass.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

50 - 10 (To the Eyes) = 40 - 30 (15 levels of DA)

Skill 10 vs defense 13. Real hit probability 8%.

Originally Posted by Nymdok

50 - 40 (20 levels of DA)

Skill 10 vs defense 8 (28 - 20). Real hit probability 36%.

In every example you've cited, assuming same skill level for attack and defender, you're far better off going for a straight DA than an Eye Slit + DA. Yes, the chances of successfully performing an Eye attack are a little higher than if you'd started out with a Skill 15 and tried the same thing, but they're not that great a chance of success.