Basic Damage too High?

[ArmoredSaint]

I've read posts from several people on this forum over the years saying something to the effect of "damage from muscle-powered weapons is too high in GURPS."

What "homebrew" rules, if any, has anyone tried to correct this?

I though maybe that replacing sw damage with the figure for thr damage and replacing thr with (thr-1) might work. I played with this a bit, running a few mock combats (with all rules for bleeding, etc. in place), and the results it yielded satisfied me with regard to lethality and armour protection.

Thoughts?

[Gollum]

I don't find any problem with GURPS rules as written. If characters were automatically killed at -HP, damage would sound too high, indeed. But since there are HT rolls to avoid death, characters can survive with - 2xHP or worse (especially heroes with HT above 10).

The damage system as written allows characters to be fragile, as everyone of us is in real life (a knife strike in the stomach is a real life-or-death danger), but also to survive terrible wounds (and news are full of things like that).

Brief, I find that GURPS system of HP and damage is one of the most realistic I've ever seen. And for those who want heroes who can survive more wounds, things are also easy to play: just give them more HP, a higher HT or advantages like Hard to kill.

[ErhnamDJ]

I've been working on this for a few years now, and I don't have anything particularly satisfying to deal with this. I have a few posts by Douglas Cole bookmarked that I can link to, but the point that he seemed to view as most important was that for every doubling of ST, there should be a doubling of damage so the damage was in line with the lifting formula.

Along those lines, what I've been working on is basing damage directly on Basic Lift.

Here's what I have so far:

Your base amount of energy, in joules, is your Basic Lift. To figure the amount of damage you do, get the square root of that number and multiply it time .24, then translate that into dice of damage. Edit: I think I remembered that wrong and it should be divided by 2.4 which I got wrong since I was going by memory on this. Or maybe I was doing it the other way to account for inefficiencies in the energy delivery. I don't remember which it was now that I think about it.

So, using a straight ST 10 attack with no modifiers at all, that does 1.073 damage, which I think is 1d-2 or something like that. I'm doing this all from memory.

For more complicated attacks, such as when there are modifiers, each +1 is a 100% in joules of energy. So if that ST 10 person was swinging an axe, that would be +200%. If they were doing an AoA Strong (which I assume is how most actual attacks in real life are done), then that would be another +200%.

After that step, then I multiply the resulting number times 1.5 for swinging. For our axeman, that would be 20 joules at +400%, which is 100, times 1.5 for swing, which brings our total up to 150 joules.

To then find the damage, all we do is get the square root of 150 and multiply it times .24, giving us a total damage of 2.93 for our ST 10 person swinging an axe as hard as they can.

For negative numbers, all I do is subtract by 100% until you get into overall negatives, at which point I start subtracting 10% total for each -1.


I think this works okay. The downside is that the game isn't calibrated around this, so I need to tinker with the individual damage bonuses from each weapon, particularly smaller weapons such as knives. I probably need to fiddle with the injury modifiers as well, perhaps adding a Cut+ or something like that.

There are a number of other issues with penetration vs. wounding, where I need to work that out. There are things like energy being distributed over area that need to be worked out, and if I was trying to do this from scratch then I would definitely work that into a stat for each weapon rather than them having only pluses or minuses.

The benefit that I see from this is that the numbers I get for joules do math up pretty closely to what we see in professional athletes. I can handle things like javelin and shot put and get numbers in joules that look very close to what top athletes get. I haven't been able to find that many numbers, but the ones I've found have been spot on.

This also fixes the human damage when compared to firearms. A ST 20 person swinging a warhammer AoA does 6.95 damage. As far as penetration goes, I don't think there's anything to complain about with that. That's about the equivalent of a .38 Special and that's the strongest person you can get with a very large weapon. And that's without the system even being designed for this. Surely it could be better with the numbers tweaked for things like precise weapon weights, energy losses due to the way they're held, the striking area, and a number of other things.


Maybe someone will post something better that they've come up with, but this matches up with the numbers I've been able to find for real life human energies better than anything else I've seen. The standard proposal of 1d at ST 10 and 2d at ST 20 gives way too much damage. A regular man doesn't do 1d+2 with a two-handed sword. No way. That's the same as a Colt Navy revolver. And that's not even including AoA. With an AoA, that's 1d+4 damage. That's more than a .44 Special. Uh-uh.

[mlangsdorf]

Basic damage is probably okay - the problem is unreasonably strong characters. I know that the ability to perform a one-handed lift of 80+ lbs is a human ability, but I don't think that olympic weightlifters hit as hard as 9mm bullets.

My vague (never needed to be used) house rules to address this is to limit normal humans to ST14 or so, classify Lifting ST as a mundane trait, and require people to buy least one level of Lifting ST for every point of ST they have about 10 (with a max lifting ST of twice that).

At the extreme, an olympic athlete might be ST14, Lifting ST22: he can repeatedly lift 100 lbs in one hand, but even if he's a trained boxer or karateka, he still doesn't hit all that hard (1d+1 cr punch damage).

They're a simple set of rules and I think they get the job done. I don't use them because I mostly play in Dungeon Fantasy, and people doing absurd amounts of damage is part of the appeal.

tl;dr: Make people buy less ST, and more lifting ST.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

tl;dr: Make people buy less ST, and more lifting ST.

Yes. That is exactly the same problem than with IQ and geniuses...

If you play in a heroic genre, no problem. Geniuses are universal geniuses who know how to do everything they need (Tintin is able to pilot a plane just after asking some questions to a professional pilot, for instance, and Conan can knock out a camel with only one punch...).

But if you want to play in a realistic world, never forget that 13 or more is exceptional and 15 or more amazing. So, choose your basic attributes very wisely and, for really outstanding but still realistic characters, use advantages rather than too high basic attributes.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Basic damage is probably okay - the problem is unreasonably strong characters.

A ST 10 person with a regular axe in two hands does 1d+5 damage. More than a .38. That's 420 joules!

A ST 11 person with a mace in two hands does 1d+7. The same as a .357 Magnum. 750 joules! Who are these supermen?!


I don't see how those are okay. You can look at the other weapons too. It's not only the heavy swinging weapons. A ST 11 person with a heavy spear does 1d+5 damage. No wonder the Persians didn't both to send their troops in with heavy bronze armor. Alexander's men would have Swiss-cheesed that armor the first time their spears met it. And shields? Forget about trying to use a shield. Those spears are going right through them.

Armor is useless. A ST 8 person with a quarterstaff does 1d+2 damage. How's your mail working out for you against that? Even on their lowest roll, they still penetrate mail with that thing. That's not okay.

Even a ST 8 person with a simple short sword does 1d of damage. That slips right through even medium cloth armor, jack of plates, or light mail.

Beware the woman with a butcher knife, I guess. If granny has a Bowie knife and you're decked in mail, then you'd best run for your life. Invade the people who have guns. Maybe they'll be dumb enough to use those instead of melee weapons.

Edit:

Ignore the weight lifters and look at the shot put. We know how much energy is in those. We know what real strong people can do.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Basic damage is probably okay - the problem is unreasonably strong characters. I know that the ability to perform a one-handed lift of 80+ lbs is a human ability, but I don't think that olympic weightlifters hit as hard as 9mm bullets.

That's not a problem with unreasonably strong characters - that's a problem with GURPS assigning too much damage to quite reasonably strong characters. If it takesc ST 14/Lifting ST 22/HP 22 to make an olympic athlete, things are REALLY out of whack

The solution I toy with is doubling base HP and firearms damage. Possibly continue the progression from 20-30 past 30, instead of capping at Swing being +2d over Thrust, and just be done with it.

It has the advantage of being easy to use existing GURPS material :)

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

A ST 10 person with a regular axe in two hands does 1d+5 damage. More than a .38. That's 420 joules!
A ST 11 person with a mace in two hands does 1d+7. The same as a .357 Magnum. 750 joules! Who are these supermen?!
I don't see how those are okay.

If someone really tries to kill me with an axe or a mace and strikes me as strongly as he can, I really think that he will dish out a lot of damage. The blow will go less deeper than a bullet, of course, but it will inflict a much more larger and nastier wound. Most of my bones will break under the impact.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Even a ST 8 person with a simple short sword does 1d of damage. That slips right through even medium cloth armor, jack of plates, or light mail.

1d of damage has only 2 chance in 6 (33%) to go through a mail armor.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Gollum

If someone really tries to kill me with an axe or a mace and strikes me as strongly as he can, I really think that he will dish out a lot of damage. The blow will go less deeper than a bullet, of course, but it will inflict a much more larger and nastier wound. Most of my bones will break under the impact.

Okay. Let's say that's true. What about if we have a machine that swings axes? We could measure the energy the machine is putting out and compare that to the energy of a human being. And a human being just cannot possibly create those amounts of energy.

The actual injury you're talking about is handled through wounding modifiers and hit locations. That we don't have rules for bones is probably a failing of the system and something I would like to see added for these cases.


Injury and penetration are two separate things. When you look at similar cases, like the piercing end on a warhammer and a .44 Magnum, then do you really think the warhammer swung by a human will ever do more in either injury or penetration? I find that unfathomable.

What caliber round equivalent does the warhammer put out at different ST scores? I've given my best guess estimation. If anyone has some better data to go by, I would love to see it. I would need to redo some numbers in my house rules to better match reality.


If you think the injury is too low, then maybe we should alter the hit location or wounding modifiers. The energies are way too high already. And I seriously doubt that those handheld weapons are as damaging to a person as GURPS makes them out to be when you're using the realistic hit location and bleeding rules from Martial Arts. I've looked at studies from head injuries and GURPS is already probably a little bit too deadly there. I wouldn't be happy with making those weapons even deadlier unless I had some convincing data to back that up.

1d of damage has only 2 chance in 6 (33%) to go through a mail armor.

4, 5, and 6 on a d6 go through the armors I listed. That looks like three out of six, which is fifty percent.

There's no way real armors were ever penetrated at those levels. No way at all. Period.

And there's no way the people sticking those short swords were ST 8. They were probably ST 11 or 12 farmers. ST 11 with a short sword is 1d+2. Incredibly powerful. That's the same damage as a .22 LR.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Okay. Let's say that's true. What about if we have a machine that swings axes? We could measure the energy the machine is putting out and compare that to the energy of a human being. And a human being just cannot possibly create those amounts of energy.

If the machine is able to inflict more damage than the man with the same axe, it just means that the machine has a higher striking ST... I don't really understand what you are wanting to mean here...

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

The actual injury you're talking about is handled through wounding modifiers and hit locations.

No. There are three things taken into account in the GURPS damage system:

1. the amount of damage;
2. the type of damage;
3. and the hit location of the damage.

And all of them are equally important. Two different weapons inflicting the same type of damage (two cutting weapons hitting the same arm, for instance), won't necessarily do the same amount of damage. It also depends on the size of the weapon, its weight, its precise shape, etc.

Of course, GURPS could be more precise, and have special rules for everything, including bone breaking, as you suggest it... But adding such rules would just make GURPS much more complicated. We already have rules for crippling injuries, rules for dismemberment, rules for bleedings... The game is complex enough. Adding even more rules would be counterproductive.

So, in my humble opinion, simplifying things as GURPS does it is not at all a "failing of the system" but a very bright decision. A .45 do a lot of damage, I do agree. But a two handed axe blow also does a lot of damage. And if someone asked me: "What do you prefer? I shot you with my .45 and strike you as strongly as I can with this axe?", I wouldn't be able to answer. Both are very frightening and can kill very easily.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

4, 5, and 6 on a d6 go through the armors I listed. That looks like three out of six, which is fifty percent.

I was using the standard mail armor of GURPS Lite: DR 4. But I do agree with you about lighter armors.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

There's no way real armors were ever penetrated at those levels. No way at all. Period.

I wouldn't like to try.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

And there's no way the people sticking those short swords were ST 8. They were probably ST 11 or 12 farmers. ST 11 with a short sword is 1d+2. Incredibly powerful. That's the same damage as a .22 LR.

Here again, I wouldn't like to try. My wife is probably ST 8. If she takes a very well sharpened shortsword and hit me as strongly as she can (we are talking about an all-out attack strong here, because the swinging damage of a ST 8 character is only 1d-2), I wouldn't like to suffer the blow, even with a light-scale DR3 armor... And despite of the fact that this blow would only have one chance in two to inflict me a quite little 1 to 4 point of damage wound.