Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Okay... so... I'm checking to see if I have this right. I wrote myself a little combat simulator to check various fights. It doesn't take into account everything, of course, but it does do most of the major rules (I think). And with this I've considered two fighters of 58 points each (excluding what else they spent points on). The first fighter is a wealthy knight-type with muscles, health, and armor, armed with a nice spear. The second is a poor guy with no armor and also a spear.

Wealthy Dude: 58
ST 12, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 12, Wealth: Comfortable, Broadsword-12
--Equipment: Scale armor (DR 4 everywhere), Broadsword (1d+3 cutting), Large Shield
==Dodge: 8, Parry: 12

Poor Peasant: 57
ST 10, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 10, Wealth: Poor, Close Combat (Spear)-4, Spear-27
--Equipment: Spear (1d+1 Impaling, using 2 hands)
==Dodge: 8, Parry: 16

When I run this... the guy with who sunk all those same points into spear ability clobbers several sorts of heck out of the guy who spread it out into strength and so on, winning 80% of the time whether in a 1 on 1 situation or a 2 on 2 situation. Effectively, it looks like, for combat at least, there's literally no point in spending any points on anything other than skill with an impaling weapon. Why bother? It's the cheapest, and most effective increase to your combat potential. At least until you're at a skill level where you can stab someone in the eye intentionally with a 16 or less, even in close combat (skill 30 with the Close Combat technique), then pump points into anything else (damage, HT, etc.).

Is this correct, or am I missing something?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Spear Guy rapidly develops a reputation. Nobody engages him in hostilities except at range, and his social life isn't great either once he becomes known as a serial eye-stabber. He is a lonely man who talks to his spear, which he has given a girl's name in a fit of maddening loneliness. Even if he has a hobby he's terrible at it. There is no relief but the death of a broken man.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

-Any enemies without eyes (or other armor chinks,) and spear guy is in big trouble.

-Skill-27 is unrealistic. It works in some genre like Dungeon Fantasy, or other highly cinematic setting (where no-eye enemies will appear sometimes !), but should be avoided in mundane settings. (especially as a single skill without matching attributes and support skills)

-Wealthy Dude can afford to pay some money to a few guys with bows to help him deal with an annoying eye-stabber.

-If the poor peasant is ever separated from his spear, he is in trouble, while broadsword guy can grab any piece of wood (or go bare-handed) and clobber him.

Otherwise, you are correct.
And a bunch of guys with spears was the core of many armies for thousands of years for many reason : it is a cheap and efficient weapon.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

I'd say you got it right. Spear Guy is the way to go, for featureless combat units optimized for featureless gladiatorial pits, where nothing but a single weapon skill is likely to matter. He'll be a lousy adventurer, and even in straight-up combat will be vulnerable to single points of failure like a broken spear, but I expect he'd be amazing in most fights.

That said, it's arguably an unrealistic build - Skill-27?? He picked that up while never having gained an iota of general athletic ability (ST, DX, HT), or anything else? It's perfectly rules-legal, AFAIK, so you did nothing wrong. But, somewhere out there, if players were actually vexing a GM with builds like this, I think it'd be time to step in with some rules to keep things sensible (even if as simple as "no skills at level twice as high as the controlling attribute" or other limits on point allocation).

Still, your build is a fun look at extreme (ab)use of chargen rules, Maybe Spear Guy isn't a realistic character, but imagine a magic/divine/cosmic foe creating automatons like this to send against the PCs...

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Apart from the comments already made, where is the knight's block skill? He has a shield. That DB also adds to other defences. If he shield rushes and knocks the spear guy down, it could turn the tables, even against the unrealistic spear skill.

Basically, though, it's a study in unrealistic optimisation of a single factor against a more realistic and broadly competent opponent.

Also, on average 4.5 damage isn't going to hurt the knight (due to DR4) whereas the sword is doing an average of 6.5 points of damage * 1.5 = 9.75 points of damage, which means if it hits first, he basically wins because it's likely a knock down or a cripple etc. The knight also goes first due to higher basic speed.

I think if you actually played this out rather than a straight number comparison, you'd find the knight, even against such an optimised opponent, does a lot better. With Comfortable Wealth the knight could possibly also have a balanced broadsword offering +1 to skill.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Maxing a single weapon skill is a pretty consistently superior optimal way of building a character in GURPS. It loses to certain things, mostly hard counters that make your weapon skill unusable and thus irrelevant, but if you want to keep your game functioning in a sensible way you generally have to hard-cap skill.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

DX 10 and Spear 27 means he has it at Attribute+17, per B294 (an optional rule which helps keep things realistic) if it's above skill+10 you need to either use it "in the field" (ie fighting every day, combat) or spend an hour of practice (doesn't count as study hours) to maintain it

That's a pretty big Duty (to yourself) either way. Either a lot of time, or the risks that come with real combat like crit fails and breaking your gear or yourself.

Would love to see more of a soft cap to the "Maintaining Skills" rules though, like a gradual slide up to that 1 hour time attribute+10, and a clearer idea of how 'in the field' substitutes for that time in shorter intervals.

Also more of a gradual slide from "once per six months" to "once per day" would be good. Like what if we start from "once per never" to maintain your defaults (unless we treat Incompetent like the true default) and then as one gets Dabblers up to 1pt and beyond we incur progressively higher periods of daily investiture to avoid losing the point.

Like for example, if you were training, can you just be doing spear katas alone in your backyard, do you need a training partner, etc.

That kinda thing probably ought to apply to attributes too though, like if you don't lift heavy stuff your Lifting ST might go down, if you don't challenge your mind your IQ degrades, etc.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

What happens when someone shoots a bow at spear guy? Or sneaks up on him and stabs him in the back? Or fights him under the influence of a Shield spell? Incredibly mediocre knight is better prepared for each of those eventualities. That is the peril of choosing to be a one-trick pony quite apart from the uproarious laughter from your DM when you present such an unbelievable character.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

So as for skills, he was listed as Broadsword-12. Was right in there. Adding other skills would add more points, giving Spear Dude even more ability to Do Nasty Things to the knight (either upping his ludicrous skill even more, I'd stop around skill 30, or else starting to work on ST and HT).
As for the DB, it's correctly accounted. A full set of scale armor (DR 4 everywhere) weighs 85 lbs, which with a 12 ST puts him at the 'Heavy Encumbrance', giving a -3 to dodge, +3 with the shield, comes out to 8 (exactly as before). Parry 12 is already accounted with the broadsword skill of 12.
I'm not sure a shield rush is a good tactic. They both have DX 10, the HP difference isn't huge, the knight's only moving at 2 (5 - 3 encumbrance), so they're both doing 1d-3 even if he hits (odds are 37%, 50% for the original DX attack, 74.1% chance for spear guy to fail a dodge). Plus, once on the ground, spear guy is now at a mere -4 (laying down) which... well, we'll get there.

... I think you're really missing the point here. With a 27 skill, Spear Dude can target the knights eyes through the armor slits (-10 to skill) and still have a 17 skill to hit with, and with the knight's Parry of 12 that gives a 25.4% chance to hit (compared in reverse with a 1.4% chance for the knight to hit). No DR, x4 multiplier, the average damage he's doing is 14. Plus, two or three hits in and our knight is blind (-10 to skill), and that isn't even counting that the knight is likely to be knocked down or suffer Major Wounds because of this. Even with a -4 if spear guy got knocked prone, that'd be 13, giving a 21.7% chance of still stabbing the guy through the eye slits with that spear if he didn't feel like getting up. He has a -3 to defenses, sure, but with a Parry at 16, spear guy is still well protected from that sword (the chances for the knight going up to 12%, a huge increase but still pretty bad).

+1 skill is... not about to offset things all that much. As for playing it out, perhaps. As I said, I wrote a simulator. It doesn't take into account everything, every possible tactic, but it does take a lot into account. I didn't just compare numbers, I simulated about 10,000 battles. Spear Guy won 80% of them (roughly, I ran this a few times, it was usually around 80% or so). That +1 skill from the balanced weapon changes this to Spear Guy winning only about 75% of the time.

There are many great responses to why Spear Guy is problematic (mainly lack of realism and problems with other sorts of attackers, particularly ranged ones or sneaky ones), but this response stuck out to me for... well... how much it got wrong.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Thanks. Effective discussion technique.

It's good to have a discussion and have people correct things. That's how we learn. I think you've set up such an unrealistic scenario that I'll agree I was throwing in a number of things to try to get a more balanced take on it. Things that aren't simulated with your straight numbers.

I'll add that without a shield skill, you've removed the possibility of closing the close combat to cause issues for the spear. You've removed block. You haven't considered attacking the spear to break (knight goes first, too). A spear is already a *very* effective weapon, so when you create a completely unrealistic scenario to further advantage it, you've pretty much guaranteed it's going to "win".

Anyway, I did learn some valuable things from the conversation, mostly unrelated to game mechanics, but still.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

I actually have a question about that Shield spell. Well, the Armor spell, really.

But first, a Shield spell isn't about to help anything. If you've sunk points into Magery (25 to be able to get that Shield spell) you're missing out on ST and HT at this point, need to get your spell skill up there (otherwise you end up not having it, so let's assume 12). Said mage can have the Comfortable wealth level to afford the armor, but at that point there's not much left for any form of actual attack skill. I think this would have to be something along the lines of Spear Guy is up against multiple opponents. But that's not a fair comparison.

So the only way that works, really, is for 2 Spear Guys against mage and knight. But this doesn't work since Spear Guy can just Feint to obliterate any bonus that mage could give (and I didn't even simulate Feinting in my run, just 'Deceptive Attacks').

This brings me to the Armor spell... does it cover the eyes? The Magic book says it offers DR 'just like armor', but the whole point of attacking the eyes is to avoid the armor! If it does cover the eyes, yes this will severely mess with Spear Guy's day.

Ranged weapons and sneak attacks are, of course, far more of an issue, and there's not a lot this character can do about that, true.

However, all that said, I'm not sure the knight is faring much better in these scenarios than Spear Guy. What if the knight (or two of them) were up against someone with a shield spell? Armor spell? Those would ruin his day by almost as much since basic damage is 1d+1 vs 1d+3. And if it were against another knight, the attacking knight is toast! It's the DR of the spell and the underlying armor now! If we considered 5 DR from the spell and 4 from the armor, that makes the knight effectively unable to do any damage at all without trying for the impossible eye shot (needs a 3 or 4 roll), meanwhile Spear Dude still does damage on a roll of 5 or 6 and is hitting with a 17.

Then there's ranged combat. Not sure the knight's faring a whole lot better there, either. Sure, with his DR of 4 most shots aren't going to hurt him at all (depends on the weapon, but a regular bow with ST 10, so not even knightly, would do damage on a 6) while the Spear Guy gets pelted with arrows and turned into a pin cushion, but that person with the bow, unless they are heavily armored, too, can likely just outrun the knight, keeping him at a distance and pelting him with arrows until he goes down anyway.

Now the knight can correct this by getting a block skill, but the Spear Guy can largely do the same since even at Poor he's still got plenty of money left over to buy a shield, though he'd lose 1 point of damage. Not sure how this would play out. Unlike the knight, the Spear guy can't really be kept at a distance because he's likely moving the same speed as the archer (whereas the archer is likely moving much faster than the knight).

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Yeah... adding a shield skill might help. If I get that to 12 on the knight, and sink the same number of point into Spear Guy's spear skill (again, keeping them even), I think that gets Spear Guy to 28 only. He now has a 17 parry, but also closing to close combat is not as helpful as you might think. Notice that Spear Guy has the 'Close Combat' technique from Martial Arts, meaning he can use his spear in Close Combat at a -4. Perhaps if he were knocked down, too, that'd be a -8? ... Okay, so now I'm imagining this heavily armored knight jumping on top of the Spear Guy in a very inappropriate fashion... it might be late. :P

In any case, I wasn't trying to 'create a scenario' to make it more advantageous. Honestly I stumbled onto this entirely by accident. I was trying to make a combat simulator so I'd have a vague idea of 'if I put my players up against this baddy/group, how likely are they to survive the fight'. I made a lot of simplifying assumptions (basically the two sides just sit there and hit each other until they go down, no feinting, etc.) for the purposes of running the simulation, but I wasn't trying to favor spears at the start. Heck, the whole reason I picked the spear initially was the serious possibility that the player wouldn't be able to afford anything I initially thought was better!

I've decided to cap skill at 16 after seeing all this stuff, because... beyond that it gets ridiculous as this shows.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

A response of pure beauty.

But yeah, add me to the growing list of those who find Spear-27 ridiculous, and that's not even addressing how a schmuck "poor peasant" gets to a level beyond Dr Kromm's "best in the history of the world" marker. (For my part, in 37 years of GMing GURPS, and over 200 characters, I've allowed two players to reach -25 with a single skill each. Their characters were something like 325 and over 500 pts apiece, at the time.)

Granted, this is a time-honored riff ... remember the people who just could not be separated from the concept that Utter Dome + Create Fire was the invincible tactic that would surely have its practitioners ruling the world?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Equal points does not mean equal ability, only equal potential.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

in the case of unparryable (deceptive -10) attacks to the eye, can't you just opt to hold a buckler in front of the eye slit as cover (have to strike THROUGH it) to stop this?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Fighting blind is not really a great idea, plus I guess the spear guy can simply stab some place else w/o the need to do a deceptive attack since you can't defend anyway. An Impaling attack to the vitals is not as bad as one to the eye but it will still eventually kill, it will just be slower and more painful.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Part of the issue is that GURPS makes eye-shots too easy.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Character points spent in a melee weapon skill are way more effective than points spent in just about anything else combat-related in realistic low tech games.
That single skill gives you the ability to hit (and pierce defenses with deceptive attack), deal lots of damage (by targeting vulnerable locations), and defend yourself (using parry). In 3e, "physical" skills have a slower progression (maxing out at a cost of 8/level rather than 4), which helped mitigate this problem--I have adopted this as a house rule for weapon skills in 4e, and it has really helped with this problem. I highly recommend it, I have seen no negative side effects, and my players have even talked about how much they liked this change when I first implemented it, because they could focus on other aspects of their characters.

People sometimes talk as if this is only a problem when you have "spear guy" and how unrealistic he is, but it's really a problem for every PC who has to contemplate whether to spend 4 points raising melee weapon skill or raising anything else combat-related--raising melee weapon skill just looks better a lot of the time.

In fantasy games, the threats can be much more various, so you might consider whether it's more important to have, say, Will for resisting mind control or Dodge for avoiding lightning bolts, or what you'll do against a skeleton with no eyes and DR 6 plate armor when you have ST 10 and Spear-27.
But even in DF, I've found my house rule is fun and definitely worth having, so that you don't end up with a Rapier-30 Swashbuckler within a few sessions of advancement. The Swashbuckler already has an Edged Rapier to do sw cut damage, Weapon Master to do a lot of damage, and Luck to avoid crit fails and other mishaps, so they avoid some of the weaknesses of "spear guy."
What really messes things up for the GM (and other players) is that any enemy that even threatens Rapier-30 guy on the battlefield instantly slaughters everyone else...

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

The idea is that someone who is fully armored could do this to protect his eyes. Now, "fully armored" generally does have armor gaps other than just the eyes; of note here is the armpit (where you are hitting the Vitals, and can cripple the arm to add insult to injury), which you'll be exposing by holding that shield up anyway (and, humorously, these armor gaps are actually easier to hit than the eye slits). Of course, at TL 4, those may be covered by mail, thanks to the knight's arming garments. On the other hand, there are face coverings that will prevent a spear from being able to hit the eyes without having to deal with DR - see this thread.

As for the topic of this thread - yes, pumping all your points into a single combat skill is a very effective, if boring, way to build a fighter. The primary way to avoid this is to just say "No." Failing that, things like needing to maintain your skills, making it clear that many scenarios in the setting won't call for just stabbing things as an effective means of getting through them, enforcing the use of templates, having foes who have full-coverage DR (such that you need higher ST to wound them), etc, can certainly help.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

While I'd say 27 is clearly a exceptionally high skill for most settings which in turn can be leveraged to get exceptional results (as you pointed out) especially if no on else comes close, a cap at 16 might be going a bit far in the other direction depending on what you want in your game.


For instance a cap at 16 meaning a lot of fighters will be lower will make shields very powerful in relative terms. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course!

What kind of feel are you going for here?

I used to run a lot of v.low fantasy/historical, combat skills v.rarely over 20. fights generally favored defense and players had to generally speaking look for advantages and tricks to get past defensive opponents rather than raw skill.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

When I was looking at capping skills at some level, I was looking more at having Attributes cap in the 14-16 range and Skills cap between Attribute +5 to +10, most likely with extra costs (similar to UBs) to reach the higher end.
But this was for a cinematic game with "common" humans (no magic, psionics, superpowers, aliens or stuff like that).

So, someone could actually reach a skill of 26 but it would be a lot more expensive than it is under the normal rules.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

If you want it to produce rules-legal characters (which may not be a concern), you can just have a skill cap with a leveled unusual background to exceed that cap.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Pretty much the official answer, by the way.

—

GURPS is a toolkit. To get the look and feel you want – in terms of genre, realism level, and power level – you must turn the dials to suitable settings.

Skill levels don't have a hard cap because unlike, say, self-control rolls or rolls for Patron, skill rolls have no hard floor on penalties . . . a skill roll at -10 or even -30 is perfectly possible under the rules. Which said, p. B172 is fairly clear on pointing out that skill 20+ is masterful, and suggests a cap of 20-25. There's also ample advice there and on pp. B447-448 that "normal" people have skill 12-14, whatever the rules allow in theory.

So . . . the observed behavior in the example isn't surprising. The example depicts a moderately realistic professional warrior vs. a cinematic peasant-hero type. Power level might be comparable, but realism level sure isn't!

I see those 58-point heroes and raise with this. That's an example where both realism level and genre are out of whack. You can get similar results by creating a 0-point person with enough disads to afford the Wealth to own a nuke, then setting it off remotely.

The point being that the original example, while less extreme than mine, isn't comparing like with like at all.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Yes, I've done this too. I find that everyone reaches the cap very quickly and then starts contemplating buying the UB, depending on the cost. My "house rule" is essentially this, but the "cap" is 8 points in the skill, and the UB is 4 points per level after that.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

It's honestly meant as a somewhat high fantasy game like D&D, closing on MMO's. My first set of combat trials were against two 'Goblins' with HP 5 versus our Spear Guy (who, at the time, only had a skill of 10). Thinking about it more, I may 'soft cap' it at 16. Part of the issue is there is going to be magic in the system, and I'm thinking of making it a lot easier to get to higher end spells (basically fewer prerequisites) to allow for characters who can do high end stuff without having to sink 70 points into prerequisites to do it, and then slowly grow a larger repertoire of things over time. Though that might turn out to be a disaster.

On the plus side, my player is a) not very familiar with GURPS rules, and b) doesn't have a min/max/munchkin mindset nearly as much as I do. It's the first game we've done in a loooooooong time, so it'll likely be adjusted as we go, and my player isn't planning to get attached to their character (since 'oops, you died' is a serious possibility while tinkering around with all this).

One of the other rules going in will be that one can purchase HP and EP freely with earned points. Again, sort of like D&D/MMOs, this should mean that a few dozen points down the line, where our hero is first taking on a couple goblins and it's a tough fight (simulator says they win against 2 goblins only 66% of the time), they're now taking them on in positive hordes and winning, even if it's just Spear Guy on his own (hopefully with some armor by then).

Doing this, though, with the simulator, I've learned that even a point or two of difference in a stat can mean a lot, while HP isn't as valuable, but skill comes out on top.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

"Power" in Gurps Magic is seldom "knowledge of advanced spells" and prerequisites are seldom a meaningful barrier to that.

What "power" usually means is having the energy(FP or other) to _cast_ the spells you've got and everything can revolve around that.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

One thing I've noticed about Gurps is that ST is optional for a warrior, while DX/Skill is required. The one place this breaks down is in unarmed combat, and even then just a little ST or buying up the kicking technique goes a long ways. HT is similar: its not where you should be spending your combat points first.


I do think there is a point where buying ST and HT rather than skill become worth it. Especially if you are facing a well-rounded roster of supernatural enemies. It'd be curious to do some stats on that.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

First off, wealthy dude is built really badly, and you're exploiting all his weaknesses. You've given him armor he won't be allowed use and very limited combat abilities while sending him against the best spear master to ever grace the planet. He should lose horribly given this situation.

Wealthy guy would do much better with a shield skill and no broadsword. Shield bashes would likely break the spear before an eye hit (33% chance of breakage parrying the shield vs 25% chance of failing a block).

Wealthy guy would also benefit from a warhorse more broadsword as well while replacing broadsword with riding. The strategy here is to have the warhorse trample the peasant. Trying to "parry" the horse is possible, but even more likely to result in the loss of a spear (5/6 chance of breakage?). Once the spear is out of play, wealthy guy can punch him the peasant to death with armored gauntlets while the peasant effectively can't hurt DR4 wealthy guy.

Mostly, though, wealthy guy should pay some archers or knife throwers to make an example of this unruly peasant.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

In actual gameplay I've never found any issue with insane weapon skill, sure, you are awesome when weapon skill helps and less awesome when it doesn't. Insane weapon skill character hasn't shown brighter than characters who spent CP differently

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Deceptive-10 to the Eye (-10) is a -30 penalty, so to keethe effective skill at the minimum (12) for a deceptive attack you need Spear-42, not 'merely' Spear-27. That's another 60 points that I'm sure the knight could do something useful with.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

As far as "hard caps" go, I don't have a bright-line rule. My character creation handout has the following:

In general: a skill level below 11 is unreliable;
* Skill-11-12 is fair, in the "it’s good to have someone in the party who knows something about literature" camp, and where an average craftsman is;
* Skill-13 is good, and where a talented craftsman is;
* Skill-14-15 is quality, and is the floor where you want the make or break ability upon which your character relies;
* Skill-18+ is expert ... a level which I will not let a new character exceed, and am very unlikely to allow a new character to reach without an outstanding explanation on the part of a player.
* Skill-21 is the best in all the land, while Skill-25 is the best in all the world. Getting to -21 requires a dedicated focus incompatible with the adventuring life, along the lines of spending five hours in the dojo each and every day.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Yes.

If we're moving the discussion to fantasy knights and fantasy spear-wielding peasants, then fantasy wizards will come up . . . and their skill with spells isn't even close to as important as their energy for powering spells. All of my worst mistakes as a GM of players of spellcasters were in that realm. The thing that keeps people from just throwing dozens of save-or-lose spells isn't resistance (which has a cap) or even time, really, but the lack of hundreds of energy points.

The usual proof is that when I've offered magical wishes that could grant 20 points of any one thing (not complex builds or combos), I've had many a spellcaster opt to waste 2 points and get +6 to their Energy Reserve [18], but nobody take +5 to their favorite spell [20], because a recharging reserve of 6 energy for all spells is so vastly more useful than -1 to cost and half time with one specific spell.

"ST is optional" is somewhat true in mortal vs. mortal conflicts where nobody can have extraordinary abilities or gear. As soon as people can have arbitrary DR all over their body thanks to tech or magic, which can quite easily protect even the eyes (e.g., invisible or transparent plastic visors), and/or innate gifts, ST matters to punch through the DR. If the enemy is weird enough – say, with one or more of Damage Reduction, Homogeneous, Supernatural Durability, and Unkillable – even DR ceases to matter, and you just need damage output. In fantasy, so many things just don't care about your high-skill eye poke that you absolutely need ST if you're planning to use weapons rather than magic.

Of course, this burdens the GM with the duty of remembering all that stuff. Or just reading that the dragon has, on top of DR 20, Nictitating Membrane 20 that makes the eye poke kind of pointless. A lot of GMs run everything like a human with human vulnerabilities, in which case skill is indeed decisive.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

My experience running a multi-year SF campaign (base TL10) is that ST is very useful. Yes, at that TL it doesn't mean much in terms of damage directly from ST. However, it lets you carry stuff, and stuff is what makes the damage component of ST generally unimportant - armour, guns, sensors, etc.

Then there are the times when a conflict goes physical in a situation where people aren't in serious armour and aren't carrying guns (like in a bar, or a meeting room). Being the strongest person in the room has quite a lot of value then.

Also, ST includes hit points, and even in an SF game they are useful.

I think if you're (generic 'you') finding that ST isn't seen as worthwhile, and this bothers you (if it doesn't, well there's no problem, of course), you need to look at arranging for more wilderness trips on foot, and other such events.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

One thing I think we're overlooking here is that if this rich dude has enough wealth to buy armor (and prep to armor up ahead of time) he probably also has the wealth/prep to get on horseback for superior mobility than the spear guy.

This would be very different on horseback since you could have your horse charge the spear guy and using spears in close combat gets pretty tricky.

A spear wielded 2H is reach 1,2* which means it takes a ready maneuver to change reach, so if you're stuck at reach 2 then you're -8 to skill to use it in Close Combat until you make that ready maneuver.

usually not, though the armor makes it a lot more feasible to do

B394's visibility rules make it only -6 if you can still see your surroundings (buckler-over-face guy still can see up/down/left/right just not front) and a mere -4 to hit if you still have an idea of where the person is (ie you know they are in the hex ahead of you because otherwise you would be able to see them coming around the left/right of your buckler)

You get -4 to defenses in this situation but if you're already doomed due to Deceptive Attack then you're probably just going to make All-Out Attacks anyway.

AOA:double where 1st is a DWA (shield bash + sword) and 2nd is another sword hit could be pretty effective - if you're purely relying on your high spear skill to parry this stuff then that 3rd parry is going to be at -8

Using that spear to parry also sets up rich guy to use his ST 12 for a Bash as well which is going to penalize parries coming in the following turn.

Your basic spear also weighs only 4 pounds (B273) so it risks breaking if you use it to parry an attack 3x that (12+) per B376, so ST12 guy making a slam would be adequate to do that.

This would also apply if using the 15lb medium shield on B287 (2 in 6 chance of breaking) and using a Shield Bash w/ a 25lb heavy shield has a 5/6 chance of breaking the spear if it parries.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Agree with all Rupert said above. ST in TL3 or TL10 or in between I've always found useful. Maybe as Striking ST or Lifting ST rather than the full stat at times, but rarely felt like it was wasted if you wanted a combat character. It absolutely depends on the situations you find the character in, so genre and play style will modify ST utility, but broadly speaking I tend to find it more useful than HT (if I had to weigh them against each other).

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

NALOTH said everything 1 shield bash and a bit of luck and the spear is broken and our spearman is defenseless

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Wealth. Spend the 50 points on Wealth and you can hire a group to murder the crap out of spear guy. Yeah, he's dangerous but send twenty decent fighters against him and he will lose.

Points are not a good measure of combat effectiveness. They can be if all characters are built with the same design philosophy, but otherwise they just aren't.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

I'm thinking about how Mr. Spear and Mr. Knight would fare in the PbP Dungeon Fantasy game I play in...


Of the four players, two of them would take down Mr. Knight marginally slower, One would take down Mr. Knight easily but be in trouble again spear, and one would take down Mr. Spear easily but need to take time with Mr. Knight. I'm also thinking of monsters Mr. Spear would struggle with compared to Mr. Knight. Knight does better against the massed bandit archers, the exploding bugs, and the line of undead... which are what I'm remembering as the "hard" encounters. Though part of that is one player has a high-skill high rate of fire DF archer, who takes care of most things the spear guy would take out.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

My DFRPG game is nigh 600 points and actually no-one in it has 27 skill. However there are definitely 20+ ST characters involved

One of my guidelines is 'hit like a truck, use a penetrating weapon, hit a weakness; pick two of three' so ST is definitely emphasized for slugging purposes

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Just a personal quibble here -- there is no such thing as a 58 point "knight".

The character posited here is a barely skilled swordsman with armor.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Like most things, I would instinctively use the SSR scale. Something like:
At att+17, you're basically spending every waking moment practicing.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Weapon breakage is a significant concern when you're reliant on a single weapon, yeah. In my test fight between Shigran (+ two hireling NPC's from Delvers to Grow) against a group of nautamadr (Nordlondr minotaurs), Shigran - who is similarly a highly-skilled spearman, albeit not to the same extent as Mr. Spear (Shigran has Spear-21, although between Combat Reflexes and Weapon Adaptation (Staff to Spear), he has the same Parry as Mr. Spear) - suffered a broken spear that likely would have ended with his messy death without using up Luck to prevent it... and having burned his Luck there, he was unable to avoid getting gored later, which took him out of the fight (he survived, thanks to those hirelings acting quickly).

Granted, I'm pretty certain Mr. Knight (or, as Donny Brook notes, Mr. Armor and Sword and Not Much Else) would have fared far worse than Mr. Spear against that particular foe...

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Mr Knight's practical hit probability is going to be severely reduced by the -2 to attacks for his large shield.

In our DF game, our wizard handles both of these jokers readily by being already in Body of Air, because he always is, flying out of their reach and killing them with lightning. Our warrior deals with Mr Knight readily; Mr Spear looks difficult on the surface, but he doesn't have enough skill to Deceptively Attack the eyes, nor enough damage to get far with other locations, and the first cut that lands on his torso involves a death check. Our necromancer ("Psychopomp!") can handle Mr Knight in hard-to-hand. Mr Spear might give him trouble, but is likely to succumb to terror magic.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

As for Shigran, the most likely result of an encounter with Mr. Knight or Mr. Spear is that Shigran's opponent dies before he ever realizes anything is amiss - Shigran typically starts an encounter by using Backstab to sneak up behind the nearest enemy (and even using my variant rules that give a chance for the opponent to notice their attacker, Per 10 isn't going to cut it against Shigran's Stealth 17) and using his Signature Move (three stabs to the Vitals); his minimum damage will kill Mr. Spear outright with three hits (8 damage each, for 24 Injury each, and a total of 72 HP Injury, dropping Mr. Spear to -6xHP), with a good chance of killing Mr. Knight and being all-but-guaranteed to at least Stun him, if not render him unconscious (8 damage each, for 4 penetrating damage each; that's 12 Injury each, and a total of 36 HP Injury; each hit calls for a roll against Knockdown/Stunning at -5, with MoF 5+ resulting in unconsciousness, Mr. Knight needs to make two death checks, with 50% chance of death each time, and to act once he recovers from stunning, he needs to roll against HT-2 each second to avoid passing out); average damage on each leaves Mr. Knight with only the slimmest chance of survival (average of 58.5 HP Injury, so 4 death checks, and bleeding rolls at enough of a penalty he only avoids bleeding on a Critical Success; if he makes all 4 death checks and rolls a Critical Success to stop bleeding - roughly 0.12% chance - he'd survive... at least until Shigran stabs him again to make sure, given the fellow has Bloodlust).

If for some reason Shigran got into a straight-up fight with one of them, he'd make short work of Mr. Knight - DR 4 is nothing to sneeze at, but even in normal combat Shigran's attacking at 1d+4 imp, has Weapon Master to allow him to readily Rapid Strike, and enough skill to reliably hit the Vitals. A two-hit Rapid Strike to the Vitals (Parry 12 means a good chance the first will be Parried, but that -4 Iteration penalty is going to drop that to 8 against the second hit) will likely leave Mr. Knight Stunned on the ground, after which a Reverse Grip Rapid Strike to the Vitals will end things rather definitively.

Mr. Spear would be more of a problem. The above isn't going to work that well, particularly if using the optional rule from Martial Arts that two-handed weapons (like the spear) only suffer a -2 per additional Parry. Of course, Shigran is guaranteed to drop Mr. Spear to 0 HP or lower on any hit to the torso (minimum damage is 5, for 10 HP Injury), which may be enough to end the fight. A 3-attack Rapid Strike (at skill 15 each) might be the best bet, with a roughly 30% chance of landing at least one hit (which itself has a roughly 75% chance of ending the fight) if using the reduced iteration penalty (if not using that rule, that 3-attack RS has a much higher chance of ending the fight, with an 80% chance of landing at least one hit). However, Mr. Spear also has a good chance to end the fight, with a Deceptive Attack to Shigran's Vitals - dropping skill to 14 leaves Shigran at Parry 11, for a ~34% chance to connect; Stunning is highly likely, given this would be a Major Wound to the Vitals. Shigran's Luck would probably be enough for him to win, but it would be a close thing. Well, unless we allow for Extra Effort - a 7-attack Rapid Strike to the Torso, using Flurry of Blows to reduce the penalty to a total of -6 (but at the cost of 7 FP, leaving Shigran just a bit above 1/3rd), for a total of skill 15 for each hit, would almost certainly leave Mr. Spear dead at Shigran's feet. Mr. Spear could try something similar, but a) Shigran goes first (Speed 7 vs Speed 5), b) Shigran's Weapon Master means he's at only -1 per additional attack using Flurry of Blows, while Mr. Spear at -3, meaning keeping skill at 15 allows for only 5 attacks, and c) Shigran's Weapon Master means halved iteration penalties for Parries, so while Mr. Spear is at either -4 (in which case just a 3-attack RS should suffice) or -2 per Parry, Shigran is at either -2 or -1, leaving the advantage clearly on Shigran's side.

Of course, Shigran is also a [260] character, while Mr. Spear is only worth [57]. The fact Shigran would have to go more-or-less all-out against a character with around 1/4th as many points really does help demonstrate how effective "just put everything in skill" can be...

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Slugging is both the most realistically important capacity of a warrior and the most underrated one in RPGs. A large part of the explanation for the latter can be found in the love affair gamers and other nerds seem to have with nimble "finesse fighter" archetypes: unarmored swashbucklers, cowled assassins who faff about with knives and pistol crossbows, barely clad women who do gymnastics in combat, ninjas, etc. But of course that's silliness that merits a "DYEL?"

Mass, strength, cardio, and toughness are eminently achievable goals. You can get them by working out. Then you can swing whatever comes to hand with devastating effect, and clank about in enough armor to shrug off most of the response.

Agility and speed can be developed, of course, but are far harder to maintain. Skill is harder yet. All of them are far closer to being a game of soft percentages than hard hits and hard stops: Skilled at what, and relative to whom? And you can only dodge or parry what you see coming.

Of course, some would say GURPS gets it wrong because skill is so much cheaper than ST. "ST 20 or skill 35? Is this a trick question?" But that's precisely because ST is, in fact, better . . . it's more useful, so it costs more.

The catch is convincing the GM to disappoint the assassins and ninjas by (1) establishing sensible skill caps, (2) being a lot more generous with ST caps, (3) routinely setting up encounters where competent foes get the first shot from surprise, and (4) generally making all the non-hitting-people aspects of ST (wearing heavy armor, lugging backup weapons, having enough HP to eat a surprise hit, breaking free of grapples from behind when mobbed, etc.) as important as they should be.

When I run fantasy, I pull no punches: Fine rapiers get Disintegrated. Spiders drop down and web people with ST 15-20 webs, and too bad if you can't break free. Some traps can't be disarmed . . . bring DR and HP, or go home. Certain goo monsters have no vital spots at all, and just roll up and "grapple" automatically by filling the entire hex, so your options are "do enough raw damage to one-shot them before that happens" (like, ST 20-level damage), "be beefy enough to break free," or "run away and be useless."

I'm all for niche protection and spotlight time, but soi-disant finesse fighters don't deserve an extra helping of that simply because they're showoffs. I give equal glory to beefy, high-ST, fighters with layered armor, backup weapons, backup-backup weapons, and backup-backup-backup weapons, and grappling skills. Smart players usually learn to hedge their bets rather than fall into either camp.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

It's telling that when I ran the very first DFRPG adventures at GenCon using the 15 pre-gens in the box, lightly customized, that the delvers who did the best were Argua (oh, my), Grükuk, and Sir Yvor. So many of the low-ST, high-DX types just got . . . webbed, grabbed, and eaten.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

To be fair, there's absolutely such a thing as a cheap knight:

They have Wealthy [20], Status 2 [5] (of which one level comes from Wealth), a Duty in the 9 or less [-5] to 12 or less [-10] range, and a couple of points in each of Area Knowledge (Demesne), Broadsword, Diplomacy, Lance, Leadership, Riding, Shield, and Savoir-Faire (High Society). They're about a 30- to 35-point character.

A fit knight might raise ST and HT, the cost somewhat offset by various self-imposed codes about being a rah-rah warrior type, and perhaps things like missing eyes and hands. A really good one would of course have Tactics, high attributes, and combat skills better than 10.

But mostly they just need the Status and Wealth, which in many (maybe most) times and places weren't earned through valor, but through being in the right family: "Right, you're the first son and next Baron Whatsit, and the rest of you lot are knights. Go forth and ride horses or whatever." The idea that all knights were competent heavy cavalrymen is as idealistic as the idea that all knights obeyed the codes of romantic chivalry. Scutage goes back to the 12th century, at least, and its existence is basically the equivalent of saying the most important attributes of a knight are loyalty and paying the bills on time.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Part of the reason gamers undervalue ST is that, realistically, there's a big component of ST in things that people think of as DX. That nimble acrobat is almost certainly very strong for their size, though of course if they're 90 pounds they might be only moderately strong in absolute terms. It's worse for weapons, because then what matter is your ST relative to the weapon, not relative to your body.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

That doesn't work with the GURPS definition of ST, though, which is absolute rather than relative to body size.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

(or failed a Fast-Draw roll and cut off their own leg. Putting the Ow! in Meow!)

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

That whole event was . . . unfortunate.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

That was HILRIOUS. I still laugh about it. I still want my pound of flesh and by pound of flesh I mean a magic item made from the bones of that character's leg to appear somewhere in DFRPG canon. XD

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Well, there's the problem that GURPS doesn't have a size stat, but most people don't realize 'ST 9/DX 15' is someone who weighs on the order of 50 pounds.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

It really isn't. Even the quick and dirty mass-to-ST equation (which tends to underestimate the size of humans) would put ST 9 at about 90 lb. Why would DX even have an impact on someone's weight?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

I think "DX is really ST"-type arguments would hold more water if DX was just speed. But DX isn't just speed. It's very specifically also flexibility, balance, fine motor skills, and lots of other things that are more about joints, the inner ear, nerves, and the brain than anything to do with muscles or how swiftly you move. In fact, outside of combat and vehicle skills, there isn't even much of a speed aspect to what DX covers . . .

I do think that "DX is really ST" makes sense for active defenses, though. The essence of avoiding harm isn't "being really precise" but "jerking large chunks of your ponderous self around forcefully enough that they avoid or intercept an attack vector over which you have zero control."

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Because you need a high strength to weight ratio to be dextrous. Thus, ST^3/8 formula (91 lb) gets reduced by a pretty substantial factor.
DX is not ST, but DX is limited by ST.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Spear guy is not "a poor guy with a spear" he's a legendary spear fighter the likes of which have only been seen a handful of times in history, the rival of Miyomoto Musashi and other great masters (as his skill is 2 higher than what basic set lists as the upper range of a masterful level [20-25 skill].) If you have that kind of level you should have many other skills related to spear at at least ordinary if not expert levels (armory, spear art, staff, tactics, philosophy, soldier, you name it), and unless he's old and decrepit (in which case he couldn't realistically maintain that skill level but maybe could if this was a very cinematic game) he should have very fit and great ST, DX, and HT scores to be at all believable. No one accomplishes a 27 skill with a muscled powered combat weapon without also being in peak physical condition... even old decrepit martial arts masters in cinema are functionally in good shape.

Meanwhile sword guy isn't bad, but he's no expert either. Mostly relies on his ability to afford armor to win fights, because his skill level is in the upper end of "ordinary" but not really close to being an expert (ordinary is 9-11 for a hobby, 12-13 for something used in professional life, expert is 14-19). He's had lessons for a while or maybe been in a few battles in which he sat on a horse, wearing armor, and killed a bunch of peasants who didn't have the spear skill, but he's never faced a really skilled opponent (or he has but got schooled.)

GURPS shouldn't be treated as an open book for you to buy whatever you want. GM's should take a very active hand in character creation to make sure characters make sense and are appropriate for the game. GURPS can do anything, but that doesn't mean anything is appropriate for the game or realistic or even believably cinematic. You can have a 4 DX and a 30 broadsword skill and 30 acrobatics if you want, along with Klutz but perfect Balance. Does it make sense? Not really?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Not trying to be rude, but I just don't understand how that makes any sense. By that logic, no human can ever have any remotely good DX, because the weight required would either be physically impossible or at least underweight to a deadly degree. 90 lb is already lower than possible on the Build Table for someone ST 9 and Average build. Even the Skinny column only goes down to 70 lb.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Hmmm, Kromm has already posted about DX not being limited to physicality. I'm 52, I grew up being very sporty and athletic, these days less so. I still have demonstrably faster reflexes than my 20 year old nephew, who is athletic and very fit. His ST to weight ratio is MUCH better than mine, but I am still much faster to react and move physically. What he is able to do is sustain dextrous movement and is at less risk of injury when we start talking about moving whole body mass. But, really, it's too simplistic (and I think wrong) to equate ST to mass as a defining factor in DX. It's a contributor, but there is much more to reaction and movement, including experience, muscle type, cognitive processing, training, and so on.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Other folks have commented on many relevant aspects, but let me clarify one more thing that has been stated but not explicitly:

GURPS CP are not an accurate measure of character power (whatever that is)

They are kinda balanced for balancing the spotlight time of wandering violent squad-based troubleshooters ... but it's a rough balance. Very rough. Don't count on it to force your players to make appropriate PCs all on its own. Making sure that the PCs are good fits for the game is part of the GM's job.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Sure you can, you just need to actually be strong. If we assume half normal weight at DX 15, you wind up with DX 15 adults ranging from about ST 12 (108 lb) to 16 (256 lb).

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Sure, if your concept of knight includes superannuated actors and popular musicians.

I mean professional fighting men, expected to earn their keep by being ready to throw down against hard living outlaws or equally equipped peers.

A vision of some rich guy with a couple of points in Broadsword, Lance and RIding (i.e. skill level 10 unless you've neglected to mention high DX) is either a child still in training or a senior citizen.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

As I recall, the major complaints from people running the DFRPG's included dungeon were along the lines that the early encounter with the giant spiders was way too difficult, and it usually turned out that they expected the PCs to be able to 'kite' with bows and finesse attacks and thought it unfair that the spiders would get into close combat really quickly and maul the 'light' combatants.

'Old school' players from pre-D&D3 days would've been better prepared...

Me I got my early experience in fantasy games in Runequest, and if you weren't in mail or better, and didn't have a decent weapon and a damage bonus, you had no business in melee (and arguably in combat at all).

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

+1. Case in point in my current party. One of the characters is relatively weak, two are north of 300 pts, but the fourth ... is an experiment. Player was mulling over things at startup, and popped for Multi-Millionaire with some Independent Income tacked on, declaring that wealth would be his superpower. He's got the best of everything, magical stuff and alchemicals up the wazoo, and shorn of his toys is kinda pedestrian in battle.

My concept of knight is "someone who is a knight." GURPS not having character classes, the distinction is entirely social. Sure, people get knighted for brave deeds, but they also get knighted for service, for donating large sums to the crown (see Multi-Millionaire Guy above), for many reasons good or ill ... not to mention those cultures with the concept of hereditary knighthood. The rich guy might never have been within ten yards of a lance, never mind picking up Lance skill.

Obviously this flies in the face of Hollywood, Sir Walter Scott * and Malory, but that's the way it goes.


* - as it happens, Sir Walter (lamed from polio) wasn't a he-man either, trained as a lawyer, and got his title as a direct result of leading a successful search in Edinburgh Castle for the missing Scottish Crown Jewels.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Is that done purely w/ Binding or could you also do something w/ Modifying ST-based damage to add Area Effect to your melee attack and it buffs not just your punches but your grapples?

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

If you want a really scary knight, try William Marshall. Way up the list of people you'd not want to mess with.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Its main definition in GURPS seems to fall closest to a cross between "what stage magicians do" and "what fighter pilots do." Combat skills get all the press because they come up a lot on adventures. As a result, they're finely sliced, out of some sense of game balance or niche protection. Honestly, though, they could all be reduced to Melee Combat and Ranged Combat without breaking realism much or at all.

However DX more often concerns balance (Body Sense, Dancing, Free Fall, Mount, Parachuting, Riding, Stealth, etc.), fine motor skills (Filch, Knot-Tying, Leatherworking, Pickpocket, Sewing, Sleight of Hand, and sometimes Artist, Jeweler, Lockpicking, and Surgery), flexibility (Erotic Art, Escape, and sometimes Mechanic), or reflexes (vehicle skills, obviously, but also Fast-Draw, Fire Eating, and the like). Is that overbroad? Probably! But I think that excess breadth is the issue in GURPS – not the gap between DX and ST-to-weight ratio. As written, DX covers a great many things, most of them more neurological and articular than muscular.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Please reread what I wrote, specifically this part:

That isn't just my opinion or something. Many European knights from the late 12th century on, long before the actors and musicians you mentioned, were precisely "some rich guy." They were quite literally people knighted for coming from the "right" families, most of which had the financial means to pay scutage: a fee paid in lieu of military service, ostensibly so the knight's feudal superior could hire mercenaries to fight in their stead. Especially in England at this time, that was "most knights" in quite a few places, not just one or two weaselly types trying to get out of fighting.

The vision of the knight as professional fighting man isn't wrong, but it doesn't go so well with how knights actually functioned for the majority of the historical period when knights were obliged to provide military might. The two sorts of knights coexisted, but the scutage-paying knight with minimal fighting skills steadily grew into the majority case from very early on. The erasure of that truth is largely due to tales of romantic chivalry, which have all knights on horses, jousting all the time, riding out to fight bad guys, and so on . . . Yes, that's the vision RPGs like, but there's absolutely nothing in error with the statement that anyone who has Status 2 and Wealthy is a knight by definition (because social mobility was too low to have those things by very many other means), as long as they also have and obey the correct Duty.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

There's also the "knight of the carpet," where knighthood is simply given to someone as a gift from the King of England on a holiday, rather than due to some service (although I'd imagine there was some political wheeling and dealing involved). And I believe in those cases where a knight was legally obligated to show up to fight (with retainers in tow), he could opt to instead pay some sum to the crown, and I'd imagine there were some "knights" without any notable combat prowess who did just that.
EDIT: Ah, I see from Kromm's post the latter bit I was referring to was called "scutage," and may well have been what the majority of historical knights (rather than simply "some") opted to do rather than fight. That said, there's nothing preventing one from making a setting where knights are all (or at least mostly) elite warriors, possibly even a setting where they can have Status 0 (lower than that is unlikely, however, at least not without largely doing away with what "knight" means).

I've always been partial to Gotz von Berlichingen. Suffered a career-ending injury (loss of his right hand) early on but basically ignored it and went on to have a rather-successful career as a knight and mercenary, thumbed his nose at authority frequently enough that he got placed under the Imperial Ban (making him legally dead, so anyone could kill and/or rob him without legal repercussions) not just once but twice, and still managed to live to the ripe old age of 81 or 82 (only the year of his birth is known, not the month or day, although month and year of death are known). The fact the protagonist of Berserk was clearly (if a bit loosely) based off him doesn't hurt matters.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

That sounds about right. I think a lot of people take their expectations in FRPGs from CRPGs these days. Few CRPGs implement close combat or grappling the way GURPS-based rules sets do, and most go with highly abstract defense and fights won by relative rate of HP ablation, so gamers from that background tend to be unaware that their characters can get swarmed, held in place, and taken out by a single shot from behind or while grabbed.

But . . .

The DFRPG has close combat, grappling, facing, explicit defenses, and fights won by getting the first telling shot. So, being able to make and break free of grapples, and deal and absorb fight-ending shots, are more important than being able to run around like a headless chicken. That puts a lot of emphasis on ST.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

It's done by fiat: If the monster gets into your hex, you're overrun and pinned. So, don't let that happen. Monster abilities on the dungeon side of the system aren't "built" using character abilities . . . they just work, fair or not.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

In theory, something like Binding with Aura (perhaps alongside an Innate Attack Aura, for the corrosive effect of being digested once grapple) might work if you wanted to build a DF-style slime as a character (as a PC, or perhaps an Ally/summon)... but that's a pretty significant tangent that should probably go in its own thread.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

That's pretty much it.

This is an area of history of which I'm fairly aware due to my late father being a lifelong historian: As a young fantasy gamer, I was convinced that knights were all a bunch of armored hard men who dominated the battlefield. My father took the time to explain how the majority were more analogous to the upper middle class people across town who had bigger houses and cars, paying others to do things for them, and how that started not when the crown took to knighting rock stars, or even when gunpowder began to make knights obsolete, but rather during the reign of Henry I of England (1100-1135).

I was a bit disappointed at the time. ;)

Yeah, I think he's one of the archetypes of the fighting knight among those who are into HEMA and such. Said archetype usually get romanticized with a dash of Arthurian chivalry in RPGs. Marshall was storied to a great extent for actually being good at fighting himself, which was noteworthy even at the time . . . a bit of an exception that proves the rule.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Most fiat monster abilities could be built with enough effort. We just don't want writers spending their time and our money on that, nor do we want to have to edit the resulting walls of stats. It might be old school, but we're pretty serious about "Monsters aren't meant to be playable characters, so who really cares?" Builds are left as an exercise for those who disagree and do, in fact, care.

I'd probably start with Binding modified with Area Effect and Emanation. You'll likely need lots of other modifiers to let Binding pin, keep the effect on at all times, etc. As with most monster abilities, I suspect that after you've applied all the conventional modifiers, you'll hit some bit that unavoidably demands some form of Cosmic, though.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Note that in some extreme situations it's going to need to be adjusted by fiat. If Mr. Goo tries this on Nyx the Barbarian who has ST 22, a Flaming Weapon, Flaming Armor and a Flaming Shield (yeah, she had Pyromania) it's not going to work nearly as well.

The actual "goo monster" story from that game was when Aldehar the Incendiary stuck his Staff into one and triggered an Explosive Fireball. I fiated that the monster did indeed take 3x damage for an internal explosion but everyone else got "hot goo" damage for 50%.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Using Technical Grappling (or, more appropriately, Fantastic Dungeon Grappling), I believe a "pin" is simply "apply enough Control the target drops to DX 0*," and Binding applies Control rather than functioning as a pseudograpple (although I think you need an Enhancement to let it build Control over time, rather than applying its maximum immediately). You could also use the guidelines for "Swallow Whole" from FDG8; I'd be inclined to treat a character with an engulfing body and such a Binding Aura (I think Emanation requires an action, while this seems like it would be passive, and Area Effect is problematic in that I think the engulfing should require the slime to be in physical contact with the target, not just within x yards) as functionally having something like Born Biter 5 (their entire body is a mouth), allowing the slime to "swallow" anything up to their SM +1 (so an SM -1 slime could spread over and cover a human, eventually suffocating them... although it needs Lifting ST at least equal to the target's to cover them, and at least equal to twice the target's to suffocate them, again making ST useful for the hapless adventurer being slimed).

*Which is actually impossible for foes with DX 13+, although extending the table - -14 to DX at 2.5xControlMax, -16 to DX at 3xControlMax, etc, for an additional -2 to DX per +0.5 to the multiplier - wouldn't be out of the question.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Regarding "finesse" fighters, GURPS actually makes it pretty easy to make that work, and to avoid needing ST for just about anything.

If you're worried about surprise attacks or traps, buy Perception, Peripheral Vision and Danger Sense.

If you don't want to get grappled or slammed, parry--GURPS is extremely generous about letting you parry just about anything.

If you don't want to be in close combat, step out of close combat (and stay away from corners, fight back-to back with allies, etc., use good tactics). It's actually quite difficult to force someone into close combat who doesn't want to be there.

You don't need DR and HP if you never get hit because you parry everything!

If you don't want a goo monster in your hex, retreat out of the hex when it enters, then whack it with a stick until it's dead (or maybe hope your wizard blows it up--you do need magic for some things, but being strong certainly isn't helping anyone damage a Diffuse entity).


And notice that none of this actually requires a high DX! If anything, DX is overpriced in GURPS as a combat ability (it's great if you're interested in doing other things with it, like circus performance, stage magic, thievery, etc.).
The issue is that melee weapon skill is underpriced (for low tech games where melee combat is a significant factor). It gives you everything you need in one, cheap package.

Don't get me wrong, ST fighters can be awesome, but if they don't invest in high skill first, their attacks get parried, their defenses aren't good enough, and they get stabbed in the eye by higher skill enemies.


Also, it's a bit ironic that people are talking about DFRPG's Giant Spiders and their webs in the context of DX fighters vs. ST fighters when you can avoid those webs with...DX! (according to what's written in the Monsters book)

That said, in DF I generally work hard to make ST matter, to make everyone's abilities matter, and in a world of high fantasy that's definitely possible. But that's just it--I have to work hard to make everyone's abilities matter, but I also have to work hard to make high weapon skill not dominate everything. I never have to worry that a PC didn't get their money's worth out of high skill.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Very true in FDG, though "low enough to not be able to roll" happens at "whatever you're rolling drops below 3" unless said roll is a defense roll, which I believe can be attempted no matter what the effective skill.

Yah, with control points, binding effects ARE grappling effects.

Engulfing came up enough in creating the Bestiary monsters that I defined it explicitly:

It would not be out of the question! We limited it because even at DX 20 you're dealing with one success in four at that point, and GURPS combat is quite rough enough on a turn-by-turn basis. You can also SPEND control points to actively restrict your foe's squirming, and then re-attack to re-apply.

If you have a critter whose ability to apply control is capped at 30, but a victim whose Control Maximum is (say) 10, if the attacker has 30 CP on the target, they're at -12 to DX passively, but if they try anything, the grapply creature can spend up to 10 CP to apply up to an additional -10 to DX for that action, and still not limit the base passive -12. Then on their turn, they might be able to worry for free-action CP, or attack to increase, and "oh no you didn't!" bank gets refilled.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

Absolutely. Heck, though it's out of the realm of "medieval," for those of you unaware, my namedropping Sir Walter Scott was ironic in context: the whole notion of "baronets" comes because James I wanted to boost the Crown's coffers, and sold 200 baronetcies with the stipulation that the grantees would maintain a few dozen soldiers at their own expense. The titles were hereditary, and the holders' eldest sons were automatically knighted.

Now sure, as Varyon says, anyone can decide that a "knight" must be a skilled warrior in their own settings. I just don't imagine that the vast majority of settings will be any more immune to politics, rent-seeking, money grubbing, entrenched groups or other chicanery than our culture is.

Re: Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?
 

I had thought there was a rule somewhere in GURPS that a character reduced to DX 0 (or ST 0 for that matter) can't really do much, regardless of skill. So, someone with DX 12 and Wrestling at DX+10 who is affected by 2xMaxControl is helpless, while someone with DX 13 and Wrestling at DX+9 (so the same net Wrestling skill of 22) would be able to use Wrestling at 10. Of course, I'd honestly be fine with just using skill - someone with DX 10 and Wrestling at DX+12 would similarly be able to use Wrestling at 10 while under 2xMaxControl, in spite of formally having DX at -2.

Out of curiosity, is there are reason you went from "Swallow Whole at MaxControl+, Suffocate while Swallowed Whole at 2xMaxControl+" in TDG to simply "Swallow Whole and Suffocate at MaxControl+" in the Bestiary? I mean, I guess it makes sense that a swallowed creature wouldn't be able to breathe, but I had considered being Swallowed Whole at less than 2xMaxControl to represent being partially swallowed.

It just seems weird that having DX 13+ (and/or skill 15+) means you cannot be passively (that is, without your captor spending Control) prevented from struggling, while having DX 12- (and/or skill 14-) means you can. More just a conceptual issue than something likely to cause problems at the table, honestly.

Agreed. Indeed, one DF setting I came up with (for some test characters) had knighthoods and noble titles explicitly available for the wealthy to purchase. An important part of two test characters' backgrounds was that their fathers had conspired to get them together to unite the two families - the woman's family was noble but was struggling a bit with their wealth; the man's (mercantile) family had better finances but were commoners. While technically the latter could have purchased a non-hereditary title for his son (which was the minimum the man needed to be legally allowed to marry a noblewoman), doing so would have liquidated too much of his assets (roughly putting the two families on roughly equal grounds, and thus standing nothing to gain by uniting them), so the man opted to go into military service to try to earn a knighthood and associated title (again, non-hereditary, but the woman's title was hereditary). It... ah, it didn't quite work out.

A setting where all knights are actually elite warriors is arguably rather unrealistic, but at the least you could have one where that's true for most of them.