Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

Yeah, combat balance is kinda hard to evaluate with points. Who's the biggest combat monster: An expert swordsman with ST 12 [20] DX 12 [40] and Broadsword-17 [20] for 60 points or a clumsy but high-powered ogre with ST 19 [81, -10% for SM+1], DX 9 [-20] and Axe/Mace-9 [2] for 63 points ? The ogre probably won't even be able to score a hit while the other one can either aim good targets (vitals, face, etc.) or perform Deceptive Attacks.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

The problem with ST drain is that you need to address whether or not you recalculate damage with every loss. Fatigue damage, however, is easy to handle -- at 1/3 FP, you halve it. Done. End of story.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

True, but the ogre can end the fight with one lucky hit. But otherwise, your point is correct. Character points are very vague for this sort of thing. They're really intended for PCs, and the farther you get from a PC, the less useful they are to measure anything.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

Actually, the recalculating of damge wasn't an issue, it affected ST not HP, the real problem for the party was after a few hits, encumbrance became an issue. The cleric almost collapsed under her own weight!

Although thats somewhat true, for enemies that are Vaguely humanoid, they work pretty well. For Green Slime and Grey Ooze, it was an utter failure, for everything else, it worked out OK.

For the Mathematically Inclined.....For evey combat the ST and DX and Skill of the Attacker matter as do the defenses of the defender. Seems like there oughta be a way to work out damage expectation value for a given set of conditions. Maybe even apply some markovnian math and finally see if its the Mighty or the nimble that have the greatest advantage.

Nymdok

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

Yes. But I wouldn't hold fast to them. And another thing, in GURPS, it is easier to defeat a lone foe with sheer numbers. By contrast, your 7th level D&D fighter can take on swarms of goblins.

You'd have to limit your assumptions greatly for this. There are literally hundreds of ways to circumvent the whole basic assumptions of melee combat in GURPS.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

That's an even better reason to use FP. The calculation to ST comes in once, and for Basic Lift, it's a simple quartering, leaving only the messy damage issue.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

I must admit, my Spreadsheet did it for me :)

I think that the diminishing ST gave my players something different to deal with. Since Excel did the heavy lifting, it was worth the effort.

Nymdok

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

Hmmm just thought of something though. By using FP instead of ST, it will greatly punish spellcasters compared to warriors. Damaging FP is a big impact on a spellcaster's ressource while compared to the D&D shadow that is supposed to cripple warriors. Don't forget that ability damage is part of the Affliction advantage.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

That is an argument in favor of ST, you have me there.

Re: White Plume Mountain for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
 

I knew I should have been a lawyer ;)