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Old 03-28-2012, 06:33 AM   #11
NineDaysDead
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Default Re: No Achilles Heal

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
PCs do not act like sensible people. Fight until you drop has a different meaning when dropping equals death.
That's not a problem with the advantage, that's a problem with the player making tactically stupid choices. Unless they have On the Edge, they shouldn't be behaving like that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Masters View Post
Sounds like the problem is less HT than a dingbat Code of Honour.

"I am a proud warrior, significantly wounded but still on my feet, and facing powerful foes. All my allies are dead, unconscious, or fled. Do I:
(a) Execute a tactical retreat, snarling defiance at my foes and making a mental note of any who suggest that I am fleeing that I may wreak terrible vengeance upon them later,
(b) Cunningly feign death, lying beneath the corpses of my friends and kinsmen that I may later wreak terrible vengeance upon their slayers from behind enemy lines,
or (c) Stand here like a macho idiot, waving my sword around and being a minor nuisance to the enemy until their archers convert me into a pincushion and I go to join my ancestors?"

Yes, I'm aware that there are codes of honour which strictly require (c). My contention, however, is that Conan types recognise that one can still be "honourable" while opting for (a) or (b), and frankly both cooler and less dead.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
If your players really want it to be possible to lose a fight without dying, then they just have to roleplay it: retreat when clearly getting trounced but still able to flee, surrender when badly wounded, play dead when too hurt to negotiate (or lacking a common language), and accept that imprisonment, loss of equipment, and perhaps even torture are all "less bad" than being dead. To encourage this, you in your role as GM have to make sure that the foes don't consistently chase retreats, reject surrenders, slit the throats of corpses, and/or execute prisoners. If the players are unwilling to do anything but fight to the death, and their foes are unwilling to settle for any outcome less than TPK, then the problem is less with HT rolls and more with your gaming contract.

Likewise, if your players truly desire outcomes other than "We killed every man jack! Arrh!", then they must roleplay: let beaten foes retreat, accept surrenders, and consider how much more valuable ransom and prisoners for interrogation are than a stack of rotting corpses and an endless supply of vengeful eldest sons. Again, you have to encourage this as the GM by having foes retreat or surrender before dying. If all baddies always fight to the death, then the problem once again has more to do with how you're running the game than with HT rolls.

The fact that GURPS has rules for being knocked down, stunned, knocked out, crippled, and killed doesn't mean that affrays need to end only when one or more of these things has happened to everybody on one side. Very few realistic conflicts of any kind -- from street fights to total war -- go that way in reality. Most battles end inconclusively with a few percent to a few tens of percent casualties, and the rest end conclusively with surrender and/or retreat.

Save the total bloody slaughter for situations where a specific group of foes is a mindless horde (e.g., zombies), a supernatural abomination (e.g., a summoned demon who at worst will lose an avatar and return to Hell), or the direst kind of scum. It'll make such foes scarier and boost the campaign's drama level considerably.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Also mind control means your allies have to kill you to stop you.
Or Grapple you, or lift you of the ground with TK, etc.

Last edited by NineDaysDead; 03-28-2012 at 06:39 AM.
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