[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I'm not quite sure that I fully understand the concept of templates. It seems as though templates are mostly just a collection of skills and traits which the DM has already bought with character points. For example: To make elves I might make a template which starts with the underweight disadvantage, some extra DX, and some sort of GURPs equivilent of low-light vision. To make dwarves I might make a template which starts with the disadvantage which makes you smaller than normal human height, the overweight disadvantage, and skill with masonry. I may not have gotten the names of all of the features correct; I don't currently have the book sitting in front of me.

You understand the concept of templates, but a couple of notes on specific traits mentioned: Height and Build disadvantages such as Skinny and Dwarfism alter your height and build relative to the norm for your species. They are very rarely appropriate on a racial template. To make your elves scrawny compared to humans, all they need is -1 or -2 Hit Points, and then an Elf who is underweight compared to them can take Skinny on top of that. A "normal" Dwarf can take Size Modifier -1 (or not, this one tends to vary by setting a lot) to be smaller than a Human, and then an individual Dwarf can take Dwarfism (yes, making him a dwarf Dwarf) to be smaller than his racial average. The reason for this is because the primary Disadvantage to height and build modifiers that you actually get points for is the penalty to do stuff like blend in a crowd or buy clothes that fit, and if everybody in your species has the same averages as you these things aren't a problem.

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I do have some experience with tactics. I was in the military for a while, so that might help me to be able to give my friends a little bit of a crash course in what sort of tactics would be better for survival. Aside from that though, most of them at least have some sort of interest in warfare games or similar concepts, so I think they should be alright.

You guys should be fine, you just need to remember that stuff like surprise, numbers, and flanking are not to be ignored.

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I do think that perhaps it might take some time to go from the D&D mindset of being semi-superheroes to more realistic combat, but I think they'll catch on. There's really only one of them that I'd worry about dying a lot, but that's because he tends to have the worst luck in the world when it comes to rolling dice of any kind.

Y'know if you really want you can run a game where they're semi- (or fully-) superheroic to the point that the dice aren't as cruel, but it adds to the complexity on both ends so we don't generally recommend doing it to start. The Speedster in my current Supers campaign is primarily defended by his awesome Dodge, for example, but when two mooks rolled critical hits against him with their AK-47s in our last session he was also big and tough enough to survive the bullets. There are also several advantages that directly mess with die-rolling on the metagame level (Luck, Daredevil, Higher Purpose, Visualization, etc) in various ways, which are highly appropriate in most cinematic settings IMHO.

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

Would a character who heavily invested 100 points into combat skills and attributes be roughly equal to two characters who heavily invest 50 points into combat skills and attributes? Obviously the multiple characters would have the advantage of having more actions to perform in a round, but I'm trying to get an idea of how combat capabilities interact.

Probably not. Numbers are a huge factor, especially at lower power levels. One guy with 8 points in Broadsword-12 vs two guys with 4 points each in Broadsword-11 is in serious trouble. I recommend the stat comparison method already described upthread.