GURPS Fading Suns Conversion

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've begun to get interested in a GURPS Fading Suns conversion again, and I will post various thoughts on it in this thread - since there are a lot of issues to cover.

Let's start with energy shields. I'm trying to come up with a good way to model the energy shields of Fading Suns in GURPS, but this is fairly tricky.

This requires some explanation of the Fading Suns damage and armor system:

Every character has a number of "Vitality" points before he dies - 10 for a "typical" human.

Each weapon has a damage value. A Dagger might have a base damage of 5, a Rapier of 6, a laser rifle of 7, a sniper rifle of 8, and so forth. Depending on how well a character hits, he might also add bonus points to that damage value - anywhere from 0 to 9, although only very skilled people will be able to get one of the higher values.

The actual damage is then determined by rolling a number of d6 equal to the damage value, counting each 1,2,3, or 4 as a point of damage.

Then the damage is reduced by armor. Armor has ratings ranging from 2 for heavy clothing, 4 for synthsilk, to 10 for plate mail or 14 for powered armor. As with damage, you roll a number of d6 equal to the protection value, and each 1-4 reduces the actual damage by one.

Energy shields function a bit differently. Normal energy shields don't function well with armor - synthsilk that's worn under normal clothing works, but actual bulky armor requires special assault shields. All energy shields will trigger when the damage roll ends up with 5 or more points of damage, but before armor is subtracted. They then reduce the damage of the attack - by 10 for standard shields, though advanced shields intended for use with battle armor might substract as much as 20. If the attack does more damage than the shield can absorb, it burns out temporarily for a number of rounds equal to the excess damage. It also protects against broad impact damage like falls, but in this case the shield has a 1/3rd chance of temporarily burning out after use.

Each shield can absorb a number of hits before its power cell needs to be recharged or replaced - ranging from 10 for standard shields to 30 for battle shields.

Certain types of damage can also "leak through" an energy shield - plasma weapons leak one point of damage through the shield for each 1 or 2 rolled on the damage roll, while flame weapons leak on damage rolls of 1.


So, how to represent all this in GURPS terms? While velocity-limited Force Screens are a good start, I feel that energy weapons should provide some protection in melee, especially against particularly powerful hits. Yet I don't want to render someone completely invulnerable in melee who is wearing an ultra-tech body stocking.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Energy shields function a bit differently. Normal energy shields don't function well with armor - synthsilk that's worn under normal clothing works, but actual bulky armor requires special assault shields. All energy shields will trigger when the damage roll ends up with 5 or more points of damage, but before armor is subtracted. They then reduce the damage of the attack - by 10 for standard shields, though advanced shields intended for use with battle armor might substract as much as 20. If the attack does more damage than the shield can absorb, it burns out temporarily for a number of rounds equal to the excess damage. It also protects against broad impact damage like falls, but in this case the shield has a 1/3rd chance of temporarily burning out after use.

Each shield can absorb a number of hits before its power cell needs to be recharged or replaced - ranging from 10 for standard shields to 30 for battle shields.

Certain types of damage can also "leak through" an energy shield - plasma weapons leak one point of damage through the shield for each 1 or 2 rolled on the damage roll, while flame weapons leak on damage rolls of 1.

Wow, that's complicated. But it sounds like all you really need to do is slap GURPS units on that description, possibly like this:

An energy shield triggers when an attack does more than X points of base damage. Set X appropriately; 5 sounds like a good value, but this suggests the possibility of "tuning" a shield for a higher or lower threshold for more protection but less endurance, kinda like adjusting an insurance deductible for an inversely expensive premium. If triggered, it provides Y points of DR. If breached, roll against its HT to avoid shutting down for (penetrating damage) seconds. A battery also provides a limited number of points of protection. You'll need to calibrate total DR provided to batteries. 10 points for a B cell, 100 for C? Something else? Anyway, there have been some weapons, flame weapons even that "leak" through DR anyway (a point on every 6 rolled), so that sounds appropriate. The triggering threshold is probably sufficient to allow some but not total protection from melee weapons.

[Jürgen Hubert]

5 seems to low to me, since adding some decent ultra-tech body glove will make someone pretty much invulnerable, as long as the shield holds.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

5 seems to low to me, since adding some decent ultra-tech body glove will make someone pretty much invulnerable, as long as the shield holds.

You could declare that the screen doesn't trigger for melee weapons, but really, if the target has access to damage-reducing force screens and ultra-tech armor, why shouldn't it be invulnerable to standard melee weapons? The ultra-tech armor alone should be pretty good for stopping most melee attacks anyway.

Ultra-tech melee weapons, I'll note, might fare better. For example, something with an armor divisor (for example, UT's superfine and monowire blades) is still going to shrug off lightweight physical armor. I might apply the energy screen's DR and trigger conditions to base damage, not damage bonuses from weapon quality, so if, say, a superfine weapon comes through a force screen, it still has that +2 damage.

[trechriron]

Most of that persnickity stuff is an attempt (bad one IMHO) to create game balance. I personally think GURPS is pretty well balanced in it's own right. Also, the FS people we're trying to make combat work "just right". There's lots of ways to challenge a combat trained party of PCs... outside combat.

I wouldn't even TRY and emulate game mechanics from a setting. The shields and armor are not really what makes Fading Suns. The style of that armor is (the somewhat fantasy-esque armor worn by the inquisitors (sp?), etc.).

GURPS already has ablative force shields. Make them rechargeable. Add a limitation "only stops ballistic attacks" or some such for the flavor (I swear that one is mentioned in the section on DR). Don't sweat the numbers. Lean towards GURPS rules for the mechanics (ignore all the picky number stuff in FS).

GURPS has rules for stacking armor. Weight and flexibility should impact characters. Fine tune if you think the combinations make characters invincible (for instance, increase bulk of all armor by factor X when combined with shields due to the unique vibrations causing a stiffening effect on materials... something...).

Steal the flavor from the setting, use the GURPS mechanics because they make WAY more sense and actually WORK versus the headache of trying to make characters "just squishy enough".

Just my two cents...

[Anthony]

The main problem you have here is relative scaling of melee weapons to ranged; in GURPS, anything that might let rifle bullets through will always let melee weapons through unless you have superhuman strength. Other than that, it's really just "shield has DR X, and hits doing Y or less are unaffected by the shield", plus a note that shields can only be layered over nonrigid armor.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by trechriron

Add a limitation "only stops ballistic attacks" or some such for the flavor (I swear that one is mentioned in the section on DR).

"Kinetic only" energy only" "high velocity only", these are all discussed possibilitiies on UT p.92.

Not trying to port over particular game mechnacis is good advice. Even if the game in question actually is like Gurps in that every bit of damage is lethal and really counts the numbers and proportions aren't like to match up.

This is especially true if the original game's ratios of fist damage to bullet damage to armor don't match up with Gurps.

I don't own Fading Suns. The two tiem a buddy of mine has tried to start a game I borrowed one of his copies to make a character and familiarize myself with the game. We ended up plyaing only a single session one time. I don't really think it's a good system in a mechancial sense.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

You could declare that the screen doesn't trigger for melee weapons, but really, if the target has access to damage-reducing force screens and ultra-tech armor, why shouldn't it be invulnerable to standard melee weapons? The ultra-tech armor alone should be pretty good for stopping most melee attacks anyway.

Because the setting has a vibrant duelling culture between nobles who fight with energy shields and melee weapons, and I want to keep that for the GURPS conversion.

I am not trying to convert everything 1:1 to GURPS, but important bits of the flavor should be kept.

[Exar_Kun]

I've been using Gurps for Fading Suns for almost two years and I still have several issues.

I've divided the shields in four categories. Usable only with clothes that doesn't give DR (Standard), usable with concealable and flexible armor (Dueling), usable with flexible armor (Assault) and usable with hard armor (Battle).

Their thresholds are: Standard (6/24), Dueling (6/24), Assault (6/36), Battle (6/48). They are fully hardened against all kind of damage except that with the "burning" or "surge" modifier. Burning damage leaks 1 point for every 10 dealt, and burn + sur leaks 1 for every 5.

They have "HP" equal to: Standard and Dueling (240), Assaul (540) and Battle (960), altough they use their full max.threshold for every impact, so they endure 10, 15 and 20 impacts rerspectively.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Now I am considering allowing all melee attacks without any triggering base damage values... but someone wearing an energy shield gets an additional Defense Bonus against larger/heavier melee weapons (like two-handed swords, warhammers and the like). If the defender avoids the attack within the margin of this Defense Bonus, it counts as a shield activation.