4E's hit point philosophy

[Refplace]

I like the idea of adjusting pi ratings on SM but think it should adjust others as well. People tend to ignore the fact that a good swordsman can take out a ship pretty quickly too.
That said I favor a point cost for it so it is more consistent and you can model Supers and others who have vehicle or giant forms.
I also like the RAW that SM does not give you more HP, ST, Move or other abilities but that you still have to buy them. this lets us simulate a wider variety of things.
To me the fixes should be assigning the same discount that ST and HP get to IT:DR with a modifer for area attacks that are large enough to matter.
That advantage could also be applied to the Pi or other weapon size rating.
Note that most larger weapons do more damage so it might not be needed though.
The other thing is a few more versions of IT:Homogenius or such.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I like the idea of adjusting pi ratings on SM but think it should adjust others as well.

To quote myself, "apply it to all damage types".

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The HP for the frigate is the RAW, not revised.

Wow, compared to Spaceships it's weight is SM+7 but it's HP are low SM+6... With alternate HP scaling from Pyramid it should approx 1600HP.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Note that cannon damage is more than 16 HPs, so even if you were using a rule which allowed for ignoring hits of less than 10%, the frigate wouldn't ignore hits from them.

Doh! I used SM+8 for the ship. Perhaps it should be SM+7 and the +9 just for targeting sails. And Forgot the *5. Doh!nado:D (I'll edit/retcon)
(Dude, it's the Glorious Twelfth*; I'm sleep-deprived {heat-wave - it usually rains for tGT}, aphasic (what Do you call those american critters - B&W bushy tailed, bandit masked {Racoon!}, and off-topic:D) *PS give it a minute - ignore the happy dude - you'd be surprised how many walk like that even without the music/ uniform.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It might be, but with the RAW, it only takes a few shots to sink one. So instead of it taking hundreds of crewmen, one PC aiming a cannon can do it.

How would ever get that far? Just give the NPC seamen +.25 more Speed than the PCs and it will decades before anybody gets to roll anything. "Able Seamen Jones takes a Ready and assists with setting the sail, Able Seaman Henry takes a Ready and assists with setting the sail, Able Seamen Johnson takes a Ready..."

That's not something I especially want to game out, though.

Who does?

But it's possible in the rules and while that's the case, players who know the rules will wonder why I keep getting a sad look when they formulate their naval tactics based on them.

If you say naval combat is really outside the scale of GURPS combat, point out that you can't actually game out a two hour naval battle in ten square miles with hundreds of people with individual one second turns in 1 inch = 1 yd scale and they still want to game it out with the regular combat system you probably should get more players.

[hal]

If I WERE to run a GURPS based Age of Sail combat, I wouldn't be using 1 second turns. Even GURPS VEHICLES suggests using turns where the time span is at least 10 second per turn, and GURPS STARSHIPS suggests using variable turns that can be measured in spans of tens of minutes or longer (or less for that matter).

HEART OF OAK uses turns of roughly 1 minute in duration. Beat To Quarters utilizes turns that are either 4.5 minutes per turn, or 90 seconds per turn depending on the scale of ship activity the players want to endure with their games.

Do/Would I advocate playing games of this nature at a 1 second per turn scale? Nope. Why?

Because movement rates would be relatively LOW in GURPS games for ships that are moving relatively slowly (bet THAT one surprised you!). Couple this with the fact that it takes a well trained (aka crack) crew roughly 90 seconds to load a gun, and you're not going to be doing much with player characters who man a gun using Long actions. Only if the ship gets into melee combat would we see turns of 1 second in duration - but then we're actively talking about something that GURPS handles well!

[hal]

For anyone who might be interested, here's a thread you might want to peek at from the past. Please, no Thread Necromancy here!!!


http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ighlight=ships

Added thought:
In response to the question regarding cannons and other ordinance relative to ships, I bring this oldie up as well, where I attempted to approximate the HP value for the HMS VICTORY and how many shots it would take to render the HMS VICTORY unable to function (and this example uses 12 lbr guns instead of the more normal 18 lbr and 32 lbr guns that were more common on enemy Ships of the Line.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ighlight=ships

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by apoc527

But yes, I kind of agree with you. Any GM who tries to roll out a 76 gun ship of the line's attacks should be keelhauled.

But of course GURPS Spaceships regularly deals with combined RoFs far greater than 76. Which works great to illustrate what's wrong with GURPS RoF rules, but eh.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by tbone

I understand and appreciate the historical examples; thanks. But I remain curious: What's the GURPS equivalent that leaves you unsatisfied, in terms of specific numbers? What's the damage stat for the equivalent cannons, and the DR and HP of a representative ship?

Well, the smallest gun carried by a ship of the line in Napoleonic times was a 12 lbr. A 12 lbr gun does about 24-30d pi++ (HT p. 140, LT p. 88). HMS Victory displaces 3500 tons (Wikipedia). Call that 3000 tons unloaded and we get 726 HP (the actual HP figure would be less since it is calculated from unloaded weight and all those cannon and shot and crew and cables and sails and water and biscuits are heavy). Give her DR 30, and ignore wounding modifiers, and each shot does 54-75 points of wounding. So after 20-26 hits from a light gun she is in danger of sinking. Halve that if damage is doubled for pi++. In the real world it took hundreds of hits to endanger such a warship, barring bad luck such as a fire or a powder explosion.

This is just a back-of-an-envelope calculation, but it shows the problems.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

So after 20-26 hits from a light gun she is in danger of sinking. Halve that if damage is doubled for pi++. In the real world it took hundreds of hits to endanger such a warship, barring bad luck such as a fire or a powder explosion.

Thanks, that's a big help in understanding the discussion.

Let me try the same with numbers provided by the good Mr Icelander:

I'll attack the DR 6, HP 268 frigate with the 18-lb. cannon (it's not a huge ship, so I'll stick to a mid-size gun).

7dx4 dam generates an average 98 basic hits. Looking at just basic hits without any complications, we subtract DR 6 for 92 basic hits... meaning the frigate is at negative HP after 3(!) cannon balls. Yikes, am I doing that right??

Let's try the 4d+2 musket. Average damage 16 - DR 6 = 10 hits. That means the frigate is at negative HP after 27 musket shots. (If I'm doing things right.) Clearly the task takes many more musket balls than cannon balls, as should be the case, but yeah, I'd have to say that either weapon seems to make oddly short work of a ship.

Hmm. Knowing little of GURPS guns-vs-vehicles mayhem, and even less of the real-life equivalents, I'll crit miss a Will roll vs Obsession (Must. Think. Of. Rules.), blather something silly, and move along.

1) If the basic GURPS 4e approach is to abstract vehicles and other structures into a simple DR + HP approach, the same as with creatures, I think that's cool. That is, it'd be great if there were also a 3e Vehicles-like approach with detailed thickness-based DR and materials-based HP and substructures and all that – but as the default system for gamers who may not care about detailed structural stuff, I'm all for an approach of "A tank has DR X, HP Y. Game it more or less like a character."

2) That said, it would be nice if the abstract DR and HP of such structures scaled in a way such that canonical examples, like big guns vs pirate ships, fall within the ballpark of feeling reasonable. Based on what people are saying, it seems DR and HP should scale up much higher for big structures. With a big wooden ship, for example, DR should arguably be high enough that musket fire has no effect.

3) Oh no, here comes the "gotta make a rules suggestion" part: It seems sensible to set abstract ship DR high enough that small arms have no effect... and yet, saying "Muskets can't do anything. Sorry." isn't entirely satisfying either. If ship stats were gamed in great detail, musket users could avoid the hull and big structures, and pick out some smaller, weaker targets in order to do some damage (if not much). Using simple and abstract vehicle stats, maybe we could simulate picking away at weaker locations with something like this (vaguely similar in concept to chinks in armor):

To aim at substructures or other less-important parts, take -X TH. Success divides DR by X, but also divides post-DR damage by X^2.

Example: Say the frigate had abstract DR 24, not 6. Musket fire (av. 16 basic hits) would be ineffective. But musketeers could aim at ropes, deck structures, open ports, etc.: for -2 TH, divide DR by 2, divide post-DR dam by 4. Average damage = 16 - 12 = 4; 4 / 4 = 1.

So, an effective 1 dam per hit. If the frigate also had better-scaling HP (500? 1000?) then maybe that damage is approaching reasonable? It's markedly smaller than the 98 hits - DR 24 = 74 hits of the 18-kb. cannon...


Ok, done. Itch scratched. Thanks, and sorry –

[rust]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

In the real world it took hundreds of hits to endanger such a warship, barring bad luck such as a fire or a powder explosion.

Yep, taking a look at a major naval battle of the Age of Sail, the Battle of Tra-
falgar, it turns out that of the 60 ships of the line involved in the battle not a
single one was sunk by cannon fire alone, and only one ship, the French ship
of the line Redoutable, was probably damaged beyond repair by cannon fire -
and even the Redoutable might have made it into a port without the additio-
nal damage from the storm on the day after the battle. Actually sinking a ship
of the line without a lucky hit that caused a fire or an explosion seems to ha-
ve been a very rare event.