GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians

[ErhnamDJ]

The problem isn't with the concepts, it's with the character point prices of those traits. Outdoorsman is hardly better than a level of Per, but it costs double. If you removed the Fishing skill from Outdoorsman, you would be paying only 5/level for it. This means you're paying five points a level for Fishing when you take Outdoorsman. Compared to other traits, Outdoorsman is one of the worst deals in the game. It's bad enough that we're sinking large numbers of points into wilderness abilities in a game about killing things in dungeons already. We shouldn't have to overpay for them as well! If we were given the option to remove Fishing and take a 5/level version of Outdoorsman, it would be a good deal.

And Gigantism is bad because it doubles the cost and weight of the Barbarian's armor. This is a serious enough disadvantage that it would be best avoided if possible. Like with Outdoorsman, this would be dandy if it gave you, say, fifteen points back as a disadvantage.

These traits aren't bad because of what they do. They're bad because of what they cost in metagame character creation points. The Barbarian template takes enough bad deals like these that it ends up much less powerful than the other comparable templates.

You can play as a Halfling or Gnome to fix the problem with Gigantism, but I always feel like I'm getting ripped off when I spend points on Outdoorsman, and getting ripped off isn't any fun.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

The problem isn't with the concepts, it's with the character point prices of those traits. Outdoorsman is hardly better than a level of Per, but it costs double. If you removed the Fishing skill from Outdoorsman, you would be paying only 5/level for it. This means you're paying five points a level for Fishing when you take Outdoorsman. Compared to other traits, Outdoorsman is one of the worst deals in the game. It's bad enough that we're sinking large numbers of points into wilderness abilities in a game about killing things in dungeons already. We shouldn't have to overpay for them as well! If we were given the option to remove Fishing and take a 5/level version of Outdoorsman, it would be a good deal.

That's a generic problem with the Talents mechanic, as implemented in GURPS 4E, and one that I'm well aware of. It's not a problem that is in any way particular to DF's Barbarians, or to DF only.

My proposed solution, apart from the drastic one of ditching GURPS in favour of something better designed, is to re-bracket and re-price Talents so that they fall into 4 breadth categories rather than 3, and costing 6, 9, 12 and 15 points per level (not 5, 10 and 15). Perhaps in combination with increasing the cost of DX and IQ to 25/level (Per could cost 6/lvl too, and in a fantasy world Will could cost 6/lvl too, whereas in most other types of worlds Will should probably cost only 4/lvl).

Keeping in mind that rolls affected by the Outdoorsman Talent should sometimes realistically float to an attribute or sub-attribute other than Per (where Outdoorsman Talent still gives its benefit), I think it'd be fine.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

And Gigantism is bad because it doubles the cost and weight of the Barbarian's armor. This is a serious enough disadvantage that it would be best avoided if possible. Like with Outdoorsman, this would be dandy if it gave you, say, fifteen points back as a disadvantage.

I'd say -5 points is more like it for the inconvenience of having to pay a lot extra for armour and enviromental/space suits..

But really, the thinking behind it seems to be that Barbarians shouldn't wear armour, and I'd be OK with that. I just think that to make it more fair and balanced, there ought to be traits offering unarmoured defensive options.

For instance a couple of levels of Enhanced Dodge, one Limited to only when not wearing armour, and one Limited to only when at Light-or-better Encumbrance.

Likewise, a few levels of DR, with Limitations that reflect a light-footed approach to combat (Only When at Light-or-better-Encumbrance) and active defenive movements (Only When Aware of Attack, and Vs Melee Only).

Note that I haven't purchased the PDF. It's quite possible that such traits are already present in it. I don't seem to recall much of that sort of thing in DF11, even though that would have been an obvious thing to do, but then again I haven't read DF11 very closely and certainly haven't memorized it.