The "Size Discount for ST -- Why?" Discussion

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Are we talking about 4e ST being over-priced?

I find it interesting that in another recent thread it was claimed that a ST based barbarian was a superior fighter compared to a DX based swashbuckler in 4e.

Okay, so here's the real problem: GURPS is centered in a man-oriented, "agent" style gameplay. For example, in DF, a human-scale character can leverage human-scale weapons and armor to maximize the power of his ST and pose a serious threat to someone else.

Consider that ST 10 deals about 1-2 thrust damage and 3-4 swing damage. Doubling that requires about +4 st [40] which gives you about 3-4 thrust damage and 7 swing damage.

DX is harder to measure when it comes to "doubling," but a DX 10 character will hit you about half the time while parrying about 1/4 of the time (meaning that one DX 10 character can expect to hit another about 37% of the time. If we increased our DX to 15 [100], we'd get a 95% hit rate, which (with 1/4 of our attacks dodged) gives us a hit rate of 71%, which is close to double. I think if you broke down into the actual tactics, you could come up with slightly more reasonable numbers, and GURPS offers some ways around this high cost: First of all, that higher DX gives you superior dodge (this character would defend 1/2 the time), and we could boost our skill rather than our DX for far cheaper, and DX is more broadly applicable than ST, so I think most people would argue that it's largely balanced, though I would argue that for pure combat utility, ST is slightly better than DX, point for point.

But let's do the same model, but set as a base ST 50. We're a bunch of giants, right? ST 50 deals 19 and 27 damage. To double this requires +50 ST [500], to ST 100, which deals 38 and 42 damage (it's high on thrust, but low on swing). To double your ability to hit still requires... +5 DX [100].

"Alright, genius, but what if you started at DX 20?"

Okay, so the problem with DX 20 is that it basically always hits and always defends. The only way to get past it is to use deceptive attacks that bring you back, more or less, to the center of the bell-curve. And the ratio of deceptive attack penalty to defense penalty is the same as the ratio between attack and defense: 2 to 1. This means that a character with DX 25 is twice as likely to hit someone as someone with DX 20. Look, DX 25 defends with a 15 while someone with DX 20 defends with a 13. Apply a -10 to both attacks, and you end up with... 15 and 10, just like before, and a defense of 10 and 8... just like before. The ratio remains the same. It doesn't matter where you are on the scale: +5 DX effectively doubles your ability to hit someone once all deceptive attacks are taken into account.

But +5 ST does not effectively double your ability to damage someone.

Most of GURPS lives on a bell-curve, but ST does not. It's linear. That means that for your 20 points, DX gets you about the same amount of oomph each time you buy it, but those 10 points for ST are worth less and less. This means that ST works fine on a human scale, but becomes a disaster when you slide far off of it. I know I came up with some solutions... but they ended up look like pale imitations of what T-Bone Tony has already done.

This is in a low ST, DF-style game. The problem becomes even more compounded in a high TL game, like those I play, because weapon damage rapidly eclipses ST-based damage, and the ability to avoid those attacks utterly eclipses the ability to endure them. Being ST 20, or even ST 50, isn't worth that much in a game with disinetgrators, but being DX 20 is definitely worth it in such a game.