Combining GURPS and Hackmaster combat system?

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Exallted

Again, I'm just eye balling it really, but for some reason I think that a dagger or similar should have Weapon Speed of 1 or 2, a short sword 3 or 4, for a ST of 10. Which raises another concern (that is far down the line in terms of things I have to workout): would I cap weapon speed to 1 and be done with it (I want to say yes)? Or should I allow negative weapon speeds, that somehow translate to more than 1 attack per turn? I think I wouldn't like to.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the meaning you give to the numbers, I assume these numbers are linear with respect to time: that dagger with Weapon Speed of 2 can attack twice as often as that shortsword with speed of 4 (with those speeds probably representing "every 2 seconds" and "every 4 seconds", respectively).

If so, a speed faster than 1 wouldn't be 0 or negative; it'd be 0.7 or 0.5 or whatever. A speed of 0 or lower wouldn't be possible.

How to play speeds with a decimal point of precision? Well, you'd have to start using a "count up" in increments of 0.1. It can be done, of course... but by that point, it's starting to sound like an odd game. : )

I'd be wary of allowing too big a spread among those weapon speeds to begin with. Part of the reason can be put down to physics: Sure, the 1-lb. weapon should move faster than the 6-lb. weapon, but not to the tune of attacking 6 times as often! The wielder's arm strength isn't just pushing the weapon mass; it's pushing weapon mass + some effective measure of arm mass, and (6 lb. + effective arm mass) isn't 6 times as heavy as (1 lb. + effective arm mass). On top of that, a combat attack typically won't mean standing stock-still and moving arms alone, like a boxer at his punching bag; it'll mean moving feet and the whole body for better positioning, however long that takes – and switching from a 6-lb. to a 1-lb. weapon would make hardly any difference in that time.

Another part of the reason, IMO, is player psychology. For a lot of combat-loving gamers, attacking as often as humanly possible is really important; "missing out" on an attack while others hack away can just seem unbearable. I think some players will view even a modest speed penalty for that 6-lb. weapon as some horrible Molasses Time hell. : )

All probably obvious stuff to you or anyone reading this, but in short: IMO, any fancy-pants speed system should probably stick to pretty modest relative differences in melee attack speeds, which is both a) realistically justifiable, and b) plenty of difference in terms of players' perception.

Originally Posted by Exallted

It went over my head, despite being very clearly labeled so, that GLAIVE was made with 3e in mind. I was making an attempt at simplifying your Wield ST, Combat ST and Effective ST back into one single attribute (correct me if I'm wrong, I admit I didn't read GLAIVE in much depth as it deserves.

Let me make clear: I didn't suggest any needlessly complex use of multiple ST stats. If you want to derive some measure of melee attack speed, there should be just one ST stat that you compare to the corresponding "how heavy and unwieldy the weapon is" stat, as you suggest.

The concept is simple. GLAIVE's attack time rule, in a nutshell, is just this: What's the effective mass to be moved? And what's your effective power for moving it? The ratio of that effective mass to effective power yields the time an attack takes (i.e., its "slowness").

The question, then, becomes what measures to use for that effective mass and that effective power.

The easiest answer for the former is some measure that's linear in weapon mass in lbs. There, that's a good measure of effective mass for thrusts. For swings, you'll want to multiply it somehow for length, and again somehow for unbalance (effectively building moment of inertia into the measure). There, a measure of effective mass for swings.

For effective power... well, ST seems the easy answer, but be careful. GURPS 4e ST doesn't linearly map to ability to move mass; Basic Lift does. So, use Basic Lift together with the above measure of effective mass. OR, use regular ST, and use a measure of effective mass that's based on the square root of weapon mass in lbs. Either way should work.

Finally, note that the power available to the wielder isn't fixed; it can change with something as simple as using two hands instead of one. So you'll want to modify effective power by some appropriate amount for factors like that.

And there you go: You take some measure of effective weapon mass, divide it by some appropriate measure of effective power to move the mass, and you have a result you can tie to "time it takes to attack".

I hope that makes sense. Anything in GLAIVE that looks like a further complication probably isn't. "Combat ST" and "Load ST" aren't further complications; they were just my attempt to create "ST" and "Basic Lift" before GURPS had those. (Doing any fancy stuff involving ST was often just a mess in 3e.) Similarly, "Effective ST" just means "the ST stat after any needed modification for things like number of hands". "Wield ST", too, isn't something new; it's just GURPS' Min ST, given a calculation and a rename. (Whatever you call it, that's a measure of whether you can use a weapon at all, a different matter from how fast you are with the weapon.)

Originally Posted by Exallted

As I said, I though I could just use your recovery values as they are (from the sample table) and work them through some 4e character value to get a weapon speed that seems "right". It seems that this is not the case then?

Sorry, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but for 4e I'd rework the Recovery stats with new formulas. Namely, pare down the factors that boost Swing Recovery for length and unbalance; gotta speed up those axes and halberds for 4e.

Also, for 4e, I think I'd ditch the use of a Recovery that's linear with lbs., and, as noted above, make it map to the square root of lbs. Yes, "square root" makes some people cringe, but we're talking a one-time calculation of a speed factor for weapon tables, not calculation of roots during play. The upside is that you can then use plain ST for all purposes: figuring damage from ST, comparing ST to Min ST (or Wield ST or whatever you call it) to make sure the character can use the weapon, and dividing Recovery by ST to get some measure of time required. Basic Lift can keep completely out of weapon performance. (The wee downside to the method: the Recovery stat for many weapons will appear as figures with decimals, not neat integers.)


Anyway. To bring this back to Hackmaster + GURPS:

You don't have to do any of the above. You could just give GURPS weapons arbitrary "this is how many seconds it takes" speed factors, like (Basic) Hackmaster.

Or to get fancier, set some arbitrary speed factors as above, but then divide by, or otherwise adjust by, GURPS ST.

Or to get fanciest, calculate some speed factor (like GLAIVE), then divide that by, or otherwise adjust by, GURPS ST.

If you create something good, let's see a notice on the forum here!