Calculating "Power Level" or "Combat Score" in GURPS

[Talonos]

I've been giving them the full CER, which, indeed, has led to a lot of head scratching at times. For instance, they still haven't figured out that "HP restored by your best healing spell" is factored into the "Threat Rating" equation, and still think the NPC healer they found has some hidden secret martial art powers (or something) that he's hiding, which explains the healer's unexpectedly high Threat Rating.

If they find out and object to healing's inclusion in the threat formula, my planned response is: "If healing's not a threat, then why do people always try to take out the healers first?" ;)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Talonos

If they find out and object to healing's inclusion in the threat formula, my planned response is: "If healing's not a threat, then why do people always try to take out the healers first?" ;)

Healing is absolutely a threat - heck, most MMO's beyond the earlier ones have healing generate aggro (the variable that's used to determine who in the party a given enemy prioritizes attacking) at a pretty high rate - and importantly it applies to all the enemies. A blaster-type spamming damaging area effects and a healer generate aggro at fairly comparable rates IIRC. Also, considering CER includes defenses, healing would certainly be accounted for there - healing spells and Regeneration fill similar niches, so if one gives a boost to CER, the other absolutely should as well. Further question - do you give them a straight numerical value ("The orc has a CER/Threat Rating of 67"), or is it more comparative ("The orc seems to be more dangerous than you, but less dangerous than your healer")? I can see room for both - although in the latter case I might be inclined to steal the color-coding from City of Heroes and similar (in CoH, enemies who are 4 or more levels below you are dark gray, those who are 3 below are light gray, 2 below are green, 1 below are blue, equal are white, 1 above are yellow, 2 above are orange, 3 above are red, and 4+ above are purple; there's also an adjustment for rank, with underlings being at -1, minions at +0, lieutenants at +1, bosses at +2, and supervillains at +5).