Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

it seems so freaking odd to me that the game name is Generic *UNIVERSAL* Role Playing System !

One of the foundations of this is that "realistic" humans (who are probably built on a base of 25 pts excepting Social advantages) will always have the same relationship to threats. If they travel to another world it won't be a peculiar one where guns do different damage.

No one is telling you that you can't have PCs built on many more pts and who thus don't have the same relationship to threats.

Make your PCs tougher and more capable. Don't shrink and soften your world.

There's also a specific note about the "halve firearms damage and halve armor values" option. This will ahve the effectiveness of any firearms in the PCs' hands and probably annoy them mightily.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

Well, just essentially halving the firearm damage while similarly reducing armor DR is a pretty similar solution to what has been suggested in terms of cinematics. It's also pretty simple. Unliving advantage is also useful but not every player is going to be a vampire. I want the margin for failure to be more than a straight and narrow path thereby allowing for a lot of possibilities and creativity. Not "well if you aren't built this exact way due to the sheer deadliness of the slightest failure... you won't last five minutes!"

I'm setting up some short campaigns with myself (playing 2-3 characters of my own to "simulate") before I commit to any such thing now though. We will see. Also being TL9 first aid apparently is pretty good now...




As mentioned elsewhere there are impossible trans dimensional beings, vampires and magic as well as cybernetics we have yet to achieve in the real world. I'm not particularly interested in "well this gun puts down someone this reliably in real life so it should in game" arguments. This is a fantasy game, get with the fantasy lol.

it seems so freaking odd to me that the game name is Generic *UNIVERSAL* Role Playing System and time and time again people are mentioning reality "well this is like the real world." No no, this is supposed to be a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system and I'm not interested in playing a realistic campaign where my players get shot and die within five minutes for being gonk enough to think they could actually do anything. Nope nope nope. Lets expand our options and variety a bit from "realistic" and adopt the motto of a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system!

If bring "realistic" is what's bothering you, have you looked at The Cinematic Campaign (p. B488-B489) and Cinematic Combat Rules (p. B417), which provide the rule changes needed for games where being "realistic" takes a backseat to the game (and story) being exciting?

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

... I'm not interested in playing a realistic campaign where my players get shot and die within five minutes for being gonk enough to think they could actually do anything. Nope nope nope. Lets expand our options and variety a bit from "realistic" and adopt the motto of a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system!

It has now been explained several times that the system is not as instantly deadly as you appear to think. Also, numerous rules to ameliorate the concern even more have been pointed out.

(BTW, Some degree of consistent realism is essential to making a universal game. Realism is the foundation off of which fantasy departs. For example, gravity is pretty consistent across most fantasy fiction, but not always. You've got to have rules for falling for the ones that do have gravity even if the ones that don't have it don't need it.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

it seems so freaking odd to me that the game name is Generic *UNIVERSAL* Role Playing System and time and time again people are mentioning reality "well this is like the real world." No no, this is supposed to be a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system and I'm not interested in playing a realistic campaign where my players get shot and die within five minutes for being gonk enough to think they could actually do anything. Nope nope nope. Lets expand our options and variety a bit from "realistic" and adopt the motto of a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system!

You can perfectly well have player characters whose reaction to being shot at is not to take cover, but to charge for the guy with the gun. For example, you can have supers. Not having to worry about guns is one of the standard requirements for being a super (the other two are being able to take on multiple people hand to hand and win, and having some splashy ability that evokes sensawunda).

They're also built on a lot of points, as Fred says. My character La Gata Encantada, whose reaction to guns was to leap through the air at the shooter and kick the gun out of their hand, was built on 555 points in the version I have in my files; I believe she started out at 500, which is a good starting point for baseline supers.

Your campaign isn't in the supers genre as standardly defined, I know. But it has a lot in common with it. It has power sources, and origin stories, and characters with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and it even brings together characters with powers from several diverse sources. All of that is almost exactly like supers. Try building some sample characters on 500 points, giving them protective abilities that that point budget will allow, and test them against each other.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

...it seems so freaking odd to me that the game name is Generic *UNIVERSAL* Role Playing System and time and time again people are mentioning reality "well this is like the real world." No no, this is supposed to be a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system and I'm not interested in playing a realistic campaign where my players get shot and die within five minutes for being gonk enough to think they could actually do anything. Nope nope nope. Lets expand our options and variety a bit from "realistic" and adopt the motto of a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system!

A UNIVERSAL system needs to be capable of doing close to everything from realistic to cinematic. GURPS stats things as realistic as it can but does not cap it. It provides all the rules you need to change the settings expectations as you need.

You are STUCK with the mind set of "This part is too realistic and I want it to not be" while ignoring the part of GURPS that you should be using, which is giving the characters the abilities they need to be cinematic.

Guns are dangerous, in every setting I have ever seen. The difference in their danger does not come from CHANGING the guns, but the characters. In an urban modern spy thriller, guns are the end all be all for the PCs. In a Supers, they are a nuisance to the PCs. The guns are the SAME, its the PCs that changed.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The highest damage roll I ever achieved on a character sheet I still have is Bryce's 2d+1 quarterstaff...

Bruno (Mrugnak's player) once fired a 125mm anti-tank missile at an extremely large dragon and rolled 84 dice of damage. We were playing online and had flexible die rollers so she actually could roll 84 dice instead of doing 6dx14 like you would on a tabletop.

Highest consistent, low-tech damage at my table was probably Big Al, the half-ogre knight with Weapon Master in a DFRPG game. He tended to go up against a lot of demons, golems, and other weird monsters by the time he reached that point, but 4d+12 damage splattered anything that was vulnerable to being splattered.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Guns are dangerous, in every setting I have ever seen.

In most cinematic settings guns are perceived as dangerous but are very rarely actually effective. This is not something GURPS handles well (though most other game systems don't do a lot better, it's hard to manage "looks dangerous but actually isn't" in a rule set).

[Donny Brook]

Guns are very effective in cinematic settings EXCEPT when the script needs different.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Guns are very effective in cinematic settings EXCEPT when the script needs different.

I would reverse that: Guns are only effective when the script requires it.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In most cinematic settings guns are perceived as dangerous but are very rarely actually effective. This is not something GURPS handles well (though most other game systems don't do a lot better, it's hard to manage "looks dangerous but actually isn't" in a rule set).

This thread is evidence that GURPS handles it very well indeed.

Looks dangerous: new player sees 7d damage from Farmer John in the rule book, compares that to HP, expects instant death

Actually isn't: GURPS characters with decent HT can survive down to -50 HP or more, and even just hitting a vampire in the first place potentially involves beating Stealth, vampire Speed, range penalties, Dodge, Luck, and so on.

Mission accomplished!