How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[hal]

Having started the thread, I watched the ebbs and flows of the conversation, and smiled at some responses and gave the equivalent of a mental shrug on others. All the things brought up were interesting of course, so all is good.

The thing I'd like to point out in all of this, is that a GM can be mindful of NOT overwhelming his player's characters to the point that even seeming insurmountable "Bad things" can be dealt with in some way shape or form. House rules can be crafted to suit the needs of the GM where he feels that certain rules are either not sufficient to realism, or are too hindering for the kind of atmosphere the GM wants to utilize.

When you introduce magic into the game, there are all kinds of spells that can help save even lost limbs. Toss in sci-fi where you can have cybernetic limbs and that broadens the playing field all the more.

GMs new to GURPS should spend the time reading and re-reading the rules to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and they should then try a few practice runs "Solo" to see how things can come into play - treating the NPC's they build as player characters - well, as player characters ;)

After a while, you as the newbie GM, begin to see how the game can unfold, and can even anticipate what your players will do. When players need some form of education on how GURPS plays out, have a few "NPC" ally characters do the things that the players are not doing. This shows the players what the benefits are, or are not, using certain combat options or what have you.

Demonstrate for example, what happens when a fighter has low levels of skill and uses the "Telegraphed blow" option. Sure, the defender gains a +2 bonus to their defense rolls, but aiming for the head with a -5 penalty to hit initially, using a skill of 12, means that the attacker needs a 7 or less to hit their opponent. Using Telegraphed blow PLUS aimed shot to the head for a skill 12 NPC, results in needing a roll of an 11 or less. NOW - as GM, you've done two things...

1) Increased the chances of a successful defense roll against the attack.
2) demonstrated for the players that hey, try this

Better yet? If as GM, your NPCs are using Telegraphed blow - you've given your players an automatic +2 bonus to their defense rolls. For me as GM, I rarely have NPCs with a skill rating of 14 or higher, utilize the telegraphed blow, but then again, for those with skill levels less than 12, I almost ALWAYS use telegraphed blow these days.

In one campaign, I had a player get involved in an unsanctioned street fight using Martial Arts against a really STRONG guy with implanted blades in his fist (Cyberpunk campaign). You would think that a skill 10 street fighter with brawling would lose to a martial artist with a skill of (I believe) 13. Sadly, the martial artist lost. Why? Street fighter kept going for head shots with telegraphed blow, reducing his "to hit" down to either an 8 or 9 (forget now which it was). The martial artist kept rolling good "to hit" rolls, but lousy Damage rolls. Then it happened - a SINGLE "slash" to the player character's head that was a crit success. Net result, player character goes down with a destroyed facial sinus cavity region plus an eye taken out of action as well. Player character is rescued by TRAUMA TEAM, stabilized, then taken into surgical care where the character dies on the operating table. He's brought back to life, and then stabilized and finally saved.

Why? Because his death saving roll initially failed only by 2, and then his arrival at the hospital with top notch surgeons resulted in his being kept alive and eventually, healed.

You can NEVER "death proof" a game simply because critical hits offer a means for the player characters to kill NPC's in a single blow - but good for the goose means good for the gander. PC's can die in a single blow. Nice thing is, crit hits to the head are relatively rare in most campaigns simply because crit successes are relatively rare.

With luck, sufficient ideas exist in this thread to help the newbie GM's out there.

As a final note: During the Vietnam conflict, one Soldier had the misfortune of being hit by an AK round, that entered into his chest, and exited out of his elbow. Went into torso, tumbled through into his arm, and exited out his elbow region. THAT is what I would call a critical success to the damage roll for a GURPS combat situation. It is freakish, not the norm, and - by virtue of having happened in reality, is certainly possible in a GURPS CAMPAIGN.

It should not come as any surprise, that while combat may be an "exciting" thing to have in a game, if you put your head on the chopping block on a regular basis (ie get into mortal combats), don't be surprised if the chopping blade finally lands upon the neck of your player character.

I have one player who constantly says "Great Strategist, lousy die roller" for his characters. That he holds the distinction of having the most "Boot hill" characters - could be due to the fact that at times, choosing options like "All out attacks" is perhaps not the smart way to go. ;)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

If absolute banality is the goal then...

is a clear win. But, aside from having seen a movie or two, you don't have to know anything about sword fighting to make that a better read. It may not be real world accurate, but it can be certainly make a decent read. It can be imagined in real time almost as good as it can be written. And it can be weaved into a good story almost directly from the game log, even if the GM's narration is as poor as the above.

Now make hacking a computer/starting a fusion reactor/getting the methacrylic acid pump back in action, etc a good story without knowing anything about the subject. It's just a dice roll. It can't even be imagined without some level of knowledge. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not my preference in an RPG.

You're assuming some level of knowledge about sword fighting, but no level of knowledge about computer hacking. Sure, the former is a bit more common (although hacking is common enough in movies you can probably spit out some technobabble you remember from one of those - it won't be real-world accurate, but neither were most of the swordfights you've seen in movies), but that's an apples to oranges comparison; I was talking about a more equal situation. I stand by my statement that, in cases where you have no idea what your character is actually doing, the GM and/or other players should chime in - I assume if there's a challenge in the game that involves hacking or nuclear reactors or hitting orcs with sharp sticks or whatever at least someone at the table has an interest in or basic knowledge of (even if it doesn't extend beyond bad B movies) such a subject. A good description helps with immersion - and even in a beer-and-pretzels kind of game, it helps make things more entertaining.

[Calvin]

There are over sixty responses here without anyone mentioning the most very basic way to ensure you don't kill your players:

Actually sit down and figure out how much damage your NPCs are putting out, compared to how good the PC's defences are. GURPS is a game, you're the GM, so balance it.

The goal here is to get an idea of how many times a PC can be targetted by NPC attacks before they fall unconscious, and how many before they die. Forget about Active Defences for a moment and just focus on the DR and other damage modifiers like Injury Tolerance and the like.

1. Each time you're going to put a weapon in the hands of the enemy, look to see what the average and maximum wounding will be for that weapon against each of your players. I have a little box with note cards where I keep track of this info, but you can obviously keep track of this however you like, so once you've sorted this out for a given weapon you won't need to do it again.

2. Now that you've sorted out the raw numbers, figure out how many average and maximum hits will take a player down to zero HP, and -1xHP.

Ignore NPC skill, player active defences, or any other odds-based effect on the damage aside from the damage roll itself. In short, assume that these attacks are hitting.

3. If your attack will do a full HP worth of damage to any PC on the board, be cautious about including it. Sometimes this is par for the course at higher TLs, especially UT if the armour vs weaponry dynamic is out of balance, as can often happen. But you should really keep this in mind, and make sure your players are well aware. Doing full HP on a max roll is probably not a big deal, but doing full HP on an average roll is extremely dangerous to both your PCs and the balance of the game.

4. If your attack will bring any PC down to -1xHP in a single average damage roll, then you probably shouldn't be using it except in extreme situations. Mounted weapons that are very obviously deadly, a boss enemy's main attack, that sort of thing. It should be very obvious and telegraphed. If the attack only does this on a maximum or near-maximum roll then it's less dangerous, but still dangerous! Check out https://anydice.com/ , are you happy with a 5% chance one of your PCs die? It's a big risk.

5. Once you've factored all of the above in, then you can start thinking about odds-based effects like NPC skill or PC active defences. But from a balance perspective, those aren't terribly helpful for attacks that risk killing a player in one shot. Knocking them out is less of an issue, but does still put them out of the combat which can dramatically worsen things for the rest of the party. It's also why I tend to prefer attacks that will do a lot of damage, but without risking a max roll that will bring someone to zero. That way you can work in the odds for successful active defence rolls and failed attack rolls without the worry that somewhere hidden in your figures is a 5% chance that a PC is going to die any time an NPC attacks them.

6. And as a last point, I'd include figures for those PCs that are durable enough to be confident passing multiple death checks.

At the end of this you should have a little card or a section of your spreadsheet that tells you how many times each PC can be hit/attacked before they're going to pass out/die.

---

A simpler version of the above: If you're at a higher TL or in a high-powered game, which is likely if you're this worried about killing people, use Armour as Dice. You know how many dice of armour they have, you know how many each attack will do, which very easily gives you the difference. Once you have that difference, multiply it by 3.5 to get the average and 6 to get the max, and it should give you a pretty good idea of how much risk you're exposing your players to each time you attack them.

---

The point is not to never kill a player. The point is to know how much risk you're putting them in, so you don't surprise them and yourself when someone kicks the bucket in what should have been an easy fight.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Calvin

There are over sixty responses here without anyone mentioning the most very basic way to ensure you don't kill your players:

Actually sit down and figure out how much damage your NPCs are putting out, compared to how good the PC's defences are. GURPS is a game, you're the GM, so balance it.

The goal here is to get an idea of how many times a PC can be targetted by NPC attacks before they fall unconscious, and how many before they die. Forget about Active Defences for a moment and just focus on the DR and other damage modifiers like Injury Tolerance and the like.

Good "basic" way to conclude that only vampire ogres can use guns in a setting without superscience armor.

If you get hit is way more important than how hard.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by hal

Having started the thread, I watched the ebbs and flows of the conversation, and smiled at some responses and gave the equivalent of a mental shrug on others. All the things brought up were interesting of course, so all is good.

The thing I'd like to point out in all of this, is that a GM can be mindful of NOT overwhelming his player's characters to the point that even seeming insurmountable "Bad things" can be dealt with in some way shape or form. House rules can be crafted to suit the needs of the GM where he feels that certain rules are either not sufficient to realism, or are too hindering for the kind of atmosphere the GM wants to utilize.

When you introduce magic into the game, there are all kinds of spells that can help save even lost limbs. Toss in sci-fi where you can have cybernetic limbs and that broadens the playing field all the more.

GMs new to GURPS should spend the time reading and re-reading the rules to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and they should then try a few practice runs "Solo" to see how things can come into play - treating the NPC's they build as player characters - well, as player characters ;)

After a while, you as the newbie GM, begin to see how the game can unfold, and can even anticipate what your players will do. When players need some form of education on how GURPS plays out, have a few "NPC" ally characters do the things that the players are not doing. This shows the players what the benefits are, or are not, using certain combat options or what have you.

Demonstrate for example, what happens when a fighter has low levels of skill and uses the "Telegraphed blow" option. Sure, the defender gains a +2 bonus to their defense rolls, but aiming for the head with a -5 penalty to hit initially, using a skill of 12, means that the attacker needs a 7 or less to hit their opponent. Using Telegraphed blow PLUS aimed shot to the head for a skill 12 NPC, results in needing a roll of an 11 or less. NOW - as GM, you've done two things...

1) Increased the chances of a successful defense roll against the attack.
2) demonstrated for the players that hey, try this

Better yet? If as GM, your NPCs are using Telegraphed blow - you've given your players an automatic +2 bonus to their defense rolls. For me as GM, I rarely have NPCs with a skill rating of 14 or higher, utilize the telegraphed blow, but then again, for those with skill levels less than 12, I almost ALWAYS use telegraphed blow these days.

In one campaign, I had a player get involved in an unsanctioned street fight using Martial Arts against a really STRONG guy with implanted blades in his fist (Cyberpunk campaign). You would think that a skill 10 street fighter with brawling would lose to a martial artist with a skill of (I believe) 13. Sadly, the martial artist lost. Why? Street fighter kept going for head shots with telegraphed blow, reducing his "to hit" down to either an 8 or 9 (forget now which it was). The martial artist kept rolling good "to hit" rolls, but lousy Damage rolls. Then it happened - a SINGLE "slash" to the player character's head that was a crit success. Net result, player character goes down with a destroyed facial sinus cavity region plus an eye taken out of action as well. Player character is rescued by TRAUMA TEAM, stabilized, then taken into surgical care where the character dies on the operating table. He's brought back to life, and then stabilized and finally saved.

Why? Because his death saving roll initially failed only by 2, and then his arrival at the hospital with top notch surgeons resulted in his being kept alive and eventually, healed.

You can NEVER "death proof" a game simply because critical hits offer a means for the player characters to kill NPC's in a single blow - but good for the goose means good for the gander. PC's can die in a single blow. Nice thing is, crit hits to the head are relatively rare in most campaigns simply because crit successes are relatively rare.

With luck, sufficient ideas exist in this thread to help the newbie GM's out there.

As a final note: During the Vietnam conflict, one Soldier had the misfortune of being hit by an AK round, that entered into his chest, and exited out of his elbow. Went into torso, tumbled through into his arm, and exited out his elbow region. THAT is what I would call a critical success to the damage roll for a GURPS combat situation. It is freakish, not the norm, and - by virtue of having happened in reality, is certainly possible in a GURPS CAMPAIGN.

It should not come as any surprise, that while combat may be an "exciting" thing to have in a game, if you put your head on the chopping block on a regular basis (ie get into mortal combats), don't be surprised if the chopping blade finally lands upon the neck of your player character.

I have one player who constantly says "Great Strategist, lousy die roller" for his characters. That he holds the distinction of having the most "Boot hill" characters - could be due to the fact that at times, choosing options like "All out attacks" is perhaps not the smart way to go. ;)

Critical hits being "fairly rare" really makes me think of playing "the other game" (it's voldemort or something here lol.) I rolled a natural 20 with a dagger, the thing only has a 10% chance to crit and tbh it does like... no damage with a basic character. The dm, she says "well you gotta roll again." I never heard of this rule but she swears in that particular game you roll a natural 20, then you have to roll AGAIN with no bonuses and if you roll well enough to count as a hit on the second roll you crit. Meaning on most well protected targets you have a 0% chance to crit , and all the rest it's something like... 1%. I roll my eyes every time now because we might as well say they just don't happen. I'm tbh much happier that gurps skills can push the critical margin up to 6 from a roll of 3.

In GURPS for the time being I'm just going to ignore all NPC critical hits. Take even melee weapons... A sword cut with an average strength person is in the 2d range with x2 wound factor... Even melee weapons, as garbage as they are compared to the guns will instantly cripple any exposed limb and instantly push someone into rolling simply to stay conscious with a REGULAR hit. Not some critical hit, just... regular damage.

Then I put players up against fun stuff that is cool and interesting? Like having a raid on a underground scrap shop (that was part of some investigation plot line the players are doing) and one of the bad guys has a 8 ROF 5d6 rifle at a range of 4 hexes (12 yards... LONG range for the environment.) I give that NPC a chance to critical hit and it's like throwing the player's character into a blender. And what's worse is I HAVE TO give that NPC that kind of firepower because the players will be wearing DR18 or better.... Which means I might need stuff even nastier to actually even hurt them a little. The contest isn't interesting unless there is a chance they can lose, but it's also no fun if it's instant death in the volcano blender of doom if everything doesn't go right.

I'm playing with magic healing though I'm not sure if I want resurrection.... funnily in my setting it's the vampire school that would heal flesh (if they are willing to do that for kine... )and technomancy can work strange wonders for cybernetics. I kind of giggle a little at that. The healer archetype in the setting is naturally a tank against bullets so he's not stereotypically squishy... but he also gets more and more likely to become unhinged as he gets hungrier and hungrier the more he heals...

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

much happier that gurps skills can push the critical margin up to 6 from a roll of 3.

.

Crits begin with a 3 or 4 which is 4 in 216 or about 2%. ^ or less is jsut alittle below 10%.

The important thing about crits in Gurps is not that they can do more damage. That almost never happens. The important thing is that they automatically hit rather than giving the defender a chance to avoid the hit.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Calvin

There are over sixty responses here without anyone mentioning the most very basic way to ensure you don't kill your players:

Actually sit down and figure out how much damage your NPCs are putting out, compared to how good the PC's defences are. GURPS is a game, you're the GM, so balance it.

This is all very well, but not much help if you're playing historical games set any time from TL5 onwards, unless the games are low-violence or otherwise have some serious gun control.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

Critical hits being "fairly rare" really makes me think of playing "the other game" (it's voldemort or something here lol.) I rolled a natural 20 with a dagger, the thing only has a 10% chance to crit and tbh it does like... no damage with a basic character. The dm, she says "well you gotta roll again." I never heard of this rule but she swears in that particular game you roll a natural 20, then you have to roll AGAIN with no bonuses and if you roll well enough to count as a hit on the second roll you crit. Meaning on most well protected targets you have a 0% chance to crit , and all the rest it's something like... 1%. I roll my eyes every time now because we might as well say they just don't happen. I'm tbh much happier that gurps skills can push the critical margin up to 6 from a roll of 3.

That sounds like D&D 3rd edition, but distorted. The rule there was that if you rolled within a weapon's 'threat range' (19-20 for a dagger), you rolled again with all the same modifiers, etc. if if you 'hit' again you did extra damage (double in the case of a dagger). This meant that the odds of a critical scaled with your hit chance, but it was done away with in later editions for being over-complicated and because it upset players who were bad at maths.

In GURPS for the time being I'm just going to ignore all NPC critical hits. Take even melee weapons... A sword cut with an average strength person is in the 2d range with x2 wound factor... Even melee weapons, as garbage as they are compared to the guns will instantly cripple any exposed limb and instantly push someone into rolling simply to stay conscious with a REGULAR hit. Not some critical hit, just... regular damage.

A sword in the hands of an average person does 1d+1 cutting (which gives x1.5 damage), and criticals very seldom do extra damage. I do agree that this is quite nasty thought - it means a 2-in-3 chance of a non-critical 'crippling' a limb. But... no conciousness check required except on maximum damage. Thay've probably fallen over though - playing with sharp objects when not armoured is dangerous!

Then I put players up against fun stuff that is cool and interesting? Like having a raid on a underground scrap shop (that was part of some investigation plot line the players are doing) and one of the bad guys has a 8 ROF 5d6 rifle at a range of 4 hexes (12 yards... LONG range for the environment.) I give that NPC a chance to critical hit and it's like throwing the player's character into a blender. And what's worse is I HAVE TO give that NPC that kind of firepower because the players will be wearing DR18 or better.... Which means I might need stuff even nastier to actually even hurt them a little. The contest isn't interesting unless there is a chance they can lose, but it's also no fun if it's instant death in the volcano blender of doom if everything doesn't go right.

Again - a critical doesn't guarantee anything but that your hit is unavoidable. And if you just want to worry the players, why are you using automatic weapons that have a good chance of penetrating their armour? That's a choice you're making when a semi-automatic weapon would do just as well (and the NPCs don't have to fire using full-auto anyway).

By the way, as an option if the PCs all have DR18 over their Torsos and heads you could give the bad guys 'hollow-point' ammunition, as that penetrates armour very poorly, and doesn't do extra damage to limbs and extremities (and lets you have them shot some NPC bystander and one-shot them to illustrate to the PCs their wisdom in wearing armour, if you want).

But... not using criticals for NPCs certainly won't break the game. Nor will not rolling on the table and just going with a fixed 'criticals can't be defended against' effect (for everyone or just for NPCs' attacks).

[Calvin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Good "basic" way to conclude that only vampire ogres can use guns in a setting without superscience armor.

If you get hit is way more important than how hard.

This is in no way the case, even around TL8, a vest with a carrier plate is more than enough to handle a lot of the weaponry that your NPCs might use. Yes, there's still risk to limbs, but damage there is capped out in such a way you're not going to instantly kill anyone. And all this only gets easier at higher TLs so long as you are careful about what weapons and armour you allow, no super science required.

And in GURPS, it's not "if" but "when". Even if you have crazy high active defences and for some reason the enemy has very low skill, with enough attacks eventually you'll roll poorly and they'll roll well, and the PC will get hit. And if the player dies due to some low-chance but high damage attack then they are going to be rightfully annoyed. While if you as the GM do your job and at least consider balance, then you can tune things so that the damage they take only knocks them out, or does enough to convince them that a second hit would be a very bad idea.

Originally Posted by Rupert

This is all very well, but not much help if you're playing historical games set any time from TL5 onwards, unless the games are low-violence or otherwise have some serious gun control.

Maybe if you give everyone rifles, but you could just as easily hand your enemies pistols. If your historical game requires enemies to have rifles, then I suppose that's how it's going to be. But the point of this is to at least get you thinking about these things.

TL5 through 7 is risky for people facing battle-field scale weaponry because armour has not caught up with weapon technology, but that doesn't mean every encounter needs to risk instant death. There are options available to both the GM and players that will make combat less instantly lethal.

I can't remember who the quote is often attributed to, but the general idea is that you should understand the rules before you break them. In this case, the idea is similar, understand good balance before you go against it.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That sounds like D&D 3rd edition, but distorted. The rule there was that if you rolled within a weapon's 'threat range' (19-20 for a dagger), you rolled again with all the same modifiers, etc. if if you 'hit' again you did extra damage (double in the case of a dagger). This meant that the odds of a critical scaled with your hit chance, but it was done away with in later editions for being over-complicated and because it upset players who were bad at maths.

I personally like the idea of requiring a confirmation roll on a hit, as it basically separates out "chance to hit at all" and "chance your hit is a crit" - without that, a Keen Scimitar (say) against a foe that you need to roll a 15 or better to hit (30% hit chance; AC 25 against a 5th-level Fighter with Weapon Focus, a +1 Keen weapon, and Str 16-17) can basically only miss (1-14) or crit (15-20), with nothing in between. With it, you've got a 30% chance to hit, and a 30% chance that hit will be a crit.
A DM who rules the confirmation roll must be without modifiers (so you need a maximum roll equal to or exceeding the target's AC) deserves to be hit in the head with the PHB.

Originally Posted by Rupert

By the way, as an option if the PCs all have DR18 over their Torsos and heads you could give the bad guys 'hollow-point' ammunition, as that penetrates armour very poorly, and doesn't do extra damage to limbs and extremities (and lets you have them shot some NPC bystander and one-shot them to illustrate to the PCs their wisdom in wearing armour, if you want).

Alternatively, use weaker weapons with armor-piercing ammunition. With APHC, DR 18 becomes DR 9, and now you only need 3d damage (I think there are some pistol-caliber carbines in this range) to have a better-than-even chance of wounding through armor. With APEP (which I think is TL9), DR 18 becomes DR 6, and even 2d damage (which is readily achievable with a handgun) will penetrate on an average hit. As an added benefit, the pi-class gets downgraded, so those bullets that get through the Torso armor (or hit the unprotected Neck and Face) won't wound even as badly as their damage implies - and if the starting weapon was pi (which I think many ~5d rifles tend to be), the pi-class downgrade even applies to limb hits.

I'll second the idea of only having the PC's (and maybe important NPC's) roll on the Critical Hit Table if that has some unacceptable results.