How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Calvin

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.

I was thinking shotguns, actually - they're very common in non-military situations where guns show up (more common than pistols in many), and at close range their damage is quite high. Not every NPC is going to load their gun with rock salt.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Calvin

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.

TBH this discussion exists in part because I have been dismayed that in a TL5 + campaign that's EVERY attack, especially if I'm having a rough distorted society where everyone has guns. The only option seems to be not to give them cyberpunk but mars war logs where guns only exist in legend and the most advanced weapon of all time is a vanadium steel bar in spite of super science being abundant....

Originally Posted by Rupert

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).

Originally Posted by Calvin

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.



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.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Alternatively, use weaker weapons with armor-piercing ammunition. With APHC, DR 18 becomes DR 9, and now you only need 3d damage 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 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.

Using pistols with armor piercing *WAS* an idea but...

Ok, I quoted you three to show a consistent response. Imagine I have this big monster manual full of baddies. (I do actually "creatures of the night", got it specifically because this campaign has supernatural horrors. ) Then I flip through dismayed because my players wouldn't ever EVER conceivably be able to face these things without a fair chance of instant death even if they have 500 points because of things like " players should be in the 10-13 hp range, never over 20" the extreme damage ect.

Your response is "well the game is fundamentally incapable of handling those cool encounters. You can only plausibly allow your players to confront giant rats, and maybe a dog but never a hellhound. "

And I'm like "well if that's the case there's something fundamentally wrong with the game."

The consistent response back "no, there's something fundamentally wrong with you."

Those machineguns and rifles are like the hellhound. I COULD snip them out of my campaign (with no way to plausibly explain why in a nearly lawless society full of super tech and cybernetics the technology of a tl7 rifle is not available ) but then I'd just be in effect giving up on the game and all of it's possibilities which is downright depressing.

[hal]

As I've mentioned earlier - some rules may be such that as GM, you do not want to apply them against player characters. Take the rule for Dismemberment. A ST 10 person would by the rules as written (RAW), would require that they take damage equal to 2 x 5 or 10 points before the Dismemberment rule comes into play.

Really?!!!

Take a Glock 17 9mm that inflicts 2d6+2 damage. That's 9 points overage damage, which means that on an easy stretch of statistics, 10 is VERY easy to roll as total damage. How often do you hear in the news, that a limb was dismembered by a single shot to the arm? I've read of injuries to the arm in which the bone was shattered by a bullet, but I've also read of instances where bullets have nicked the arm, gone clear through without significant damage (by significant, I'm talking about a major loss of the use of said limb), and I've read of instances where the bullets in question have really messed up a limb due to bullet tumble etc.

Problem is, when you roll MORE dice for damage, the result is that the average of damage will generally tend to 3.5 x dice + die adds. There are no light grazing wounds from bullets that are 2d with a +2 damage modifier, since the lowest damage you can roll is 4 points of damage.

Now for the FUN part. GURPS HIGH TECH actually ADDRESSES this particular issue where it states (pg 162):

"While an attack that’s neither cutting nor explosive can dismember (p. B421), the injury threshold is realistically much higher. Notably, bullets are more likely to pass through a limb or an extremity than to blow it off. Optionally, a body part is automatically permanently crippled (p. B422) if it suffers at least twice the injury needed to cripple it – but impaling, piercing, and tight-beam burning attacks must inflict twice that amount to sever the body part."

So, problem addressed right there. But there is more to this than meets the eye.

Historically, in battlefield situations, it takes a LOT of shots fired to inflict casualties. Google the number of bullets it takes to secure a casualty in real life and then look at how GURPS achieves this:

Fire a gun without taking ONE second to aim, results in the shooter losing any accuracy for the gun itself.

Fire a gun at a target that is over 30 yards away, and the penalty to hit becomes -8 on a CLEAR day against a target on an open field.

Fire a gun at a target in dusk - add more penalties. Fire at a target that is crouched, add a further penalty of -2.

In short, there are so many possible negative modifiers that not every shot is going to have a high chance of hitting.

So, yes, critical hits cant take a character out of play, but that is part of the CHARM if you will. When you play in game with "levels of hit points" and you know you can't be killed in one shot, that lessens the anxiety of "I could lose my character".

As GM, simply note this and take care to not hit your players with lethal attacks in the hands of highly skilled NPCs. Trust me on this - my players some 30 years ago in their first firefight using GURPS 2nd edition, worried with EACH die roll that they might lose their characters. The visible relief on their faces when their characters survived was plainly evident. (Yes, they were playing GURPSified versions of themselves - which probably added to the tension as well).

Hope this thread helps to understand things.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by hal

As I've mentioned earlier - some rules may be such that as GM, you do not want to apply them against player characters. Take the rule for Dismemberment. A ST 10 person would by the rules as written (RAW), would require that they take damage equal to 2 x 5 or 10 points before the Dismemberment rule comes into play.

Really?!!!

Take a Glock 17 9mm that inflicts 2d6+2 damage. That's 9 points overage damage, which means that on an easy stretch of statistics, 10 is VERY easy to roll as total damage. How often do you hear in the news, that a limb was dismembered by a single shot to the arm? I've read of injuries to the arm in which the bone was shattered by a bullet, but I've also read of instances where bullets have nicked the arm, gone clear through without significant damage (by significant, I'm talking about a major loss of the use of said limb), and I've read of instances where the bullets in question have really messed up a limb due to bullet tumble etc.

Problem is, when you roll MORE dice for damage, the result is that the average of damage will generally tend to 3.5 x dice + die adds. There are no light grazing wounds from bullets that are 2d with a +2 damage modifier, since the lowest damage you can roll is 4 points of damage.

Now for the FUN part. GURPS HIGH TECH actually ADDRESSES this particular issue where it states (pg 162):

"While an attack that’s neither cutting nor explosive can dismember (p. B421), the injury threshold is realistically much higher. Notably, bullets are more likely to pass through a limb or an extremity than to blow it off. Optionally, a body part is automatically permanently crippled (p. B422) if it suffers at least twice the injury needed to cripple it – but impaling, piercing, and tight-beam burning attacks must inflict twice that amount to sever the body part."

So, problem addressed right there. But there is more to this than meets the eye.

Historically, in battlefield situations, it takes a LOT of shots fired to inflict casualties. Google the number of bullets it takes to secure a casualty in real life and then look at how GURPS achieves this:

Fire a gun without taking ONE second to aim, results in the shooter losing any accuracy for the gun itself.

Fire a gun at a target that is over 30 yards away, and the penalty to hit becomes -8 on a CLEAR day against a target on an open field.

Fire a gun at a target in dusk - add more penalties. Fire at a target that is crouched, add a further penalty of -2.

In short, there are so many possible negative modifiers that not every shot is going to have a high chance of hitting.

So, yes, critical hits cant take a character out of play, but that is part of the CHARM if you will. When you play in game with "levels of hit points" and you know you can't be killed in one shot, that lessens the anxiety of "I could lose my character".

As GM, simply note this and take care to not hit your players with lethal attacks in the hands of highly skilled NPCs. Trust me on this - my players some 30 years ago in their first firefight using GURPS 2nd edition, worried with EACH die roll that they might lose their characters. The visible relief on their faces when their characters survived was plainly evident. (Yes, they were playing GURPSified versions of themselves - which probably added to the tension as well).

Hope this thread helps to understand things.

The severing rules really aren't much of a relief because the core rule is still that if the weakest firearm in the game hits their arm they can no longer use their arm. The arm being cut off or not really tbh is a moot point.

There is room for some well ranged combat in my campaign but part of my concern is that it's cyberpunk which is heavily related to urban sprawl and decay. So there will be a lot of gunfights in alleys, not "the battle of belleau wood." with ranges in the hundreds of yards and all these trees and fog and all of that. No, it's 20 feet (roughly 6 yards not thirty) in a stinky alley over the fate of a man stuffed in a trunk. That's what we are dealing with.

I do have plans for greater death valley (set in eternal shadow) but let's get the core setting to work first.

And yes, historically on battlefield situations most of the time you were shooting at shadows and supposed targets. But tbh... I'm not really concerned with historically. It's my opinion that this absolute dogged obsession with getting every detail inanely realistic is where all my worries and problems are coming from. Where does a hellhound or a ghoul fit in "'realism"?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

T things without a fair chance of instant death even if they have 500 points because of things like " players should be in the 10-13 hp range, never over 20" the extreme damage ect.

Yng.

Where did you get this? I don't recognize it.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Where did you get this? I don't recognize it.

This thread that evolved into a similar subject. Several people told me the same thing.

https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=192377

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

Your response is "well the game is fundamentally incapable of handling those cool encounters. You can only plausibly allow your players to confront giant rats, and maybe a dog but never a hellhound. "

I feel I at least was fairly consistent about the fact the game can handle such, you (and/or your players) just need to give the characters the right traits (Luck, appropriate Injury Tolerances, Vitality Points or Ablative DR fluffed as representing near-misses, etc) and/or use the right optional rules (Survivable Guns, Flesh Wounds, TV Action Violence, etc). But the GURPS default is that if you throw mundane people into a situation where mundane people are likely to wind up dead... they're likely to wind up dead. And certainly, you can do different tweaks than those we recommended, such as your suggestion of dropping handguns to 1d pi and rifles to 2d(2) pi, you just need to make certain you go into it with both eyes open - nerf guns means "gunman" isn't as viable of an option as the players may be expecting for a cyberpunk game, for example. Unless only OpFor's weapons get the nerf treatment, with the hunting rifle the party loots from Farmer Joe's corpse transforming from 2d(2) pi to 7d pi+ in their hands.

I will, however, admit to becoming a little combative when you stated the rules that make firearms generally deadlier than melee weapons were unrealistic, and I apologize for that. People making what I consider false statements about the nature of reality are something of a pet peeve of mine, and I often fail the resulting Self Control Roll.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

And yes, historically on battlefield situations most of the time you were shooting at shadows and supposed targets. But tbh... I'm not really concerned with historically. It's my opinion that this absolute dogged obsession with getting every detail inanely realistic is where all my worries and problems are coming from. Where does a hellhound or a ghoul fit in "'realism"?

I think that's oversimplifying the issue a little. As I see it, there are two different distinctions: realistic vs. cinematic/epic, and mundane vs. fantastic. Hellhounds and ghouls are certainly fantastic (not mundane), but they can be either realistic or epic.

I personally like what Marianne Moore called "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" as a fantastic mode. When I ran my latest fantasy campaign, it had seven sapient races, magical rituals powerful enough to alter the climate of a continent, and a spirit world. But it also was much more realistic than epic, even when its action took place on a large scale.

Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with epic. I've occasionally ventured into epic myself, though it's not my preferred mode. That's a question of taste and of your goals for a campaign. But I think we should be clear that we can have fantastic premises without having an epic manner. Or we can have an epic manner in a mundane campaign—see for example the classic Bond films, or Zorro.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

The severing rules really aren't much of a relief because the core rule is still that if the weakest firearm in the game hits their arm they can no longer use their arm. The arm being cut off or not really tbh is a moot point.

But that's not about lethality, that's about being put out of a fight. Those are two different things in gurps, and being put out of the fight is a LOT more likely to happen than dying, especially with good medical tech (and decent HT).

One good trick to reduce lethality with guns is don't have the bad guys aim for the skull or vitals. The other hits tend to put you between 0 and -HP. And remember failing a death roll often just puts you in need of surgery, not instantly dead.

If you want rules to reduce being put out of the fight.... that's a lot harder.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I feel I at least was fairly consistent about the fact the game can handle such, you (and/or your players) just need to give the characters the right traits (Luck, appropriate Injury Tolerances, Vitality Points or Ablative DR fluffed as representing near-misses, etc) and/or use the right optional rules (Survivable Guns, Flesh Wounds, TV Action Violence, etc). But the GURPS default is that if you throw mundane people into a situation where mundane people are likely to wind up dead... they're likely to wind up dead. And certainly, you can do different tweaks than those we recommended, such as your suggestion of dropping handguns to 1d pi and rifles to 2d(2) pi, you just need to make certain you go into it with both eyes open - nerf guns means "gunman" isn't as viable of an option as the players may be expecting for a cyberpunk game, for example. Unless only OpFor's weapons get the nerf treatment, with the hunting rifle the party loots from Farmer Joe's corpse transforming from 2d(2) pi to 7d pi+ in their hands.

I will, however, admit to becoming a little combative when you stated the rules that make firearms generally deadlier than melee weapons were unrealistic, and I apologize for that. People making what I consider false statements about the nature of reality are something of a pet peeve of mine, and I often fail the resulting Self Control Roll.

Lol well I freely and openly admit to getting excessively combative.

I took upon the task of fusing these (apparently) incompatible elements together in a campaign setting. It took me three months to finally see the supernatural substrate of the world correctly so it all fit together. Then I set about imagining in my new world where everything comes from. Yes, where aaaaaalllllllllllllll the stuff comes from. Mirage (the main city in the setting) collects 70% of the sunlight of death valley for itself and stores the energy by breaking down desert sand and collecting the hydrogen. With the sources of all society's production and wealth accounted for I can begin discussing power and factions, who controls those means. Who stands to gain by bothering others? are there anarchists (The secret of the Valhalla gang is that they actually will *ignore* your convoy if it's too lightly guarded! It's no fun!) Then I can break it down further, what street gangs work with power, what street gangs are on the outs and trying to dislodge others out of hatred or wanting that connection with power and down atomized to your local pawn shop merchant who secretly runs a freezer horror show in the basement... feeding carvings of human dead to the ghouls in the city for a premo price.

Then finally with 6-8 months of work done I can finally begin fitting it within the only system I know of that has a chance of carrying my vision (without me writing my own system from scratch.) Imagine the concussive waves of depression inspiring sheer disappointment when I read how the rules are fundamentally structured to ensure that if you get hit once, just once it's game over. Things like the -4 shock factor. The fact that you in effect aren't allowed to roll successful defensive rolls if less than 2/3rds Hp. That the weakest firearm I could give a NPC would instantly disable a player's limb without effort.... Then I get in discussion and the answers are "don't have those weapons" or "fudge the dice" or in the case of Cinnematic rules "dead doesn't mean dead." (which isn't so bad of an idea tbh considering vampires in my setting can only be killed by fire or light.)

All these trying to paper over the problem of excessively powerful weapons. I think the best solution so far is to give all my player characters 10-15 free hp... AFTER they make their characters so they don't take that into account when making them! It *still* doesn't solve the rule that says "if you're at less than 2/3rds hp you don't get to successfully roll defensive rolls" but it's... better than nothing?