How to protect casters?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Gizensha

Pre-MMO, to me, reflects genre rather than time period.

Indeed. I was speaking in terms of design generations, not calendar years. I tend to cite years -- as I did for the PnP RPGs -- when I am discussing years.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by blacksmith

How much of the outlook is from DND and how much is from fiction though?

You encounter both in both, and also in real-world myth. The key thing is that as soon as you use the word "god," by itself or as part of "demigod," you're relegating the entity to a special category that plays by its own rules.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

But the only source of cheap/free healing is a Cleric. What's up with that?

Why are your holy warriors forbidden from taking Healing as a Holy Might ability? That version of Healing costs 33 points, while even a starting holy warrior can put up to 50 points toward Holy Might. And Healing is a potent, open-ended ability . . . a holy warrior with bog-standard 13 FP can heal up to 26 HP in one shot this way.

A scholar can use his special Wild Talent to cast just about any Healing spell he wants. Not over and over . . . but he can start out with up to two levels of that trait, allowing him to have up to two castings of Major Healing or even Great Healing per session, if he needs it.

And an artificer can accumulate as many healing potions, balms, gems, etc., as he wishes; leave them at some unspecified "back at town" location; and Gizmo them into existence as needed. This isn't cheap or free, but after a couple of adventures, it will amount to a few instant healings per game session that use resources that nobody has to carry -- and that, truth be told, will probably be easy to hoard. Also, as DF 2 notes, he can use Alchemy to get the ones he does buy at 20% off (or at 50% off, if the GM allows him to learn Herb Lore, although that limits other abilities).

In actual play, my gamers' PCs rely more on their artificer's healing elixirs, their wild mage's "remembered" Healing spells (via Wild Talent), and their shaman's Healing advantage than they do on castings of studied Healing spells. Thanks to defense rolls and DR, GURPS hack n' slashers generally avoid injury, where in other games they would lose HP; so really, what you need is one or two large, reliable healings, not lots of small ones. These sorts of abilities deliver that.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Thanks to defense rolls and DR, GURPS hack n' slashers generally avoid injury, where in other games they would lose HP; so really, what you need is one or two large, reliable healings, not lots of small ones. These sorts of abilities deliver that.

It strikes me that this is exactly right, and fits well with modern and future tech as well, where the results of most wounds tend to be "miss" or "squish."

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

It strikes me that this is exactly right, and fits well with modern and future tech as well, where the results of most wounds tend to be "miss" or "squish."

It's exactly realistic. It does not, however, tend to fit the cinematic genre, of which dungeon fantasy is most certainly a category.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's exactly realistic. It does not, however, tend to fit the cinematic genre, of which dungeon fantasy is most certainly a category.

I've played cinematic GURPS in multiple genres, and the miss/squish issue comes up in most of them unless you do something like the "half damage for expending 1CP 'flesh wound' rule."

It's an artifact of weapon damages being pretty darn high while HP are held to more moderate levels. For firearms and blasters and such, obviously damage get get pretty uber pretty fast.

as power level increases, damage dealing ability goes up. Damage soak ability often does not unless players are encouraged to make their characters suitably robust.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I've played cinematic GURPS in multiple genres, and the miss/squish issue comes up in most of them unless you do something like the "half damage for expending 1CP 'flesh wound' rule."

I didn't say that the miss/squish problem is only a problem in DF. The miss/ping/squish problem is a generic issue with cinematic GURPS, and is a major reason I don't use GURPS for cinematic games.

[Kromm]

Well in this case, it has nothing to do with genre . . . it's just how the game works. I can truthfully say that I've run well over a thousand GURPS combats, especially if I include Man to Man tourneys in 1985. Whether the battles were high-tech or low-tech, high-powered or low-powered, high-realism or using every cinematic rule going, the usual outcome was a few PCs totally blasted and on the floor, but the rest unscratched. I've very rarely seen battles where everybody was a little hurt and the PCs needed someone to patch them all up a tad; the all-or-nothing nature of active defenses tends to prevent that.

You can certainly build a mountain-of-HP fighter and rely on that instead of defenses to not die, but that's just another person who needs lots of healing. He simply doesn't fall down from it.

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I didn't say that the miss/squish problem is only a problem in DF. The miss/ping/squish problem is a generic issue with cinematic GURPS, and is a major reason I don't use GURPS for cinematic games.

Isn't damage in GURPS and damage in the other game measures of significantly different things, though? While GURPS limits HP to measuring injury, the other game has it measure things like lucky escapes, ability to dodge, etc. Which means it's just as possible to make characters capable of soaking up as much 'damage' in GURPS as it is in the other game... It just won't look like you're soaking up damage because you're not. A few levels of luck, improvements to active defences, etc.

A hit in GURPS is a hit. A hit in the other game is an abstract concept of leeching away at the enemy's ability to survive combat.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You can certainly build a mountain-of-HP fighter and rely on that instead of defenses to not die, but that's just another person who needs lots of healing. He simply doesn't fall down from it.

Although the mountain-of-HP comes packaged with built-in accelerated healing rates, making it an even more attractive option. A knight with HP 30 will not only take three times as much damage to put down, he heals three times as much when he gets a healing spell, Healing, a healing potion, etc., as well as through natural HP recovery. Since HP are very cheap, this is a perfectly viable path to take, if the GM allows it.