Gurps Damage question

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

I did see that muscle powers weapons are swing/thrust based, but I assigned dice rolls to them bc my players are…well lazy.

That is perfectly understandable; I was just making certain you understood the way GURPS generally handles things, and it sounds like you've got a good handle on that.

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

I’m actually glad you addressed the 3 turn comment too. So the way I designed the sword when I crafted it in game while my brother was still running it is that it sprays and lifts liquid hydrogen (we found concentrated hydrogen on an alien ship) so it sprays a super hot flame throughout the length of the blade. My brother assigned a random damage roll with a different addition for if it was using the hydrogen cylinder or poison cylinder, along with the 3 turn before reload stipulation, and we called it that. What I’d come up with is earth metal behaves like weapon rolls and armor in the basic set set (mainly so DR with earth materials was limited and they’d either have to craft or find better ones using alien stuff) but my sword is made with alien tech so it gets a +4 to swing/thrust and the (2) armor divisor. Since it has to distribute both poison and flame more than likely it would be coming out from a few parts of the blade (I based it off Hiccups sword from How To Train Your Dragon so imagine something like that). So I’d come up with (for swing) swing+4(2) cut with +1d burn damage. This flame effect on the sword only lasts 3 of my combat turns (so 3 seconds), after which I would have to spend the my next turn ejecting the old canister and putting in a new one if I still wanted the extra damage. So swing+4(2)cut with 1d burn for 3 turns. With a successful hit and 4+ burning damage on a single hit, the enemy is lit on fire and has to make a DX-3 roll on their turn to put the fire out or take 1d-3 burning damage. This follow up lasts for 3 turns as well before the fire on them dwindled down.

With all that in mind, my suggestion for the weapon (in flaming sword mode) would be for it to have 1d+4 cut inc (the inc to represent the sword blade being hot, regardless of if the flame manages to get through) and a linked 1d burn. The flame sticking to the target on a roll of 4+ for 1d-3 burn is a special effect you can make note of (but keep in mind that if the initial flame doesn't burn through the armor, this one will have to deal with it - meaning it won't harm them, but will be rather distracting; see the rules for being on fire on B434).

For the poison canister, I feel you should probably have it able to squirt poison onto the blade three times, and the poison stays there until you either hit something or it gets removed some other way (say, burned off because you tossed a hydrogen canister in there). The poison would simply be a follow-up of some flavor; 1d tox should work just fine (typically this would be resistible in some manner - perhaps an HT-4 roll - but that's not strictly necessary), but you could also add an Affliction to the effect if you'd like (which should indeed be resistible). If it's just spraying toxin for 3 seconds, I'd still have it be a follow-up (and stay on the blade after the 3 seconds are up), and maybe have any struck foe with an open wound at the hit location you targeted (or who has unprotected eyes and you hit them in the face) suffer the effects of the poison even if you fail to penetrate their DR (the poison gets sprayed onto the open wound, or into their eyes).

As a final note, for that "made of alien materials" effect, I'll note that the Superfine modifier from Ultra-Tech functions similarly - I believe it automatically counts as Very Fine (it's one step up from that), for +2 to cutting/impaling damage, and gives a (2) Armor Divisor.

[ChaoticDM]

Originally Posted by Varyon

With all that in mind, my suggestion for the weapon (in flaming sword mode) would be for it to have 1d+4 cut inc (the inc to represent the sword blade being hot, regardless of if the flame manages to get through) and a linked 1d burn. The flame sticking to the target on a roll of 4+ for 1d-3 burn is a special effect you can make note of (but keep in mind that if the initial flame doesn't burn through the armor, this one will have to deal with it - meaning it won't harm them, but will be rather distracting; see the rules for being on fire on B434).

That’s what I was going for, the linked 1d burn and special effect would only happen if the initial attack went over the DR, if not then there would be no damage applied. I’ll check on those rules for fire when I get it all written up.

For the poison canister, I feel you should probably have it able to squirt poison onto the blade three times, and the poison stays there until you either hit something or it gets removed some other way (say, burned off because you tossed a hydrogen canister in there). The poison would simply be a follow-up of some flavor; 1d tox should work just fine (typically this would be resistible in some manner - perhaps an HT-4 roll - but that's not strictly necessary), but you could also add an Affliction to the effect if you'd like (which should indeed be resistible). If it's just spraying toxin for 3 seconds, I'd still have it be a follow-up (and stay on the blade after the 3 seconds are up), and maybe have any struck foe with an open wound at the hit location you targeted (or who has unprotected eyes and you hit them in the face) suffer the effects of the poison even if you fail to penetrate their DR (the poison gets sprayed onto the open wound, or into their eyes).

The way I was figuring it was similar to the burning damage. Our chemist synthesized the poison from some alien fluid a bit ago but I haven’t used it in combat yet. I was kinda thinking of putting a similar damage and special effect as the burn, with the idea that the poison is fast acting but (due to not being from our planet) fast degrading. The canister drips a constant stream of the poison onto the blade, but it all evaporated after 3 turns (same mentality as the aliens dying in war of the worlds), the sword damage goes over DR, 1d initial toxic damage, with the effect that if the toxic damage is 3+, the person hit is poisoned for 3 (the poison degrades in their system), and must roll HT-4 to resist the poison or ends take -3 to any MV and DX based skill. Of course all of that only happens if the initial attack passes the DR.

As a final note, for that "made of alien materials" effect, I'll note that the Superfine modifier from Ultra-Tech functions similarly - I believe it automatically counts as Very Fine (it's one step up from that), for +2 to cutting/impaling damage, and gives a (2) Armor Divisor.

I do have both of the Ultra Tech books, i’ll absolutely look over those as well. Thank you

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

I do have both of the Ultra Tech books, i’ll absolutely look over those as well. Thank you

Two Ultra Tech books? Are they softcovers that say 3rd edition on their fronts? It's fine if they are but if you ask questions about them you'd need to mention that 3e bit.

[ChaoticDM]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Two Ultra Tech books? Are they softcovers that say 3rd edition on their fronts? It's fine if they are but if you ask questions about them you'd need to mention that 3e bit.

I just checked, all of my books are for 4th edition except for High Tech 2. I’m assuming that the 4th edition of High Tech merged 1 and 2 together into one book, 2 didn’t say which edition on the cover, it’s on the inside. I try to get all the books in the 4th edition so my game is consistent with the current rule set.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

I just checked, all of my books are for 4th edition except for High Tech 2. I’m assuming that the 4th edition of High Tech merged 1 and 2 together into one book, 2 didn’t say which edition on the cover, it’s on the inside. I try to get all the books in the 4th edition so my game is consistent with the current rule set.

Numbers can be a problem because they can confuse updated editions of that particular book and the _game_ edition a book was written for.

The glossy black hardcover that's High Tech for 4th edition happens to be the 4th version of High tech printed too. High tech 2nd edition (and High tech 3rd edition for that matter) were updated versions of the first High Tech. You don't need anything except the 4e version.

To confuse matters further there were UTs 1 & 2 which were non-overlapping and both for 3rd ed. UT for 4e took a lot of stuff that was in both of those (but not everything) and updated them for 4th edition.

There have been only 2 editions of Low Tech. The 1st for 3e and the second for 4e.

[ChaoticDM]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Numbers can be a problem because they can confuse updated editions of that particular book and the _game_ edition a book was written for.

The glossy black hardcover that's High Tech for 4th edition happens to be the 4th version of High tech printed too. High tech 2nd edition (and High tech 3rd edition for that matter) were updated versions of the first High Tech. You don't need anything except the 4e version.

To confuse matters further there were UTs 1 & 2 which were non-overlapping and both for 3rd ed. UT for 4e took a lot of stuff that was in both of those (but not everything) and updated them for 4th edition.

There have been only 2 editions of Low Tech. The 1st for 3e and the second for 4e.

I’m slowly learning that, Amazon doesn’t even list which editions some books are. I almost got the Transhuman Space book before I saw it was 2e. I haven’t gotten Low-Tech yet, But I did get the Low-Tech Companion 2 4e PDF because it included rules on armor damage and I wanted to include that in part of my calculator and campaign.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

I’ I almost got the Transhuman Space book before I saw it was 2e..

Transhuman Space is a special case. It's based off of 3rd ed game mechanics but isn't directly compatible. It is its' own thing. This is sort of what he "Powered by Gurps" logo means. It was fairly influential on some of the tech and space travel stuff for 4e.

[ChaoticDM]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Transhuman Space is a special case. It's based off of 3rd ed game mechanics but isn't directly compatible. It is its' own thing. This is sort of what he "Powered by Gurps" logo means. It was fairly influential on some of the tech and space travel stuff for 4e.

Interesting. I have both the Space 4e and Spaceships 4e (our campaign is about scavenging alien shipwrecks to build our own ship and get off planet) so eventually our campaign will take us into space so I have them for when the campaign gets that far. I was interested in Transhuman because it mentioned Artificial intelligence, and we picked up a functioning AI from a ship ( my brother introduced a few things without having a clue on how they’d work.) So I’m trying to do my research to see if I want build it in the way GURPs builds AI or if I just want to homebrew something. We basically described the AI as Space Wikipedia so it’s a source of knowledge beyond what we have at our disposal.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ChaoticDM

, so instead of them looking at their swing/thrust and adding whatever +/- the weapon gave them to that, I just put the dice roll down so I don’t have to baby them though it.

The way this is supposed to work is you figure out what the damage is and write that down once, when you make your character or pick up a new weapon, which seems like what you are doing anyway.


In regards to Transhuman Space: the 4th edition update Changing Times just updates the mechanics to 4e, you would still want the 3e Powered by GURPS core book to make sense of the setting.

[ChaoticDM]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The way this is supposed to work is you figure out what the damage is and write that down once, when you make your character or pick up a new weapon, which seems like what you are doing anyway.

Yeah, I’m trying to get everything on everyone’s character sheet as accurate to GURPS as possible, most of the original character sheets (we’ve been using a custom one that one of our group members used, it’s a very basic one that lists like 1/3 of what a GURPs character sheet does) didn’t have any swing or thrust damage, and the ones that did my brother kinda bs’d what they’d be. I looked up the rolls based on each characters ST and put it on the character sheet that I made (which is about 80% of what’s on a GURPs sheet but it’s everything we use on a regular basis in the game.), then on muscle powered weapons that are swing/thrust +/- something, I just put down a dice roll that’s exactly their swing/thrust roll +/- whatever the book has it as (so if they have swing at a 1d-3 and the weapon is swing+2, I put down 1d-1 for their weapon roll.) Like I said my brother started GMing this game with a basic/loose understanding of the GURPS Lite sheet, when he handed it to me to GM, I got the books and started to research how the game worked. I appreciate my brother starting the game up, but I have a bit more to research and figure out before I’m ready to run another session.