Changing damage progression and price of ST

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Anders

I thought I would try out making swing damage less all-overshadowing. Changing it so that sw = thr+2. At normal ST this makes thrust a viable alternative to swinging. AT TL 0-4, how should that change the price of ST? I've looked at PU:9 and couldn't find anything about how changing basic damage changes the value of ST.

I'm thinking reducing Striking ST to 1 or 2 points per level - it's arguably overpriced anyway compared to Innate Attack. That makes ST cost 6 or 7, which seems reasonable.

Originally Posted by Anthony

The problem with Swing=Thrust+2 is it means half of the possible values of striking ST don't do anything at all for you. You can invert it (Thrust=Swing-2), in which case the value of ST doesn't go down at all and might go up.

That's a fair argument for the price of striking ST being halved down to two or three, right there.

Originally Posted by naloth

I use either regular price with KYOS <or> in the past I've used ST 5/lvl with the regular thrust / BL progression. I suspect the latter would still be fair if you're just adjusting sw.

I use ST at 5/level all of the time, even without the adjustment. It works out pretty well. Gurps generally is very tolerant of moving point costs around.

[zoncxs]

My personal take on damage and ST price is to not use "1d" as any type of standard. It is too small for enough detail for "ST".

I first found out the ratio of BL for all ST scores, using ST 10 as the base. So 20 BL was our "1" and everything was a ratio of that, meaning ST 20 was a ratio of 4.

Doug had an old article about damage being the square root of basic lift and I went with that. That means someone with ST 20 should be doing twice the damage of someone with ST 10. The Math worked out to simplify to:

ST/10 = damage output ratio

from there I played with different numbers till I found one that had a nice progression and only use that.

So someone with ST 20 can lift 4 times as much as an ST 10 person and deals only twice as much as them.

[Anthony]

The simple way around the granularity issue with damage is to separate things out, so "lifting costs [3], hp cost [2], and damage costs [20] per die".

[Anders]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

The Math worked out to simplify to:

ST/10 = damage output ratio

from there I played with different numbers till I found one that had a nice progression and only use that.

That sounds very interesting. Could you e-mail me that progression?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The simple way around the granularity issue with damage is to separate things out, so "lifting costs [3], hp cost [2], and damage costs [20] per die".

And then just give guidelines - "For a typical, 'heroic realism' campaign, an average person has Lifting 10 (BL 20), HP 10, and Damage 1d. Lifting and HP are typically equal; damage is typically +1d per +10 to Lifting and HP. Lifting and HP typically don't deviate more than +30% from each other, and Damage typically doesn't deviate more than +1 point from what Lifting and/or HP would suggest."

(Of course, [20]/die is pretty high, even if that is what Striking ST costs for +1d to swing. [10]/die may be more fair; treating this as [2.5] per +1 wouldn't be terribly far off; above, that would mean +1 to damage per +2.5 to Lifting/HP)

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Anders

That sounds very interesting. Could you e-mail me that progression?

ST/4 = swing dice damage

fractions being:
.25 = +1
.5 = +2
.75 = +1d-1

Thrust is Swing-2.

So ST 10 is 2d+2 sw and 2d thr.

The other thing to note is that known DR needs to get multiplied by 2.5 (round up) and known damage also multiplied by 2.5.

HP cost drop to 1cp per level.

DR cost drop to 2cp per level.

So a pistol that does 2d+2 becomes 6d+1 damage, For a person to match that in regular GURPS they needed ST 16. With my formula they need ST 25.

There are other cascades with my house rule, but the main thing is that ST levels have meaning, its not possible for a human to match a pistol anymore, and you can have Armor that is better against damage and more detailed (levels or them).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

(Of course, [20]/die is pretty high, even if that is what Striking ST costs for +1d to swing. [10]/die may be more fair; treating this as [2.5] per +1 wouldn't be terribly far off; above, that would mean +1 to damage per +2.5 to Lifting/HP)

Part of the issue is that the damage progression for ST comes from Man to Man (TL 3), and the damage progression for innate attack comes from Supers (TL 7). Neither scaling is inherently wrong, but they don't combine well.