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Old 12-17-2020, 02:32 PM   #1
johndallman
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Default [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

High Pain Threshold [10] is a mundane physical advantage. You still feel pain, but it doesn’t affect you nearly as badly as most people. The primary effect of this is that you don’t suffer shock penalties when you’re injured. This advantage first appeared in GURPS 1e.

As well as not suffering shock, you get +3 on your HT rolls to avoid knockdown and stunning, and +3 to resist torture. You can also claim +3 to other rolls to resist pain, at the GM’s discretion. This advantage forms a part of Supernatural Durability, and you can’t have both. High Pain Threshold halves penalties from Bad Back and Pain afflictions, although it does not help with penalties to spell casting for fuelling it with HP instead of FP. It lets you function, with penalties, under Agony afflictions, although you can temporarily lose the advantage to radiation damage or hangovers. You can also gain it from large doses of painkillers. Machines can have High Pain Threshold, representing backup controls and other systems, so that they aren’t disrupted by shock penalties.

Supernatural Durability [150] is a (highly) exotic physical advantage, which means you can only die under special circumstance. This advantage appeared at GURPS 4e, based on the 3e Vampiric Invulnerability advantage.

Someone with Supernatural Durability takes damage normally, and suffers knockback, but is immune to shock, physical stunning and knockout. While they have 0HP or more, they have their full Move and Dodge, and can’t be crippled. On negative HP, they are at half Move and Dodge, and can be crippled. They can’t die unless they’re at ‑HP or below, when injuries by something specified when they bought the disadvantage can cause them to have to make death checks like a normal person. This must be “Occasional” or more common on the Limited Defences table (p. B46), and anything to which they have a Vulnerability does the same. If injuries from these sources take them past ‑5×HP, they die automatically; if they are below ‑5×HP from other damage, any injury from these sources kills them. Additionally, any attack that does 10×HP in one hit will kill them, so that vampires don’t survive planetary collisions.

High Pain Threshold is a common advantage option on templates for combatants especially in low-tech settings like Banestorm, DF, or Discworld. It’s also common on tough “monsters,” especially undead, where it makes the GM’s opponents management simpler and increases the threat level. Bio-Tech can engineer it, and Horror applies it to many creatures. Low-Tech allows Esoteric Medicine to grant this advantage under controlled conditions, and clarifies pain levels; LTC1 lets it help with low-tech surgery.

Magic has an elixir that gives High Pain Threshold, but the Resist Pain spell’s effects are different. Mysteries recommends this advantage for hard-boiled detectives, and Powers: Divine Favor and The Weird rebuild it as Resistant (+3) to the Very Common effect of Pain. Social Engineering makes it useful in fake fights, and Back to School provides a way of acquiring it. Thaumatology has uses for it in blood and gem magics, although it can be counter-productive in magic that requires painful sacrifice.

Supernatural Durability is much rarer, being confined to powerful supernatural creatures; Horror has advice on these. Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 has a trick for bypassing Supernatural Durability, which would be useful with many Zombies.

I’ve always felt that the way to survive combat in GURPS was avoiding getting hit, rather than avoiding the shock penalties, so I don’t think I’ve ever used High Pain Threshold on a PC. As a GM, I’ve used Supernatural Durability on a monster that did physical attacks, and it made quite a mess of the PC who got to fight it in a narrow tunnel, although he survived after extensive medical treatment. This was in my Laundry Files campaign, where healing magic was, to say the least, inadvisable.

Have these advantages saved the day in your games?

Last edited by johndallman; 01-28-2021 at 03:25 PM. Reason: Layout
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Old 12-17-2020, 03:36 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Back in GURPS Steampunk, I recommended HPT as an advantage for pugilists.
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Old 12-17-2020, 03:50 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Related to this is Immunity to Pain or such.
Lets see Injury Tolerance (Unstoppable) [10] from Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 and the same thing or very closely related from GURPS Zombies which I dnt have at hand this moment.
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Old 12-17-2020, 03:51 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Powers: Divine Favor page 10 introduces Resistant/Immune to Pain, and specifies that the lowest level is High Pain Threshold, plus briefly describes some of the others.

I have players bring that advantage occasionally. Far more than I've ever seen Supernatural durability.
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Old 12-17-2020, 05:37 PM   #5
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

HPT is almost ubiquitous among my combat characters, as not suffering a penalty due to shock is quite valuable (it is even more common than Combat Reflexes, though the combination is quite common). I almost never use Supernatural Durability, as a combination of HT, HPT, Injury Tolerance, Recovery, and Regeneration is almost always more useful for the same point value.
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Old 12-17-2020, 08:30 PM   #6
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
Related to this is Immunity to Pain or such.
I wrote up Immunity to Pain for GURPS Powers: The Weird, giving it a base value of 30 points.
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Old 12-17-2020, 11:37 PM   #7
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

While HPT And Resistant/Immunity to pain are reasonably common in my games, combat robots and undead don't generally feel pain, one thing I rarely see is it's mirror image: Resistant/Immunity to Pleasure. Euphoria is priced exactly like 1.5 levels of pain, which to me implies the possibility of reworking it to be an exact mirror with Low, Moderate and High Euphoria levels, and Ecstacy is treated as exactly as the same as Agony with a different skill bonus, and the only ability related to it is Killjoy, a disadvantage. I suppose pleasure attacks just aren't very common.
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Old 12-18-2020, 12:12 AM   #8
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Well, pain is general considered a bad thing while pleasure is generally considered a good thing because we are generally wired to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. I know that I would much rather be targeted by Ecstasy rather than Agony, even if the effects are mechanically the same.
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Old 12-18-2020, 12:14 AM   #9
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyneras View Post
I suppose pleasure attacks just aren't very common.
I actually had a character with an Affliction for Ecstasy and he was pretty devastating.
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Old 12-18-2020, 09:13 AM   #10
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: High Pain Threshold and Supernatural Durability

I have a strong dislike for supernatural durability. It feels like it should be a metatrait built of various other pieces, and as such its hard to tweak. It does include some nice abilities, but its for some very specific purposes.

I use it in exactly one situation, though that one keeps coming up: its on the monster hunters vampire template. When I play monster hunters, I'm generally trying to throw together a game with either minimal prep or with minimal house-rules to explain, so I use the supplements exactly as written, and that means looking up the rules on how supernatural durability works for vampires.
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