07-11-2013, 06:53 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
In my experience, GURPS has worked for almost every adventuring encounter I've tried to game out. After all, "universal" is right in the name! But it fell flat when I wanted to play a pirates game and model ship damage. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to want a playable set of rules for ship damage. |
|
07-11-2013, 06:55 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Mar 2010
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
Characters have variable ST/HP as regards their mass due to it being a game and it not wanting to penalize the player who wants to play a tough but small character; such is the same reason female characters don't have lower ST attributes, that weight doesn't mandate a certain Basic Move and that height also doesn't mandate a certain Ground Move. (GURPS Basic, pg 19) Last edited by Sunrunners_Fire; 07-11-2013 at 07:09 AM. |
|
07-11-2013, 07:05 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
One thing to consider is that the key function of GURPS' damage model is to handle human-like-beings shooting, clubbing and stabbing each other. Damage to living things is incredibly hard to model. So it is not surprising that it has problems as a model for large wood or steel vessels shooting at each other. That is not what is was designed for. (I think that if you search these forums, you can find a Kromm or Pulver post explaining what problems with human-scale-combat in 3e the 4e rules were meant to solve. I think it was an issue with fights between two giants or two small creatures).
GURPS is not the best engine for vehicle combat, but designing a damage model which is just as good for vehicle combat as it is for human-like-beings fighting each other would be very difficult. And using one model for living things, and another for buildings and ships and aircraft, would be more complicated.
__________________
"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
07-11-2013, 07:49 AM | #24 |
Munchkin Line Editor
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Yep, right before "RolePlaying." It's not the Generic Universal Vehicle Combat System.
__________________
Andrew Hackard, Munchkin Line Editor If you have a question that isn't getting answered, we have a thread for that. Let people like what they like. Don't be a gamer hater. #PlayMunchkin on social media: Twitter || Facebook || Instagram || YouTube Follow us on Kickstarter: Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 |
07-11-2013, 07:54 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Mar 2010
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
SJG can't publish articles and books no one writes. :) |
|
07-11-2013, 08:14 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
That said, optional rules published in Pyramid and on the forums do wonders for making things work out properly. Namely, the alternative HP scaling rules and giving everyone DR equal to 10% of their HP and/or ignoring any hit smaller than 10% of their HP. The vehicular combat system also seems to work fine for more normal sized vehicles, like cars; it's just the big things like ships that are an issue. |
|
07-11-2013, 08:15 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Caxias do Sul, Brazil
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
Actually, even for humans we have some problems, such as Swing damage, where a strong human can cut through armor with a cheap knife as if it was butter. |
|
07-11-2013, 08:24 AM | #28 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
The game isn't perfect, and has its flaws. Pretending they don't exist is actually rather disrespectful to the areas that it excels in.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
|
07-11-2013, 08:31 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
So it's more than a little disconcerting to see SJ Games staff responding to discussions on an area where new rules are desired with hostility and criticism. I very much want systems for vehicle combat that actually functions to emulate vehicle combat for popular genres; like naval combat with wooden ships and iron men or dogfighting knights of the sky. I don't really have the time to commit to writing one, though. And I don't have any writing creds either. I'm willing to playtest GURPS Seadogs, Sails and Shiverin' Timbers*, contribute material or even co-write it with one or two others, but I won't do it all myself. I do have to eat and that requires spending more time on writing legal briefs than game supplements, official or unofficial. I'm hoping David Pulver will, if he sees interest, come up with an adaptation of his Spaceships system, though, incorporating his fixes from Pyramid for large, more-or-less homogenous things. That has potential to be elegant, playable and realistic enough to be useful. *Alternate names would be considered, if reluctantly.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
|
07-11-2013, 08:39 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
|
Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
Quote:
In the end? It appears that vehicles in general, relative to the scaling of damage - is flawed in the sense that vehicles have too little hit points for realism. Having said that? What precisely are "Hit points"? It is an abstraction to a degree (heck, a MAJOR degree) that states in effect "This much damage is required to make the body non-functional, this much damage is required to render the body unlivable, and this much damage is required to render the body into itty bitty parts that are disconnected from each other." That we utilize dice in the process is to give a relatively random element to the process because we can't account for everything that IS possible to happen in real life. Place a .44 cal. gun 2 inches from the heart and pull the trigger, one would expect that all of the energy available within the cartridge will dump into the heart - not some random 2d6+1 (or what ever is determined to be the range of damage for a .44 cal. slug) die roll. If someone really wanted to have fun? They could start an investigation on just how many bullets are lodged within a body after being fired from a gun. For GURPS, if any given bullet does damage in excess of a body's HP level (or for limbs, the max damage that can be inflicted upon a limb) the bullet blows through. Yet... It seems to me that various accounts have bullets lodged within the body (Often times in bone or adjacent to bone) indicating that the bullet did not have sufficient energy to exit the body. Taking damage to the rib bone first, and then having the bullet go through the body means what in GURPS terms? These things are "hyper-realistic" demands for a hard core simulationist, that may NOT be desirable by the main body of players (Phoenix Command anyone?!!!). But at least it is an abstraction that people are willing to accept in their suspension of disbelief. Therein lies a problem I believe. When you have a level of abstraction, and people can agree that it is in the right ball-park as far as "realism" is concerned, whether it is SUPER simulationist to the point of requiring extra time to play out the game, or whether it is marginally simulationist and plays fast is relatively immaterial. The purpose of rules is to facilitate a game - correct? The purpose of rules in a role playing game is to facilitate a story and to some degree, permit people to avoid worrying about whether or not what they're portraying is realistic or not (suspension of disbelief). Case in point? My 18 year old daughter was in LOVE with the original FAST AND FURIOUS movie franchise. We had the pleasure of watching FAST AND FURIOUS 6 (SPOILER ALERT for those who haven't seen it) Spoiler space... Spoiler space.... Spoiler space end... Where the hero leaps out of a vehicle moving at high speed, collides in mid-air with the love object (A delectably lovely love interest I might add!) then slams into the windshield of a moving vehicle with his back while she's atop his chest, cushioning her landing like an overgrown teddybear cushion. Meanwhile, we have another woman who is moving a similar speeds, falling from a car to the ground from a similar height, who is mourned for being lost in the heat of battle. Lack of consistency was an issue in this movie. What was even worse? There were a lot of things that were "over the top" to which my daughter muttered "Bull<censored>" over and over (fortunately, we were at a showing where we were the only customers at the tail end of the movie run). In the end? The same thing holds true with any rules system. Some people might find the fast and playable reason for play, worth the while. Some like the cinematic style of play (Heck, how many people remember the JAMES BOND role playing game?) to where the cinematic approach is the primary reason for its popularity. Then, there are some who like uber-realistic rules. That is why we have a diverse market of role playing systems instead of one rules set to rule them all. In the end? I don't mind abstractions. I don't even really mind rules systems that have a little more meat to them. It may very well be, that the reason for this is that I grew to love wargames first, then role playing games and think nothing of spending a day recreating the Battle of Gettysburg via TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD by SPI instead of playing the one page BATTLE OF THE BULGE games ;) What I do mind however, is when a rules set allows for unrealistic results while attempting to simulate realistic parameters in game - be it vehicular simulations set in the age of Heroes (biremes and pentakonters) or chariots or castles or wooden ships and iron men, or even space patrol characters in space ships. If one has a belief that the game system models reality reasonably well for the known things, then such confidence can extend to totally imaginary things (like spaceships!).
__________________
Newest Alaconius Lecture now up: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scourge-of-shards-schpdx Go to bottom of page to see lectures 1-11 |
|
Tags |
damage, hit points |
|
|