Keeping you players alive for dummies

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by benz72

Danger Sense is the way to avoid a fight, Tactics is the way to win a fight, but if you get into trouble Luck, armor*, HT and HP are the ways to give yourself time to recover.

I would add that Combat Reflexes is the way to get through a fight unscathed. To my mind it's an even better buy than Danger Sense.

[RGTraynor]

Plenty of good advice above. My own take on some of the points:

1) I disagree that Combat Reflexes is the supreme Advantage here. It gives you an edge, and a solid one, but for a straight-up brawl where you have your weapons in your hands and the good guys aren't surprised, all it really gives you is that +1 to defenses. Which is fine, but that doesn't come close to beating Luck. Luck is what keeps PCs alive. Luck is what negates that bad guy's critical hit or your critical miss. Luck is what lets you say "Let's try that one again, shall we?" when you're making a HT roll for survival and you rolled a 17. Luck is when you're glowering at your feeble damage dice for the shot you put into the Big Bad's head.

2) It isn't really true that GURPS is all that lethal -- compare and contrast, after all, with the expected lifespan of a 1st or 2nd level D&D character. It's that it's fairly easy to incapacitate a character in GURPS. A single center-mass pistol shot might drop a man, but for the most part the assailant would have to empty his pistol into the body to do worse.

3) Frontal assault is for morons, the desperate or for those who aspire to die young. Waiting until you only have a couple HP left before bugging out is for morons, the desperate or for those who aspire to die young.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

2) It isn't really true that GURPS is all that lethal -- compare and contrast, after all, with the expected lifespan of a 1st or 2nd level D&D character. .

This reminds of some pts of my own.

I've never lost a Gurps character as a player or as a GM. I've lost lots of D&D characters and killed one as a DM. How that happened might be a little instructive.

It was a Critical Hit of course and D&D crits are probably generally worse than Gurps ones. It's extremely hard to get Gurps 2x or 3x damage.

I was also using things as they were written up in the published module. The designers had taken the "standard" 3.5 Orc (which was already a "glass cannon") and made it more so by dropping the AC by 1 but raising the damage by 1 too. Then they made their standard weapon a polearm with "reach" and a 3x crit multiiplier. They either misread the PHB stats or decided to change them.

They may have thought it was important that their "orcs" be "real threats". That didn't work. My PCs were contemptuous of how easily these "orcs" died.
Until this "orc" who only had 6 pts and a bad AC did 42 pts of damage to a 2nd level character and I still hear about it 10 years later.

So this leads to the point that many things that "might" cause a GM to kill a PC are things that are under his control. Don't build your npcs to be "glass cannons" or "eggshells armed with hammers". If anything npcs should be underarmed but if you don't want them to die like flies give them(cheap) armor or better Defense scores or even more HP.. Be sparing with that last option. It's okay if npcs go down after 1 good hit.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I was also using things as they were written up in the published module. The designers had taken the "standard" 3.5 Orc (which was already a "glass cannon") and made it more so by dropping the AC by 1 but raising the damage by 1 too. Then they made their standard weapon a polearm with "reach" and a 3x crit multiiplier. They either misread the PHB stats or decided to change them.

That sounds like they took the 3.0 orc and changed it's stats from 'average orc' to 'warrior'. Or took the 3.5 orc (already a warrior) and gave it the 3.0's Great Axe as a weapon. The writers changed the 3.5 orc's weapon to a falchion (2d4 damage, x2/1820 crit) from a great axe (1d12 damage, 20/x3) for a darned good reason.

BTW I, as GM, killed a 3rd level ranger that had full hit points with one of those D&D3.0 orcs with that same thing - rolled a crit, rolled an 11 or 12 on the die and did 39 or 42 points of damage.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That sounds like they took the 3.0 orc and changed it's stats from 'average orc' to 'warrior'. Or took the 3.5 orc (already a warrior) and gave it the 3.0's Great Axe as a weapon. T.

No, it was a variant race with a plus to ST and a minus to DX compared to regular Orcs and they armed them with mis-statted glaives (I think). Anyway they gave it a x3 Crit to it instead a x2 (plus the reach).

Anyway, don't things like this. Roll the dice enough and all the possible numbers will come up including those killer crits.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

No, it was a variant race with a plus to ST and a minus to DX compared to regular Orcs and they armed them with mis-statted glaives (I think). Anyway they gave it a x3 Crit to it instead a x2 (plus the reach).

Anyway, don't things like this. Roll the dice enough and all the possible numbers will come up including those killer crits.

Of course, GURPS also has crit tables and crit-table-like things...if you choose to use them.

If you want more predictable (and hence more avoidably lethal) outcomes, don't.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Of course, GURPS also has crit tables and crit-table-like things...if you choose to use them.

If you want more predictable (and hence more avoidably lethal) outcomes, don't.

The Gurps crits for 2x and 3x damage are confirmed about a 100x less often than the D&D ones. That's one of the things that would make Gurps _less_ lethal than D&D.

I could see not rolling on the Gurps crit tables as a time saver. We seldom got any worthwhile result during my last full Gurps campaign but it's not high on my list of the ways to make Gurps less lethal.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You may wish to avoid bleeding rolls, and if you do use them then you won't want to use the rules from High Tech and Bio Tech that make severe wounds harder to patch up (in some cases calling for Surgery at a penalty) - if it just requires basic First Aid, then outside of the party all being knocked out and left for dead, bandaging them up to prevent further bleeding will keep them alive.

Bleeding is a weird one, the basic bleeding rules and the blow through rule in HT help short term survivability. I had one come up the other week where one of my NPC's took three c 10 damage hits in a round without falling into death check territory because of the damage caps.

But then again major wounds and multiple wounds are pretty much a death sentence without outside help (or even with it if somebody is short on luck).

On balance, keeping all of that in mind, I would recommend the basic bleeding rule and the blow through rule for grittier games.

[Pursuivant]

Four more tips on how to handle combat/damage dice rolls.

1) Fudge damage dice rolls or just use average damage for NPCs. For example, if an NPC does 1d HP crushing with a mace, just assume that they do 3 or 4 HP per hit.

Alternately, compare average damage vs. DR and only assign damage in proportion. For example, if using the mace example above vs. armor with DR 4, statistically the mace man is only going to do 1-2 HP every 3 hits.

This also speeds up play if you choose a damage result rather than rolling for it.

2) Don't let random rolls kill PCs. Reroll random hit locations or critical hit results that result in massive damage modifiers. The exception is if you want a particular foe to be really lethal, the PCs are prepared accordingly, and the players are willing to lose characters.

For example, just assume that any hit is generic "torso" damage rather than being randomly aimed at the Brain or Vitals.

Again, ignoring Hit Location and/or Critical Hit rolls speeds play since you don't have to roll dice and interpret the results.

You can also do the John Wick (GM, not Marvel character) trick of asking the player if they're willing to accept a lethal hit on their PC. If the player says yes, let the dice finish the PC off. If the player says no, let them come up with a plausible reason why their character survives but is badly injured and out of fight. Then, give them an option of having their character suffer some sort of permanent problem (canonically, -25 character points in exchange for Extra Life granted on the fly) or die heroically at a later time.

3) Related to Suggestion # 2: Take a limb, not a life. Instead of killing PCs outright, treat them like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail - cripple their limbs until the player gets the idea that it's time to stop fighting. Massive damage to the torso or head is an instant kill. Massive damage to a limb is a fight ender and means that the limb is probably gone, but the PC is still alive. Given access to suitable magic/advanced technology, the missing body part might be a temporary setback rather than a life-altering experience.

4) Reinterpret critical hits or deadly HP damage as "bad stuff happens that isn't HP loss. For example, a critical hit or damage roll which would normally kill the character knocks them down, knocks them unconscious, or breaks their weapon.

If the players are into the idea, allow them to spend character points as "fate/impulse points" to convert lethal damage into something less permanent using the "Only a Flesh Wound" rules. Unlike the standard rule, be creative in explaining why the PC isn't as badly hurt or is only out of the fight rather than dead. For example, they might get knocked down a hill or trapped beneath falling rubble. They can eventually get back into action, but by the time they do the fight will be over.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Frost

On balance, keeping all of that in mind, I would recommend the basic bleeding rule and the blow through rule for grittier games.

I wouldn't use bleeding at all unless you think it'll add something useful to your game - it increases lethality, but almost entirely on the PC side of things in most games, and it adds bookkeeping.