Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Purple Snit]

Part of what puzzles me is the choice of genre; picking Cyberpunk, then saying you don't want death by gunfire, seems odd. Kind of like picking high fantasy and disallowing magic. Why go with Cyberpunk at all, unless it's an espionage-themed game?
And are you going to nerf the PC weapons, too? That might annoy them a bit as well; " What do you mean my M-16 does damage like a thrown dagger!?!?"
If big vampire dudes sinking axes into their enemies is what you want, maybe After The End or a Fantasy game would fit your ideas better?
I'm not trying to rain on your parade - I just think that your expectations of a Cyberpunk campaign are outbif synch with the traditional weapons.
If you don't want the PCs dying in a firefight, you have every right as GM to fudge and describe rolls to make it dramatic. I don't think rewriting all the damages is the best way to go. But ymmv.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

Part of what puzzles me is the choice of genre; picking Cyberpunk, then saying you don't want death by gunfire, seems odd. Kind of like picking high fantasy and disallowing magic. Why go with Cyberpunk at all, unless it's an espionage-themed game?
And are you going to nerf the PC weapons, too? That might annoy them a bit as well; " What do you mean my M-16 does damage like a thrown dagger!?!?"
If big vampire dudes sinking axes into their enemies is what you want, maybe After The End or a Fantasy game would fit your ideas better?
I'm not trying to rain on your parade - I just think that your expectations of a Cyberpunk campaign are outbif synch with the traditional weapons.
If you don't want the PCs dying in a firefight, you have every right as GM to fudge and describe rolls to make it dramatic. I don't think rewriting all the damages is the best way to go. But ymmv.

I don't want *instant* death by gunfire....

Ok, imagine you boot up the video game cyberpunk 2077. You have that first mission with the cyber ghoul haunt right? Ok, you mistep and two of the goons notice you. They shoot you ONCE and it's game over. You try it again and discover yes you can stealth it but that means all the weapons in the game are pretty much pointless because whenever you actually shoot someone and go into combat you get shot ONCE and it's game over. It starts to feel pretty hollow doesn't it?

There's games and places for that. Games like Red Orchestra where you spawn in repeatedly, not a game where you spent quite some time designing and falling in love with your character only for the rules to be structured such to discourage any playstyle but one and the instant you slip up or do the wrong thing? Instant death.

Fudging the rolls would be an option, I think it would be better to find a consistent non arbitrary solution. And yes, the tighter the wire you make your players run, the less margin for failure you allow in your game that means the fewer play styles they are allowed. You make the margin for error too tight then you have worked out of your game all playstyles but one. Preeeeeeeetttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyy lame.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If your game focuses mostly on guns, and you're not letting players do fancy stuff like shoot enemies in the head or cut off arms and legs, you CAN just treat basic damage (what you roll after you hit) and injury (how many HP are lost) as the same thing, after subtracting DR.

If you do start getting into that fancy stuff, or run a game that's more medieval instead of gun-based, then those wounding multipliers start getting interesting. E.g. if you shoot a zombie in the torso and roll 5 damage, it's piercing damage, so because it's a zombie (Injury Tolerance: Unliving) it takes only 1/5 of that as injury. It loses 1 HP where a human would lose 5 HP. But if you shoot it in the head, which is harder, it has an extra +2 DR so there's only 3 points of penetrating damage after DR. But there's a x4 wounding modifier instead of x1/5 so it takes 12 points of injury instead of only 1!

The upshot is that those various wounding modifiers exist to reward players for roleplaying intelligently against various kinds of foes. If you always did the same injury with a weapon no matter who you hit and where, there wouldn't be a reason to headshot zombies or to cut the arms off a living statue instead of stabbing it in the "heart".

They exist to give players more interesting choices during combat.

P.S. There are also some advanced rules like knockback which are based on basic damage (before DR) and not on final injury, but I'm assuming that you're not using those or you wouldn't be asking.



Unless it's a headshot! Then they both use x4. Or vitals shot, like aiming for the heart, where they both use x3.

I know you know this but saying so for OP's sake.

I'll be honest... you guys are winning me over on the damage modifiers. It gives reason for the (in setting extremely rare) laser to exist or to use swords. The vampires are just going to be that tough. Maybe the advantage of cyborgs is natural DR and insane strength so they can carry heavier and heavier armor without being slowed down?

Mages? Well... I'm still figuring out the basics, we will see where they fit as the basics get in.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

I don't want *instant* death by gunfire....

Ok, imagine you boot up the video game cyberpunk 2077. You have that first mission with the cyber ghoul haunt right? Ok, you mistep and two of the goons notice you. They shoot you ONCE and it's game over. You try it again and discover yes you can stealth it but that means all the weapons in the game are pretty much pointless because whenever you actually shoot someone and go into combat you get shot ONCE and it's game over. It starts to feel pretty hollow doesn't it?

There's games and places for that. Games like Red Orchestra where you spawn in repeatedly, not a game where you spent quite some time designing and falling in love with your character only for the rules to be structured such to discourage any playstyle but one and the instant you slip up or do the wrong thing? Instant death.

It's worth bearing in mind that it takes 60 HP of injury to auto-kill even a typical human, much less a vampire, and that GURPS is a team game. Say you've got a team of four vampires, each of them with above-average HP (say HP 14) and a few points in HT 13 and Hard To Kill 2. Farmer Joe gets a lucky hit with his 7d rifle round and does 24 HP of damage to one of the vampires, who happens to have no armor (DR 0) and failed his Dodge attempt and didn't have Luck. Instant death?

Not really. The main thing that happens is that that particular vampire loses Move and Dodge and might go unconscious after a few seconds. He can maybe still fight, and he doesn't automatically die until he reaches -5 times his HP, which takes a total of 84 points (6 x 14) of damage. Farmer Joe needs to shoot him three more times to guarantee a kill! Meanwhile, the other vampires are probably feasting on Farmer Joe (or whatever--I don't really play vampire games so I'm only guessing).

So in practice it will always take more than Farmer Joe with a high-powered rifle and a bit of bad luck to TPK the party and end the game. Eight goons with high-powered rifles, yes, that might wipe out a group of four vampires. (I dunno details, depends on how powerful they are, but it seems possible.) But the power of teamwork ensures that "getting shot once" is NOT going to be game over[1], it's just going to be a timeout for healing.

[1] Unless it's a headshot of course. 96 HP of damage from Farmer Joe's headshot could be ugly.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

I don't want *instant* death by gunfire....

Ok, imagine you boot up the video game cyberpunk 2077. You have that first mission with the cyber ghoul haunt right? Ok, you mistep and two of the goons notice you. They shoot you ONCE and it's game over. You try it again and discover yes you can stealth it but that means all the weapons in the game are pretty much pointless because whenever you actually shoot someone and go into combat you get shot ONCE and it's game over. It starts to feel pretty hollow doesn't it?

I mean, not really, no. I played through Rogue Spear, which was quite a lot like that unless you were willing to treat your team as expendable. The best gunfight is when only your side knows there's a gunfight. (Meanwhile, gotta repeat again that that's not actually what happens in a GURPS gunfight. Unless you not only get shot but get shot in the skull or vitals, in which case you're more likely to be done.)

Video games make bad settings.

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

Fudging the rolls would be an option, I think it would be better to find a consistent non arbitrary solution. And yes, the tighter the wire you make your players run, the less margin for failure you allow in your game that means the fewer play styles they are allowed. You make the margin for error too tight then you have worked out of your game all playstyles but one. Preeeeeeeetttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyy lame.

Again, buy luck! Oops, you fumbled a vital roll (or an enemy rolled a crit) and are going to die? No, that just didn't happen. You're fine, so long as you don't keep having that happen more frequently than your Luck supply can cover.

This is why we have that Advantage.

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

It's worth bearing in mind that it takes 60 HP of injury to auto-kill even a typical human, much less a vampire, and that GURPS is a team game. Say you've got a team of four vampires, each of them with above-average HP (say HP 14) and a few points in HT 13 and Hard To Kill 2. Farmer Joe gets a lucky hit with his 7d rifle round and does 24 HP of damage to one of the vampires, who happens to have no armor (DR 0) and failed his Dodge attempt and didn't have Luck. Instant death?

Not really. The main thing that happens is that that particular vampire loses Move and Dodge and might go unconscious after a few seconds. He can maybe still fight, and he doesn't automatically die until he reaches -5 times his HP, which takes a total of 84 points (6 x 14) of damage. Farmer Joe needs to shoot him three more times to guarantee a kill! Meanwhile, the other vampires are probably feasting on Farmer Joe (or whatever--I don't really play vampire games so I'm only guessing).

So in practice it will always take more than Farmer Joe with a high-powered rifle and a bit of bad luck to TPK the party and end the game. Eight goons with high-powered rifles, yes, that might wipe out a group of four vampires. (I dunno details, depends on how powerful they are, but it seems possible.) But the power of teamwork ensures that "getting shot once" is NOT going to be game over[1], it's just going to be a timeout for healing.

[1] Unless it's a headshot of course. 96 HP of damage from Farmer Joe's headshot could be ugly.

1v1 definitely amps up the sense of lethality of hits that aren't, in their own right, at all lethal - if there's one vampire and one Farmer Joe, and Farmer Joe is a believer in no such thing as overkill, the vampire who falls over stunned might well get shot again and again until they stop twitching.

If the one down isn't alone, OTOH, the shooter has better things to do than keep shooting somebody who isn't fighting.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

I don't want *instant* death by gunfire....

Instant death by gunfire is about as likely in GURPS as real life (especially if you use bleeding and the rules from the box on High-Tech p. 162) and generally only when you have a central nervous system hit or a very high caliber high velocity round like an HMG.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Instant death by gunfire is about as likely in GURPS as real life (especially if you use bleeding and the rules from the box on High-Tech p. 162) and generally only when you have a central nervous system hit or a very high caliber high velocity round like an HMG.

Short range bursts by 9mm SMGs or 12g shotguns, much less assault rifles, can easily achieve 24-36 injury against an unarmored target and cause death checks. That's not an automatic death, but it is more or less instant.

I don't see a lot of death in my fantasy games - people usually drop out of a fight before hitting -1xHP - but my modern day and sci-fi games have people drop dead. Not everyone, but a couple in any high intensity combat.

Automatic death is incredibly rare. Like maybe a handful of times across hundreds of combats, though again more likely with guns. 7.62mm sniper rifles to the skull are rare, but not much survives them. Though I've seen some PCs that just shrugged them off.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Short range bursts by 9mm SMGs or 12g shotguns, much less assault rifles, can easily achieve 24-36 injury against an unarmored target and cause death checks. That's not an automatic death, but it is more or less instant.

Sure, you might have one or two death checks in that case. Even with HT 10, and two death checks, you have a 55.80% of either passing them both, or failing with a mortal wound. Either way, you don't die instantly.

Although, yes "riddled with bullets" is also a way to die fast.

[Farmer]

Getting close enough to use the SMG and land lots of hits is much harder, of course, so there's balance there. Vampires tend to have enhanced perception and other abilities that make getting close hard and dangerous.

Excellent discussion about the single shot above - clearly demonstrates it's not as instantly lethal as some might suspect.

Also, Farmer Joe needs a pretty good weapon skill and/or weapon enhancements and/or plenty of aiming time to get a hit. Doesn't sound so much like a farmer, but if he's well more than just a farmer then he's a much more potent foe and the GM should use him sparingly.

If the GM wants to kill a PC, they die. Whether that's by fiat or recklessness or ridiculous scenario. It's equally easy for the GM to avoid that and present a balanced option where death could happen, but not automatically and not without the PCs having a chance to get out of it. If the GM wants the players to be able to hold onto their characters for a while and death to be unlikely (but time in torpor or other healing and so on to be the primary impact) then set the opponents appropriately or use one of the many options provided to alter the balance.

Something that I think we've all missed so far, so I'll throw it in now, is a recommendation to the "How to be a GURPS GM" series:

https://warehouse23.com/search?q=how...prefix%5D=last

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Farmer

If the GM wants to kill a PC, they die. Whether that's by fiat or recklessness or ridiculous scenario. It's equally easy for the GM to avoid that and present a balanced option where death could happen, but not automatically and not without the PCs having a chance to get out of it.

I sense that the OP's concern is primarily about not wanting to kill a PC accidentally, the way that an AD&D housecat will murder a 1st level wizard if you run it by its MM stats. Imagine the poor DM muttering to himself, "I was just trying to introduce a potential familiar for you, not a deadly combat encounter!"

@OP's takeaway by now is hopefully "don't worry, that's extremely unlikely especially if you have a buddy."