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Old 03-21-2023, 03:01 PM   #1
ChaoticDM
 
Join Date: Mar 2023
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Default Gurps Damage question

Hey everyone, so I’m running a post apocalyptic campaign that my brother originally started (up until then we’d just been loosely using the lite version of the basic set and assigning random dice to weapons). He wanted to play and I was more than happy to take over the DMing, but I decided to actually read the GURPS book, along with the relevant books that fall into the scope of the campaign, and better assign damage to weapons. I’m working on programming a calculator app to streamline combat, but I’m a little confused on effect damage for weapons (burn, tox, etc.) Part of the campaign is that we raid downed alien ships and use what we find to upgrade and build a ship and items (I’m not clear if that’s a thing in GURPS but there’s still some home-brew stuff I’m keeping)

As an example of my confusion in the effect damage, my character created a flaming sword, similar to Hiccups in How To Train Your Dragon. It does 1D+4 cut damage, Armor Divisor (2) with the burn effect for 3 turns. (I have to spend an action to put in a new hydrogen cylinder or just use the normal sword damage. So it reads 1d+4(2) cut bn on my character sheet. When reading the book, I think that I understand that it says to follow fire damage, but the only real thing I could get from that section was that fire does 1d damage when someone is in it, so would that mean that I get an extra 1d of effect damage on top of my roll, or is there some other thing about fire damage that I don’t get. I do also have a poison canister as well that changed the burn effect to toxic, so I’m not really clear on that either. My home-brew understanding is that any effect damage (that is not affliction or corrosion) without a bracketed number [] gives 1d effect damage. Is this a fair understanding or am I missing something?
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Old 03-21-2023, 03:14 PM   #2
mlangsdorf
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

There are very few cases in GURPS where an instance of damage doesn't specify the type and amount. And in no cases does the same amount of damage have two different types.

So 1d+4 (2) cu bn isn't a correct damage line. It probably supposed to be 1d+4 (2) cu inc, where inc is a damage modifier (see Basic pp 104-105) that acts as linked 1 point burning attack (see Basic pp 433-434). If you do 3+ burning damage to someone in normal clothes in a single attack, some of their clothes start burning for 1d-4 bu per second. If you do 10+ burning damage in a single attack, all of their clothes are aflame for 1d-1 bu per second.

Your home brew understanding of default damage amount is not, to my knowledge, correct. A poison canister would likely add some kind of toxic damage, usually as a linked or follow-up attack (see Basic p 106 and 105 for the differences), possibly with blood agent (Basic pp 110-111). See Basic pp 437-439 for poison rules in general and p 439 for specific examples - for instance, cobra venom does 2d to per hourly cycle for up to 6 cycles.
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Old 03-21-2023, 06:00 PM   #3
ChaoticDM
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

Ah, I see where I got confused. The basic set (Basic pp 61) says Innate attacks inflicts 1d damage per level, while listing weapon modifiers including burning, but one of the notes on a weapon with burning I had read (I can’t remember which) said to use rules for fire damage (i kinda glossed over the fire damage just looking for what damage to apply, it was very late at the time so I didn’t look at it too carefully. Gonna rectify that soon). But also says on the same page (Basic pp 61) it says “by default this is a ranged attack” at the start of a new paragraph, so whether that’s implying the example of dragon fire in the paragraph above it or innate attacks in general I’m not sure. As for the bracketing I see my mistake. Above the firearms table (Basic pp 269) says bracketed numbers in damage are only for fragmentation damage.

Last edited by ChaoticDM; 03-21-2023 at 06:24 PM.
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Old 03-21-2023, 09:48 PM   #4
ChaoticDM
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

So maybe if I ask another way, because looking at the ability and advantage breakdown of attacks in the book is confusing me.

So if my sword does 1d+4 (2) cu inc damage against an opponent with DR4, and I the roll is 2, plus 4 makes it a 6. Damage calculation would be 6-(4/2) with armor divisor 2, making it 4 damage over the DR, multiplied by 1.5 for cutting damage, making that 6 damage over the DR, plus 1 for incendiary damage, giving a grand total of 7 damage to my opponent. How does this change if I have burn as an innate attack instead of the incendiary enhancement?
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Old 03-21-2023, 09:58 PM   #5
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

An innate attack is a ranged attack unless you apply a modifier that makes it something else.

If you had a burning Innate Attack instead of a sword with incendiary, it would be a separate attack - you would attack with the sword or you would attack with the Innate Attack, they wouldn't combine. (Unless you'd made a fairly complex build to set them up as doing so.)


Of course, you also could perfectly well stat the sword as doing 1d+4 cu + linked 1d burn or whatever instead of just having the inc modifier, items can have any stats the GM thinks are a good idea.
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Old 03-21-2023, 11:19 PM   #6
ChaoticDM
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Of course, you also could perfectly well stat the sword as doing 1d+4 cu + linked 1d burn or whatever instead of just having the inc modifier, items can have any stats the GM thinks are a good idea.
Thank you, that’s what I had initially planned on doing (I’m the DM and several of our characters weapons will have some sort of similar modifier on a few of their weapons) That makes my calculator app a lot easier to work with. I just wanted to make sure it fit within the scope of what I could do in GURPS.
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Old 03-22-2023, 08:00 AM   #7
mlangsdorf
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaoticDM View Post
So maybe if I ask another way, because looking at the ability and advantage breakdown of attacks in the book is confusing me.

So if my sword does 1d+4 (2) cu inc damage against an opponent with DR4, and I the roll is 2, plus 4 makes it a 6. Damage calculation would be 6-(4/2) with armor divisor 2, making it 4 damage over the DR, multiplied by 1.5 for cutting damage, making that 6 damage over the DR, plus 1 for incendiary damage, giving a grand total of 7 damage to my opponent. How does this change if I have burn as an innate attack instead of the incendiary enhancement?
The incendiary damage is linked, not follow-up, so it penetrates DR separately. Since it only does 1 damage, that means any DR blocks it, so you'd only do 6 injury. If the target was unarmored, you'd do 6 cu and 1 bu damage against DR 0, for a total of 9+1 injury.

You could set up the enhanced sword a couple of ways, but let's go with an impressive version: a 3d bu follow-up attack. On a typical hit, you'd do 3+2 (2) cu damage and 10 bu damage, and if the cutting damage penetrated DR, the entire 10 bu damage would apply. If the cutting damage was stopped by DR, the burning damage would have go through DR normally.

Continuing the example, if you hit the target with DR 4 and rolled a 4 for cutting damage, you'd do 6 damage against an effective DR 2 (thanks to the armor divisor), for 4 damage past DR which is multiplied by 1.5 for 6 injury. Then the burning follow-up would occur, for another 10 injury that incidentally sets the target aflame for a further 1d-1 bu damage per second.

If you attacked a target with DR 7 and rolled poorly, only doing 3 cutting damage, the armor would entirely stop the cutting attack. Then the burning follow-up would have to penetrate armor, which it would for 3 injury. The target would also be aflame, because setting things on fire considers damage, not injury.

If you attacked a target with DR 15 and rolled normally, the cutting attack would still be stopped by armor and the burning attack would have to penetrate DR, but since 10 damage is less than 15, no injury would occur. The target would still be set on fire, though. However, 15 DR is more than enough to ignore the fire for quite some time.

If the burning innate attack was linked to the cutting attack instead of being a follow-up, it would also have to penetrate DR. Nothing else would change.

You can link multiple damage types and have multiple different types of follow-up attacks, though practically speaking, most people limit themselves to a primary damage, a single linked or follow-up, and possibly some fragmentation. But nothing stops you from having something like:

Code:
Attack                            Amount   Type
Overpowered Example                4d [3d]   cr ex
  follow-up                        2d        fa
  linked                           3d        cu
  linked                           2d (2)    im
    follow-up                      6d        tox
Hope that helps.
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Old 03-22-2023, 08:10 AM   #8
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

So... flaming swords are a bit iffy in GURPS. First off, I'll note that if it's meant to actually be a sword (rather than some special ability the character summons up as needed - which certainly is an option in GURPS), the strength of the wielder should matter - rather than being 1d+4 cut, it's going to be something more like sw+4 cut (using the character's swing damage), and most swords can also strike with a thrust (typically for Impaling damage, although there are some blunt-tipped swords that do Crushing instead). While some systems, such as d20 (which I assume is what you're used to by your use of "DM"), have the weapon provide the base damage and the character's strength potentially give a bonus (or penalty), GURPS muscle-powered weapons are basically the opposite - the character's strength provides the base damage, and the weapon potentially gives a bonus (or penalty). For example, in d20 a Longsword does 1d8 damage, plus the character's Strength modifier. In GURPS, the equivalent of the d20 Longsword is the Thrusting Broadsword, which does sw+1 cut or thr+2 imp.

For having it be on fire, there are a few options to represent the effect. Incendiary is fairly weak, being a 1-point linked Burning attack. An argument can be made that, by RAW, this means any amount of DR will block the incendiary effect (which won't be able to get past the DR), but that's not how most GM's (and I think most GURPS supplements that have inc weapons) treat it, so having it deal 1 point of burning damage to everything it comes in contact with (armor, the target wearing the armor, the wall behind the target if it's a bullet that overpenetrates, etc) works the best. But, as noted, that's a pretty weak effect - it will only ignite things that are Highly Flammable or Super-Flammable (see Campaigns, page 433*), and only deals an additional 1 HP of Injury, outside of double/triple damage critical hits (which are rare, and only the triple-damage ones will result in igniting merely Flammable objects).

Next up is some amount of linked burning damage. The sword cut (or thrust) and the burning effect are each assessed against the DR separately - you could have a case where only some cutting (or impaling) damage gets through, only some burning damage gets through, neither gets through, or both get through (but for different amounts). This works fairly well if the flaming effect is external to the sword blade, like Fallout's Shishkebab, where there are nozzles on the hilt that spray flaming fluid onto the blade, so it makes sense for the coating to get left behind when going through armor (or even manage to drip through armor cracks on its own when the blade fails to penetrate). I would recommend if designing your flaming sword this way to also give the cutting (and impaling) damage the incendiary modifier - that flaming liquid on the blade is going to heat it up such that it will cause at least some burning damage to whatever it touches, even if the flaming fluid doesn't make it past the outer barrier.

The last RAW option is some amount of follow-up burning damage. Follow-up damage doesn't apply until after the initial damage, so if your sword gets past DR, so will all of the follow-up damage... but if the sword fails to penetrate, the follow-up damage will have to deal with the full DR. This works decently well if the flaming effect comes from the sword blade itself, like the fluff for the old Samurai 3000 line of wallhangers, the plasma swords from Deathworlders (and related media, like Humans Don't Make Good Pets, where I think the weapon originated), something like the Shishkebab where the flaming liquid is actually inside the hollow blade and maybe seeps out some small holes, and most magical flaming swords. But this has the opposite problem of the Linked version - the burning damage effect doesn't affect the armor unless it fails to penetrate. Although for a piece of gear (rather than a power), you could get away with treating it as "super-incendiary" - the follow-up applies to anything the weapon comes into contact with, so even if you get through the armor, if it's flammable enough you can ignite the armor in addition to causing damage to the target.


Finally, something nobody has addressed yet is your mention that you want the flaming effect to last for 3 turns. By this, do you mean "the target continues burning for 3 seconds" (implying the weapon is spraying them with burning liquid, which is consumed after 3 seconds) or do you instead mean "when I activate the flaming aspect, my sword burns for 3 seconds before I run out of fuel and have to reload"? For the former, that means you'll need to use either Linked of Follow-Up, and apply Cyclic (Characters page 103*) to the Burning damage; note for gear you can just make a note of this, rather than needing to adjust point cost (as gear doesn't have a point cost). For the latter, for gear that's as simple as noting that it just burns for 3 seconds before needing a reload. Although in that case, you'll have to decide how the character activates it - is it something where the device just has a simple means of activation that the character can do as a free action and then it burns for 3 seconds, is it a bit fiddly (which fluffwise means accidental activation is less likely) and requires a Ready, can the character switch it on and off to conserve fuel (flick on, attack, flick off, so you only use one turn's-worth), etc. One thing I've come up with for vibroblades in the past is to let the character conserve battery life by turning it on just before impact (which realistically probably wouldn't work in that case, but whatever, we're dealing with flaming swords here); this is difficult to pull off, so attacking in this fashion is at a penalty - say, -4 to hit, but you can buy this off with a Technique; failure by this penalty (or perhaps half the penalty) might mean you still hit, but you activate the flaming effect too late to affect the target. If you really want to, you could even say this only uses a fraction of a second's worth of fuel for each attack - maybe while the weapon normally only has enough fuel for 3 seconds, when using it in this fashion you can get off up to 10 attacks on a full fuel cell. That's a lot more fiddly than you really need, of course, just another option if that interests you.


*You'll typically see page numbers for Characters and Campaigns (which together make up the Basic Set) abbreviated as something like B116, representing page 116 of the Basic Set (in this case, that's going to be in Characters).
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Last edited by Varyon; 03-22-2023 at 08:15 AM.
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Old 03-22-2023, 11:34 AM   #9
ChaoticDM
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post

Code:
Attack                            Amount   Type
Overpowered Example                4d [3d]   cr ex
  follow-up                        2d        fa
  linked                           3d        cu
  linked                           2d (2)    im
    follow-up                      6d        tox
Hope that helps.
This while post helps a lot, thank you. I was planning on limiting things to 1 follow up and 1 linked attack for now, and introducing higher damage items later in the campaign when higher stated enemies come knocking.
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Old 03-22-2023, 11:58 AM   #10
ChaoticDM
 
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Default Re: Gurps Damage question

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
So... flaming swords are a bit iffy in GURPS. First off, I'll note that if it's meant to actually be a sword (rather than some special ability the character summons up as needed - which certainly is an option in GURPS), the strength of the wielder should matter - rather than being 1d+4 cut, it's going to be something more like sw+4 cut (using the character's swing damage), and most swords can also strike with a thrust (typically for Impaling damage, although there are some blunt-tipped swords that do Crushing instead). While some systems, such as d20 (which I assume is what you're used to by your use of "DM"), have the weapon provide the base damage and the character's strength potentially give a bonus (or penalty), GURPS muscle-powered weapons are basically the opposite - the character's strength provides the base damage, and the weapon potentially gives a bonus (or penalty). For example, in d20 a Longsword does 1d8 damage, plus the character's Strength modifier. In GURPS, the equivalent of the d20 Longsword is the Thrusting Broadsword, which does sw+1 cut or thr+2 imp.

For having it be on fire, there are a few options to represent the effect. Incendiary is fairly weak, being a 1-point linked Burning attack. An argument can be made that, by RAW, this means any amount of DR will block the incendiary effect (which won't be able to get past the DR), but that's not how most GM's (and I think most GURPS supplements that have inc weapons) treat it, so having it deal 1 point of burning damage to everything it comes in contact with (armor, the target wearing the armor, the wall behind the target if it's a bullet that overpenetrates, etc) works the best. But, as noted, that's a pretty weak effect - it will only ignite things that are Highly Flammable or Super-Flammable (see Campaigns, page 433*), and only deals an additional 1 HP of Injury, outside of double/triple damage critical hits (which are rare, and only the triple-damage ones will result in igniting merely Flammable objects).

Next up is some amount of linked burning damage. The sword cut (or thrust) and the burning effect are each assessed against the DR separately - you could have a case where only some cutting (or impaling) damage gets through, only some burning damage gets through, neither gets through, or both get through (but for different amounts). This works fairly well if the flaming effect is external to the sword blade, like Fallout's Shishkebab, where there are nozzles on the hilt that spray flaming fluid onto the blade, so it makes sense for the coating to get left behind when going through armor (or even manage to drip through armor cracks on its own when the blade fails to penetrate). I would recommend if designing your flaming sword this way to also give the cutting (and impaling) damage the incendiary modifier - that flaming liquid on the blade is going to heat it up such that it will cause at least some burning damage to whatever it touches, even if the flaming fluid doesn't make it past the outer barrier.

The last RAW option is some amount of follow-up burning damage. Follow-up damage doesn't apply until after the initial damage, so if your sword gets past DR, so will all of the follow-up damage... but if the sword fails to penetrate, the follow-up damage will have to deal with the full DR. This works decently well if the flaming effect comes from the sword blade itself, like the fluff for the old Samurai 3000 line of wallhangers, the plasma swords from Deathworlders (and related media, like Humans Don't Make Good Pets, where I think the weapon originated), something like the Shishkebab where the flaming liquid is actually inside the hollow blade and maybe seeps out some small holes, and most magical flaming swords. But this has the opposite problem of the Linked version - the burning damage effect doesn't affect the armor unless it fails to penetrate. Although for a piece of gear (rather than a power), you could get away with treating it as "super-incendiary" - the follow-up applies to anything the weapon comes into contact with, so even if you get through the armor, if it's flammable enough you can ignite the armor in addition to causing damage to the target.


Finally, something nobody has addressed yet is your mention that you want the flaming effect to last for 3 turns. By this, do you mean "the target continues burning for 3 seconds" (implying the weapon is spraying them with burning liquid, which is consumed after 3 seconds) or do you instead mean "when I activate the flaming aspect, my sword burns for 3 seconds before I run out of fuel and have to reload"? For the former, that means you'll need to use either Linked of Follow-Up, and apply Cyclic (Characters page 103*) to the Burning damage; note for gear you can just make a note of this, rather than needing to adjust point cost (as gear doesn't have a point cost). For the latter, for gear that's as simple as noting that it just burns for 3 seconds before needing a reload. Although in that case, you'll have to decide how the character activates it - is it something where the device just has a simple means of activation that the character can do as a free action and then it burns for 3 seconds, is it a bit fiddly (which fluffwise means accidental activation is less likely) and requires a Ready, can the character switch it on and off to conserve fuel (flick on, attack, flick off, so you only use one turn's-worth), etc. One thing I've come up with for vibroblades in the past is to let the character conserve battery life by turning it on just before impact (which realistically probably wouldn't work in that case, but whatever, we're dealing with flaming swords here); this is difficult to pull off, so attacking in this fashion is at a penalty - say, -4 to hit, but you can buy this off with a Technique; failure by this penalty (or perhaps half the penalty) might mean you still hit, but you activate the flaming effect too late to affect the target. If you really want to, you could even say this only uses a fraction of a second's worth of fuel for each attack - maybe while the weapon normally only has enough fuel for 3 seconds, when using it in this fashion you can get off up to 10 attacks on a full fuel cell. That's a lot more fiddly than you really need, of course, just another option if that interests you.


*You'll typically see page numbers for Characters and Campaigns (which together make up the Basic Set) abbreviated as something like B116, representing page 116 of the Basic Set (in this case, that's going to be in Characters).
Thank you for all the info. I’m trying to answer some things in order:
I did see that muscle powers weapons are swing/thrust based, but I assigned dice rolls to them bc my players are…well lazy. When I ran a one shot of the movie Predator, I gave everyone a 1 sheet list of GURPS all out attacks and other things they could do in combat besides move or attack, and none of them read it, saying they’d just rely on me to tell them if they could do something else, so instead of them looking at their swing/thrust and adding whatever +/- the weapon gave them to that, I just put the dice roll down so I don’t have to baby them though it.

GURPS is the first RPG system I’ve ever played, my brother and his friends introduced it to me using the lite version, and we loosely followed that. Most of them had played DnD so they’d all gotten used to using GM and DM interchangeably, so I did too.

I’m actually glad you addressed the 3 turn comment too. So the way I designed the sword when I crafted it in game while my brother was still running it is that it sprays and lifts liquid hydrogen (we found concentrated hydrogen on an alien ship) so it sprays a super hot flame throughout the length of the blade. My brother assigned a random damage roll with a different addition for if it was using the hydrogen cylinder or poison cylinder, along with the 3 turn before reload stipulation, and we called it that. What I’d come up with is earth metal behaves like weapon rolls and armor in the basic set set (mainly so DR with earth materials was limited and they’d either have to craft or find better ones using alien stuff) but my sword is made with alien tech so it gets a +4 to swing/thrust and the (2) armor divisor. Since it has to distribute both poison and flame more than likely it would be coming out from a few parts of the blade (I based it off Hiccups sword from How To Train Your Dragon so imagine something like that). So I’d come up with (for swing) swing+4(2) cut with +1d burn damage. This flame effect on the sword only lasts 3 of my combat turns (so 3 seconds), after which I would have to spend the my next turn ejecting the old canister and putting in a new one if I still wanted the extra damage. So swing+4(2)cut with 1d burn for 3 turns. With a successful hit and 4+ burning damage on a single hit, the enemy is lit on fire and has to make a DX-3 roll on their turn to put the fire out or take 1d-3 burning damage. This follow up lasts for 3 turns as well before the fire on them dwindled down.

Last edited by ChaoticDM; 03-22-2023 at 12:12 PM.
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