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#21 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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I feel you.
Calibrating lethality of encounters in an unfamiliar game system can be challenging. There are some suggestions in the Basic Set about optional rules that can make combat more survivable. I'd suggest implementing some or all of them as you get into the GURPS system. And there are some good tips in the posts above. Fortunately, your character race choices offer a lot of scope for resurrection, revivification, and repair. |
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#22 | ||||||||
Join Date: Jun 2022
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And my point still stands, this could have just as easily happened in VtM. GURPS isn't making firearms anymore deadly of vamps any more fragile. The point of VtM isn't combat anyway, it's the drama of the night, combat is supposed to be what happens when everything else fails. Unless you're playing a Sabbat campaign, a "vamps are just tragic superheroes lol" game. Quote:
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However you keep mentioning pi... so I think you're mixing the editions. In 4e HP are determined by ST, FP by HT. Quote:
Or contemplate giving them Unliving. It doesn't really fit the BtM genre where a cop with a glock can drop the average vamp, but, if fights with high powered rifles are meant to be your norm and you want the PCs easily triumphing, it's a simple fix. This isn't D&D. VtM also wasn't ever D&D. Both GURPS and original VtM get pretty deadly if the PCs just stand around letting themselves get shot, stabbed, etc. Quote:
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Why is the vamp standing around letting themselves get shot up? Do they not have another discipline they could use? Running away? Dodging at the very least? If they got snipered, well, that's on the GM for sniping them. Quote:
Or maybe not roll solo when they're not capable of being subtle, sneaky, or tough enough? Literally same thing can happen in almost every edition of VtM, single shot into torpor land with a powerful firearm. I'm not sure what editions you've been playing to not see that a happen. Quote:
My recommendation, tell your Players "combat can be deadly, try real hard to not get shot or hit by strong foes carrying axes". That means taking cover, not standing around in the open, be sneaky, ambush your foes, etc. If you have Obfuscate, use it. Spy on foes from afar with Auspex, no need to be right on top of them. Etc. Also... the Discipline write ups in GURPS VtM are... close, but not quite exact, and they could have been a lot better. It's something to think about if you're aiming for a good "VtM feel". |
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#23 |
Join Date: Jun 2022
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The ultimate actually. As long as they aren't hit by their weakness, they won't drop below -HP, they just go into 'torpor' (deep unconsciousness basically) until they heal back slowly.
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#24 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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For example against a vampire who has Injury Tolerance: Unliving that 7D6 P rifle round only does 1/3 damage. So an average of 24 pts becomes only 8 and the vamp is only wounded. Even less if he was wearing that concealable vest. If he had Luck he could have re-rolled that blown dodge roll and be unwounded. The last time I did pregens _all_ the PCs had Luck.
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Fred Brackin |
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#25 |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Sydney, Australia
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It models guns really well. They're quite lethal. That's why armies use guns now and not swords! That said, a Weapon Master with a Very Fine blade, high skill, and high ST and/or Striking ST is very lethal. It's like having a very powerful gun.
If you think a given gun is too powerful, use a less powerful one.
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Farmer Mortal Wombat "But if the while I think on thee, dear friend All losses are restored and sorrows end." |
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#26 |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Then don't shoot them. Or do less damage. You're the GM, you make the story. The dice are a guide.
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Farmer Mortal Wombat "But if the while I think on thee, dear friend All losses are restored and sorrows end." |
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#27 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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To survive GURPS combat, you concentrate on not getting hit. Against ranged weapons, that means not getting spotted. In melee, that means not getting hit, by making your active defence rolls. Armour is the backup to not getting hit, not the primary form of defence. This means stealth and tactics are what the players should be thinking about, not looking heroic.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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#28 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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The important thing to keep in mind is that GURPS default combat rules can be quite deadly, so you need to account for that when designing characters and encounters.
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GURPS Overhaul |
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#29 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2022
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Specifically it's cyberpunk with Vampires as a contrast. I thought it would be a fun balancing act. Cybernetics are their own path to great power allowing human characters, player or otherwise to achieve great things but vampires have their own path to power. Lore wise in my setting they heal too completely to cyberize. Thrown in the mix are mages for more fun. To balance you have to pick as a human. Cybernetics or magery, they are incompatible with each other (right now I'm playing with a disadvantage that reduces ones FP ceiling for casting spells based upon the points in cybernetic advantages he has in order to accomplish this.) It was when I was using the VTM book as a guide to write the vampire chapter in my source book, modifying things as needed that I realized how the sheer level of damage in gurps combat renders even the fantasy elements moot, when I was considering increasing the fortitude ability's damage resistance by a factor of 5 or 10 I realized that I instead needed to look at fixing the root of the problem. The damage scale of the weapons themselves. Beeeeeing cyberpunk the player characters aren't going to be sitting around discussing the finer points of pottery or roleplaying politics of the night (some folks might like such campaigns but to me a campaign where nothing actually happens, there's no conflict is just boring.) They are going to be in a gritty, dangerous, violent setting where the people at the top of society could not have gotten there if they were not familiar with a gun. I got this fun idea of having a NPC that is intended for the player characters to fight and kill and then they see him next week. If they kill him he comes back again! Every time! Of course its a invitation to the players to begin to learn the arcane secrets of the setting, the npc is a ghoul in lovecraftian sense. He gets shot, dies, wakes up in the dream lands. Usually that means he wouldn't find his way back to even the same dimension but the campaign takes place at a particular city that has become a beacon across the planes that ghouls (and other beings) can see across infinity. It's the first place ghouls have always been able to return to. This builds to our heroes fighting beings of incomprehensible power as the big bosses of the game. The ghouls are just a hint at the existence of a greater darkness. TBH, the vampires in the setting are too a symbiosis of humans and "eldritch" beings themselves in the setting rather than VTM's legacy of Cain story. Last edited by Colonel__Klink; 07-28-2023 at 08:23 AM. |
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#30 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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If either dodging or Luck works, you avoid being hit. Entirely. So instead of having a certain increase in how much damage you can stand, you have a probable avoidance of all damage. In the long run, these reduce your average damage per combat similarly—but with the GURPS way, there's always that element of risk. On the other hand, you can get pretty impressive results. Back when I wrote GURPS Supers (for 4/e), a friend of mine invited me into a campaign using it. I created a speedster, La Gata Encantada. She had DX 19, and Basic Speed 12, which gave her Dodge-15, and Enhanced Time Sense made this Dodge-16; and if she made an Acrobatics roll (using her Move!-19), that increased to Dodge-17. So she failed to dodge only once in 54 attacks. I did give her some DR—motorcycle helmet, leathers, and boots—as a little insurance; but I never actually saw her hit. (Though a critical success on an attack could have done a number on her!)
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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Tags |
combat, defending, tactics, vtm |
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