04-05-2023, 05:46 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
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.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
04-05-2023, 07:02 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
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.
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My gaming blog: Apotheosis of the Invisible City "Call me old-fashioned, but after you're dead, I don't think you should be entitled to a Dodge any more." - my wife It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I disagree with what you're saying. |
04-05-2023, 08:39 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
Quote:
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.
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Fred Brackin |
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04-05-2023, 09:17 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
Quote:
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.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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04-05-2023, 10:06 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
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Anyway, don't things like this. Roll the dice enough and all the possible numbers will come up including those killer crits.
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Fred Brackin |
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04-05-2023, 11:00 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
Quote:
If you want more predictable (and hence more avoidably lethal) outcomes, don't.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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04-06-2023, 12:14 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
Quote:
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.
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Fred Brackin |
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04-06-2023, 05:16 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Shropshire, uk
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
Quote:
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. |
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04-06-2023, 02:07 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
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. Last edited by Pursuivant; 04-06-2023 at 02:12 PM. |
04-06-2023, 05:00 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Keeping you players alive for dummies
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.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
Tags |
combat, old west, survival |
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