High Power GURPS: Where lies the problem?

[pawsplay]

In this edition, high power is mostly a solved problem. There are some tweaks and optional rules you can employ, sheer superhuman power isn't a problem.

No, the real issue has to do with high point values, which can lead to characters with too many useful traits, or characters who have so many skills it's actually cumbersome in play.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Usually, "doesn't do high power well" actually means, "doesn't do the particular high power genre I want to do well without a lot of effort that I'm unwilling to put into it".

That's it, right there.

We've got 52 sessions of a 1000+ point campaign and still going. To some folks, that's not high powered, to others, it's crazy. It's certainly not *low* powered. And it all works fine. The issue is simply thinking about it, planning it, and balancing it - which is true for any campaign.

[Rupert]

When it was put of hiatus, possibly permanent stasis, my 'Traveller' game (that didn't stay as that) was something around 600 sessions old. A couple of the characters were originals and they were up around 1200 points, and as there was very limited access to non-mundane abilities (some cinematic stuff, and some characters picked up small amounts of magical and psionic power along the way) most of the points were in attributes (pushed up to near-human maximums across the board), and skills which even the player, who always feels that less than a certainty isn't enough skill felt didn't need to go above 30-ish, so they had very broad skill bases.

Even so, they still got challenged by quite normal and mundane opponents. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, once the shooting starts a bunch of guys with rocket launchers that can penetrate your armour are a threat (and the one with the radio and an artillery battery on the other end even more so), and sometimes you just can't finesse your way around them.

Also, the question can be changed from "Can the PC overcome this challenge?" to "What does the character do with this power to overcome almost anything?"

[WingedKagouti]

One of my personal issues with high point total characters is that it's very easy to make them omni-competent. And if combat is a factor, the threat of failing is usually going to be linked to "Character automatically dies at -5xHP", because player characters will almost always have enough HT and Luck to make every roll to stay concious and alive until that point (outside rerolling a critical failure with Luck).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

One of my personal issues with high point total characters is that it's very easy to make them omni-competent. And if combat is a factor, the threat of failing is usually going to be linked to "Character automatically dies at -5xHP", because player characters will almost always have enough HT and Luck to make every roll to stay concious and alive until that point (outside rerolling a critical failure with Luck).

The risk often isn't of dying it's of being crippled, maimed, or dismembered.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The physically strongest character in Sovereignty was Nemesis, who had base ST 20 and Strength +10/+100 (Divine, -10%; Super-Effort, +300), which together used up roughly a third of her point budget. That allowed her Basic Lift of 180 lbs. on a sustained basis and 2880 lbs. with extraordinary effort. Her Thrust damage was 13d with extraordinary effort, but she also had Power Blow against worthy foes, which let her build up to 39d.

This is fine, but for those of us who worked through our need for four-colour supers gaming via Champions, it can't but feel like a tortuous fudge. Logarhythmic lifting ability coupled with linear striking damage just handles four-colour supers so much more elegantly.

The lack of a dual HP track in baseline GURPS also messes up a proper four-colour feel for me. Games end up with too many glass cannons or weird three-figure-hit-point builds.

None of which says that GURPS can't do "high powered" at all. Four-colour supers is merely one sort of high-power game. But high-power games do, I think, demand some close supervision of character creation by the GM.

(I mean, okay, so does Champions when your players are more interested in "winning" than in the source genre....)

[Donny Brook]

The are challenges to be aware of. To summarize comments above and add a couple:

1-Omnicompetence. With enough points in skills and high attributes characters can seem too good at too many different things. This problem appears even at moderately high point totals around IQ in particular. Usual solutions involve "point buckets" and skill caps. More radical solutions involve raising the cost of IQ, or having incrementally higher costs for everything at higher levels.

2-Cost/value of ST. It seems very expensive to reach levels of strength seen in certain genres where tossing cars, bending tank guns, or smashing star ships are portrayed. This makes it particularly difficult to emulate characters who are very strong AND anything else. The official solution provided in Supers (super effort) feels awkward to implement and is still not a good match for many genres.

3-Scale-to-scope issues. Upper limits of physics that the GM doesn't want tested or overthrown can be attained with high point totals. For example, a specific level of Area Effect can encompass the entire known universe.

4-Technology. Making characters who can match the feats of existing and plausibly predictable technology can be challenging balance problems. For example, emulating gun damage is expensive, but since no mind control technology exists powers that provide it can seem very cheap for their benefits.

5-Survivability. At high point levels, many abilities make the normal human levels of hit points trivial in comparison to the dangers imposed.

I my opinion much of the foregoing discussion is not so much a problem of GURPS not handling high power, but GURPS not handling hogh power in line with certain genre expectations or common plot/script evasions that a writer can use that a GM cannot. Silver Surfer should hit hard enough to literally knock Wolverine's skeleton out of his flesh, but that doesn't happen 'because'.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

This is fine, but for those of us who worked through our need for four-colour supers gaming via Champions, it can't but feel like a tortuous fudge. Logarhythmic lifting ability coupled with linear striking damage just handles four-colour supers so much more elegantly.

The lack of a dual HP track in baseline GURPS also messes up a proper four-colour feel for me. Games end up with too many glass cannons or weird three-figure-hit-point builds.

None of which says that GURPS can't do "high powered" at all. Four-colour supers is merely one sort of high-power game. But high-power games do, I think, demand some close supervision of character creation by the GM.

(I mean, okay, so does Champions when your players are more interested in "winning" than in the source genre....)

Yes. It turns out that we're going to be doing a Champions campaign starting in January, and I expect to monitor the character designs closely, and provide players with design help as needed. Fortunately my players seem agreeable to sitting down together and discussing character concepts, so we don't end up with three flying bricks or something.

This is kind of an experiment for me; I've never felt happy with Champions as a vehicle for four-color supers. I'm going to see if adding a few house rules can produce a version I can work with.

But I must note that the standard version of Super-Effort, as defined in GURPS Powers, does provide precisely the combination of exponential lift with linear damage that you call for. Nemesis was built with the version from GURPS Supers that provided exponential effects on both because (a) she was designed as a warrior with powers granted by Ares, so high lethality was appropriate, and (b) I was not running a classic four-color campaign anyway. But that was my preference; it wasn't forced on me by GURPS.

(Which is not to say that the system in GURPS Powers is elegant! It was fitted onto a system that handled things differently, and the bolts show.)

[Anthony]

I will say that I was running high power GURPS I would use a house rule to vastly simplify it:

Scale: games and creatures can have a scale. The core effect of scale is to change the definition of a unit. Typical scales are

• Damage: changes the definition of a point of damage (D-scale, C-scale, etc, in the base rules, are an example of this).
• Hex: changes the definition of a hex (GURPS default: 1 yard)
• Mass: changes the base unit of lifting (GURPS default: 0.2 lb)
• Turn: changes the definition of a turn (GURPS default: 1s)

Game scale is just like other features such as TL -- it has no cost. Usually, all PCs have the same Scale, but the GM may offer the ability to buy Scale (characters of different scale is detail I don't want to go into right now).

Thus, if we're running GURPS Kaiju, with 50m giant monsters, you just say that the scale of the game is Damage C (100), Hex 25 yards, Mass 2 tons (x20,000), Turn 5s. If you're running GURPS Bunnies and Burrows, well, scaling goes the other way.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

The are challenges to be aware of. To summarize comments above and add a couple:

1-Omnicompetence. With enough points in skills and high attributes characters can seem too good at too many different things. This problem appears even at moderately high point totals around IQ in particular. Usual solutions involve "point buckets" and skill caps. More radical solutions involve raising the cost of IQ, or having incrementally higher costs for everything at higher levels.

This is relatively easy to solve, I find - extremely competent characters should be presented with problems worthy of their time, and the 'mundane' ones just assumed to be solved - charge them some time to work on the problem, and move on. Tony Stark and Reed Richards don't worry themselves with problems that seem trivial to them, unless they want something to relax with over a cocktail. They work of problems that are difficult even for them - the ones merely brilliant researchers and engineers can't solve.

In the RAW the invention rules state amazing inventions require skill-21+ and have a -22 penalty (and more if it's a truly novel invention and/or of a higher TL). Also, brilliance and skill don't bypass the time requirements or the costs (except in that higher skill means fewer failures and thus less wasted time and money).

So there's whole area where near super-human levels of skill are required.

For more day-today adventuring, I encourage players of highly-skilled characters to use their skill to do things in a rush when it makes sense, and that soaks up skill while providing a benefit. Encouraging players to make use of high skills levels for more than just getting huge margins of success (though that can be useful too) makes them interesting. Possibly still troublesome for a GM if the players are inventive, but at least they aren't just boring 'always succeed' things.