GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Walden

I'm not an expert on applying GURPS rules by a longshot, but I thought there was an almost universal princple that, in most campaigns, the most basic level of Luck was practically mandatory for all characters. In How to be a GURPS GM, Kromm almost seemed to imply it was necessary for everyone due to the nature of GURPS rules.

"Necessary" for everyone? Practically nothing is. Desirable for everyone, post-4e? Absolutely. Luck is your insurance policy against critical failures. I would never create a GURPS PC without it.

[mburr0003]

As much as I've been waiting for this release, it caught me flatfooted by surprise with a suspiciously empty* coin purse.


* Like Kromm, it's that tight for me too right now. Not house hunting, suddenly necessary surgery, which is mostly covered, mostly. It's the weeks of recuperating afterwards that I'll be unable to work that has me stashing funds away in anticipation.

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

I would never create a GURPS PC without it.

Inversely, I almost never take Luck. Mostly this comes from it being 'yet another thing' I have to keep track of as a Player, and worse as a GM. So I tend to avoid it as a Player since I know how much of a hassle keeping separate timers for each Player who has Luck can be...


Which is also why as a GM I tend to just wing the timing; they get as many uses that session as I expect the game to last in hours. If we go long, I extend them more uses as we go.

Still often have PCs with a pile of Luck tokens at the end of a session.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

"Necessary" for everyone? Practically nothing is. Desirable for everyone, post-4e? Absolutely. Luck is your insurance policy against critical failures. I would never create a GURPS PC without it.

I've never taken it, and virtually no one I play with has in however long 4E has been out. I have nothing against it, and no problem if a player wants to take it if I'm running, but I've never had an issue with crit failures, either. They help the story and a GM can twist that into the narrative without destroying the whole scene or game. Some of my most fun moments have come from crit fails.

As to the new product, it's awesome! The new purchase process on the new store, less so (no immediate link to download it, not immediately in your downloads, having to wait for an email, a downloads list that can't be sorted or searched, and so on).

But excellent product!

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Inversely, I almost never take Luck. Mostly this comes from it being 'yet another thing' I have to keep track of as a Player, and worse as a GM. So I tend to avoid it as a Player since I know how much of a hassle keeping separate timers for each Player who has Luck can be...

My group has discovered the helpfulness of Alexa for things like that. Alexa set a NAME timer for 1 hour.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by dcarson

My group has discovered the helpfulness of Alexa for things like that. Alexa set a NAME timer for 1 hour.

A piece of paper and a pencil also serve. Oh, and a timepiece of some kind.

Luck isn’t ever mandatory, but once you’ve played a few characters with it, it’s just so frustrating not to have it. Yes, being able to negate those so-amusing critical failures may be a bad thing from the narrativist point of view, and I learned always to take Luck from our local arch-gamist’s character-building approach, but even from the narrativist viewpoint, there are times when having a character make that 14- roll is what completes a good story, and having the dice decide to inflict an anticlimactic 16 on you is just boring.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I just convert to uses per session and be done with it. That is when I use it. I prefer Impulse Points to meta-game traits for basically everything.

[johndallman]

I'm glad to see a sensible approach to sentry removal (box, p. 16).

[Tinman]

I'm very confused by the Sneak Attack advantage (p.29).

Is this correct:
I attack & get 1pt of damage to the vitals.
1pt(dmg) x3(vitals) x2(snk.atk) = 6pts

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Tinman

I'm very confused by the Sneak Attack advantage (p.29).

Is this correct:
I attack & get 1pt of damage to the vitals.
1pt(dmg) x3(vitals) x2(snk.atk) = 6pts

Sneak Attack at level 1 doubles the final injury to the target. So say you hit and did 4 points of basic impaling damage and 2 points got through basic the target has DR 2 then the injury would be 6 points. But if the target had this power-up and made their Quick Contest of DX/Weapon Skill vs. the subject's HT then they would do 12 points of damage instead.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Sneak Attack at level 1 doubles the final injury to the target. So say you hit and did 4 points of basic impaling damage and 2 points got through basic the target has DR 2 then the injury would be 6 points. But if the target had this power-up and made their Quick Contest of DX/Weapon Skill vs. the subject's HT then they would do 12 points of damage instead.

I don't have the book (yet), but that sounds like you're basically Afflicting the target with Vulnerability x2 toward your sneak attack. Does the book include any Under the Hood information for the abilities in it? I'd be interested to see how you built that.