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Old 12-22-2009, 11:01 PM   #1
jackbosha
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Default Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

So, I'm working on a sort of steampunky campaign with a pretty even focus on melee weapons (mostly fencing swords) and ranged weapons, but i've run into a problem: DR. If i have a party of a few players, some who primarily use melee weapons and some who primarily use firearms, I have no idea what equipment to give their foes. Any DR low enough that weapons like fencing swords (that do about 1d imp damage if ST is around 12 or 13) could have any effect at all would enable firearm using players to blow foes away with ridiculous ease. Any DR high enough to offer decent protection from firearms would make the wearer virtually invulnerable to damage from swords.

How do I make this campaign challenging?
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Old 12-22-2009, 11:44 PM   #2
lachimba
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

There are many ways to handle this.

For starters how important is combat to your setting?

In GURPS combat is generally pretty deadly. So smart players will avoid it. Best to use ambushes or overwhelming firepower.

Equally the consequences are just like real life. If you use violence you will have to deal with the consequences such as law enforcement and more violent foes.

eg Are your players Cops? civillians, crooks? Each of these groups need to keep Combat to a minimum. Cops might get into shootouts, but they should be trying to make arrests. Civillians like myself don't want to get killed. Crooks want to make money. Sure they might have to rob and kill to get it, but much better if the opponent can't fight back because you snuk in or you whacked them when they weren't looking.

And why is it a problem for ranged weapons to be better?
What if I want to play the party 'face' I don't want to fight I want to be negotiating, drugging targets, and helping the occasional black jack on an unsuspecting victim. So what if the other players have huge guns. They only get to use them after I lure the foes into the ambush. I can feel a lot more important than them. Plus I get to do the interrogating. All that game time for my character while they only get to do something useful in the 5 turns of combat.

Or what if I want to play an ace detective with a fiream. I only have a low gun skill level because my character is based around solving mysteries. Sure every so often I need to get a shot off, but I have my street muscle for when things get rough. When I need to get my gun out well I know that I have really stuffed up!



But assuming that combat is going to feature heavily here are some possible ideas

Price: Ranged weapons and ammo are expensive

Availability: Not many ranged weapons and ammo

ROF and reload: You get less shots plus need to reload your ranged weapons. So sure you take out one or two opponents, but then you better rely on your buddies for mellee support while you spend those 6 turns reloading.

Lethalness of firearms: cant take many prisoners with firearms. Better to use wrestling or nets etc if you need to take prisoners.

Legality: firearms almost always have a worse LC than melee weapons. Get caught with them in some areas and off to jail you go.

DR vs melee is hard to get, but these experimental vests are all the rage against bullets.

Skill level: no expert shooters. Only allow novices, but allow players to have higher melee levels.

Crap guns: limit the firearms available to low damge ones Lot of smoke, but not much good! unless you aim for head shots etc or maybe the acc is limited. So no good aimed shots. But I can target attack my sword for players eyes etc.

code of honour: it is generally considered unsportsman to attack an opponent with superior weapons. Anyone with this code of honour must use equal arms to their foe.

Last edited by lachimba; 12-22-2009 at 11:51 PM.
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Old 12-23-2009, 12:21 AM   #3
jackbosha
 
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

thanks for the advice!
in particular, what you said about "DR vs Melee" is interesting... do you have any more info on that front?
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Old 12-23-2009, 01:13 AM   #4
Cybren
 
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

You'd probably be better off encouraging people to have one area of 'specialty' but still competent in other areas.

A good marksman is great to have when you get the jump on someone or the enemy approaches from range. As the fight closes they might switch to a melee weapon. But they might not. The people who are mainly melee might have some firearms (or bow or throwing weapons or lasers or whatever) skill so that they can respond to ranged attacks or capitalize (to less effectiveness than the dedicated marksman!) on taking an enemy by surprise but not being able to immediately get into hand to hand combat.

But still, there's things like targeting chinks in armor to overcome DR, or just targeting unarmed body parts firearms can do that too, of course, but also have distance penalties. Fencing weapons can also do some nifty disarms
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Old 12-23-2009, 01:30 AM   #5
Threlgar
 
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

Hi,

I encouter the same problem in my GURPS adaptions of Fading Suns and Warhammer 40K. Of course, these are Science fiction settings, but depending on the level of weird technology and magic in your campaign, there are some points you might use in your steampunk setting, too:

1) Bioplastic Armor, from Ultra Tech, is very effective vs. guns and beam weapons, but not vs. most melee weapons. Maybe you have some faction in your world (elves ?) with higher biotech, so they invented a tuned down version of that. (EDIT: Maybe DR 7 - 10 vs. piercing and DR 2 vs. everything else ?)

2) Velocity limited personal forcescreens. They might be rare and expensive, so only rich people are wearing them.

3) Missile shield spell. If you have mages in your setting, this spell (and itīs better versions) makes attacking them with ranged weapons utterly useless.

Other than things like this, I rely mostly on things Iachimba already mentioned - ammo shortages, reloading times, legal issues, subtlety issues...

Last edited by Threlgar; 12-23-2009 at 01:37 AM.
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Old 12-23-2009, 01:53 AM   #6
lachimba
 
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jackbosha View Post
thanks for the advice!
in particular, what you said about "DR vs Melee" is interesting... do you have any more info on that front?
Well there are many ways of doing this. I was thinking of a setting wth most armour with a low DR vs Melee, but a high one vs firearms.

You have the basic set?

The unrealistic way for starters.
DR can have limitations so you could have DR with a limitation against either firearms or because most firearms cause piercing damage DR vs piercing.

So for example give all your thugs DR 2 vs firearms only combined with tough skin. So basically your thugs will tend to shrug off the first two points of firearms damage.

Not plausible, but a cheap and dirty way to make firearms marginally less effective. Mind you expect your players to complain when punches don't have to deal with this armour. But if you can think of an unrealistic but fair way for it to come up then all power to you. The only way that I could think would be magic, physics or different races. Not sure if this is in your setting


The more realistic way.

Steam punk is usually Tech level 5+ 1, 2 or 3 right

There are several options for armour in the basic set that have high DRs vs piercing and cutting and low DR vs impaling or crushing.

The concealable vest is one.

So many of your thugs would have either vests or straight out flak jackets etc which is completely plausible. If a hero aims for the difficult body parts well then they can still kill the opponent, but body shots won't generally kill.

In some cases then all of a sudden the implaing attack to the torso isn't too bad an option.

Lose a little on the DR, but you might still get a one stab kill particularly given striking strength is cheap.

So the firearm players are making targetted attacks to difficult to hit body parts like Kneecaps etc. They will often have to aim for a turn to make a hard shot (particularly if you limit their skills to less than 16) If the vests are concealble well wont that be a surprise sometimes they are going to shoot someone and they are going to keep on coming.

An example of combat where this might come up

spooky warehouse:

Cast:

player # 1 world famous detective with pistol skill 16

player number #2 His lowtech African Prince friend with Spear skill 16

Villlian with pistol and skill 16

Turn #1
Villian aims

player 1 blasts away with a body shot

The villian is 7 to10 yards away so there is a small penalty, but player 1 easily hits and gets 8 for damage, but the villian is wearing a concealable vest and no damage gets through

player 2 moves closer to strike.

Turn #2

Villian shoots and rolls a hit, but in this example we will assume that either player 1 or 2 manages to dodge this deadly headshot

player 1 starts to aim for the villian's head.

Player 2: Attacks and villian fails his dodge roll. Player 1 skewers villian doing 8 damage with the spear. 2 of which is stopped by body armour the rest which is doubled and the villian goes down.

Player 1: says: From now on I am not doing body shots I am going straight for head shots even if I have to aim for a turn.


Now granted many combats won't go like that, but just the fact that player 1 will always now have a -5 to hit ought to give the 'african prince' something to do in combat.


Mind you with auto weapons or rifles well then melee weapons most probably can't keep up. That's why soldiers carry rifles not swords!

Last edited by lachimba; 12-23-2009 at 03:21 AM.
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Old 12-23-2009, 03:43 AM   #7
Exxar
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

From a purely mechanical point of view, it's easiest to equalize the damage of melee weapons and firearms. Either adjust the damage of firearms - those early black powder guns can do really crappy damage, or adjust the damage of melee weapons - eg. if your setting can viably support it, make all melee weapons pseudo-vibro per default (with the extra damage but without the Armor Divisor). You can also give guns higher damage while giving Armor Divisor to melee weapons, but that's a bit harder to balance.
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Old 12-23-2009, 08:01 AM   #8
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

One thing that has been suggested before is to slap a (2) (3) or (4) armor divisor on all firearms, and divide the base damage by 2, 3, or 4, respectively.

So if your basic M16 does 2d+2(2) instead of 5d, and a 9mm pistol does 1d+1(2), it gives the firearms guys a reason to want to carry them (penetration), but same-scale damage as many melee weapons, which are also in the 1d-4d range (a very strong person doing a swung weapon with weapon master bonuses or other adds can get pretty high damage; my wife had a character with a sword doing 2d+7)

The "divide by 3 or 4" options can nerf damage pretty hard, but basically make it such that a firearm will lance through just about any armor, at range...but only do a few points of damage per hit. Even a battle rifle at 7d doesn't quite make 2d injury when you've slapped a (4) AD on it.
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Old 12-23-2009, 08:37 AM   #9
Bruno
 
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

What sort of tech level are you looking at? If you're in the TL 4 to 5 range, your gunpowder weapons could easily be single shot muzzel loaders that take 30 seconds to a minute to reload.

Guns will be important under these conditions, and get to have all the cool and the 3d pi++ and the range, but this is the era of the bayonet, the mace-pistol, and the sword as a personal sidearm - because if you can only fire the gun ONCE before their front ranks are upon you, you NEED a backup weapon.

This is also the era that saw most armor fade away BECAUSE guns could punch right through most of it - so there wasn't much point in lugging around 30-50 lbs of protection if it wasn't going to protect you significantly. This means that melee weapons are actually more viable - there are no shields (because you need two hands to load and fire a musket) and not much armor (because there wasn't much point) and swords are just as stabby and flesh just as squishy as it was before. 1d+2 imp to the vitals is just as lethal as it ever was; guns are mostly overkill or used from a safe distance.

Stress the fragility, unreliability, and awkwardness of guns. Gunpowder weapons make big clouds of foul smoke. Multipart ammunition is fussy and prone to spoiling under tough environmental conditions (or exploding if mishandled in bulk). Repeating weapons are multi-barrel arrangements that weigh more in proportion to the number of shots, and then take FOREVER to reload.
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Old 12-23-2009, 08:58 AM   #10
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Default Re: Campaign with even focus on melee and ranged weapons?

The issue is that at TL5 and above, ranged weapons rule the day. Only in niche circumstances will melee weapons be useful. That's realistic, and GURPS reflects that. You can add magical powers and whatnot that can change that, of course, but at its base ranged weapons at TL5+ simply outclass melee weapons.
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