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Old 08-05-2022, 10:01 AM   #11
Witchking
 
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Originally Posted by corruptjackyl View Post
Thank you all for the input. Going to be thinking about it some and see what I come up with!
First, Welcome aboard!

Others have thrown some good advice out up thread, I will just throw out two advantages that are very nice to have and are on my list to always consider while putting a character together.

Combat Reflexes 15 pts

+1 to all active defenses, +1 to Fast Draw skill, +2 to Fright Checks, +6 to IQ rolls to wake up, recover from surprise or mental stun, your side gets +1 on 'initiative rolls' to avoid surprise attacks, +2 if you are the leader.

To my mind this package is a decent reflection of the wariness and reflexes of a character to has experience in combat (been there, done that). A nice combo of bonuses that are worth the point cost IMHO.

Luck 15 pts

Once per hour of play you may reroll a bad dice roll two more times and take the best of the three results.

This one can be a literal lifesaver. There is literally no downside to it. Combat run, social run, business empire building run, having fun in the harem run...no matter the GM's direction this advantage more than holds its own.

Well that's my $0.02 of free advice. Have Fun!!
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Old 08-05-2022, 10:16 AM   #12
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=Yet some people might tell you that 16 is very high and the best swordsman in the world is only at 18. I think this is a little low but it's your GM's opinion that matters.
This is what Basic Set p 171 suggests: "Once your skill level reaches 14, additional levels of skill don’t improve your odds of success much."

The GURPSwiki took a post by Kromm and some information from Classic and produced this:

*7 or less (Unskilled): default users
*8-9 (Feeble/Novice): beginners, humorous bumblers, old School day skills
*10-11 (Average): most non-job/secondary and hobby skills for ordinary folks; primary draftee skills
*12-13 (Competent/Low-risk professional): most job skills for ordinary folks including cops, doctors, pilots, and soldiers
*14-16 (Exceptional/Expert/High-risk professional): the most seasoned of ordinary folks such as commandos, field surgeons, and ace pilot
*17-19 (Expert/Heroic): extraordinary world-class experts; generally the best in their field for that generation.
20-25 (Master): it is counter productive to go for a skill this high. Time (and points) is better spent in “subsidiary” skills, related advantages, or Techniques.
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Old 08-05-2022, 10:34 AM   #13
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Obscure to create darkness.
Night Vision if can see into shadows
Shadow Form can give you some stealth and movement.
Warp is probably too expensive for you but if it has enough limitations its possible.
FP or Toxic Innate Attack, perhaps even a cold based attack.
Assuming a Dungeon Fantasy Campaign:

Night Vision is probably the most obviously useful. It's also extremely cheap.

Obscure would mostly be useful for a fighter in that it obscures your body parts, allowing you to strike "from a cloud of darkness" without allowing enemies to target individual hit locations.

Shadow Form is more appropriate for scouts or stealth-focused characters, not a primary fighter build.

Warp, if it's got enough limitations on it (e.g., Accessibility: Only between areas of shadow, Reduced Range) can be reduced in cost to the point that it's not too expensive while still being a potentially devastating power for a melee or unarmed combat fighter, since it allows you to "teleport" behind foes or close to combat range with ranged-weapon fighters.

Protected Sense (Vision) is only 5 character points and protects you from dazzling attacks, sudden bright lights, etc. Also useful for a dungeon crawling character. It could easily be justified for a shadow mage.

Even cheaper would be the Accessory (Sunglasses) Perk which just provides the built-in equivalent of a pair of shades.

Last edited by Pursuivant; 08-05-2022 at 11:03 AM.
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Old 08-05-2022, 10:47 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
This is what Basic Set p 171 suggests: "Once your skill level reaches 14, additional levels of skill don’t improve your odds of success much."

.
Note that this is "simple" success that's being discussed. Raising Skill from 14 to 15 and from 15 to 16 greatly increases the chance of getting a _Critical_ success. See p.347-348 in the Campaigns book.

This is important in combat because Critical Successes do not allow for attempts to Dodge, Parry or Block. This can easily lead to winning a fight.

Also, Skill above 14-16 can absorb penalties. A relevant one for a samurai is -5 to aim for the Neck Hit Location. In the advanced rules in Martial Arts you can buy that penalty down from -5 to -2.
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Old 08-05-2022, 11:16 AM   #15
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It could be worth asking your GM what the “Everyman” skills are for the setting. Literacy? Knots? Riding [Horse]? Gesture? Throwing? Area Knowledge?

Ask, too, about what special skills or disadvantages might be especially useful, e.g. Hidden Lore [Yokai] and Discipline of Faith [Meditation].
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Old 08-05-2022, 11:20 AM   #16
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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Note that this is "simple" success that's being discussed. Raising Skill from 14 to 15 and from 15 to 16 greatly increases the chance of getting a _Critical_ success. See p.347-348 in the Campaigns book.

This is important in combat because Critical Successes do not allow for attempts to Dodge, Parry or Block. This can easily lead to winning a fight.

Also, Skill above 14-16 can absorb penalties. A relevant one for a samurai is -5 to aim for the Neck Hit Location. In the advanced rules in Martial Arts you can buy that penalty down from -5 to -2.
The following isn't really something a new player needs to be overly concerned with, but is included just in case OP is curious.

Combat is an exception to the general rule that skill over 14 has rather diminishing returns. First off, Parry is based on skill/2, so every +2 to skill is +1 to Parry, so you need to get Parry to 14 before diminishing returns kick in there (Skill 22 without Combat Reflexes, Skill 20 with it; you can actually get there with Skill 16 if you have Combat Reflexes and are using a quarterstaff or similar). But then Deceptive Attack comes into play, which allows you to impose a penalty to your foe's defense by taking twice that penalty to your attack roll, which can mean you never hit a point of diminishing returns... at least if your enemies keep up with you. A fight between two theoretical characters with Broadsword 200 is going to look pretty much identical to a fight between two characters with Broadsword 20, all else being equal - assuming Combat Reflexes, the former characters would have Parry 104, while the latter characters would have Parry 14; in either case, each character will probably use Deceptive Attack to reduce their effective skill to 16 (for maximum crit chance) or 12 (for maximum overall chance of actually connecting), which will reduce their foe's Parry to 12 or 10. It's just that, in the first case, each character is doing a -184/-92 or -188/-94 Deceptive Attack, while in the latter each character is doing a -4/-2 or -8/-4 Deceptive Attack.

Of course, if your foes don't keep up with your skill, you probably hit diminishing returns once your defense will be at 14 if they drop their skill to 12, and their defense will be at 7 if you drop your skill to 12. Assuming Combat Reflexes, the former will happen if your skill exceeds theirs by 8, while the latter will happen if your skill exceeds theirs by 6; use the larger value of 8. So, if vanishingly few foes have skill over 12, you start hitting diminishing returns around skill 20; if instead you only have a few foes with skill above 16, you start hitting diminishing returns around skill 24.
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Old 08-06-2022, 03:36 AM   #17
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Default Re: New to GURPS

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Note that this is "simple" success that's being discussed. Raising Skill from 14 to 15 and from 15 to 16 greatly increases the chance of getting a _Critical_ success. See p.347-348 in the Campaigns book.

This is important in combat because Critical Successes do not allow for attempts to Dodge, Parry or Block. This can easily lead to winning a fight.

Also, Skill above 14-16 can absorb penalties. A relevant one for a samurai is -5 to aim for the Neck Hit Location. In the advanced rules in Martial Arts you can buy that penalty down from -5 to -2.
The thing is if Task Difficulty Modifiers are being used properly a Critical Success becomes so situational that it isn't funny.

Also remember the GURPSwiki also took information from Classic GUPRS to expanded on what Kromm provided:

*14-16 (Exceptional/Expert/High-risk professional): the most seasoned of ordinary folks such as commandos, field surgeons, and ace pilot
*17-19 (Expert/Heroic): extraordinary world-class experts; generally the best in their field for that generation.

Retooling an example from Classic showed using things Blind Fighting skill (which negates darkness penalties), High Pain Threshold, and the techniques Ground Fighting, Hit Location and Off-Hand Training (removing penalties for position, hit location and off-handedness respectively) can be more effective (and cost less points) than sending the skill level much past 16 mark.
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Old 08-06-2022, 08:57 AM   #18
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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
Retooling an example from Classic showed using things Blind Fighting skill (which negates darkness penalties), High Pain Threshold, and the techniques Ground Fighting, Hit Location and Off-Hand Training (removing penalties for position, hit location and off-handedness respectively) can be more effective (and cost less points) than sending the skill level much past 16 mark.
Rapid Strike is a fine manuver to consider. It takes a single attack (at base skill) and turns it into TWO attacks (at -6 to skill) at the default skill level. Trained by Master and Weapon Master both reduce the skill penalty to -3 to skill (one of the many reasons both of those adv. should be looked at).

However the ability to consider options like targeting specific hit locations and using combat maneuvers (such as Rapid Strike) are reasons to look at higher skill levels for combat skills.
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Old 08-08-2022, 12:33 PM   #19
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A few more "Shadow Spells" for your Sorcery:

Paralyze Shadow: either Binding or Affliction (Paralyzis) with Acessibility: must step in your enemies shadow.

Create Shinobi: animate shadows around you to fight your enemies.
Group of Allies with Minion +50% and Summonable +100%. Those allies being created from Shadows is a special effect.

Warp can have acessibility limitations (line of sight, only between shadows), maybe others. This would allow your samurai to "step inside" a shadow and emerge in another one that he can see; Im sorry for not giving all the proper values, I'll have to check the books for that, but I guess you get the idea.

Shadow Darts/Bolts/Arrows/Shurikens: that's just an innate attack with special effects - althought it may enlicit "muscular powered attack" limitations.

Shadow Armor: this is DR, perhaps with a few limitations that requires you to "turn it on" instead of being a permanent always on passive defense; that can appear as a samurai defense made purely of shadows, which is a special effect.

Shadow Touch: this could have a huge number of different effects. Maybe upon touching your oponent, a bunch of black veins beggins to spread over your enemy's body. This part is the special effect. The actual effect can have many modifiers, such as delay (if the effects take some time to take hold) and many others related to the time it requires to affect the target. As to what it does, it may be several different kinds of Afflictions - so, your "Shadow Touch" could be a "Death Spell" that kills the target once the Shadows Veins spread over the entire body (Affliction: Heart Attack), it can render the target unconcious, or perhaps just simply weakening him (an Affliction that reduces anyone of his Attributes), or just pure damage, in which case it would be an Innate Attack.
Alternatively, this can also be Possession; once the Black Veins spread all over the victim's body, their eyes becomes fully darkened, and the victim is rendered completely under your control for the duration.

Dark Hole: Snatch items from the "Shadow Plane". Snatcher with several modifiers. It could also be modified to do a "Looney Toones" and make your adversaries fall into your magic holes.

All those "spells" would also have a "Power Modifier", usually -10% "Shadow Powers", but that could be a bit more if for example a strong light could dissipate those. It may also be interesting if those cost 1 FP for activation for -5% or 1 ER for -10%.
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Old 08-08-2022, 12:42 PM   #20
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All those "spells" would also have a "Power Modifier", usually -10% "Shadow Powers", but that could be a bit more if for example a strong light could dissipate those. It may also be interesting if those cost 1 FP for activation for -5% or 1 ER for -10%.
What are you thinking of as the composition of that modifier? GURPS Powers has details on how to analyze the composition of a power modifier. This might have modifiers comparable to those for Magical, Psionic, or Super, all -10%. But I could see that it might also have the Elemental power modifier of -10% for mundane countermeasures (bright lights, for example) for a total of -20%.
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