Using PK's "Supercharged" enhancement to create genre-appropriate bricks - Page 2

Michael Thayne · 02-22-2013, 11:18 PM

I've been thinking about the "GURPS doesn't do super-bricks well" problem, and have a solution that may work for games done in a "four color" mode or something close to it. Feedback greatly appreciated.

Here it goes: take Powers' Lifting ST (Super-Effort, +400%) and PK's Striking ST (Supercharged, +100%) and combine them into ST (Comic Book Super Strength, +150%). As with GURPS Supers' ST (Super-Effort, +300%), we're effectively throwing in 1 HP/level as a freebie.

Let's rebuild the Archetype template from Supers using this idea. ST +13 (Super-Effort, +300%; Super, -10%) [507] gets replaced by ST +13 (Comic Book Super Strength, +150%; Super, -10%) [312], saving 195 points. This keeps Lifting ST the same, but reduces Striking ST to 85 for most purposes and gives a Thrust damage of 9d+2.

Now that it's impossible for characters to do 100s of points of damage without using serious military hardware, Damage Reduction feels inappropriate for the campaign, so let's take that out entirely, saving another 270 points. This will require the GM to make sure to use cinematic rules like Cinematic Explosions and Flesh Wounds if the bad guys ever bring that serious military hardware to the table, but I don't see it as a real problem otherwise.

DR creates a more awkward problem. It seems wrong for our budget Archetype to be totally immune to the punches of equally strong supers, but it's pretty important for our Archetype to be immune to bullets. One solution is to buy some of our DR with the limitation Piercing Only, -40%. Another is to use David Pulver's "Survivable Guns" rules from Pyramid #3/34, which decrease gun damage while increasing armor divisors. Using those rules, DR 30 (Hardened 3, +60%; Super, -10%) [225] gets the job done for the vast majority of cases, including when facing armor piercing rounds. A sniper with a high-powered rifle and a very lucky damage roll could still hurt him, but still won't kill him (unless your using bleeding rules or something, which you shouldn't for this campaign) and there's always the Flesh Wound rule. Oh, and we've saved 225 points over the canonical Archetype template.

In total, we've saved 690 points, bringing the template cost down to 1310 points, making a fairly good (if slightly low-end) Superman clone viable for games in that point range. Really, after scaling back the things we've scaled back, it would make a lot of sense to scale back secondary abilities too, but I won't get into that. This should also reduce the extent to which players' feel obligated to play Psis or Blasters rather than Bricks because of point-cost-efficiency issues (though our scaled down Archetype isn't even trying to compete with true munchkin builds).

This solution isn't for all campaigns. It can result in characters whose Striking ST is inexplicably weak compared to their Lifting ST, and requires some blatantly unrealistic optional rules. So it probably won't work for games aiming at greater realism. But it does seem to emulate how super strength works in lot of superhero comics fairly well.

02-22-2013, 11:18 PM	#1
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Using PK's "Supercharged" enhancement to create genre-appropriate bricks I've been thinking about the "GURPS doesn't do super-bricks well" problem, and have a solution that may work for games done in a "four color" mode or something close to it. Feedback greatly appreciated. Here it goes: take Powers' Lifting ST (Super-Effort, +400%) and PK's Striking ST (Supercharged, +100%) and combine them into ST (Comic Book Super Strength, +150%). As with GURPS Supers' ST (Super-Effort, +300%), we're effectively throwing in 1 HP/level as a freebie. Let's rebuild the Archetype template from Supers using this idea. ST +13 (Super-Effort, +300%; Super, -10%) [507] gets replaced by ST +13 (Comic Book Super Strength, +150%; Super, -10%) [312], saving 195 points. This keeps Lifting ST the same, but reduces Striking ST to 85 for most purposes and gives a Thrust damage of 9d+2. Now that it's impossible for characters to do 100s of points of damage without using serious military hardware, Damage Reduction feels inappropriate for the campaign, so let's take that out entirely, saving another 270 points. This will require the GM to make sure to use cinematic rules like Cinematic Explosions and Flesh Wounds if the bad guys ever bring that serious military hardware to the table, but I don't see it as a real problem otherwise. DR creates a more awkward problem. It seems wrong for our budget Archetype to be totally immune to the punches of equally strong supers, but it's pretty important for our Archetype to be immune to bullets. One solution is to buy some of our DR with the limitation Piercing Only, -40%. Another is to use David Pulver's "Survivable Guns" rules from Pyramid #3/34, which decrease gun damage while increasing armor divisors. Using those rules, DR 30 (Hardened 3, +60%; Super, -10%) [225] gets the job done for the vast majority of cases, including when facing armor piercing rounds. A sniper with a high-powered rifle and a very lucky damage roll could still hurt him, but still won't kill him (unless your using bleeding rules or something, which you shouldn't for this campaign) and there's always the Flesh Wound rule. Oh, and we've saved 225 points over the canonical Archetype template. In total, we've saved 690 points, bringing the template cost down to 1310 points, making a fairly good (if slightly low-end) Superman clone viable for games in that point range. Really, after scaling back the things we've scaled back, it would make a lot of sense to scale back secondary abilities too, but I won't get into that. This should also reduce the extent to which players' feel obligated to play Psis or Blasters rather than Bricks because of point-cost-efficiency issues (though our scaled down Archetype isn't even trying to compete with true munchkin builds). This solution isn't for all campaigns. It can result in characters whose Striking ST is inexplicably weak compared to their Lifting ST, and requires some blatantly unrealistic optional rules. So it probably won't work for games aiming at greater realism. But it does seem to emulate how super strength works in lot of superhero comics fairly well.