GURPS does dungeon crawl?

[NorthSaber]

Great ideas from Dr. Kromm! I especially liked the 'quick alchemy'...

Originally Posted by Kromm

[*]HP. There's no shame in allowing big warriors to have lots of HP. This lets them do what big warriors do best: tank for everybody else. And don't overlook High HP and Healing (p. B424) for those with 20 and 30 HP. A use of Healing that would restore 20 HP to an ordinary man would restore 60 HP to a warrior with 30 HP!

This might result in some undesirable metagaming concerns; clerics choosing to heal fighters simply because they'd get more bang for their buck. To me it makes sense that it takes more effort to heal an elephant than a cat.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by NorthSaber

This might result in some undesirable metagaming concerns; clerics choosing to heal fighters simply because they'd get more bang for their buck. To me it makes sense that it takes more effort to heal an elephant than a cat.

Your warrior isn't an elephant, he's a man sized man with 30 HP. More importantly, he's a SM 0 creature. Minor/Major Healing are Regular spells, their costs increase with the size modifier of the creature. It DOES cost more to heal an elephant than a cat, even if you have a freakish elephant with 10 HPs (and a freakish cat with 10 HPs).

EDIT: Also, your clerics should be able to concentrate healing on the warriors anyways, as the warriors should be taking the lions share of the damage. The clerics however won't skimp on healing the mages or archers or whatever, however, because they're doing most of the damage and therefore control when the combat ends (if it's a fight to the death, which it usually is in a dungeon).

The faster you kill the enemy, the less healing you need to do at all - if one of the mages draws aggro, you want to keep him alive until the warrior can get aggro back. If you loose your fire support, your fight duration could double or tripple, requiring you to burn far more energy keeping the warrior(s) up.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by NorthSaber

This might result in some undesirable metagaming concerns; clerics choosing to heal fighters simply because they'd get more bang for their buck. To me it makes sense that it takes more effort to heal an elephant than a cat.

As Bruno points out, if your fighters aren't taking the majority of hits to begin with, you're doing something wrong.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by NorthSaber

This might result in some undesirable metagaming concerns; clerics choosing to heal fighters simply because they'd get more bang for their buck. To me it makes sense that it takes more effort to heal an elephant than a cat.

A cat has SM -3 and spells costs are ×1 on him. He has 4 HP. To heal his full 4 HP requires 2 FP worth of Major Healing (4 HP requires 4 HP of healing, and 4 HP of healing costs 2 FP).

An elephant has SM +3 and spell costs are ×4 on him. He has 45 HP. To heal his full 45 HP requires 24 FP worth of Major Healing (45 HP requires only 12 HP of healing, because healing is ×4 for high HP, and 12 HP of healing cost only 6 FP, but that's ×4 for size, for a net 24 FP).

In both cases, the actual FP:HP ratio is 1:2, but restoring the elephant to full HP is very costly and requires six full-strength Major Healings -- five of which will be at penalties for repeated castings, unless you have piles of healers.

However, the elephant got his ST and HP and 30% off for SM. A man with SM 0 but 45 HP didn't get the discount. Since he paid full price, he presumably gets some benefit. The benefit is that he doesn't suffer the downside of high SM. Thus, healing him 45 HP requires only 6 FP of Major Healing (45 HP requires only 12 HP of healing, because healing is ×4 for high HP, and 12 HP of healing cost 6 FP). This represents warriors being hardy, which is part of the archetype.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Powerstones. They rule so badly that it isn't cool. A one-point Signature Item is a fine quarterstaff enchanted with the Staff spell and set with a 4-point powerstone. And woe betide the wizard who didn't drop a point into Recover Energy.

Were I to run a dungeon-bash in the style of That Other Game, I'd disallow Signature Gear, and Wealth ads/disads, though I'd allow characters to buy cash with points at chargen (I'd also allow them to buy down their starting cash at the same ratio) up to 10 points for +100% starting cash. Also, everyone would be assumed to be a wandering type, and thus have all their starting wealth available for gear.

Now, the wizard can still blow his cash on an enchanted Staff ($40) with a 9-point ($1900) dedicated powerstone (18 energy for spells cast through the staff). However, in a normal mana zone those points come back slowly - one point of the base energy per day so in any one excursion, once the energy is used it is gone. Unless the party is willing to bail every time the mage's stone runs dry, and wait a week before returning the stone's a limited resource in the shorter term.

Last time (over a decade ago) I participated in a fantasy game with a professional adventuring mage, he bought a whole bunch of small powerstones, and didn't even try and recharge them until he got home after a 'job'.

[Kromm]

I'd probably be okay with Signature Gear. The number of unremovable family heirloom items on Baldur's Gate NPCs might be influencing me here, but it does seem to be a common enough occurrence in hack n' slash fantasy. Actually, I kind of like the idea of all wizards' staffs being Signature Gear that somehow find their way back unless forcefully broken. (Gee, where did that thought come from?)

But I'm in agreement on Wealth. I think it's fairly meaningless . . . along with most social traits. Dungeon crawling does "societies" about as well as it does "ecologies."

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Bruno

ANd of course "dungeons" don't have to be underground. Anywhere you can restrict the players choice of direction of travel (and usually line of sight/line of fire but there are fun things to do with that) is a dungeon. This is probably why DMs traditionally get a little flustered when their players bring mining picks and start breaking through walls.

The traditional answer to that is to have a continual parade of 'random' wandering monsters turn up to see what the fuss is about. Just like if the players decide to take a rest after every encounter.

[Kazander]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

The one thing to avoid is that some of the magic spells can make things a bit too easy in GURPS. We banned invisibility, for example.

It's interesting to see that someone sees that spell the same way I do--amazingly powerful for it's cost within the context of GURPS mechanics.

I didn't go so far as to outright ban it, but I did change it somewhat. IMC, it more closely resembles the same spell from The Other Game. It has the Fringe effect (from Powers p57) and it automatically dispels after the Invisible character attacks. I find that works a lot better.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Kazander

I didn't go so far as to outright ban it, but I did change it somewhat. IMC, it more closely resembles the same spell from The Other Game. It has the Fringe effect (from Powers p57) and it automatically dispels after the Invisible character attacks. I find that works a lot better.

If I could go back and change it to this, I would. In fact, when a PC recently got a Great Wish and asked for some kind of concealment power, I gave him Invisibility with Fringe, a "dispels after attack" limitation, and fatigue costs. This also opens the door for Improved Invisibility (or call it True Invisibility) for really powerful opponents who lack the fringe or the dispel limitation. As a spell, you could probably cost at at double the cost of Invisibility as written and it would still be amazingly useful.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I'd probably be okay with Signature Gear. The number of unremovable family heirloom items on Baldur's Gate NPCs might be influencing me here, but it does seem to be a common enough occurrence in hack n' slash fantasy.

Maybe. I just prefer the feeling that mages, like fighters, upgrade their gear as time goes on. I suppose this could reflected by letting people pay more points into their Signature Gear advantage to make a new find their 'signature'.

But I'm in agreement on Wealth. I think it's fairly meaningless . . . along with most social traits. Dungeon crawling does "societies" about as well as it does "ecologies."

Exactly.