Help bury my problems with GURPS?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Venatius

I had wondered about converting the rolls to quick contests as a way to avert this, but I wasn't at all sure if it'd play out well or crash into some unforeseen conflicts with existing rules.

The most important observation is that it tends to exaggerate skill differences. If I've got a defense of 8 and am rolling uncontested, I've got a 25% chance of success; not great, but doable. If I'm in a contested fight against someone with skill 12 and have to consistently roll 4 better than him on 3d6 to avoid being hit...well, I'm probably screwed.

Having said that, I think that you're really selling Deceptive Attack and Feint short, which, on a statistical level at least, do much the same thing. Yes, they don't cover ranged combat, but ranged combat has its own issues and set of defensive techniques. Quite realistically, being seen long enough to be aimed and fired at with most missile weapons is a death sentence no matter how agile you may be; keep your opponent from aiming at you at any reasonable distance and your opponent's to-hit gets too low to matter.

[whthat]

It should also be noted that flamethrowers and similar attacks effect you if you are in there area with the possibility of diving out leaving you prone.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Venatius

#3: "Defense" doesn't defend AGAINST anything?

.....Sure, the attack roll helps determine whether or not the attacker is so inept that they make the defender's job extra-easy, but avoiding a clumsy swing of a tire iron from a cornered hoodlum is as easy as escaping some elaborate multidimensional ultimate martial arts strike from a Lotus Master of the Fivefold Whoozits. I realize there's Deceptive Attack, but that leaves ranged attacks out in the cold, and it seems awfully inconvenient to have to apply some variable penalty to every attack launched by a skilled attacker.

Lotus Master normally has Higher skill than the thug. The defender however is no better versus one than the other.

Ranged Attack is normally going against Dodge so thats not too much of a problem either. With Rapid Fire rules, its roughly like a quick contest.

(Attacker Margin of victory versus his Attack) / RCL + 1 = Number of Hits
Defender Margin of victory versus Dodge = Number of bullets avoided.

Deceptive Attacks for ranged weapons are covered on MA121.


Nymdok

[Agent]

Originally Posted by Venatius

If someone were to, say, attack you with a completely invisible sword, wouldn't that just be a wee bit challenging to defend against? (Bonus points to anyone who knows where this example is coming from)

(Hwang from Soulblade for PS had an invisible sword as one of his later weapons, maybe the ultimate one. I remember the main reason it was hard to defend against was its absurd length, longer than the games polearms, but the invisibility played a significant part as well, obviously.)

Powers suggests a -2 to detect the attack per 5% of the enhancement, with 25% being undetectable. This is of course mainly for surprise - at some point the defender is going to figure it out, but it depends on the circumstances. I can understand why they didn't 'mechanics-ize' it because it is highly subjective to the situation.

Powers also had a modifier for 'attacks that originate behind the target' or are otherwise *nearly* impossible to defend. I believe it is +150%.

[The Wrathchild]

Originally Posted by Venatius

#3: "Defense" doesn't defend AGAINST anything?

This seems to be a common problem with any "roll-under" system (a mechanic I find to be almost belligerently inefficient). All right. So the attacker rolls to see if their attack is even conceivably going to stab/swing/shoot/flamethrower where their target is standing. But after that, the attacker's input inexplicably ceases to matter. The defender rolls against their own defense. This is baffling, considering GURPS, unlike some roll-under systems (I'm looking fondly and shaking my head at you, Call of Cthulhu), actually does have mechanics for opposed rolls. But despite that, attack and defend in combat seem to occupy totally seperate rooms, and the only seriously relevant factor seems to be defense. Sure, the attack roll helps determine whether or not the attacker is so inept that they make the defender's job extra-easy, but avoiding a clumsy swing of a tire iron from a cornered hoodlum is as easy as escaping some elaborate multidimensional ultimate martial arts strike from a Lotus Master of the Fivefold Whoozits. I realize there's Deceptive Attack, but that leaves ranged attacks out in the cold, and it seems awfully inconvenient to have to apply some variable penalty to every attack launched by a skilled attacker.

Aha! Good news! You are just not yet aware of some of the built-in reations between various options.

A year of running a GURPS PbP Arena has taught me that the GURPS system is ALL about attacker (and defender) input, and that their choices greatly influence the final attack roll vs. defence roll resolution.

First, GURPS does the perhaps slightly quirky thing of moving that opposed roll to the Feinting mechanic. High skill master will out-maneuver low-skill mook through this route in the utter bare-bones system.

Second, the first option I allowed in when getting my grubby hands on 4e was Deceptive Attack. It is an Optional rule, granted, but it speaks loudly to the issue you raise. Attacker takes -2 skill for each -1 defence he forces on defender. High skill master will wipe the floor with low skill mook even faster using this one. Combined with Feint - low skill mook is essentially defenceless when attack comes.

Then add the options from Martial Arts: Counterattacks, Ripostes, Defensive Feints (now mook can't even HIT high skill master) to name just some of the options.

When getting into the synergies of the system, I think you will find your worries in this area alliviated :-)

[Venatius]

All righty! So, it looks like a lot of good ideas are coming around here. Let me just give this a quick rundown of the few possible problems I see remaining and how I think I'm gonna address those -

Spells that can't be converted into advantages seem to be fairly few and far between. Their advantage versions are just sometimes not readily obvious. It's a fault, but not a big one. It looks like my workaround for if there is absolutely NO appropriate advantage even after factoring in modifiers/limitations and a bit of definition-stretching, I could just use the spell mechanics but waive the magical "flavor" of it, in a pinch. Powers sounds like a very easy way to design simple custom magic systems, and for more elaborate stuff I could probably reverse-engineer the nearest approximate existing system.

Spaceships sounds like my best bet for vehicle design. Again, I'm not needing Engineering 200 here, just a way to provide some point budgets for design. If that doesn't cut the mustard, I'll see if I can cobble something together out of building vehicles as "characters" and using these rules as guidelines for variables not available to characters (like the Handling trait).

This 'predictive shot' thing, if it's a ranged sibling to deceptive attack, sounds like it REALLY helps balance out that upward scaling of offense. I'll look more into the feint issue too and see how that factors in, but it sounds like deceptive attack is the way to go. Even if predictive shot doesn't cleanly match it, it doesn't look like much stands in the way of just handwaving allowing deceptive attack to be used at range.

Powers has proven to be a really swell asset (unrelatedly, I've also fallen in love with Imbuements, which cover something it seems few to any RPGs handle gracefully at all), though the issue of converting advantages into spells hasn't been my concern so much as vice-versa, by the way. The recommendation of it as well as Thaumatology has proven sound. Even if it's not a faultless solution to these quandaries, they're useful in their own right.

Anyway, do these conclusions sound good, or am I cutting myself off from a better way of handling this?

[Kage2020]

I'm keeping on replying out of a sense of "newbie solidarity." While I've been tinkering with GURPS on and off (mostly off) for a while now, I'm still consider myself in that light. :D

Originally Posted by Venatius

It looks like my workaround for if there is absolutely NO appropriate advantage even after factoring in modifiers/limitations and a bit of definition-stretching, I could just use the spell mechanics but waive the magical "flavor" of it, in a pinch.

Although probably not the way that someone more experienced in GURPS would do it, there's no reason that you couldn't borrow the Knack system from Magic 3e. It's not pretty but you could do it.

Originally Posted by Venatius

Powers sounds like a very easy way to design simple custom magic systems, and for more elaborate stuff I could probably reverse-engineer the nearest approximate existing system.

I guess one of the problems that I'm having offering my personal answer to some of these questions is that without the use of an example it's pretty hard to actually go, "No, you're right" or "Ah, you just haven't seen this option..."

It's a purely interest thing, but if you had unlimited resources then you might just want to thread through Psionic Powers. It might be absolutely no use to you, but you would begin to see how Powers could be tweaked to produce a specific effect. You might find this illuminating.

Originally Posted by Venatius

If that doesn't cut the mustard, I'll see if I can cobble something together out of building vehicles as "characters"...

It's not really cobbling since the information is in there to create a vehicle using this method--there are just no guidelines. Indeed this thread might be interesting to you.

In terms of a crunch book to guide your through this process, then once again you're left waiting for Vehicles for examples, or VDS for the "complete" system.

Originally Posted by Venatius

...unrelatedly, I've also fallen in love with Imbuements, which cover something it seems few to any RPGs handle gracefully at all)...

Me, too. They were just perfect for an apocalyptic crossover between Shadowrun and Earthdawn, where "physical adepts" of the Shadowrun world could begin to extend their magic into their weapons to make them a tad bit more interesting.

On the other hand, on the face of things it seems that you might run into similar problems that you're talking about vis-a-vis spells/advantages as imbuements/spells/advantages...?

Originally Posted by Venatius

Even if it's not a faultless solution to these quandaries, they're useful in their own right.

To be honest, I feel that the solution is to sit down and skim through the books with specific examples in mind. If you don't find the solution that you're looking for, why not post the example that you had in mind and see if those more experienced with the system can go, "I'd do it this way..."

Kage

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Venatius

Spaceships sounds like my best bet for vehicle design. Again, I'm not needing Engineering 200 here, just a way to provide some point budgets for design. If that doesn't cut the mustard, I'll see if I can cobble something together out of building vehicles as "characters" and using these rules as guidelines for variables not available to characters (like the Handling trait).

Spaceships won't do anything involving point budgets, since it designs vehicles as vehicles, not as characters.