Too much MATH!

[Walking Paradox]

I was reading my shiny new copy of GURPS: Tactical Shooting and I found a passage introducing a rule that I have literally been waiting to see in this game for years (for those who have the book, it's the "Close Quarters Battle" technique). It requires one to add a bonus which may or may not be present for a character to a stat and then compare that another stat which the character presumably has, whereupon the lower of the two is considered for the purposes of making a task roll; both of these figures, prior to the aforementioned comparison, require a negative modifier to be applied.

The long and the short of it is, I have been waiting for this rule for about a decade and as realistic as it might be, it involves too much math to be done and the very nature of the rule means that it must be used many times in an combat. In other words, I waited a decade for a rule that is unplayable.

What are some of the other rules you've found in games that seemed to make sense on paper but you instinctively knew were not playable?

 

[Darkness]

It requires one to add a bonus which may or may not be present for a character to a stat and then compare that another stat which the character presumably has, whereupon the lower of the two is considered for the purposes of making a task roll; both of these figures, prior to the aforementioned comparison, require a negative modifier to be applied.

The long and the short of it is, I have been waiting for this rule for about a decade and as realistic as it might be, it involves too much math to be done and the very nature of the rule means that it must be used many times in an combat. In other words, I waited a decade for a rule that is unplayable.

It's not feasible to precalculate it?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, to me a lot of conditional feats and such in 4E are essentially unplayable so I avoid taking those feats. If there is more than one condition to using something I do not take it.

 

[mhensley]

I love the idea of rolling for both attacks and parries, but find it to be too much rolling in actual play.

I love the idea of armor absorbing damage, but hate the extra math involved.

I love the idea of critical hit charts and being able to hit exact body locations, but I hate how it slows combat to a crawl.

In short I love the idea of detailed, gritty combat, but I love quick, simple combat a lot more.

 

[jedavis]

I picked up a copy of Guns Guns Guns hoping to use it to build weapons for Traveller d20. Unfortunately, figuring out d20 range increments required solving differential equations...

 

[Voadam]

Broadsides! from Living Imagination has the best naval maneuvering rules I have ever read and does them out for the d20 system I run pirate games in. It takes momentum, currents, wind, ship maneuverability, crew, and skill into account and looks to map things well and realistically. Turning ships into big creatures with normal movement speeds who can move in any direction each round grates on me from my experience with actual boating.

The broadside rules are not too complicated for what they are and what they accomplish but I don't see myself ever actually using them in my pirate D&D/Pathfinder games. If I ever wanted to tactically map out naval maneuverings I might use them, but I am so much more likely to narratively run such a scene if it came up in my games and probably cut straight to the boarding action for player interactions.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I love the idea of rolling for both attacks and parries, but find it to be too much rolling in actual play.

I love the idea of armor absorbing damage, but hate the extra math involved.

I love the idea of critical hit charts and being able to hit exact body locations, but I hate how it slows combat to a crawl.

In short I love the idea of detailed, gritty combat, but I love quick, simple combat a lot more.

Don't play RuneQuest 2!

Honestly, I love all those things, and RQ2 is full of them - but it means that it is a system you should probably avoid like mad

 

[mhensley]

Don't play RuneQuest 2!

Honestly, I love all those things, and RQ2 is full of them - but it means that it is a system you should probably avoid like mad

lol, yeah i know. I have the pdf of it and it tempts me mightly but I know I would quickly tire of the details.

 

[garrowolf]

@OP what was the GURPS game mechanic trying to convey?

 

[coyote6]

@OP what was the GURPS game mechanic trying to convey?

It's covering the techniques used by shooters in close quarters battle (e.g., clearing a house or otherwise fighting in tight quarters). Basically, in GURPS, you take a penalty to attack with a gun if you are moving while shooting; the CQB technique lets you spend character points to reduce that penalty.

FWIW, OP, the way to do it is to figure the number out once, and write it down when you write down the gun stats. So if you are using an Barret REC7 (to pick the last gun on the table on p. 63), have Guns (Rifle)-15, and have invested 3 pts in CQB, you might write down, "Barret REC7 (skill 15, CQB-14, 5d+1 pi, Acc 4, Rng 780/3300, ROF 12, shots 30+1, Rcl 2, very reliable)", or whatever.

Or just write down that you've bought off X pts of penalty (where X is 1-4, depending on how many points you spent on CQB) -- that's what CQB lets you do.

The "use the lower of your modified CQB or unmodified shooting skill" just means that you can't have Guns-14, CQB-18, use a gun with a -2 penalty, and fire at (CQB-18 minus 2 equals...) skill 16.