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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KenHood" data-source="post: 1473994" data-attributes="member: 4413">Survivability at higher levels comes from the Defense bonus. In Real Life (tm), the best defense is not getting hit.Hit points in the core rules not only represent your life, but also represent your ability to avoid attacks and resist harm. In the GnG rules, Defense represents the ability to avoid attacks, Life Pips represent your life, and Soak is your ability to resist damage. If you want to increase survivability, increase Soak, not pips. Increasing pips permits characters to ignore the effects of a sword stab or bullet. That's neither grim, nor gritty. Once that three feet blade of steel penetrates your armor, your body mass, and outright cussedness, you should tumble like a house of cards. Increasing survivability moves back into a cinematic spirit. Consider Real Life (tm): Training makes you better able to handle pain, but doesn't necessarily make you more likely to survive having three feet of steel shoved into your body. Severing a major artery would kill you, me, Arnold, and an elephant all the same. Doesn't matter how tough you are or how athletic, you die all the same. Once you get through all the metal, muscle, and body mass (represented by Soak), you don't have to do much to end life (represented by the Life Bar).If you want tougher characters, give them the Toughness feat and better armor. Give them the Dodge feat. Use a shield. Have them use cover. If the combats you run are straight, stand-up-and-take-it fights, then this system is not the system to use. Try the rules, as is, but change tactics, so that players avoid direct confrontation. If your players run out in the middle of things, guns a-blazin' and swords a-swingin', then they should die -- as they would in Real Life (tm). If they sneak, hide, confuse, harass, bewilder -- much like Special Forces do today -- then you're working in the spirit of the system, and you'll find survival is not a tremendous issue.That's not a small thing. It's a central conceit of the system!Big things are supposed to have generous bonuses!If the bonuses to big things bothers you, use the variant rule where Dexterity is the primary attack statistic. You'll find that it tends to level the playing field a bit, while still permitting big things to level small things, should they manage to get ahold of them.3.5E rules already do so -- when you use a two-handed weapon!</blockquote>

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