What is GURPS?

[Jürgen Hubert]

1) The PCs ended up making called shorts to the feet and legs, thereby crippling the opposition. Effective and exstremely unheroic, uninspiring and boring. Solutions while still using ht locations (and "let the enemies do the the same" does not work for me)?.

3e favored DX - and thus, high weapon skills - strongly over other attributes. In 4e, that's less of a problem, since DX now costs a flat 20 CP per level - while ST costs 10 CP per level. So it's now an equally valid strategy to put one's points in doing lots of damage with a hit instead of having a really high weapon skill - and as an additional advantage, this works against enemy with no vulnerable locations (such as undead, slime monsters, and the like).

Furthermore, there are now other interesting options than vulnerable hit locations even for those with high weapon skills. With a Deceptive Attack, you can reduce the Defense of the target - for each penalty of -2 you take, the target gets -1 to his defenses (remember, a Defense roll is not a Contest of Skills). And a Rapid Strike allows you to make two attacks with a balanced weapon, at a penalty of -6 each (-3 with Weapon Master/Trained By A Master), without taking an All-Out Attack. So hitting the limbs or eyes might not be the best tactic.

2) A guardsman with 12 HT can take an awful long time to kill, or what? Is not unreasonable that he will make his HT roll 5 times after being reduced to - HT, is it? Solutions?

The solution is not to give "mook" enemies a HT of 12. No-name enemies - the type that PCs are supposed to slaughter by the dozen - should never have more than HT of 11-12, a weapon skill of higher than 12, and a high Damage Resistance - otherwise the fights will just drag on. Such stats are appropriate for "elite" foes - those who will duel with PCs for a long time - but their minions and cannon fodder should be weaker.

If you want to make minions more of a threat, either increase their number (swarm attacks are still pretty nasty, especially if the PCs don't make good use of terrain - once they are surrounded, they will be in a world of hurt), or increase their Strength and Hit Points. The latter means that while they might not hit very often, the high damage they do when they do hit will keep the fight suspenseful nonetheless.

One of my most memorable fights in my GURPS Eberron campaign was when the three PCs fought five ogres in the depths of Xen'drik - the fight was very nasty, and while the ogres hit only rarely, they were fairly devastating when they did hit. Oh, and the two melee fighters in the party also got their shields wrecked from those blows...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You know, I wonder...

Does anyone know WHY Steve Jackson never thought about opening GURPS up a la 3e D&D?

I think the reasons were mainly:

- Economy of scale: GURPS is a niche RPG when compared to D&D, and wouldn't nearly get as many third party producers through the OGL.

- Quality control: SJG pride themselves on the high quality of the editing, playtesting, and research, and GURPS has indeed a good reputation with those. But if others were to produce crappy supplements for GURPS, that reputation might suffer.

Though it should be pointed out that it is possible for other companies to license GURPS. This has been done for Conspiracy X and Starfleet Battles, among others.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Thanks for the answers, ExploderWizard, Jürgen & Estar.

I'm not really sold on ExploderWizard's explaination on skill points, I'm much more for Jürgen's ( ). However, the reasoning for the defense roll is top notch you guys. Thanks.

Another thing. Many many years ago we tried out a 3e GURPS game (fantasy). Two things happened very quickly:

1) The PCs ended up making called shorts to the feet and legs, thereby crippling the opposition. Effective and exstremely unheroic, uninspiring and boring. Solutions while still using ht locations (and "let the enemies do the the same" does not work for me)?.

2) A guardsman with 12 HT can take an awful long time to kill, or what? Is not unreasonable that he will make his HT roll 5 times after being reduced to - HT, is it? Solutions?

1) You can modify the combat rules to suit your taste. Disabling limbs is a very effective tactic in realistic combat. You can make rules changes to suit the mood of the genre you are playing. For over-the-top fantasy action thats less gritty you can rule that it takes damage equal to the targets HP (instead of half) to cripple a limb. You can also rule that crippling effects don't take effect until AFTER the battle to let mighty heroes and villans fight at full capacity. Just remember that the rules as presented are gritty and semi-realistic (as much as a game can be) and that you can add or change them to desired level of larger than life action. For example in our DURPS game that I posted about earlier, as characters progressed they kept getting more and more HP. An 8th level (200 point) fighter having 30-35 HP made combat very heroic. Allowing a regular "person" to have this many HP threw out combat realism but gave us a more D&D-like feel with the amount of punishment these characters could take.

2) That depends on where and how he was hit. If he was nicked and bruised a couple points at a time it might take a while. He could be killed almost at once by a crossbow bolt to heart. ST 20 crossbow hits guard in the vitals for 10 (average) impaling damage. Guard has a mail shirt so 8 points get through. 8 x3 for a vitals shot =24 non critical points of damage in one shot. The guard needs to make a death roll after one shot. The basic rule is one extra death check for every 5 points he takes beyond this-OR he makes one roll at -1 for every 5 points (the second option is a bit deadlier)

Keep in mind that the rules allow for taking someone out quickly without cutting them to bits. A brain blow is a good option. Damage after DR (including skull DR) is x4 and the victim is knocked out when damage equals HP/2. So the 12 HP guard can be knocked out by a blow to the brain that does 2 points of damage (after DR)

Keep in mind what you want from the rules when modifying them. If you want fighters to be difficult to disable and combatants needing to hack through HP to down thier foes then taking out that guard fast becomes much harder.

 

[robconley]

Oh, and the two melee fighters in the party also got their shields wrecked from those blows...

How did you handle that? I am not too up on my shield breakage rules.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Thanks Jürgen and ExploderW.

GreatLemur, I feel the same way about roll under. If I decide to run a GURPS campaign and convince my players (both will surely be a while, since we are still wrapping up our 3.5 campaign and going 4E afterwards for quite some time, I'm sure), it will most assuredly be converted to roll high.

Should be no big deal, though.

 

[robconley]

2) ST 20 crossbow hits guard in the vitals

Flip it around and give the guards the Str 20 crossbow and you get my campaign's Knight-Killer Crossbows. One shot only, but boy if it hits!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

How did you handle that? I am not too up on my shield breakage rules.

It's an optional rule from page 484 in the Basic Set. Basically, any time the Defense Bonus for a shield makes the difference between getting hit and avoiding a hit on the Defense roll, the attack hits the shield instead. A small shield, for example, has a Defense Bonus of 1, DR 6, and 30 hit points (this assumes a wooden shield - metal shields have DR 9 and 60 HP, but cost five time as much and weigh twice as much). IIRC the ogres had ST 20 and did about 3d+3 crushing with each hit, so shield damage was definitely a factor in this fight.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

This thread has really intrigued me. I started RPGs with 2nd AD&D, but most of my experience as a gamer and designer lies with the d20 system. After giving this thread a perusal, I'm going to pick up the GURPS Lite rules, and maybe the HEROs Sidekick stuff. Sounds like there's some great material in both systems.

 

[robertsconley]

It's an optional rule from page 484 in the Basic Set. Basically, any time the Defense Bonus for a shield makes the difference between getting hit and avoiding a hit on the Defense roll, the attack hits the shield instead. A small shield, for example, has a Defense Bonus of 1, DR 6, and 30 hit points (this assumes a wooden shield - metal shields have DR 9 and 60 HP, but cost five time as much and weigh twice as much). IIRC the ogres had ST 20 and did about 3d+3 crushing with each hit, so shield damage was definitely a factor in this fight.

Historically shields broke a lot. With the players experiencing this do they consider this fun at all? I like to pour on the realism but I will pull back if the rule is overaly picky.

 

[sjmiller]

Historically shields broke a lot. With the players experiencing this do they consider this fun at all? I like to pour on the realism but I will pull back if the rule is overaly picky.

The best part about this is, if you don't like that rule, it's optional. Don't use it.

I have been reading this thread since the beginning. Every time I think I should chime in and add something Jürgen comes along and says exactly what needs to be said better than I could. I figured that now, as things have developed, I would put in my 2 character points of info.

First, I have to say, I am a bit biased when it comes to GURPS. I played it for well over a decade, wrote a few of the creatures found in the GURPS Bestiary third edition, and playtested several books including GURPS Steampunk. So, as you can imagine, I like the game.

I also played Hero System when it was still Champions, and later on I even played FRED Hero System. Surprisingly, I actually had fun making characters for Champions, but I hated playing the system. I looked at the character creation system a lot like Car Wars: add parts with modifiers, juggle the numbers around, and eventually get something that fit the chassis you picked. The actual playing of the system drove me nuts. The huge number of dice, remembering which ones do BODY damage, and a host of other things really annoyed me. Now, I admit, it may have also been the GM, but the game system really interfered with the gaming experience.

GURPS, which I have only played 3rd Edition, Revised, did not seem to be nearly as intrusive. The system of rolling 3d6 below your skill was easy, and damage was usually easy to compute as well. You had lots of choices in advantages, disadvantages, and skill to really give you a well rounded character. With Quirks you could add the personal touches that made each character truly stand out. I never really had any problems with GURPS. It just seems to be an easy to use, simple system. Sure, you can add a lot of options to make it really complex, but they are just that, options. Add as many or as few as you desire.