/gurpsgen/ GURPS general

Ah thanks.
Nice alternate solution too.

>A quick comparison:
I just realized how pointless that comparison is without Basic Set's damage alongside it for comparable Basic Lift. Hold on.

Okay, pic related. Wow. Uh... wow. How much damage do you need to punch through a tank?

Appending table...
Excuse the shitty formatting and inconsistency with labels.

I think it's safe to say that ST-based damage is weird. This is for the T72-A. Unloaded weight is 43.7 tons. New ST is 63 (I think?). That's 87,400 lbs. To lift with two hands would require KYOS ST 41, which is 8d+1 damage, or Basic Set ST 234, which is 24+2 damage. Extreme would make it 10d (10.5d? +1? 2?). This means that, with brawling at DX+2, you'd be doing 31d with basic set ST, which is enough to punch and damage the top of a tank body, dealing an average of 18.5 damage per punch, which means, on average, it'll take you 10 punches to eat through all of the HP of the tank, ignoring HP per locations and shit that I don't know about.

Interesting. Not sure if I like it, but it's interesting.

Being able to lift something before you can break it isn't that odd. I know tons of shit I can lift but not break with my bare hands.

With that said, according to this thread, it's a bit silly with KYOS, which sorta implies damage might have lagged behind a bit in the equation:
forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=141809

Having a bit of trouble understanding energy costs for magic.

The Basic Set says that if you know a spell well enough you can cast it at no cost. On the next page it says at skill level 15-19 cost is reduced by 1. So here's my question:

If I know the spell Shape Water at level 15 which has its cost listed as
>1 per 20 gallons shaped. Same cost to maintain.
Does that mean I can cast it for as long as I want with no cost? Or is that just for the initial cast and then 1 to maintain?

I forgot to specify, this is assuming I'm manipulating 20 gallons.

Yeah. Running the extreme damage rules for 50 ST in KYOS, along with Karate and an All-Out Attack (Strong), you get 27d+2 for a punch. That's enough to start damaging the top of a tank, but it'll take you a while. Better to just pick it up and use it as a rock to bean people with. DR might have to be re-worked, damage might, I'm not entirely sure. Extreme damage helps some, but not "enough", depending on your point of view of what ST levels should do. I think this is a problem for GMs to make judgement calls on.

I'd allow an ST-based Innate Attack that can have double the base damage in dice of your KYOS damage, because making another table with extreme damage numbers withers my soul.

GURPS Magic, M8:
>If your base skill with a spell, modified only by the -5 for low mana, if applicable, is 15 or more, reduce the cost to cast the spell by 1.
>Apply the same reduction to the cost to maintain a spell.
>Calculate the entire cost for a spell before applying energy cost reductions for high skill.
Yes, you can manipulate 20 gallons of water for as long as you want.

Seriously considering a Veeky Forums pass. Fuck captcha.

Agreed. Even with vanilla there's issues with how striking ST, lifting ST, HP and DR scale across the board. Of course, you ordinarily don't encounter these problem with characters within the standard ranges of powers (maybe some with DR/swing damage scaling).

KYOS solves the lifting ST problem, but the other ones remain.

DR in itself is a problem, and I don't like how armor penetration works really. I think I'd be much happier if armor penetration was (ignore X amount of armor) instead (so basically just damage with a "no wounding" modifier but still usable to penetrate DR with).

Thanks familiar

>Veeky Forums pass
captcha isn't *that* bad. Annoying sure but it doesn't warrant giving free money to jewmoot who does literally nothing

>so basically just damage with a "no wounding" modifier but still usable to penetrate DR with
Could you give a mechanical example of that? It's late, and I'm not parsing it.

Further research on "solving" KYOS damage: Super-Effort Striking ST.

KYOS Striking ST is [1/level]. forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=159661&postcount=1 is a +300% enhancement to multiply Striking ST by 10. Five levels of such Striking ST would cost [20] with KYOS rules, which translates to +50 ST for damage. At ST 50, your 10d+2 (18d+3 w/Karate & AoA(S)) becomes ST 100, or 23d (42d+1 w/Karate & AoA(S)). Based on my table here, you're close to punching through the side of a tank, and definitely fucking up the tank top.

For fun, let's try that with Extreme Damage: 100/2 = 50, -10 = 40. With Karate, that's 62d+2, and 74d with an AoA(S). That's denting the side of the tank, or (with a bit of GM leeway) shoving your hand through the top to grab the soldier inside. Not the best fix, but workable (and sorta cheap, really. Super-Effort is underpriced when your Striking ST is only 1 point per level).

It gets grating. I won't buy one, but gosh darn heck-it it's tempting.

A weapon could have (2)2d+3 pi++ damage.

So it ignores 20 DR and then you roll 2d+3 pi++ damage.

So someone with 25 DR would count as having 5 DR instead.

This way you don't have to inflate DR values like crazy to protect against vanilla arpen.

Shit made a typo:

edit: the weapon could have (20) 2d+3 pi++ damage.

So the (20) is how much DR it removes. It removes 20 dr.

Huh. Interesting. If you come up with more in-depth rules/stress test it against rifles, DR, and modified rifles/DR, post the results. I think that model has potential as an alternate ruleset, even though it'd change a shitton of stats. Might work best with custom equipment, or in a game with no equipment (just innate attacks)?

I'm going to go pass out now. Keep the thread safe for me.

To minimize how much you'd have to convert, I'd just take the vanilla arpen values and multiply them by 10.

So (2)2d+1 becomes (20)2d+1.

A gun with that ammo put against a standard.

A fragmentation west with a plate inside has 30 DR. A M16 with APHC ammo would deal (20)5d pi-, so the guy in the west would still take 3,5*5-10=7,5 damage on average, multiplied by 0,5 for a wound of 3,75 in the torso.

Ehh, dunno if this is reasonable or not. I guess a shot in the vitals are still plenty deadly since that's 7,5*3=22,5 dmg on average.

I doubt the math keeps up for vehicles and ultratech though, but that's probably okay since you sort of have to make your own vehicles all the time anyway and ultratech armor and guns are sort of fubar anyway, so reworking all the dr values in ultratech would probably improve gamefeel anyway.

Since "Know Your Own Strength" was/is being discussed, what are THE BESTEST fixes and additions to 4ed to be aware of?

Alternatively, what major rule fuckups one has to keep in mind (like ST and armor balance, or Will/Per and IQ, etc.)

I dunno. Most are sort of give and take. I like replacing attack with committed and defensive attack I guess. Better Fantasy Armor is also pretty good for df games I guess.

TL 4/5 divide is a clusterfuck, with some things in Low Tech, some things in High Tech, and a confusing mash of what counts as TL 5 and when different areas hit it.

Every TL transition is sort of questionable, but this one is made a lot worse because it spans two books.

Unless you do 18th century games this isn't much of a problem though.

>like ST and armor balance
Que? Please enlighten me.

>Better Fantasy Armor
I'm not aware of this either.

19th century is the worst, because you get a radical paradigm shift in the TL midway. It's super weird.

noschoolgrognard.blogspot.fi/p/better-fantasy-armor.html

It's basically a homebrewed version of LT armor creation.

You can make leather thigh high boots with it and it's just generally better than LT for being aesthetic as fuck in my opinion.

I suspect that TL8/9 transition won't be any better. Seriously, there is still no TL9 firearms in sight.

I doubt hand-held rocket launchers will ever become a thing.
Lasers are shit in atmosphere for obvious reasons, GURPS is really cinematic in that regards, even shadowrun gives lasers harsher penalties for range in 2070s.
As for smartguns and caseless ammo, it's slowly moving in.

>hand-held rocket launchers will ever become a thing
IIRC, gyrojet concept wasn't bad, it just had shit execution
>caseless ammo
NEVER EVER. How are they going to solve problem with chamber overheating?

I'm running a game in that particular age; low tech muskets, high tech revolvers coming into play, with people saying "why dont I just get the basic set version of X?"

UgH

youtu.be/AEu9LLQpOF8
Disposable barrels?

99% of all characters that are meme'd about on GURPS thread DEMAND unusual background.

It's not a choice for the players, it's mandated by the rules. You can only avoid it by a GM that loves rule zero. (and that's okay, rule 0 is above all else)

Skill 18 karate dude in a realistic western cowboy setting ? Unusual background.

Playing the FIRST EVER good-guy alien in a X-COM game ? Unusual background.

A bird-morph humanoid with related abilities (weak gliding, feathers, beak) in a TNMT setting ? No unusual background needed.

No debate, no argument, no nothing. This is RAW.

Rule zero takes priority though. If GM doesn't want "tax" for special "out of place" skills, then it's okay. He doesn't even need to explain himself, or even be AWARE that he's not following the rules.

>How are they going to solve problem with chamber overheating?
At first I wanted to make some witty comment, but... hell if I know.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSAT_light_machine_gun
This thing is currently in testing, so maybe we will see it on the market in 2020 or so.

>combination of rocket ball and picrelated
TL9 my ass

>machine gun
>Place of origin: United States
It's going to be shit.

It's not rule zero, it's also RAW that it's purely a justification for something the GM considers just shy of inappropriate for his game, and what he considers to qualify or not qualify for that is entirely up to him. It's not 'Rule Zero' (as also there's a similar, but slightly different philosophy in GURPS), but rather the actual rules of the disadvantage itself.

They already solved it in the G11 25 years ago by using a less sensitive propellant.

Imho the Basic Set magic system is fine

I'M SO SORRY

G11 requires cinematic levels of Engineering to be produced, though, it won't work in realistic campaign.

I agree

That can't be true, because then the GM would throw out unusual background for some characters, and skip it for other for completely arbitrary reasons.

Either you follow RAW or you don't. Both are fine. But it you don't re-write the rule (also O.K) completely then it's a crapshoot.

The only reason I'm picking on this 'advantage' is because it's one of the most "abused" or "overlooked" advantages in the game. There's only one reason to not permit it in games, less fluff book-keeping and to give players more points to play around with.

Unusual background is a GREAT balancing tool and if it is correctly applied in campaigns it actually allows for MUCH MUCH more "crazy" characters in normal games. Instead of ruling out ill-fitted thematic characters, they can now be inserted into the game providing they pay the TAX, in both points & adjusted character background. mechanic & fluff put together seamlessly. BEST advantage in the game, gift from the god Steve Jackson himself.

Okay, and? The point is that during the development of the G11 they were able to solve the problem of propellant cooking off because of the chamber overheating by using a less sensitive propellant, which is the answer to the question that was asked.

Even the designers themselves admit over and over again that the Magic System is flawed, BUT they found no logical reason to throw away a full magic system that 'works' with 4th and re-invent the wheel.

There's GLARING problems with the magic system though, not just luxury problems like that it's bland and boring (it is bland and boring). There's real problems with the terminology that the magic system copied over from 3rd edition, it doesn't use the updated terms from 4th, this is especially true when it comes to the SCALING of spells.

The reason that a lot of the spells scale horribly (it goes against the basic concepts of 4th in terms of weight, energy, and mass, and EVERYTHING else) and this directly translated to immersion breaking and WEAK spells.

They're not "weak" because they were designed that way, they are weak because they were copy&pasted from an out-dated system that worked on a completely different scale.

That's the problem. It's not just about "lol boring xD". It's simply not a 4th system.

Ritual Path Magic is much better, Steve Jackson approved and 4th should have had a scaled down version of that for basic instead of a botched copy-paste job. (there's even 3rd spells that are "illegal" in that they don't work AT ALL because of mechanics that don't exist in 4th anymore.)

>Ritual Path Magic is much better
It's not very generic, it comes with pre-conceived notions on how magic 'should' feel, or what the power level of (non-Adept) mages should be. Sorcery is more generic, but could probably reworked into a more comprehensive system. And if I wanted ritualism in my games, I wouldn't use it, RPM is much better for that. In my opinion, a 5th edition should come with both as options. The standard magic has it's flaws, but it's biggest one is it's reliance on a large spellbook, a desire to hang on to it would come with a very heave page tax on any book. You can't have all three sadly. It's either Magic, or Sorcery and RPM.

>Sorcery is much better
FTFY

It works on the same system Powers works on and so balances the same way Powers does. And it's setting neutral.

Sorcery is good, but it's not skill based, which is how magic is represented in many settings, so it's not always appropriate.

My biggest problem with both Sorcery and RPM is that they're so point-hungry. One of the things I like about Basic Magic is that you can dabble in magic for very little point cost.

Requires (Attribute) Roll or Requires (Skill) Roll says it is (or at least can be) skill based.

This is a very strong opinion I haven't seen anywhere else. I've heard plenty about Basic Magic being a little off, and knew it was largely inherited from 3e, but not that it was as terribad as you claim. Have you got some examples of the problems?

And my biggest problem with default magic is that it is unbalancingly cheap. Not a problem if you're just dabbling but a dedicated mage can quickly come to outshine just about any other character.

Perhaps a quadratic cost for Magery would help fix that?

Not that user and I haven't cracked open Magic in several years so I'm fuzzy on the details. Take a look at Enlarge though. IIRC with just a little bit of creativity (~86 mana) you can grow to the size of the Earth.

Enlarge is well-known to be wonky but one dumb spell doesn't make the entire system crap.

That's not my problem at all. It's that the skill part of the spells as skills is too cheap. The best fix for that I've heard of is to make the benefits of high skill based on relative skill instead of absolute skill (so instead of a discount to energy cost and casting time at skill 15 you get a discount at IQ+5; tweak the values to suit, I'm just throwing out numbers).

Also look at the required minimum casting time. That seriously hinders mages in combat (which is not a complaint of mine but is a very common one).

Once you start putting the fixes in to remove the hard-wired assumptions in the default system (getting around the casting time with Compartmentalized Mind for example) you start approaching the cost of a seriously badass yet still balanced with the other players Sorcerer. The mage still gets to learn new tricks for a single character point where everybody else has to spend half a dozen to dozens of points for the same bump in ability.

You're absolutely right. It's all I can remember after all these years though. I remember some other stuff in the college that has Drain Power. Many of the combat useful spells are poor copy/paste jobs from 3e and so don't follow the 4e rules at all. I think Concussion, Tickle or Itch, and one other flash-bang like spell are also obviously problematic but don't quote me because I'm relying on a notoriously poor memory here.

Bullshit.

Can you name one good American machine gun designed after the death of John Moses Browning?

I like GURPS and I don't care who knows it.

Well, there's always the M134...

For more conventional platforms, the XM312 would've been good if it had been finished, and there's nothing objectively wrong with the Shrike.

I agree that default magic is too cheap. I think Magery is largely to blame. It's a 10-point Talent that applies to 800+ spells. No other Talent is priced that way. A suggested fix I've seen is to have a Talent for each college of magic, and price them accordingly. Also, I'll just leave this here.

>DX 13
>Animal Friend 4
>Riding 19
>+1 for horse having mount
>+5 for being bros with my horse
>Effectively Riding 25
I am never, ever going to dismount.

Aren't there some more bonuses for saddle and stirrups and such in Low-Tech? You could probably push your effective closer to 30.

Then use it to climb houses and mountains and jump canyons like it is a horse from Skyrim.

>"The mountainside gives way below you, roll riding to recover"
>3 on 30
>GM sighs in resignation

In the basic set, it says there's +2 for bit and bridle, +1 for spurs, and +1 for stirrups. I only have bit and bridle now, but I'll get at least stirrups later.
Getting all would push me up to Riding 29.

>Then use it to climb houses and mountains and jump canyons like it is a horse from Skyrim.
The GM already lets me get away with the most ridiculous bullshit. I outrode a landslide yesterday.
Ground began shaking and giving away, and I completed every roll even at severe penalties. Then I rolled a 4, and he just resigned to the fact that I somehow got away unharmed.

>Can you name one good American machine gun designed after the death of John Moses Browning?
Why would you need to improve on something perfect?

>caseless ammo

/k/ says no

but thats not ceaseless
its 'cased' telescoped ammunition

but tl9 if i seen one

>Que? Please enlighten me.
Not that user, but I believe they were talking about the disconnect between melee (especially Swing) damage and DR values for armor.

This table was done with Low-Tech arms and armor.

If you look at the table, you'll notice that it's really easy for a trivial ST investment to fuck up anyone in armor, even with a basic sw+1 weapon.

Edge protection tries to solve this, but it doesn't work unless you're wearing at least medium plate, which is expensive ($2,500) and heavy (20 lbs. isn't that heavy, but it isn't insignificant either), and even then it doesn't work well.

Now, this doesn't factor in GURPS' concept of "proofed" armor, which is armor rated to withstand the average damage on a roll of the dice. I might append this table in the future with armor as dice rules, when I have free time.

of course I forget the fuckin' table.

Sweet, thank you, user.

You're welcome, brother.

If you price spells as Alternative Abilities of Magery then they'll have 1/5 the cost.

Um. What?

Skill spells are already too cheap and skills, as far as I know, can't be alternate abilities.

Sorcery spells are already alternate abilities of the single most expensive sorcery spell.

I have every official GURPS 4e PDF, except:

Adaptations
After the End 1&2
Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout
Dungeon Fantasy 18&19
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3
Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 2
Powers: The Weird
Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells
Pyramid issues 85+

I'm planning on putting together a complete torrent once I can track down those last few files. If anybody here has any of the files I'm missing, I'd really appreciate sharing them with me. I can upload any other gurps 4e book as a "trade" if you want, although I'll upload them all eventually.

All of them are in the archive, which can be located via the PDF in the OP.

LSAT has a caseless version, it's considered to be promising but requires more development. The light cased telescoped ammunition is at a higher level of technological readiness.

As someone that spents a lot of time on /k/, it's the board that knows the least about the topic and hands out bad advice and memes.

Right now. The LSAT caseless works fine and isolates the chamber from the barrel's heating by pivoting the chamber away from the barrel for loading via rammer.

fuck me
I could have sworn I checked that archive a few weeks ago and it was missing like half the fucking files I needed.
Well, I'll see if I have any decent unofficial stuff I can add on there, I guess. I'll make a torrent when I'm done, too. Thanks

The rammer might be used in the caseless version too; but it's a result of the polymer cased-telescoped ammo.

Causal chain: polymer is light > polymer rips in conventional cartridge extraction > use telescoped ammo to enable rammed-forward extraction > use swinging chamber.

Polymer also insulated the chamber from heat, which is better than a heat sink (which brass provides) which is better than caseless, which no longer has overheating problems because it can use a diluted high explosive instead of double-base smokeless powder.

Heat issues with caseless aren't a thing any more. Gas jet cutting, OTOH, is a severe problem unique to caseless with no easy fix.

Can signature gear be used on multiple items?

The reason I ask is because I have a thought on using it for modular abilities, and trading up for better gear.
Let's say for example, TL3, 1 point of Signature Gear gives $500; would that one point be usable towards both a shield and a knife which would cost far less than $500 combined? Or would I need 1 point for each?

I think it is the former because the rule says:
>each point in Signature Gear gives goods worth up to 50% of the average campaign starting wealth.
>gives "goods"

I usually rule that it can, but they must be tied thematically, like heirloom panoply or bat-everything.

yes, it uses plural pretty often ('you have distinctive, valuable possessions unrelated to your wealth level' for instance) and there's nothing to say it can't be spent on more than one item.
it's ridiculously cheap for what it gives, imo - while you can't really buy assloads of cheap shit with it since you need to actually link that to your character background, it opens up a lot of crazy shit for any character

I was doing a thought experiment for the lowest common denominator form of GURPS, and I was thinking of a rogue-like mechanic where players can't take anything out/into a dungeon except what they can account for with signature gear (and encumbrance) Roll everything on Dungeon Fantasy 8 treasure tables, and if they win a $40,000 bucket that can cause a genocide... they can keep it at least until they reach the exit.

Anybody else remember that one particular user several months ago discussing Vancian magic in GURPs? Isn't a bit suspicious how closely it resembled the Vancian system in the "Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game" kickstarter?

Think it was somebody at SJGames looking for opinions and researching?

Vancian magic is pretty easy to implement. They probably just had the same idea.

>As someone that spents a lot of time on /k/, it's the board that knows the least about the topic and hands out bad advice and memes.

I see that you aren't familiar with /3/.

Or maybe one of the playtesters seeing if someone saw a gross flaw the playtest group missed. But maybe not.

So I've been working on my idea of power as abilities. What does everybody think?

I was thinking of creating a bunch of little different magical traditions like this.

^abilities as skills

Ok, this is what I'm thinking:
Modular Abilities(Any Ability, 7 points per slot; Neither Costly, Difficult, Nor subject to external influence, 5 points per point) (Trait Limited, only Signature Gear with Cosmic, Gear does not need plot significance and cosmic, no penalty for voluntarily throwing equipment away, -50%; Immediate Preparation Required, 10 minutes, -45%)

That would be 2 points for the slot, and then 2 points for each signature gear level (because it has +100% in cosmic modifiers), or maybe even 1 point for half the dollar amount (eg, since signature gear gives $500, and this +100% version costs 2 points, a 1 point version of the +100% version grants $250 worth of stuff.)

Broken? Inane? Overwrought?

Neat, thanks.

I'm a bit confused on how the pricing works. But it looks alright, I think?

Let's say I buy one level of Astrology (the talent) and spend the two points for Astrology (the skill). For 7 points I roll against Scrying to use it? Which would roll under 11? Am I reading this correctly here?

Scrying is a typo from an earlier draft. Suppose you have Astrology 1 (the Talent) and Astrology (Finance) 2. You'd roll against Astrology (Finance) 2 to use it.

For a 0% chance to succeed? Or what's the actual skill level here? Do I need to buy multiple levels of the talent or the skill to approach an acceptable 50% roll (roll under 10)?

Sorry if I'm asking like I have a severe mental deficit, but I can't wrap my head around what's happening.

Suppose I have IQ 10.

Suppose I have Astrology 1 for 5 points.
Suppose I have 1 point in Astrology (Finance).

I'd then have an effective skill of IQ+0=10 because Astrology (Finance) is an Average skill which starts at IQ-1 and Astrology (the Talent) gives a bonus of one.

To successfully use Astrology (Finance) I'd have to roll under 10 (and then the Contact has to roll under 21.)

I love Sorcery (and maybe Incantation Magic too, but I haven't seen it in play yet)!

That looks really fucking awesome. I'd say develop it a little more and then post it on the GURPS forums to see if you can catch the attention of Kromm, PK, or someone.

Thank you.

What could I do with Create (Manna) and Control (Manna) advantages?

Depends on if mana is treated as an energy or a force in the setting. If it's a force, I can see Control working as a more granular Mana Damper/Mana Generator.