Old Man

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Is this free DCV a house rule? Because permanently small 5ed characters have to pay for that DCV. It really sounds like your dealing with a munchkin, and that nothing you say that makes logical sense is going to make a bit of difference. He sees his character as numbers to be leveraged, not as a game description of a concept. He wants something for nothing, not to play a character.

Not just a munchkin, a poor munchkin. A good munchkin can create a wildly powerful character without resorting to such credibility-straining ideas.

Another possibility is that the player is amused only by cartoonish or comic-relief characters. The kind you always see in the movies and on tv, that you really wish weren't there.

Mortally wounded a dragon with a 9mm Beretta once. Fantasy Hero game, but we'd started out as versions of ourselves, with a few modern implements to give us a chance in hell of surviving. Anyway, by a dozen adventures in, we all looked like your usual FH group, I'd been using a magic sword for like ten sessions, and all the ammo was gone...well, almost.

GM: "A dragon flies over the hill and comes right towards you. It's out of melee range."

Me: "I draw my nine and fire."

GM: "You still have that thing?"

Me: "Yup. Three rounds left."

GM: "Well... okay. Roll it."

Critical hit to the vitals. Did I mention we treated firearms as AP in the campaign? Anyway, it fled in fear of my mighty boom stick.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Actually, the combat handling is only part of the database. It also keeps records and creates characters. But I don't program during a game.

No, of course not. But I'm addressing your earlier claim that the hit location table is too much work. You're smart enough to write a database to handle combat, therefore you are smart enough to memorize a little chart.

The quote above is what I was referring to. A face hit is a face hit. You have no way of knowing to dodge before the hit is announced. If you are dodging or blocking, you are dodging and blocking all attacks, not just called ones. Unless you require your NPCs to announce to the players that they are going to aim for their vitals before they roll?

Of course you have no way of knowing where the blow is going to land. That's where it gets interesting. Do you dodge, or potentially take the hit? Typically this depends on what you know about your opponent's skill level and damage class.

Please. I am not "deathly afraid".

I took one consequence of HLC to make an example. I am not afraid of hitting a character in the face.

Well, what's the problem, then? I'm not afraid of my character getting hit in the face. I don't have him go out and block with it, but I accept the fact that what he does for a living is dangerous.

No. I stand by my remark. I think what my players are more comfortable with is synonymous with what is more fun to play in this case. If people are uncomfortable with a rule, then they aren't having as much fun as they might.

If your players are more comfortable with hit points, then that's fine. I'll never understand it, but fine.

I do have other house rules that modify the uncertainty of combat, but our games are fairly story-oriented. Characters don't generally die fighting guards. Again, it might be too unrealistic for your taste, but we don't play in the same game. If Conan dies on page 4, there isn't much of a story. If Boromir dies from a random arrow in Moria, it's not nearly as much fun (to play) as dying defending the hobbits while Frodo gets away.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. If everyone knows ahead of time that the group is Not Meant To Die Here, then why even play out the combat? Why not just say, "you encounter some guards, and they die, because you're the heroes," and save a lot of time? If Conan knows he's not going to die on page 4, then why read page 4? The first time you read FotR, did you know Boromir was going to survive Moria? Of course not. That's what made it interesting.

 

You're welcome to your opinion. I think you would have to attend one of my games before you could come to the conclusion of how I run combat. I have no problem with occasionally rolling a hit location if it's important.

I don't think I actually have to attend one of your games to know that I would be bored by combat. The other stuff might be great, but every time swords are drawn and it's not the boss, I know my character is in no danger. This turns combat into a meaningless exercise in die-rolling.

It's a pretty trivial thing we're debating here, anyway. I freely admit that most people use the HLC at heroic level and have a great deal of fun with it. We don't. At this point we should agree to disagree, since I rarely argue a point this long. No one is going to change anyone's mind.

Okay. Of course, it's not your mind I'm after.

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft

If you're using a "little person" race in your game, then you should design them in such a way that they'll have their own weapon preferences. If this guy wants to weild a whopping great sword, why does he also want to play a 3' tall character? Sounds like an inherent contradiction to me. Even if he is strong enough to carry the thing and swing it, he won;t have the balance to weild it with any skill. And when you;re fighting for your life, a clumsy weapon can be worse than no weapon at all.

Actually I think he's trying to take advantage of the free +DCV for size while at the same time wielding a weapon that does huge damage.

Anyway, I have no problem with making bastard swords require two hands for the little people. The question is, how do you set the STR min for it? Along the same line, if broad swords become the little people bastard swords, how do you determine the STR min for them? I should have realized this would come up, but I also figured that my players would be reasonable. My broad swords have STR min 10 and bastard swords set at 13/15

I think you guys are forgetting that just giving them Shrinking doesn't change their stats. When the giants become small, they lose their giant strength and toughness.

Maybe it's just me but I would either use a Multiform, Transform or...

Build the big guys using Growth. The Shrinking Machine would have several linked Suppresses (maybe Standard Effect) affecting Growth, and whatever else you attribute to their large size.

Maybe Transform would be better because if something happened to the Shrinking Machine, they would suddenly become giant sized again.

There's a special effect component to this matter, though. Frequently the darkness is not just an AD+D patch of black, it's a thick fog or a cloud of dust or a swarm of locusts. Whereas light is usually just light.

Usually three points' worth of life support vs. aging. That's how much it used to cost, anyway. LS has been worked over in 5th but I'm too lazy to get up and go look at the book. Three points is pretty expensive considering that it's just not going to come up in the course of the game except on the off chance that the PCs get hit with some kind of aging spell or attack.

What ought to be done is to have immortality as a psych lim. Usually we see elves played as quick humans with pointy ears. But if you were immortal, you'd probably not be real inclined to do anything quickly, nor would you be interested in the affairs of mortals who live and die in the space of a breath.

Originally posted by Alibear

I've had this very same discussion at least twice in my RPG life. People who do Martial Arts, say San Take Karate-Do, don't block a kick by sticking an arm in the way! You block by moving your feet first, essentially getting your body out of the way and then attacking the incoming attack to knock your assailant off balance.

But at the same time, in the Real World there's no clear distinction between blocking and dodging. Many maneuvers I've learned (well, tried to) were hybrid block/dodge/strikes, like slipping a punch in boxing.

We used to allow blocking at -1 OCV to simulate a deflection block, so as not to take damage to the weapon/shield. I've lost characters to that -1 OCV, too.

BTW someone from my Karate club broke someones arm in a competition who "stuck an arm up" when trying to block his spinning kick. I always read that as rolling an 8 on hit location!

Conversely I've seen kickers break their shins on their targets' elbows or knees which they put out to block. And there's a kickboxing quicktime movie floating out on the net somewhere of a pro kickboxer ending his career in this way when his opponent raised his knee to block. The way his leg flopped around at mid-shin... well, don't watch it if you're squeamish.

Originally posted by Steve Long

Or maybe, if I stretch the concept of "Base" a little, it would be suitable for The Ultimate Base.

You shouldn't have to stretch it that far. Under (I think) 3rd ed. Champions rules it was easy to buy a "base" that encompassed the entire planet, with points left over to subjugate the inhabitants.

More seriously, there is precedent for having nation-sized bases... Dr. Doom, ruler of Latvia, is one example. Adding some kind of measure for resources, population, economy and culture to large bases seems pretty logical to me.

Part of the problem is that the hobbit shouldn't be able to reach 15 STR to begin with. The STR range for a hobbit ought to be 0-10, if that. Maybe more like 0-8, with an average of 3.

Wait, 3' is short even for a hobbit.

And then there's the problem of "where does he grip it", since little hobbit hands aren't going to get a good grip on a nice fat claymore hilt.

A prospective player to my game grumbled that the little people should be able to swing big swords. In my head I was thinking "uh...no. why? because I said so." In answer to his grumbles, I ignored him.

Basically speaking, in my game the little people are about 3 feet tall and can have a maximum STR of 15. Two-handed swords have a STR min of 15. Using his munchkin logic, he stated that the little people should be able to swing two-handed swords if they have STR 15. Of course, it is stated in the player guidelines that the little people cannot use two-handed swords.

Am I being heavy handed in my ruling? I didn't think so. I couldn't accept a 6 foot man effectively swinging a 12 foot sword, so a 3 foot man with a 6 foot sword is about the same no?

Actually I think the D+D monster whose name generates the most intense pronunciation discussions is "drow".

Originally posted by Storn

I think that leather armor, against any kind of killing attack becomes DMG reduction..allowing full PD vs. the Stun, but not adding any of itself.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Interesting idea. But how much Damage Reduction do you get?

Do other types of armor provide as much or more Damage Reduction? or do they just provide Defense?

Look up the rules on Sweep. You can already Sweep using Martial Strikes.

It also depends on how you want the character to be affected. Clumsiness or similar can be a Dex Drain/Suppress. Having stuff fall on them, fall down or step on things could be 1 pip RKA every so many minutes/hours/whatever.

If the spell is an NPC spell it's easier to pull off.

ooh ooh I know. just buy a huge amount of Luck for the bad guy. The rules say that anything over the 3d6 translate to cover the group. The effect would be unluck on the players.

Originally posted by Tetsuyama

 

Something between modern day and cyberpunk really appeals to me. I've always like Masamune Shirow's work (the Appleseed/Ghost in the Shell world is so cool), but the amount of work that would go in to something quite that detailed is beyond me. It's got cyberpunk-like tech, but in some ways the world doesn't seem as dark. Maybe it's because the protagonists work for the government and don't have the same "us vs. the World" complex that frequently shows up in cyberpunk.

Tetsuyama

You have to go back to the first issue of Appleseed. The whole first chapter with Deunan ans Briarios living in urban ruins is preety much the majority of the world. The rest of the series revolves around their life in the "civilized areas" so you don't get to see much more of the junk heap the world is.

Originally posted by Spyritwind

Hmmm ... interesting. I was thinking about how to treat shields for small characters such as a halfling? A large shield is too big for them to use and so they couldn't wield a shield with a DCV bonus of three and so would only be able to use a medium shield of plus two. I'm thinking of allowing medium shields as though they were large and a small as a medium for small characters and a buckler as a small.

The DCV benefit from the shield shouldn't change as the small guy can already have a DCV bonus for size.

GURPS Conan is excellent. Not sure if it's still in print though. I got mine used.

But this thread is an automaton... knock off the head, and it keeps coming! Muahahahaaa!

Too bad. This thread is lycanthropic, not undead, and it wears kevlar as a defense against silver bullets.

Elven hair makes really good underwear. Nice and soft, like silk. Aaaah....

Well, what you do is fillet them and then fry or grill up the fillets... kind of like chicken strips. I like them with a tangy honey mustard sauce.

Hey, I like elves. Them's good eatin'.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

The activation roll just lets me choose between two sets of defenses, armored and unarmored. Hit loctions require that roll to be indexed to a list and add in the possibility of called shots. More work, not a lot, I grant, but it's work we don't want to do. I have a database that handles all combat and can optionally do all that in one step, but it ultimately comes down to what my players feel comfortable with.

You don't want to make the effort to memorize a chart with at most a dozen entries... but you have time to make a database to handle all combat.

Also, the genre I am running can loosely be described as Post-Apoc sword and sworcery. In order to retain the look and feel of the genre (half naked barbarians swinging big swords who somehow manage to survive from adventure to adventure without disability), armor is scarce. If I were to enforce hit locations, that would make the illogicality of the genre stand out like a severed thumb.

Not realistic certainly, but neither is the genre.

Combat Luck.

How can good playing reduce the chance of a facial wound? I assume you mean by wearing a helmet.

No, I mean by dodging or blocking when someone takes a swing at you.

It sounds to me like you like modelling real-life medieval combat and that's cool. But no one in the Fellowship of the Ring for instance wears a helmet except Gimli. Not one has a missing eye or a long facial scar.

None of the characters I ran ever had a facial scar either. It's funny, but all my characters really didn't scar up much at all, even on those freak occasions when they did get hit in 3-5. Unless I thought it would look cool, anyway.

Again, you sound like you're deathly afraid of having your heroes get hit in the face in combat. To reiterate: it rarely happens, and if it does happen, so what? Hit locations do not force you to model gangrene and facial reconstruction.

It all comes down to what you are trying to simulate.

It all comes down to what's more fun to play, actually. Having a leg wound is more interesting to me than a hit point countdown. The possibility of sudden death is more interesting than wading into combat secure in the knowledge that I can take two solid hits from this guy's shortsword before I risk negative body.

How does this differ from using armor on an activation? Players can still go down with a lucky hit. The rules are't that different.

IMO what you have is a hit point system that takes longer. It has all of the drawbacks of hit locations and none of the benefits.

Actually I would go with a Summon and ask SuperSquirrel how he made his bunnies (lots of bunnies being able to combine)

If you do the MP thing, then the Villain can't really change his powers easily. If it's a Summon, you can cater the Summon to the bio material he has on hand.

Re: YES... RONIN!

Originally posted by RDU Neil

 

Other movies that make for good, "more realistic" style adventures.

 

China Town

Any of the Godfather movies.

The Bodyguard (yes, cheesy as it may sound, it's a solid DI adventure)

To Live & Die In LA (heck, the main PC bites it half way through the movie!)

Man On Fire

Platoon

Year of the Dragon

Heat and Manhunter from Michael Mann

Serpico

Taxi Driver

aww man, you forgot

HEAT