[GURPS] Help reaching a good spot with death, damage, and action

[Ninja_Grand]

Hello all! I just got my hands on some GURPS 4E books from a closeout and wanted to ask GitP about death and injury in this game. From what I understand with a hour or two of skimming this system is VERY lethal. Yet it "cinematic" options come up very often. So I would like to ask "How do you balance out lethality and cinematic action?". What im hoping for that you can get hit and still fight, yet a one shot kill is still a chance. A good goal point would be early "Rurouni Kenshin" level if you know the show. If not, many of the fights are long with block and small cuts being common. But most fights are ended when one character gets in a good hit.

A good video of a fight like what I mean (if a bit long)
Let me sum it up...
The first minute is very fast paced series of blows and blocks, yet at 1:34 we see a good hit on the hero and 3:50 on the villain (note:the sword is not bladed for story reasons). Then they fight on without issue (No "shock" using game terms, I am guessing) Yet at 7:07 we see the villain disabled with one hard blow with the sheath of a sword, with the hero describing the damage "I crushed your elbow joint and tore the ligaments".

Is there anyway to reach that kind of balance point?

[hifidelity2]

You can use a cinematic rules and some house rules to give you that feel


1st of all GURPS is/ can be lethal esp if you are used to D&D. The HP you start with are broadly speaking the HP you die with

This then needs a different game style.
Assuming to are keeping it to Fantasy then with healing magic’s it doesn’t need to be to lethal

2 – 3 points of armour will reduce most normal sword blows to a few points of damage. Naturally critical are a lot worse

One cinematic is that only X% of damage is real and the other is temporary damage and heals at the end of the combat.
If you Temp damage exceeds for HP then you get penalties (say -1 to all skills for every tim you exceed your original HP etc)
You could allow critcals / vitals hits to do a greater % of real damage

[Ts_]

Re: Lethality

Yes, Gurps is lethal and once someone is hit, one is somewhat more likely to be hit again.

Note that Shock doesn't affect Active Defenses, though. So when hit one simply All-Out-Defends (at the full value + maneuver bonuses) for a round to wait for the Shock penalty to be over. But at less than 1/3 HP the Dodge score is halved, and that's really dangerous for anyone not heavily armoured.

However, a cinematic character can often avoid dying: Really high HT (16+) or a few levels of Hard To Kill means that an opponent would have to actively slash the character to pieces (-5x HP) for them to die. (Nothing's stopping the opponent in a lost 1v1 from doing so, but if there are team mates, they might be able to save unconscious fighters.) A cinematic campaign might give Hard To Kill to all heroes and maybe even all NPCs if death is considered unfun but unconsciousness is a common outcome of a battle.

Re: Cinematics

A cinematic fight like the one linked to might be achieved by realizing that while HP is a scarce resource, players have other resources as well:

* Mundane things like space to retreat into. The Retreat option on a defense can be worth a lot and is essentially free ... unless one has to defend a gate.
* FP for the optional rule Extra Effort in Combat. With FP, one can gain bonuses when needed ... once low on FP, things become a lot more dangerous.
* Cinematic abilities with limited usage, most importantly Luck.
* Cinematic combat option: Flesh Wounds. Spend a character point to mostly ignore a hit (except for 1 HP). Players will likely use this a last resort, but it certainly can help.

(The Martial Arts source book probably has a ton more options, but let's not get side-tracked ...)

The looks of the show can also be narrated: A miss (or successful defense) can still be narrated as a gracing hit, which just happens to not do any real harm / results in no HP loss.

Still, fights are likely to be short in in-game time in GURPS: A round is 1 second long, and fights can be over in a handful of rounds, even when players use all these options. GURPS is not ideally suited for such stylized fights.

Then again, if two cinematic fighters with Defense scores at 16 meet, they won't hit each other for a very long time ... There's a very important rule against that, though, the Deceptive Attack which trades -2 to the attacker's skill for -1 to the defender's defense. (Or -4 for -2, -6 for -3 ...) I guess you could force your players to fight without this option for a bit, resulting in a lot of successful active defenses. But I don't know how this could be made fun instead of feeling like a waste of time.

Hope that helps
Ts

[Ninja_Grand]

Re: Lethality

Yes, Gurps is lethal and once someone is hit, one is somewhat more likely to be hit again.

Note that Shock doesn't affect Active Defenses, though. So when hit one simply All-Out-Defends (at the full value + maneuver bonuses) for a round to wait for the Shock penalty to be over. But at less than 1/3 HP the Dodge score is halved, and that's really dangerous for anyone not heavily armoured.

However, a cinematic character can often avoid dying: Really high HT (16+) or a few levels of Hard To Kill means that an opponent would have to actively slash the character to pieces (-5x HP) for them to die. (Nothing's stopping the opponent in a lost 1v1 from doing so, but if there are team mates, they might be able to save unconscious fighters.) A cinematic campaign might give Hard To Kill to all heroes and maybe even all NPCs if death is considered unfun but unconsciousness is a common outcome of a battle.

Re: Cinematics

A cinematic fight like the one linked to might be achieved by realizing that while HP is a scarce resource, players have other resources as well:

* Mundane things like space to retreat into. The Retreat option on a defense can be worth a lot and is essentially free ... unless one has to defend a gate.
* FP for the optional rule Extra Effort in Combat. With FP, one can gain bonuses when needed ... once low on FP, things become a lot more dangerous.
* Cinematic abilities with limited usage, most importantly Luck.
* Cinematic combat option: Flesh Wounds. Spend a character point to mostly ignore a hit (except for 1 HP). Players will likely use this a last resort, but it certainly can help.

(The Martial Arts source book probably has a ton more options, but let's not get side-tracked ...)

The looks of the show can also be narrated: A miss (or successful defense) can still be narrated as a gracing hit, which just happens to not do any real harm / results in no HP loss.

Still, fights are likely to be short in in-game time in GURPS: A round is 1 second long, and fights can be over in a handful of rounds, even when players use all these options. GURPS is not ideally suited for such stylized fights.

Then again, if two cinematic fighters with Defense scores at 16 meet, they won't hit each other for a very long time ... There's a very important rule against that, though, the Deceptive Attack which trades -2 to the attacker's skill for -1 to the defender's defense. (Or -4 for -2, -6 for -3 ...) I guess you could force your players to fight without this option for a bit, resulting in a lot of successful active defenses. But I don't know how this could be made fun instead of feeling like a waste of time.

Hope that helps
Ts

This helps a lot. The fight I link I guess was a bit poor choice, but you gave me lots of choices. I think the free levels in hard to kill is a great thought for what I need. And the narration tip is going to be a godsend, despite how simple it is. Thank you so much!

[kyoryu]

Re: Lethality

Yes, Gurps is lethal and once someone is hit, one is somewhat more likely to be hit again.

True, but it's also worth pointing out that outside of critical hits in bad places, you're far, far more likely to be knocked out in GURPS than killed.

Then again, if two cinematic fighters with Defense scores at 16 meet, they won't hit each other for a very long time ... There's a very important rule against that, though, the Deceptive Attack which trades -2 to the attacker's skill for -1 to the defender's defense. (Or -4 for -2, -6 for -3 ...) I guess you could force your players to fight without this option for a bit, resulting in a lot of successful active defenses. But I don't know how this could be made fun instead of feeling like a waste of time.

Also, Feint.