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Kiyona
2010-02-15, 03:30 AM
Hello all,

Since I got so much help with my mute mage in GURPS fantasy I thought I should turn to you again with my back-up character. :smallcool:

The adventure has gotten a bit deadly as of late, so I figured a backup was in order. So I made a character with a wolf alternate form. A really big and bad wolf, with size mod 1, actually. ^^

What I am having problems with is boosting damage. The sharp teeth advantage does about thrust-1 I think. With ST 14 and striking strength (wich DM suggested) 5, total damage comes up to 2D-2. Being a quadruped means no extra attack, so I want to focus as much damage in one attack as possible.

Is there any advantages och traits that would boost it even more? Do you know of any items that works with a wolf?

As usual is any thoughts and suggestions very welcome. :smallsmile:

Much thanks in advance!

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-02-15, 04:49 AM
Depends on 3e or 4e.

In 4e, it's pretty easy to pump ST, which increases both SW and TH. Jack that ST rating up over 18, if possible. You'll be doing over 3d6 damage a hit.

In 3e, Karate is a good skill, even if it is P/H, because it adds 1/5 skill to unarmed damage, and has 2/3 skill parry. That means at skill 15, you get a +3 damage and a base parry of 10. If you hit 20, you get a +4 damage, with a base parry of 15. I don't know what kind of bonuses you can get from this in 4e.

If it is a lethal game, *DO NOT* neglect Hit Points, which can be purchased sperately. Get at *least* 20 or even 25 if you can afford it. You are going to be a bruiser, you need to take a hit.

By that same token, see if you can pick up some DR as well. Five or six points means ignoring anyone tossing a single die around, but even DR 2 is going to be a significant impact over multiple hits.

Kiyona
2010-02-15, 05:03 AM
It is 4th edition, at least I hope it is, I only have 4th edition books. ^^

Karate is out of the question since it only applies to punch and kick... not bite unfortunatly. His brawling skill is around 18 or 20 though.

Oh, I had forgotten to buy HP, thanks. :smallsmile: He has 14 as of now, but I am going to buy at least 6 more.

Is there a difference in striking ST and pure ST? With striking ST 5 he has 19 strength. But his thrust is still 2D-1. Should I buy pure strengt instead?

DR is at 5 already, very practical indeed. :smallcool:

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-02-15, 05:34 AM
It is 4th edition, at least I hope it is, I only have 4th edition books. ^^

Karate is out of the question since it only applies to punch and kick... not bite unfortunatly. His brawling skill is around 18 or 20 though.

Oh, I had forgotten to buy HP, thanks. :smallsmile: He has 14 as of now, but I am going to buy at least 6 more.

Is there a difference in striking ST and pure ST? With striking ST 5 he has 19 strength. But his thrust is still 2D-1. Should I buy pure strengt instead?

DR is at 5 already, very practical indeed. :smallcool:

Oh yea, I forgot, biting uses TH rather than SW. No, you're doing good, although you probably want to boost striking ST more.

Brawl still gives bonuses to unarmed damage, right? Ask the DM politely if you can apply that bonus damage to your bite. It represents unscientific skill in combat... pretty much describing what you're doing with biting the hell out of someone.

If you want to dip into Magic, the Body Control college has some fun toys here. In 3e, you could rush to Deathtouch pretty darn quickly, if you went single-college, and could easily get a 20 by stacking M3 on top of IQ14 and spending the points on IQ+3. This gives you, without Fatigue cost, 2d6 damage which ignores DR. Pretty darn handy, eh? And if you want to blow 1FP, you do 3d6. Here's the fun part: At 21, you don't need to spend an action to do it. So you bite them, you're also touching them. That means they eat the bite damage... and the Deathtouch damage, all from the same attack roll. You'll need a skill of 21 in Deathtouch, though.

A bonus of going into Body Control is Iron Arm, which temporarily gives you more DR if you know you're gonna get hurt bad by a hit.

Also, more DR is always a good thing. Getting a DR of 12 means ignoring anything not throwing around at least 3d6. Coupled with at least 20 hit points, that means you are going to be one tough pup.

Also, isn't there an Advantage to make your teeth do Impaling? That effectively doubles everything that gets through armor. Not too shabby, eh?

Kiyona
2010-02-15, 05:57 AM
I dont think getting the unarmed bonus from brawling to bite will be a problem, DM is nice when it comes to these sort of things. =)

Deathtouch is awesome, and my current mage is a focused body control mage. Although, in 4th edition you dont get to add magery to your effective skill when it comes to ignoring fatigue and actions. So to get it to 21 is very costly. Still very handy though. ^^

But since my current PC is a mage, I wont be going that route with my wolf.

I realized that since he is large, and a quadruped, buying pure ST costs as much as striking ST, so he now has 19 ST and 19 HP. If I can find a way to relocate some points I will boost it to 20.



Also, isn't there an Advantage to make your teeth do Impaling? That effectively doubles everything that gets through armor. Not too shabby, eh?

If there is, I want it! :smallcool:
I havent found one yet though.

Hm... DR 12 sounds good... but expensive. Alternate form is very costly as it is. I mean, buying an ally built on 200 points costs 20 points. An alternate form for the same amount of points costs 15 + 90% of the point cost = 195 points. Ouch.

Satyr
2010-02-15, 08:47 AM
I realized that since he is large, and a quadruped, buying pure ST costs as much as striking ST, so he now has 19 ST and 19 HP. If I can find a way to relocate some points I will boost it to 20.

Striking ST is modified by size and no fine manipulators exactly like usual ST. You can take Striking ST with the Bite only limitation (It's a 60% limitation, you can find it Powers). From a plausibility point of view, one or two levels of this should be obligatory far any carnivore, and for creatures with a very strong bite, like hyenas or sharks more levels are very likely. With size +1 and NFM's, that reduces the cost of Striking ST to 1 CP per level.

Since the bonus damage for brawl is based on the number of dice, you want an effective Striking ST of 21, to get the second die of net damage when you include the teeth.

And then... do you use Martial Arts? If you do, learn to specifically target the weak spots in your victims armor - preferably on the neck - and marvel on the lethality of the wolf neck bite.

Targeted attack throat is -5 by default, but this be reduced through a trained maneuver. Cutting damage against the neck is x2, instead of x1.5, so that can get nasty quite fast. Chinks in the armor (which let you ignore the target's DR) is another -5 in addition, so when you can manage to cope with a -10 penalty, you can pretty much one shot most enemies, and that exactly how the big bad wolf would do it -by tearing out their throats.

Alternatively, treat the bite as an innate cutting attack with a reach of C, and add an armor divisor for extra viciousness. Now you can bite through steel and you can stack it up with accuracy to increase your chance to hit.

Cyrion
2010-02-15, 10:11 AM
I don't know if it's still there in 4e, but see if ablative DR is available; we used it quite a bit in a supers campaign. It's cheaper that full DR, but it's downside is that it goes down by the amount of damage you take (restored daily), i.e, if you've got an ablative DR of 25 and take 10 points of damage in one combat, for your next combat that day you only have a DR of 15. If the style of the campaign is that you only have one or two combats per game day, this can be a worthwhile way to go.

Kiyona
2010-02-15, 01:38 PM
I'm back with new directions frm DM. :smallbiggrin:

No more than 22 ST, 3 striking ST and maximum 5 DR. This to keep the game relatively balanced. And I can totally see his point. Since the "normal" form for this character is a noncombatant and kind of weak, this wolf wont be much of a problem. But if I really wanted to create a melee-monster, alternate form is easily abused.



Striking ST is modified by size and no fine manipulators exactly like usual ST. You can take Striking ST with the Bite only limitation (It's a 60% limitation, you can find it Powers). From a plausibility point of view, one or two levels of this should be obligatory far any carnivore, and for creatures with a very strong bite, like hyenas or sharks more levels are very likely. With size +1 and NFM's, that reduces the cost of Striking ST to 1 CP per level.

I had no idea about this, thanks a lot! Even though I cant increase striking ST, the leftover points will be put to good use in terror I think. :smallcool:

Asta Kask
2010-02-15, 01:43 PM
Karate is out of the question since it only applies to punch and kick... not bite unfortunatly. His brawling skill is around 18 or 20 though.

I think Kromm has stated that a Perk to get Karate bonus to biting wouldn't be unreasonable.


Is there a difference in striking ST and pure ST? With striking ST 5 he has 19 strength. But his thrust is still 2D-1. Should I buy pure strengt instead?

Pure ST gets you HP, Lifting ST, Striking ST and the ST-based skills. Striking ST only gets you damage.