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Invader
2018-10-26, 10:32 PM
My group and I decided to jump into Gurps and none of us has played before so it’s been a lot of character creation and figuring out rules for our first three sessions.

The scenario is they’re all all young mutants in modern day NYC with 150 CP

The problem we encountered was during a practice combat I threw a guy with a TL7 5.56 assault rifle at them. I fired 3 rounds and after RoF and a concealment penalty I hit with round. The problem is that even 1rd at 5d damage is more than enough to down anyone with no/little DR.

I know damage mitigation is more important in gurps than high hitpoints but are we doing something wrong that a single rifle round is so effective?

Advice appreciated.

RazorChain
2018-10-27, 07:39 AM
Gurps is realistic in the sense you can down a person with one round.

5.56 round does 17.5 in dmg on average, enough to put a normal person in negative HP forcing them to make consciousness check every round they want to take action.

you have 2 options, don't get shot or/and wear armor.

Don't get shot means careful play. Don't end up in situation where you get shot at, this require planning. In modern day warfare spotting your enemy first is most important as then you have a huge tactical advantage.

Character wise you can use extra effort: feverish defense once per round for +2 in dodge for the cost of 1 fatigue point if you make a will roll.

Drop and dodge is a retreating option that gives you +3 to dodge but you end up prone

In GURPS most fights end with a one good blow, the hard part is landing that blow.
Stunning and conscious checks kick in and end the fight. Especially when you have 150 CP characters

Invader
2018-10-27, 01:21 PM
Sounds good. I knew damage was a bit more realistic in Gurps compared to some other games but we also don't the system well enough to make sure we doing all the right things.

Curebtjy 3 people wear armor while the one that doesn't focuses on having a high dodge but we didn't know about dropping dodge or fevers defense so that's good to know.

Gnoman
2018-10-27, 10:09 PM
Don't expect too much from mundane body armor either. If you're using Exotic advantages for your mutants, they can get some pretty decent damage reduction that way, but even the best body armor isn't going to completely stop a rifle round from damaging a character - even if you're not using Hit Locations (which make matters partially worse because limbs and the head can't be armored as well as the torso, although even the worst limb hit won't kill).



In GURPS, as in real life, the best thing is to avoid getting shot in the first place. This means that you have to utilize cover and the dodge mechanics very heavily. Note that the curve system does make dodge very good - in my game I've had individual generic cultists dodge over a hundred rounds at close range - that fight took forever to run.

Thrudd
2018-10-28, 11:40 AM
Yeah, 150 pts in GURPS is "normal" human starting range, so they are going to be realistically vulnerable to physical harm. If they are meant to be low-powered supers, or to do any sort of action movie/comic book flavor stuff, I'd have given them 250-300 at least.

Connington
2018-10-28, 02:53 PM
Advice appreciated.

Up your point total, or don't throw assault rifles at them casually.

150 points is a highly competent but realistic specialist in GURPS. The point buy system makes skills and equipment (used with mundane skills) cheap compared to any supernatural "powers" built with points, so a super that can easily go up against bullets is expensive, on the order of 250 to 500 points, depending on how smart the PCs play.

In particular, "bricks" with enough DR and Strength to eat bullets and break walls require a lot of points compared to say, mind controllers or telekinetics.

To keep the "teenager" feel, consider building characters with only 100 points, then adding 100-200 points of powers. That will make the PCs powerful while still feeling young and unskilled.

Or maybe you want a low powered vibe, closer to Alphas, than early X Men. Then don't break out M-16s as a casual threat! That's the kind of threat that in the real world draws multiple SWAT teams with body armor, sniper rifles, and APCs. A pistol is going to do maybe 2d+2 damage (average of 9 damage), which isn't quite enough to knock someone out on average.

Remember that low combat skill levels is also very realistic. Guns 10 for standard crooks, 12 for cops/soldiers/elite gangsters, 14 for SWAT teams and other deadly threats. Slap some range and concealment penalties on there, and people mostly won't be hitting anyways.

Ts_
2018-10-31, 05:10 PM
All of the above, but you have even more options:

If you want to evoke the feeling of certain stories, you're definitely allowed to change the laws of physics!

So you could say that even though the weapon looks like a big rifle, it does just 2d6 like any other big weapon the heros might encounter.

You can also give everyone in the world hard to kill +4 for free, essentially making sure people only get knocked out; or simply make that a rule.

Both of these approaches help with the fact that not all members of the party can have perfect defenses to credible threats, so someone will get hurt badly eventually in a "realistic" campaign.

There are also the cinematic/narrative approaches to let characters have lots of Luck advantage (maybe for free, maybe limited to defenses); or let the players spend character points to reroll certain rolls. (1 cp / reroll? Depends on how many you want to give out.)

Best regards,
Ts

jindra34
2018-10-31, 06:19 PM
There are also the cinematic/narrative approaches to let characters have lots of Luck advantage (maybe for free, maybe limited to defenses); or let the players spend character points to reroll certain rolls. (1 cp / reroll? Depends on how many you want to give out.)

Best regards,
Ts

I'm going to comment on the last one; the game actually suggests if your going to allow spending of CP to alter results to just make it 1 cp to step from failure to success or success to critical success.

RazorChain
2018-10-31, 08:33 PM
I'm going to comment on the last one; the game actually suggests if your going to allow spending of CP to alter results to just make it 1 cp to step from failure to success or success to critical success.

My group uses bennies, nobody wants to use their hard earned character points