by K. David Ladage
It is a rare day in the GURPS Universe that someone does not say something to the effect of "GURPS does not handle Supers very well" or "GURPS breaks down after 'x' number of points."
Why?
Most cite the fact that it was the intent of GURPS to simulate reality. The point-based system was designed around the idea of 25 character points being an average run-of-the-mill Joe, while 100 character points being a heroic individual. Thus, most campaigns give 100 points (or so) to the player characters, making them a cut above the rest. Once you reach very high point levels (there is no consensus as to what that point value is exactly), then the rules that were designed for lower point totals begin to break down.
And those that cite this are probably correct, at least to a point.
There are some problems with GURPS after you get up in the points. Combat becomes so deadly in SUPERS games that players dare not use that 12d6 impaling area-effect, continuous effect Hell-blast for fear of killing a few dozen innocent bystanders. One solution that was offered in the Supers book (and later in Compendium I) was Stun Points.
Stun Points were a sort of "cut the deadliness of combat way down" solution that came with some baggage of its own. For example, all persons are equally effected, making combat in the streets between thugs unrealistically comical -- what are we trying to save them from? It also does not provide what the Supers genre is screaming for: clear breaks between the average, the heroic, and the super-heroic.
But even in other games, campaigns can get a little cinematic without going to the Supers extreme. Without making the rules in one game different than the rules in another. In a game that claims to be Generic, how do you handle these disparities?
This article offers one possible solution to this dilemma. It involves three elements:
- Stun: A variation on how to calculate how many Stun Points the character has.
- Combat: A variation on how to use Stun Points in combat.
- Scaling: A variation on character point costs to scale things such that high-point characters are less likely to be abusive.
Calculating Stun Points
The first step is to modify the Stun Point calculation rules. As they currently stand, all characters get Stun equal to 5xHP. This is not very useful in the long run, as it applies equally to all; it probably makes more sense that Stun should scale with the concept of the character. And so, what is proposed is the following steps to calculating Stun for the character:
- All players have a Health (HT) score that forms the base of Hit Points (HP). Optionally, you can use Strength (ST).
- Players may buy up HP as per normal costs. Treat this as additional muscle mass. It can be purchased later as "intensive training." See below.
- Stun Points (Stun) equals HPxZ where Z is calculated as follows:
Baseline
+2.0
Advantages *
Combat Reflexes
+0.6
Fit
+0.2
Very Fit
+0.4
Hard to Kill
+0.1
High Pain Threshold
+0.4
Disadvantages **
Combat Paralysis
-0.6
Low Pain Threshold
-0.4
Physical Attributes (ST, DX) ***
00 - 04
-0.4
05 - 08
-0.2
09 - 12
N/A
13 - 16
+0.2
17 - 20
+0.4
21+
+0.6
Combat Skills ****
None
N/A
01-05 points
+0.2
06-10 points
+0.4
11-20 points
+0.6
21-30 points
+0.8
31+ points
+1.0
- * Advantages: Any other advantage that the GM feels should apply can be fit into this calculation. Examples might include Trained by Master for Martial Artists and Initiation for practitioners of ritual Magic. The Hard to Kill advantage provides +0.1 per level.
- ** Disadvantages: The GM is free to have disadvantages that can pull from the calculation.
- *** Attributes: If the variant rule of ST=HP is used, replace ST in this calculation with HT.
- **** Combat Skills: This is the "hardened veteran" rule and may be dropped without much effect. These modifiers are here so that combat oriented characters do not have to have all of the physical advantages to take advantage of this scaling effect.
- Players may purchase additional Stun as per normal costs. Treating Stun like Hit Points in Dungeons and Dragons(TM), they represent the ability to avoid major damage in combat.
- Extra Hit Points and Extra Stun Points need to be carefully monitored. If the scaling rules (see below) are not being used, limits of +3 Hit Points and +15 Stun Points are very reasonable. If the scaling rules are being used, these limits are no longer needed.
Stun in Combat
Stun, as defined in the standard GURPS rules, is treated like Hit Points -- only you have a lot more of them. They give examples as to how you can scale Stun and Hit Points to slide the realism meter one way or the other. This article offers another option.
- When dealing damage in combat, all of the damage should be taken from Stun. All weapons and such deal damage as per normal.
- When rolling the damage, however, treat all 6s rolled on the dice as though they do no Stun damage, but inflict 1 point of HP damage instead. Thus, each die does the following:
Die
Damage Result
1:
1 Stun, 0 HP
2:
2 Stun, 0 HP
3:
3 Stun, 0 HP
4:
4 Stun, 0 HP
5:
5 Stun, 0 HP
6:
0 Stun, 1 HP
- Next, apply the multipliers for Cutting, Impaling and Bullet damage to both the Stun and the HP damage. Round all Stun damage up (1.1 = 2 Stun damage) and all HP damage down (1.9 = 1 HP damage).
- Whenever a critical hit is indicated, deal with it as normal (double damage, ignore DR, whatever the chart tells you).
- When Hit Points reach 0, treat this as per the normal rules for HP reaching -HP instead.
- When Stun reaches 0, the character is fighting to remain alert. Treat this as though the character was suffering from a continuous -1 from Shock. For every 5 full points of Stun below 0 the character is, they suffer an additional -1. This penalty applies to all rolls that Shock would normally effect.
- Damage accrued while the character has 0 or less Stun deals one HP damage per die inflicted in addition to the damage rolled (as pre #2) above.
Scaling the Game
One of the reasons that GURPS may begin to break down at high point values is that advantages are not scaled. Perhaps an explanation is needed. Attributes in GURPS are scaled. The scale is based upon the fact that the cost of an attribute is increased as the effect increases. From the GURPS Basic Set:
Lvl
Cost
1
-80
2
-70
3
-60
4
-50
5
-40
6
-30
7
-20
8
-15
9
-10
10
0
11
10
12
20
13
30
14
45
15
60
16
80
17
100
18
125
19
150
20
175
If we pay no attention to the odd cost of -15 character points for an attribute level of 8, we can see that the scale of GURPS is roughly linear for negative values, and scales up as you get into the positive values.
Let's look at this in a different light, as a function of the scale of the cost. Divide those values by 10. This then becomes our scale. If we continue to assume that a value of 10 is the normal level, then the scale can be applied as a modification of that standard. Witness:
Lvl
Scale
-9
-8
-8
-7
-7
-6
-6
-5
-5
-4
-4
-3
-3
-2
-2
-1.5
-1
-1
0
0
+1
1
+2
2
+3
3
+4
4.5
+5
6
+6
8
+7
10
+8
12.5
+9
15
+10
17.5
Now let us look at this chart as though the attributes -- DX for example -- were listed as having a cost of 10/level. Multiply that cost by the scale of the number of levels desired. Plus six (+6) levels has a scale of 8, resulting in a cost of (10x8=) 80 points for +6 levels of Dexterity.
Now, look at this as a guideline for costs in all things GURPS. Advantages represent the levels above the baseline of 0; disadvantages represent the levels below that same baseline. Because some costs in GURPS are not even, it is suggested that one of the following two scales be used as an alternative:
Lvl
Scale A
Scale B
-9
-9
-9
-8
-8
-8
-7
-7
-7
-6
-6
-6
-5
-5
-5
-4
-4
-4
-3
-3
-3
-2
-2
-2
-1
-1
-1
0
0
0
+1
1
1
+2
2
2
+3
3
4
+4
5
8
+5
7
12
+6
10
16
+7
13
20
+8
16
24
+9
19
28
+10
22
32
Scale A is for those that like the current cost of attributes, but do not want to deal with half-multipliers. Levels above +10 add 3 to the effective scale. Scale B is for those that feel the scale GURPS uses is a bit shallow and could use a little steeping of the grade. Levels above +10 add 4 to the scale. Once your scale is chosen, apply it to every advantage and disadvantage in the game. All of the examples below use Scale A.
- Attributes: With the exception of Strength (see Compendium I) use the chosen scale, assigning the base cost for each level of an attribute at 10 character points. For example, an attribute purchased at -3 levels (7) costs (-3x10=) -30 points, and one purchased at +6 levels (16) costs (10x10=) 100 points.
- Disadvantages: All disadvantages are considered as being negative values on the scale. As this side of the scale is linear, the costs for disadvantages are not effected.
- Advantages: All advantages are considered as being positive values on the scale. The scale modifies the cost of advantages that can be purchased in levels. So, for example, Alertness normally costs 5/level. When scaled, six (+6) levels of Alertness now costs (10x5=) 50 points.
- Similar/Overlapping Advantages: Warning: This rule will complicate calculating costs for advantages. All advantages that are overlapping or sub-sets of another should be carefully considered. For example: Acute senses. Acute senses are sub-sets of the Alertness advantage. Thus, if a character purchases six (+6) levels of Alertness as well as six (+6) levels of Acute Vision, then the character has purchased, in effect, +12 to Vision checks. This will need to be scaled in. First apply the cost of the more encompassing advantage; then, apply the scaled cost of the total bonus to the sub-set advantage minus the scaled cost of the effective bonus granted by the encompassing advantage:
Alertness +6: (5x10=) 50-points
Acute Vision +6: Effective bonus is +12, which would cost (2x28=) 56-points on its own. Since six levels of that are covered in Alertness +6, we subtract (2x10=) 20-points that constitute the cost of the cost of the first six (+6) levels, giving us a total cost of 36 points for Acute Vision +6 added to Alertness +6. Total cost of the two advantages is (50+36=) 86-points.
Other Sources
By using these three principles, you can accomplish several things. You can keep the combat rules the same, but vary the deadliness to the characters by the types of characters they make, and you can keep higher point characters in line by scaling the cost of advantages the same way that attributes are scaled. There are other things that you can do to help keep things in line or simply alter the feel of the game. Suggestions that have been bounced on the web by many include:
- Gulliver (http://www.io.com/~tbone) includes a rule for dropping the points gained for similar disadvantages. This is a very effective rule for keeping a character from getting more points for the overlapping effects of a series of disadvantages (such as bad sight, color blindness, etc.) than they would get for the entire removal of the effected area of the character (such as blindness). This set of rules has a lot of other things to offer as well. It is certainly worth a look or ten.
- Many people have suggested that Physical Skills should cost a maximum of 4-points per level. If this is established, it does have the effect of encouraging characters to spend points on skills more than super-attributes. The effectiveness of this left to the reader to determine.
- The ST -vs.- HT debate for establishing Fatigue and Hit Points can be settled via a compromise. Make Fatigue equal to (ST+ST+HT)/3 and make Hit Points equal to (ST+HT+HT)/3. The effective average is the same, but this makes neither attribute the end-all of the figured statistics. For those that wish, these formulae can be reversed . . .
And so on. GURPS is a very flexible system. With the right attitude, it can handle just about anything you want to throw at it.
Article publication date: June 15, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.
