I use a couple of house rules in my DF game. My players know these from experience, although I haven't really spelled them out. I like using SM as a modifier to hit both in melee and missile combat, but penalizing big fighters for fighting human sized targets really goes against the spirit of DF. In the games and fiction I'm emulating and drawing inspiration from, being bigger makes you easier to hit with missiles but doesn't make it harder for you to hit human-sized heroes. Therefore:
"To hit" rolls are zeroed out to SM 0. You skills are rated for use scaled to a SM 0 human. Don't apply relative SM as a penalty to skill unless the target is smaller than SM 0. In that case, use relative SM.
In other words, positive SM never gives you a penalty to hit a smaller foe unless that foe is below SM 0. You're a SM+3 giant with Broadsword-16 fighting a SM 0 human? You roll against a 16. A SM+1 barbarian? Roll against a 17. A SM-2 halfling? 14. Conversely, a SM-2 halfling with Shortsword-15 rolls against an 18 to hit you, because your SM is +3. And yes, you roll against a 19 to fight another SM+3 giant. Since the game I play centers on SM-2 to +1 PCs, this isn't a huge problem. In any case, SM mods cap at +4 per the FAQ (specifically case 3.4.2.23).
We still use relative SM for small guys: a SM-2 halfling is -2 to hit for a human, but not for another halfling. A SM-1 goblin strikes a SM-2 halfling at a -1; a human strikes one at -2. A SM-10 ant strikes the halfling at +4, not that I ever roll for a single ant.
Why? This keeps giants and big dragons from needing incredible skill just to hit their human-sized foes. It also means they don't get so much greater defenses - giving, say, a SM+4 dragon skill 20 so it can hit a human on a 16 or less means it gets a parry of 13 with its claws, while just saying it has a 16 skill gives it a 20 to hit other dragons and a Parry of 11 allows for a normal attack/defense roll spread.
Relative SM does affect grappling in interesting ways in my games, but I'm using a house ruled set of Technical Grappling rules in my games that aren't ready for prime time reveal yet, but suffice it to say being bigger really helps you grapple people.
I won't vouch for this outside of DF, but it works in its intended setting quite well.
So Galoob gets +1 to hit SM 0 and they all get -1 to hit him? Awesome! I didn't even know about that bit, honestly. Hopefully will help him to keep dodging all the scary monsters...
ReplyDeleteThey get a -1, you don't get a +1. Zeroed at SM 0 means your skill is rated for SM 0.
DeleteI know that can read a bit confusingly, but it works. In general, you roll against the skill on your sheet unless your target is bigger than man sized (a bonus, using absolute SM) or smaller than man sized (a penalty, relative to your size.)
It's a mix of relative and absolute SM, which sounds like a mess, but it's very smooth in play, which is probably why no one notices I'm doing this. It's why Honus doesn't suffer a -1 to hit orcs, but everyone gets a -1 to hit doomchildren except for Galoob. It would be simpler to just use absolute SM, but then halflings roll at -2 to hit each other, and that can get a little odd sometimes.
Oops, right. I think I was putting in a bit too much Pathfinder (which would do it by giving the SM-1 creature +1 def +1 hit, cancelling out a SM-1 vs SM-1 battle). As long as Galoob's opponents get that -1 to skill that's good enough for me! I think it actually makes plenty of sense for SM 0 being the point of calibration.
DeleteI think the relative SM rule from Powers is supposed to be used with the Combat at Different levels rules from the Basic Set. So that really tall characters still get a net bonus to hit the upper body of shorter foes. I know my players find it very frustrating and confusing in practice.
DeleteWhere is that rule in Powers? I looked but I couldn't spot it. I pulled the melee-affecting bit from the FAQ.
DeleteSmall Size and Combat, GURPS Powers p. 76.
DeleteBut I seem to have mixed it up in my mind with the FAQ.
DeleteIt's easy to conflate them. But thanks for tracking that down.
DeleteThis is just one of many changes needed to make SM+1 or larger characters viable.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about many - this is about the only one I made, and we have two SM+1 guys who love being big.
DeleteInteresting but you're right, probably best kept for the craziness of DF :)
ReplyDeleteRunning more low fantasy stuff myself (and PCs between 100 and 150CP), I like the balance that brings the basic SM rule: you're harder to hit and it's easier to hit but if it lands anything on you you're dead.
Basic SM rule also gives me that "massive but slow moving and predictable" feel that I like with gigantic creatures, forcing them to use telegraphic attacks more unless they're really good at their combat skills, and pretty much prevents them from aiming, which is kinda logical to me when you're facing stuff many times bigger than you. Since you can pretty much only dodge (parry risks breaking your weapon, blocking will just shatter your shield and send you flying), and since dodge cannot be trained as a skill, that balances things out for me.
In DF, which from what I can see is more into crazy power level and insane cinematic fights, I can definitely see this working though.
My experience is that large monsters, under the RAW, have very little leverage for forcing a Dodge. Parry and breakage is only a factor with weapons that are very, very heavy - over 21 pounds, for example, to threaten a 7 pound greatsword. Over 36 to threaten some of the polearms. So you end up with big, lumbering critical threats - if he rolls a critical, I'm dead, otherwise, I'm fine. For guys with one-headed weapons, yeah, it can be a problem, but I don't see a lot of one-handed weapon parries against giant monsters. I ended up house-ruling "striking weight" off of BL for unarmed attacks to keep, say, greatswords from parrying punches from ST 50 monsters as if they were nothing. Even so, heavy parrying weapons makes the issue of a giant weapon generally a non-starter. So I'd probably keep doing this outside of DF if my players asked me to, just with relative SM for missiles added back in.
DeleteI don't know...I mean there is little in RAW but using the over-sized weapons from LT (LT21), a broadsword for a SM+2 creature is more than 6x the weight of a standard broadsword so that's a 5 in 6 chances to break for the SM 0 one, unless I'm doing something wrong (which is totally possible!)
DeleteThat said, totally agree that unarmed/natural rules in RAW feel bonkers and been playing around a house rule myself but yours with BL might just be simpler.
What I was testing was basically Striking weight = (1/10 ST) * (x/y) where x is the margin of success for the attack and y is the same but for the parry.
Bit more complicated (though it's actually quite fluid once you get the hand of it) but the idea was to indicate that a very good parry and a barely made hit, even against something crazy big, would deflect force more efficiently, while a very good hit against a feeble parry would really hurt the weapon (hitting weak point, etc), even if the attacker wasn't that strong.
BL is way simpler though, gonna give it a go, see how it handles.
Oh yeah, for one-handed weapons, but I have a lot of people run around with either very high quality heavy one-handed weapons or - more commonly - heavy, high quality two-handed weapons.
DeleteI have to check my notes, because I write the "parry weight" of things, but I think I use either the weapon weight or BL/10 (for a full-body move) or BL/20 (for a limb or striker), whichever is higher. So a ST 55 giant with a BL of 605 has his punch or kick parried as if it's 30 pounds (unparryable, really, except by polearms) and a slam or perhaps a stomp as if it was 60 lbs. At least that matches all the monsters I took a glance at right now. It's okay - it keeps high-ST monsters being a real threat even to Parry Monsters like, say, the Knight in my DF game. I got this from Kromm, although I can't lay a finger on where.
I think Doug has something in the works on this subject, but I needed "quick and NOW" so I went with Kromm's BL-based suggestion.
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ReplyDeleteLong-time lurker, first-time commenter finally chiming in on this one.
ReplyDeleteI like the method you're using. Sometimes it can be a pain to remember to factor in the SM, and this seems like a good workaround that still preserves many of the benefits of tracking SM in the first place.
Our DF group has a much simpler solution, though also much less elegant one: if the SM difference is only 1, we just ignore it. If the size difference is 2 or more, then the full bonus/penalty applies.
In practice, this means we can simply ignore SM for the vast majority of combats; but we still bring it in when it's most interesting - i.e. in combat with very large or very small creatures.
Clearly, our simple solution also creates other problems.... but hey - sometimes simplicity wins!
In DF, simplicity beats a lot else. No one in my game does more than chuckle over oddness that results from our simpler rules. It's not a high-stakes game of thrones, it's a monster bashing bonanza. :)
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