tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5600541817245639686.post6727163217068335180..comments2023-04-02T07:37:35.600-07:00Comments on DJ's Gaming Blog: Critical Hit Effects in GURPSDJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961510196920710432noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5600541817245639686.post-57787135313360088242014-08-24T12:35:22.727-07:002014-08-24T12:35:22.727-07:00Sorry if the reply sounds aggressive or argumentat...Sorry if the reply sounds aggressive or argumentative - I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be direct and clear!Peter Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14246000382321978462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5600541817245639686.post-36929716592282105962014-08-24T12:34:33.526-07:002014-08-24T12:34:33.526-07:00If Critical Hits don't bypass defenses, then w...If Critical Hits don't bypass defenses, then what do they do? 10,11 on your chart are "no additional effect." What's the basic effect of rolling a critical hit? That's a big change to GURPS, which is fine, but it's something that's worth stating right up front for your table - that it assumes that critical hits don't work as written, but do XYZ instead of ABC.<br /><br />Personally, I have no issue with description of 2x or 3x damage effects. I don't think of the damage range of a strike as being "minimal possible" and "maximum possible" bounded ranges, but "expected results outside of freak situations." If 3x damage comes up from the laser, it's from what it hit, now how hard it hit, and it's a cascade of injury results that normally wouldn't be expected to occur but due to unforseen (and for the attacker) fortunate coincidence, happened.<br /><br />Same with armor - and it's funny you should mention vehicles like tanks and battleships. They're what I had in mind when I mentioned shot traps. Armor on vehicles is no more uniform than it is on the human body - often less so. Previous damage, poor choices by the crew in equipment stashing, design flaws, design decisions (the glacis plate isn't uniform thickness on a tank, due to expectations about where it'll get hit at what angle), angle of attack, etc. all allow for impacts on a generally protected area against what will be less effective armor.<br /><br />I'd venture to say that armor that is uniform and provides manufacturer-stated protection in all cases from all angles is probably vanishingly rare.<br /><br />Do you allow chinks in armor to be targeted at all?Peter Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14246000382321978462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5600541817245639686.post-9291937164228958852014-08-23T23:11:31.222-07:002014-08-23T23:11:31.222-07:00I was in the process of editing this post and got ...I was in the process of editing this post and got interrupted. I was just sitting down to edit it when I saw your response. I don't like the "no defense on a critical hit" rule in most games. I have a few different ideas for what can replace it. I think the "no defense" rule in combination with my suggested free change of hit location would be much more powerful (though also more easily explained in terms of in-game metaphysics. I know how to describe a laser striking an eyeball is doing; I don't know how to describe a triple damage laser) than the damage increases.<br /><br />I also think I need to replace some of these results to give more functionality against non-human targets like robots and vehicles.<br /><br />On the double and triple damage: I don't see any way to reconcile the effect with what I consider damage to be (outside of quantum weirdness). I've seen it come up often enough that I can't explain these common extreme overpenetrations of armor as one-in-a-trillion shots, since they come up so often. I've had multiple sessions in a row where players lost armored characters to critical hits that pushed damage far outside the expected values.<br /><br />I also very strongly dislike the halved DR. There might be possible explanations for it on some objects, such as those with actual weak spots, but it seems insane to me that someone can shoot at a tank, battleship, or sealed TL11 space armor and sometimes happen to hit a spot that has half the protection guaranteed by its manufacturer. These weaknesses would be so apparent that anyone with a working eyeball would spot them. And if you assume there aren't any structural weaknesses in the armor, then how is the halved DR to be explained? If the effect is intended to represent hitting a weak spot or a gap in armor, then why not replace it with that option?<br /><br />I don't have the Acrobatics skill for the mental gymnastics necessary to explain these results. GURPS has a very strong anti-armor bias. That's fine to emulate Hollywood action films where armor doesn't work, but those aren't the games I'm trying to run, and the rules I'm proposing are intended to offer an alternative.DJhttp://djgurps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5600541817245639686.post-508985638968927912014-08-23T05:53:03.316-07:002014-08-23T05:53:03.316-07:00I always interpreted double and triple damage as a...I always interpreted double and triple damage as a perfect combination of the strike hitting the opponent at the worst possible moment - when the defender's momentum is coming forward into the strike, the hit location is turned to its most vulnerable point, etc. - that everything that needs to happen for the maximum possible effect happens. It's a rare roll anyway, and it helps explain those unlikely but possible effects of strikes that are well outside of the expected range (aka, normal damage range).<br /><br />Half DR, same thing - finds a weak point, hits the armor as its layers are shifting apart, hits those spots armor doesn't cover well (I can't think of a heavy real-world armor that universally armors everything the same way), hits a "shot trap," hits a manufacturing flaw (uniformly perfectly formed surfaces are very rare), etc.<br />In the past, for certain situations, I've re-rolled this because it makes no sense (say, vs. a DR 10 creature made entirely of DR 10 material)<br /><br />5 and 7 don't make sense by the rules as written - critical hits already allow no defenses, so those situations can't come up.<br /><br />And what's the rationale for 9? You hit so well you are in a better position to defend next time? I'm not sure I follow.<br /><br /><br />As for me, anyway, I just use the basic combat rules for crits these days - no defense, no table rolls, a 3 is maximum damage. It's just faster given the amount of them that show up in a high-powered game.Peter Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14246000382321978462noreply@blogger.com