Intermission: The Monsters (Don't) Know What They're Doing

 I currently have, on my bookshelf, two books by Keith Amman: The Monsters Know What They're Doing, and How to Defend Your Lair. They sell themselves as tactical guides for the DM (as both are most definitely written with D&D 5e in mind), for individual monster combats and the task of building and defending a home base, respectively. Right up my alley, I thought - as would anyone that reads this blog - but while the books were enjoyable enough reads in and of themselves, I found them far too specific. 

The first, titled after the author's blog, concerns itself with picking apart the individual stat blocks found in the 5e Monster Manual, using them to construct playable tactical advice for the GM. (If this sounds like a lot of work for the average 5e DM, you would not be surprised to learn that the foreword reveals that Amman cut his teeth on GURPS, only agreeing to run a 5e game at his wife's request on behalf of her co-workers - a conversation all GURPS GMs have had.) This isn't a trivial task by any means, especially as many of the stat blocks aren't especially internally consistent, and many of the abilities are hard to use in combat or actively unhelpful. Indeed, I suspect that Amman put more effort into justifying these monster abilities than the authors of the Monster Manual did, and I'm by no means trying to put the man down. It just wasn't quite what I was searching for. 

What I was searching for - as are many GMs, I imagine - was generic advice. The D&D combat system blurs out many of the identifiable combat tactics that we see in real life, on occasion reintroducing them as feats (such as Battlemasters have available) or animal traits (such as Pack Tactics). This leads to a very undifferentiated "core" combat experience, which teaches some odd habits. Carrying these over to GURPS, or other similarly tactical games, can lead to absurd results - frequent misses, combats that end within a second or two, wolves diving onto the party's blades face-first. This essay is for GURPS GMs (or anyone running a tactical system) who want their monsters to behave like thinking beings rather than XP dispensers.

The Barrow III: Brawls, Blasphemy and Bumps in the Night

The party's day starts with a thud, as a snoring Garret rolls out of his bed. "God," he groans. "Feels like I slept for a year and a half."

Lottie: HT, vs 10: 14, failure by 4.

Miguel: HT, vs 12, +5 (Rapid healing) = 17: 15, success by 2.

Everyone's in reasonably good condition after the previous day's healing, although the two that were injured still bear some bruises and scratches. While Lottie makes up a stew of hardtack and salt pork, Elias does his best to scratch a map of the barrow as they know it onto the table with a lump of charcoal.

Elias: Cartography, vs 12, +4 (extra time) = 16: 14, success by 2. 

"Here's the route we took yesterday," he begins, tracing a line with his finger. "There's the surgery rooms, and there's the large hall we found the undead in." He pointed to the large oval that dominated the table. "There was nothing back the other way, but I think if we take a right down this corridor we can get to the sunken hall much quicker."

    The thief grumbles. "Do we really want to?" 

    "That's the only way forward I can see," the monk shrugs. "We could leave, of course."

    Garret taps his fingers impatiently. "No chance. We're finding Rutger - and besides, we've found nothing worth the trip so far. I'm not heading back to town with my tail between my legs because the little girl's too scared of a few dusty old bones." Nodding his assent, Miguel straps on his sword belt and places his hand on Lottie's shoulder. "They won't get the jump on us again," he reassures her. She twists free of his grasp. 

    "But what if the rest of the place is underwater? I'm not going swimming down there." She looks at Elias for support, but he smiles apologetically. 

    "I understand your concerns, but I don't think it could have sunk much deeper than that without bringing down the whole structure. The rooms on this side," he pointed at his makeshift map, "might be waterlogged, but I doubt they'll be submerged completely." The thief sighs, and laces her boots extra tight. 

Intermission: Archery Styles

Styles were added to GURPS Fourth Edition in Martial Arts, and represent a great tool for characterisation and for widening the combat space. Player characters don't just know Broadsword, they know Iaijutsu, which distinguishes them from the random bandits that jump them. Having Style Familiarity also vastly increases the number of perks you have available, as shown in the table below, which can make or break a character. I defy you to build a samurai without at least Grip Mastery and Form Mastery! 

For the GM, the use of combat styles can help with world-building by distinguishing some factions from others, or some players from others. It can also act as a justification for granting enemies abilities and options the players don't have access to, with the added bonus that it might be available at some point (after a long quest to prove their worth, of course). It subtly shifts the responsibility for remembering combat rules from the GM onto players, too: if everyone can Riposte, it's part of the GM's job to remind them of the rules. But if only one player character knows how to Riposte, that's his job - which makes it all the more exciting when he pulls it out to save the day.

So, styles make a great reward for players and the GM alike. Melee fighters are well-served by the styles in Martial Arts, which can be easily adapted to different settings by filing the serial numbers off, and Thaumatology: Magical Styles extends the concept to mages to great effect. But what about ranged combatants? Martial Arts describes four archery styles: Foot Archery, Kyujutsu, Kyudo, and Yabusame. They're nice - especially Foot Archery allowing up to Arm ST +3! - but we can do more by taking some pointers from Gun Fu, which did the same for action-movie gunslingers, and Tactical Shooting, which built styles for realistic shooters, and making some action hero archery styles, after the jump.

Intermission: A Recipe for Trouble

Magical potions and salves are a staple of classic fantasy. In addition to providing a convenient way to keep adventurers in play after taking one too many swords to the gut, they make great plot devices and quest hooks (the wizard's guild is in need of two score rabbits' feet and the heart of a dragon), as well as making for more interesting tactical decisions. Do we use the invulnerability potion now, or later? Do I poison my arrows with demonbane or spider's venom? Though these considerations usually won't make up the core of a party's tactical repertoire, they can provide a little extra boost to a party in a pinch, and can provide a way for weaker party members (or enemies!) to stay helpful even without fireballs and greatswords. 

Faced with such utility, the alchemically inclined player might want to have a go at brewing their own elixirs. There's plenty of precedent for it in video games such as Skyrim or The Witcher; GURPS Dungeon Fantasy alludes to it obliquely in rules about collecting monster bits, and template skills like Alchemy and Herb Lore, and there's abstract rules for making "bush potions" in DF16 - make a Herb Lore roll and Bob's your uncle, here's a 2d healing potion in a pinch. But being so abstract loses a lot of the charm of alchemy, at least in my mind. I don't want to have a big bag of Alchemy Ingredients, $300, 2lb: I want to mix a pinch of ginger root, a bugbear's spleen, and milk of redgrass! So, should we expand the alchemy system? Why wouldn't we do that? And will I go insane writing it? Let's find out. 

Handle with Care: a Treatise on Character Progression

"One player character is much more powerful than the others, and it's making it hard to balance fights."

"My players have bought everything they need and now money is worthless."

Have you caught yourself saying anything like this? Your problem might be to do with character progression, the leading cause of death among games in the 18-34 age bracket.  Here, I'm going to discuss why it exists, what problems it causes, and why you don't actually need it. 

Dungeon 001: Goblin Cave

 Finding myself without the time or inclination to play through these dungeons, I'm just going to post them - maybe someone will get to use them! You're on your own for monster stats, though, as I wouldn't want to repost published content. 

Dungeon map courtesy of Donjon RPG Tools

1: Entranceway

Shape: SM 0 arched ceiling. Dotted with small stalactites and stalagmites. 

Walls: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. 

Floor: Rough limestone, solution-carved. Damp. Dotted with shallow depressions in the floor, filled with water. 

Atmosphere: Darkness -7; only light is from entrance to east. Cold, from water evaporation. Slight breeze directed SW. Occasional dripping noises, with echoes. 

Entrances: Stepped 40° slope up to E (0). 

Smooth 30° slope down 3' to SW (2), through horizontal SM 0 gap where the wall meets the floor. 
Traps: None. 

Monsters: None. 
Treasure: None. 

Intermission: Making Swords Pokier

The Basics

The Thrust vs Swing argument - debate, comparison - is a long and storied one. Much of it stems from the confusion around what damage actually means in GURPS, which is a difficult question to answer. In fact, it's already half-answered. The damage of high-tech guns and bullets is well-documented. By defining 1" of RHA steel as having DR 70, we can use the penetration energy of the projectile and its other properties (expressed as a long and complicated formula), below, to calculate its penetration and its damage. 

Penetration Damage (points) = sqrt(KE1.04/Xsect0.314)/13.3926 and 

Wound Channel Damage (points) = MV × Xsect* x 26,220 where

Xsect* = (1-V/600) ×π(Bore/2)2 + (V2)/216,000 ×Bore2 ×(Aspect Ratio)

(From http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=2794)

Ugly. Regardless, it's a system, and it works. What we have for low-tech damage - fists and melee weapons - is more arbitrary. Whether or not it works is another question. Muscle-powered damage is split into thrust and swing, where swing damage is generally (though not always - it breaks down a little at high levels) approximately equal to thrust damage x 1.5. This multiplier represents the lever effect of accelerating something through an arc to gain more momentum. The values given for swing and thrust damage at a given ST are then affected by the damage modifier of individual weapons, which tends to be more pronounced for swinging weapons. A small knife swings for sw-3; a greataxe swings for sw+4. That's without going into weapon quality modifiers, like fine and very fine, which only really affect edged weapons to represent better metallurgy - a fine sword is harder and holds an edge better than a regular one without being more brittle. 

After this comes wounding modifiers. A living target's torso takes 2x damage from impaling attacks, 1.5x damage from cutting attacks and 1x damage from crushing attacks. Other hit locations have other multipliers, but perhaps the only relevant ones to this discussion are the vitals and eyes, neither of which can be hit by cutting and crushing attacks and offer 3x and 4x multipliers to the skilled. Impaling damage tends to come from thrusting attacks, and cutting and crushing from swinging attacks; there are exceptions, although swing/impaling attacks have their own intricacies, including an annoying propensity to get stuck. Attacks to the torso start out fairly balanced but swinging damage outstrips thrusting as ST increases. This is not helped by the tendency in fantasy to bring in creatures which have no important organs (or even recognisable bodily structures) to speak of, such as skeletons, slimes and golems, which give impaling damage a x1 or even a x0.5 multiplier. When fighting a tree, the wise man doesn't bring a spear. This makes swords and axes the de facto kings of Dungeon Fantasy, which is perhaps a little boring.

So what's the problem?

The desire for rescaled damage came from a number of places, but we'll note two. 

Firstly, I like spears, and their near-complete obsolescence in Dungeon Fantasy makes me sad. This has mellowed a little since I've reconsidered the problem; as suggested below, spears (and thrusting weapons in general) were never for defeating armour in the first place. Much of my love for them comes from their versatility, value for money and ease of use, and the fact that they can't one-shot a stone golem doesn't detract from that. I firmly believe they still have a role in DF - for skirmishers and rear-line troops, to harass, limit options at the longer melee ranges and potentially throw when the situation arises. Their use behind a shield and in the reverse grip is nice, but not optimal, and the 'master of none' is poorly represented in GURPS anyway.

Secondly, in my DF campaign of some years ago, the incredibly rich swashbuckler dominated the combat. We'll leave the Wealth aside for a moment, as that would improve any character. Weapon Master made her able to out-damage anyone else in the party, largely because it offers the double whammy of easier Rapid Strikes and increased damage for swings. For example:

• A skill-24, ST 13 swashbuckler without Weapon Master (if such a thing were to exist) and with a standard edged rapier can put out 3 attacks at skill 12, dealing 2d-1 per attack. That's an average of 6 per strike, tripled for number of attacks, then multiplied by a 75% chance to hit for an expected 13.5 cut per round. Highly respectable, and on par with a single 3d-1 swing with a big axe. The swashbuckler has the edge (heh) with multiple, poorly armoured enemies, and can sell skill for better hit locations, while the barbarian is more suited to hacking through a single big target, so there's a number of combat niches available.
• The same swashbuckler with Weapon Master can put out five attacks at skill 12, dealing 2d+3 per attack with the +2/die damage bonus. That averages 10 per strike, quintupled for number of attacks, multiplied by 75%: 37.5 cut per round. A barbarian simply can't keep up with that; opponents with high defences are rapidly overwhelmed, opponents with high DR get chipped down within seconds, and opponents with neither get blended into a fine paste. And that's without considering crits!

So WM nearly triples - or more, given crits - damage output, even before considering increases to defence. 20 points for mastering a single weapon is expensive, sure, but given that the edged rapier is arguably the best weapon available, why take anything else? I like swashbucklers, and I think they have a niche, but I also like knights and barbarians, and I don't want swashbucklers to become a silver NutriBullet. What to do about this?