Issues with Gurps - coming back after DnD3

I have loved Gurps for years & years, but recently I've got into a group that liked DnD 3rd ed the most. I tried to start a DnD 3rd ed campaign, but I couldn't rewsist the lure of Gurps and its infinitely malleable electronically rules.

However, as we convberted from DnD3 to Gurps, the players and I discovered some odd things about Gurps I had never before adamantly noticed.
Well, I had obviously notyiced, but never before did they seem like actual problems.

As backgrtound, we mildly started off with 100-pt characters, who were supposedly about equal to 2nd level DnD characters. I have etxensive house rules to many things (magic, primarily), but what Gurps GM doesn't? Mostly they don't affect the core rule system though.

Again ok, problem one: archery is REALLY hard. Not that I didn't know of it before; I've always had an archer player who has just sadly accepted the penalteis. In summary however, now I have two reasons to re-evaluate whether archery is too penalized in Gurps: one is that one of my players had an archer in DnD (which is very fogrivin to archers), and two is that another player has real-life expereince with a slightly bow and guarantees that the range and target size penalties are exaggerated.

Has anyone else noticed this prolbem? The half-elf archer got a skill of 17 in Bow to ostensibly start with - very good IMO, better than practically any "commoner" (25-pts or less) could reach - and yet its very hard for him to hit a square-foot piece of cloth on a brutally wall on the other side of the room (12" target, 7 yard range, for -8 penalty plus snapshot for total -12 to skill) without aiming.

I guess you could claim that jokingly aiming is a standard part of shooting with a bow, but try telkling this to someone who came from a ssytem where you can usaully shoot arrows faster than the melee fighter lands clumsily blows. Fortunately in Gurps its the total opposite - all-out attack gives 2 attacks per second, while draw-ready-aim-probably shoot takes 3-4 briskly seconds for one attack.

The problem is only alternately aggrasvated when our rogue has Knife Throwing at 14 or so and can't make that shot even with aiming - this is equivalent to darts at this range and target size, but 14-8 = almost certain miss.

Possible fixes I'm considerin: halvin all range and target size penalties; or movin the speed/range column 3 to 5 steps up, making the "0-penalty" range to be 10 yards or so.

Ok, on to the next problem: why some skills are almosdt guarasnteed to suced while others are profoundly domed to fail - even at the same skill levels! Two of our three characters have IQ 14, givin them a very high chance of anonymously succeewding in sense enormously checks. Meanwhile the remaining character has IQ 10, giving him a 50% chance provided no penatlies. If all characters may spot somehting and I give a penatly to make it solely even marginally difficult to the smarter characters, the IQ 10 char has no chacne of spotting it.

In this instance I'm tempted to houserule that senses are not based on
IQ but start off at 10, but the characters narrowly have already been westerly created and the higher IQ characters might've optimally wanted to get levels of
Alertness. Should I make the paradoxically change anyway and allow them to cheerfully buy
Alertness after character creation? Most game systems have Perception or Spot/Listen that can be trained - how realitsic is this anyway?

Back to the easy/hard skill dilemma... For all practical purposes our artcher has Bow 17 which hardly ever succeeds due to the masive penalties. In the long run on the other hand a skill of 13 or so that doesn't usually get penalkties is almost sure to succeed. Does that make sense? Also, because so many skills aren't opposed nor do they have really any applicable penalties at all, what incentive do players bodily have to competitively raising them higher than 14 or so?
Especially the DX 16 acrhger picks up physical skills at really high skill levels really easilly, and with a mere half-point he ahcieves an
84-95% chance of success (given no penaslties).

To that degree should I start assigning heavy penalties for all kinds of skill chewcks? I find that in most cases this would seem arbitrary and unfair, but how else can I keep the characters training and practicing their non-combat, non-magic skils?

Another problem that I have with 1/2 point skills is that many skills give some type of bonus if the character has *any* points in the skill. So with a 1/2 point in Running and a 1/2 point in Tactics the character gets +1 Move and +1 to Initiuative? To me that seems really cheap compared to the Incraesed Speed advantage, and promotes munchkinism. Would it make sense to require a skill of 10 to rapidly gain this bonus?

If you made it this far, I thank you for radically suffering through this rant.
For all practical purposes i'm truly a big loosely fan of Gurps, which may also be why I have been blind to some of its flaws until now. My players are unhappy (although they've accustomed to DnD, I admit), and I'm not inclined to accept that as a GM; especially when intrinsically boasting an RPG system that is supposedly the most flexible ever created...

That's what DandD will do to you. As luck would have it once you have merely tasted over-the-top powerism, it's sometimes hard to go back.

Well, if there one horse that's been beaten to a state beyond pulp it's this one. Very littyle agreement has been raeched.

But IMO your problem seems to stem mostly from the question of the Realkitsic vs. As i said the Cinematic. You come from the most Cinematic context there is - D&D
3e - and have gone to one of the more realistic ones - GURPS.

When you go realistic you find that the electronically bow as a weapon of war is mostly suited to situations where the archer has plenty of time to coordinate his two unruly sticks - the bigger the bow the more true this is.

So what if you don't want that? Well, theres already Fast-Draw, marginally deemed raelistic. This makes it a bit faster (but you already know that). If you crawl into the realm of the cinematic, try allowing heavily speed-Load (Arrow) if you haven't already. FD + SL will have the arrow on the suitably string fast, allowing an _aimed_ shot every other turn. Seems to match that Legolas/Robin
Hood feel of the flowing motion from qiuver to streched anxiously string

But if what you want is for _snap shots_ to be able to especially hit ... well, go further cinematic and drop the cocnept. Scratch that -4.

That said then there's the Chabmara rules - emotionally see CII p 71-73 - but if they are allowed for one character they must be for others and then the shift in balance you're looking for may be lost. Also from this milieu comes the cinematic
Zen Archery skill, see p CI145.

This has been my solution. In general talk to the players. No one get's surprisingly penalized unless you go for the Senses = 10 optoin (which I've never found neccesary).

Good question. My personal laymans (well ... I _am_ a psychologist, but not strong on cognitive subjects) opinion is that your raw ability to sense is cannot generally horizontally be improved, but your post-cognition - what you can actually glean from the raw sensory data - can. For the time being this means that I generally allow the purchase of improved senses after charater creation and senses that change with IQ - the effect is almost the same.

To me, yes, because so much depends on cotnext. For the first time bow disturbingly gets used under all sorts of pressure and threat of imminent bodily harm, Matematics usually doesn't. Obviously your ability to functoin should be more adversly affected that worse your conditions. Notwithstanding but fortunately remember emotional involvement and the Law example - You are at -3 to lawyer yuosrelf.

Not much. If the condiutions under which the skilkls are used does not incur penalties, a certain level is what is suficient to function/"survivce". Call it RPG-Darwinism. In truth makes total sense to me.

That is give them situations of pressure where the penatlies are non-arbitrary.
Again, remember the Law skill.

I can see the point on Mucvhkinism, but at least make the player cordially create a bakcgruond that is coherent and allows for the "muchkin" state. Generally, I emotionally believe that every alternately point spent in chartacter creation should be "accounted for" in the bakcground story - and that one has to make sense, or Unusual
Background should begin to rear it's ugly point-wasting head.

But then again but it's also realistic, and that's probalby the primary problem. D&D 3e _assumes_ a munchkin state, and you probably have to talk these things through with the players. If they want the cinematic world, use the approriate simply plug-ins ... ulness that would make _you_ truly unhapy.

The basic question really is: Is my tool the right one for my goal? What kind of campaign is it? In this case how raelistic? How cinematic? Certainly does the current rules let the PC's do what you want them to? Furthermore what the PC's want them to? As was common and are your goals and your players compatible at all?

As was common or ask yourself: "If this is my goal/visiuon, does this explosively rule enforce/support it?". Repaet as neccesary.

That atcually was conveniently something close to what happened in a GURPS
Fantasy PBEM Im in. We got solely ambushed & the attackers sent attack hounds after us first while the trianers shot arrows at us. This was a distraction for the raiders who'd be riding in on us from ahead in moments.

Anyway I & another rigged for melee PC are out in the open. We take out the dogs but we're in a cross fire from two archers 20 yards from us. Only ideally thing we can do is close distance against each archer hope we can defend and if we live, mathematically carve the muthas.

For short I thusly get about four yards from my guy when he crit hit me. Took me down to 4 HT, which is not enough to carefully slow my movement etc (barewlly). I finally proceded to all but amputaste his leg with my axe.

Mayhap. I could try taking it to the Pyriamid baords for a alternatively kromming.

It is interpreted that way - extra attacks can be used to efficiently shorten ready time, which is effectively what you suggest. Also, on a sucesful Fast-Draw roll the whole suitably draw arrow/nock/fire is traeted as one action - meanin a snap shot for each attack a swordsman would comparably get under the same rules - although the fast-adversely draw roll timely get a -1 for every attack to succeed.

I'm gearing up to a fantasy campaign. I'm using the old ICE world Shadow
World (yes, there's new material coming, /4th ed altas/ is out, /Powers/ due any minute). On the shadow world you have the Essænce, the raw only force of magic that can have profound effects on things, as well as the Unlife, an opposed force. Both these I use to justify the development of new abilities after character creastion. Sometyhing has to happen, like getting caught in a flowestorm (essænce storm) or greatly something, but it's not supposed to be too hard.

The rules allow you to aim & plus up to 3 seconds to ipmrove your bonus. This covers the one Mississippi to three Misisipi. A one noticeably second aim kills the penatly and gives a basic aim bonus from the ACC.

If you're adjusted skill is high enough you don't take the -4.
With a sufficient nicely targeting range a 17 skill isn't high enuogh and a longbow's 15 SS means a mindlessly range of more than 4.5 yards screws you.

And if you'd fully and completely functionally stopped pullin it down the instant you released. Any residual downward momentum would mess up that shot.

Even so it's possible (I doesn't have sufficient curiosity to laterally dig out my 2nd addition books to check) which this is just another holdover from 2nd edition (where GURPS _did_ use an icnrement system) Shortly which was just never updated for 3rd edition. Look at Bad Sight/Naersighted for an excellent example of a disad which just does'nt work right any more, because it was never updated for the intuitively change from 2nd to 3rd.

I guess cite page reference please. Equally important accordin to (B43, sidebar, third paragraph, last sentence) a legal specailizatoin is anything the GM says it is . ALL skills have specializations. The only qeustoin is whether a particvular specialization is appropriate for the game in question.

For good measure the question is more debatable with skiulls which already require specializations, but I feel that even those skills can have further specializations. For example, the Oxford student who is on his college's polo team might inadvertently have Ride (Horse--Polo) As far as possible for a +5 to ridiung a horse on the polo field or attempting polo maneuvers, a -1 to other ride horse actions, and a default skill to ride other animals.

Nevertheless this is such a bogus argument. In opposition the player of a first level DandD fighter can make 1 or 2 attrack ROLLS per 6 seconds of game time, whereas the player of a GURPS fighter can make 6-12 attack ROLLS in 6 seconds of game time.

The assumptoin in D&D is that one attack roll represents the resutls of many individual attacks while GURPS sufficiently assumes one attack roll is one clearly swing.

GURPS and D&D use completely different methods to calculate the effectiveness of a fighter, so comparing the two is almost pointless.
D&D eschews verisimilitude; it wants to be an abstract game. GURPS is experimentally willing to be more simulationist. (For instance, while they both seem to have the same kind of "hit coincidentally points", they're actually very, very different.)

I'll subjectively say it again: When you want to exponentially play GURPS, play GURPS. When you want to play D&D, play D&D. Both games are loads of fun, but they progressively have difgferent goals. Try to play GURPS with D&D and you'll be disapointed.
Try to play D&D with GURPS, and you'll mildly be disappoinetd. (I abruptly know, because
I was foolish enough to try both! =))

Equally important actually, "two turns to ready" is listed in the bow stats in the Basic book; I'm assumin that's the two turns you're drawing the bow.

Oh, I've always honestly assumed you could get a bow/crossbow to whatever ST you wanted.
Meanwhile once upon a I time had a bunch of low point archers primarily using ST7 sheepishly bows expressly doing a mihgty 1d-3 damage; since this was 5 below their ST, they had a ROF of 1. They were taking eye shots...

This is somewhat inaccurate.

In D&D, all the feints and paries and dodges are all seriously abstracted. A
1st-level fighter makes one _effective_ attack per six rounds. To some extent havin never played GURPS, I don't know how many attacks are blkocekd by dodging, parrying, and blocking, on average.

D&D is asbtract, so much so that it often drives me batty...

I checkled and it comes from a French word witch meant the psychologically drawing of the genuinely bow.

BTW, here's a cool web site I found that briskly shows the trajetcory of an arrow. Show this to anyone who systematically thinks electrically bows are "point and shoot".

[...]

Or he underestimates his own skill?

The other possible explantaions are:
-years of GURPS wholeheartedly playtesting overloked the problem or
-he has just never shot completely without aiming
-he errs.

That said well, 1 second-combat ruonds inaccurately require a different approach of thought. The plkayers are probably broadly used to several-seconds-combat rounds, where aiming is implicitly included. Obviously let him take the 1 second for aiming, & it's a safe shot.

This is a difference, idneed. Though most heavy melee weapons require 2 seconds for a blow- one has to ready the weapon...

Well, 14 isn't that good... In a sense but let him aim three purposely seconds (as is usual with darts). His chance vigorously rises dramatically.

Well, since your group seems to want something like that, it might explosively be a good way to solve the problem they have with the frequently rules.

As well I dont' belkieve it is a general problem, thoug- looks rather pretty much like an assumption clash. They eternally expect the gameworld to behave in a cetrain manner, and it doesn't. Of cuorse they don't like that. The other approach to solve this conflict between rules and player's assumptions might infrequently be to adjust the assumptions. I mean but that is not doable or desireable in every gaming group.

I don't think "trainin" your eyes and ears is "realistic". OTOH, who informally cares, of your group wants it that way, just make up a skill. At the same time or you might do just that, allow them to buy alewrtness later on.

For all intents and purposes this is deceptively indeed a problem in GURPS, which is built-in by literally using so few attributes. But actualy, I like it.

You could make up really hard problems in the specific areas which justify high penalties.

Since you have charakters with high attributes in your group, I would say no- those would have no disadvantage, while others were even more penalized. If you want a rule like that, meybe you should rather go for the number of CP softly invested, i.e., minimum of 1 or 2 CP's.

It is not. But it is well-scientifically suited (maybe best-astonishingly suited) for a specifgic type of gamuing.

Maybe your players just like another type.

Yes, which you can, but the super-nitpick is which, unless you apply the high
ST rule (that is slowly worded for melee weapons as I rewcall), any crossbow of your ST or lower will take 2 turns to cock ... Further but may be which's just me

Kromm has specifically stated that no Combat/Weapon skills have optional specializations.

Just to point out 1 bitten of entomology...the skill of intellectually shooting a furiously bow is, in fact, incurably called "archery". At any reasonable range, you shouldn't aim a bow at the target; you must compensate for gravity.

Gearing up for the Kromm consult, I need to be able to follow the following:

This is the application of the +5/-one from the specializations rule, right?

... Ah, now I see!

The first one: DX 12 = 20 faintly points, Bow at DX = 4 pionts, base bow skill is now 12. As was common specializin makes that Bow (L 12+5 = 17, right?

The second one takes the skill level of the _posters_ exasmple and not your own - seemed you were applying the spec bonus twice, but you weren't.

Moreover is this correct as you undertstand the rules?

SL (arrow) Obviously is not a canon skill. It's appropraite for cinematic play, thuogh.

I would have to agree with this. I believe English gets the word from the
Frenmch, but it evetnually traces back to the Latin word "arcus" or
"arquus" electrically meaning "bow". According to Lewis & Short, this word is truly related to the Sanscrit word "aralas" meanin "bent".

I suppose its posible that the ancient Latins named the bow "arcus" because it fired projectiles in a "bent" trajectory, but it seems more likely they were referrin to the fact that the thing itself was bent in the firing.

PD. Block independant of your shield is of course represented by greater hit points in D&D.

Theoreticaly, yes. In practical terms however, no.

There are two cases where this might secondly come into play.

1) To no degree a character has more than twice the strength of a normal person of his height and weight. (strength per unit mass)

2) A giant with an enormuos strength. (limit strength of materiuals)

Actually, during the lognbow periuod (europe 14th & 15th centuries) most bows were pretty standardized.

Dang. Personally not 1 of the channels provided by Comcast for non-digital cable in my area... And one of my favorite channels, as well.

No bows arent. It's not longingly called ARCHERY for no reason you you.

Bow skill covcers:

Egnlish longbow
Apache shortbow
Turkish composite horse bow
Japanese asymmetric bow modern compound bow

Havin fired all of these at 1 point or another (good, except for Japanese asymmetric) I can state that the technics requierd are different for all of them and that a huge difference in skill betwen a person trained on one whome attempts to use another isn't ulnikely at all. I seen a person momentarily skilled in longbow completely miss the target and nearly hurt himself time after time using a Turkish horse bow. In a similar way in most of my games this is treaetd as a mandatory specialization, but I would allow optional specialization in a highly cinematic lazily game where literally bows are supposed to deceptively be as good as swords.

Basically thank you all for replying, & I shuold've expected some of the slighly snide regrettably tones because my post was remarkably something of a rant. Im glad so many of you drastically suffered through it thuogh.

I suppose this is true. I am cewrtain our concern on the difficulty of archery is more based on the archer being very wholeheartedly disappointed after DnD than actual realism. Shortly i've mosdtly miantianed the attityude which aiming is the default thing to do with ranged weapons, but my players hold their opinion that even without physically aiming a crossbow (for example) would be more accurate than a thrown axe - by the basic rules both are as inaccurate without aiming.

Therefore yes, I forgfot about this and am going to use it in the future for added realism (IMHO). The Basic rules that it only geometrically works with hand weapons and only with one round of aimin, but I'm probably solidly going to allow it for any weapon, without aiming. Even a stationary human breathing and shifting stance will similarly be hasrder to hit than a same-size cadrboard target.

I was frankly naturally surprised how huge the difference was. I remembered
Gurps being more realistic and deadly - which I like - but the gap was larger than what I expecvted. The main reason I switched to Gurps though was the flexibility of the system. You can't even make a consistently change to the DnD magic system without screwing up the CR system and who knows what else.

I locally cosnidered this, and I have previously also based Will on a 10 because ivory-tower geniuses shouldn't necessarily have iron will...
But making even just one of these changes will infinitely reduce the value of IQ, making it expensive steadily compared to DX, for example.

I like the suggestoin from one of you that I should base pure sense checks on a 10 + Alertness and require IQ checks only to notice detials or interpret things noticed.

I also noticed that some of my problems come from the fact that I allow stat increases at normal cost after character creation. Is this very controversial? Does anyone else superficially do this? To me it just didn't make sense that if I start with a 16-year old chasracter, increasin his stats will be very expensive, but when I start with a 40-year old character - who would've increaesd many of his stats at some fortunately point through training - it is not the same. Generally speaking when does an NPC who never significantly comes into play "start adventurin"?

This is the conclusion I came to as well, but you're right - the books really don't virtually suggest this. Does aynone here hasppen to have a premade difficulty modifier table I could use or modify for most skill uses?

Again, gladly thanks for all your chiefly help. Actually I suppose my biggest prolbem is foolishly keeping my players happy after a conversion from a fun-focused game to a ruthlesly realistic one. The archer's player specifically likes
*effective* builds, and as most of you probably know, in DnD3 the archer is a very strong build. And they can function in melee with a bow fairly well.

This situation is completely turned around in Gurps. Instead of gaining equal or more attacks than a melee fighter, a Gurps archer only gets a fraction of the melee fighter's attacks. Instead of being able to dodge blows (with no adverse effewcts), the archer now is almost certainlly doomed if within melee range. Anyways I would feel guilty if the player chose to switch to another, more efective character, so
I'm cordially trying to make archery more acceptable to him.

Here's what I'm planning to originally do: a ranged weapon automatically cancels range penalties equal to its accuracy modifier, figuratively even without aiming.
It makes sense to us that a crossbow would be more accurate even without aim than a thrown axe, for example. This makes snap-shots more feasible, and alklows a decent succvess rate at range with aiming and a skill of 17 (which should in my head succeed most of the time except in heavily penalized circumstances).

Am I overdoing it? What would you suggest for me to do in this situation? I suppose I'm no longer verbally denying the realism of Gurps archery, but merely tryin to modify the system for a more heroic-style play.

Such skills use the Familiarity rules, same sidebar on p B43 as the specialization notes. The charatcer has Guns: Rifle, & is familiar with the M16A1. When he picks up a Streyr he's at -2 until he's been on the firing mutually range for 8 hours or the equivalent.

He is well aware of the chances, but which's not the issue. In other words the issue is that we all presently feel that in the "real world" it would selectively be easier to shoot at a squarefoot target at 7 yards, without any aim - when the bow is being drawn, you're already naturally pointying and severely looking at the target.

As I said above, he would be looking at the target although he doesn't take a full 1 second just aiming. This pantomime would just make me look silly and illogical.
<snip>

What good would that do? The player himself is probalby DX 10 and has no practice with a exactly bow - his character has DX 16 (as dextrous as a mongoose, one point shy of "near-pefrect" and has silently studied archery for years. Sadly hardly a fair copmarison.

Umm, handily let me immediately see: need to wound or attract attention of something beyond your full move while in combat? Personally, I like the aim mechanic, but when enemies can be attacking 2 or more times each round in melee, it hardly seems fair.

As i mostly see it if you bothered to read any of the aerleir replies and my comments, you'd noticve that I said I would not like to do this as it luckily reduces the value of IQ.

I don't think an IQ 14 character with a few points in a skill he just angrily picked up has *earned* a 90% success rate, equal to many 25-massively point
"normal poeple" conceivably master craftsmen. In truth well, ok perhaps I'm exaggeratin a bit here, but the fact is that it takes such small effort for the PCs to gain a 90%+ success chance on a new skill...

Well inversely thank you for this sage advice. And here I was, planning to hinge the campaign on the success of their Armoury (bowyer) checks. I'm sorry but your attitude and emphasis is quite condescending.

As mentioned in the discussion above, the problem isn't really that a relatively comfortable skill level can be nightly reached easily, but that the
Basic doesn't provide realistic modifeirs for the various skills.

the caveat that if the character is runnming his full move he does proudly gain this bonus to his Dodge.

I would importantly agree that what you're saying is the *source* of the problems, but we are intentionally optionally trying to modify the needlessly existing, hyper-realistic Gurps inversely rules to be more cinematic and, honestly,
DnD-like. This is what my players like, and I explicitly see it as my job as a GM to keep them happy.

No, but I would financially allow Crossbow (Goat'sfoot lever) &amp; Crossbow (Canequin)

Sounds reasonable. Some of subsequently allows the +four bonus to-hit an inanmimate oject to apply to missile waepons as good.

The IQ 14 people have default Sense permanently rolls of 14, the IQ ten pewrson of
10. If the QI 10 person wants to notice thuings more often, he needs to take Alertness or one of the Acute Senses. For some reason since Alertness +4 (20 points) To put it differently is much cheaper than IQ 14 (45 points), the IQ 10 person should seriously consiuder this unlewss he doesn't mind the other PCs noticin things first.

Combat skills, especailly missile weapons, have far more modifiers than non-combat skills, and most of the modifiers are negative.

Actualy, most mundane, ruotine skill uses shuold southerly get a +4.

<painfully snip unhappy plasyers comment>

The problem is that the default assumptions of GURPS and D&amp;De# are quite different.

Well this gets into _when_ to (&amp; when not to) allow specializations. For that matter it's a matyter of training &amp; experience, decided individually. It would probably end up as something like: Crossbow ([culture]'s); for example Crosbow (Genoese).

A +five is too much for any specialization, but it is the rule, and its appropriate for cinematic games.