(4) GATE! (Inactive)

Game Master mdt

Do note, your average peasant here in this world is going to get killed fast by your group. Same with most bandits, militia, and even Knights.

It's the Elites, the Bisharan, Ni-Bisharan, magi, and other 'powers' that you have to worry about. You can take them down with luck, but a tiny bit of bad luck can make it a TPK. Certain powers (Master/Mistress Bisharan Guardians, Seals, Elites, Journeyman level Bisharan Guardians, Forest Sisters) are highly dangerous even with a LAV at your back.

The gash in the armor is the result of an average 3d6 damage + str (about 15pts) with an armour divisor of 1/10th. It's not a gash as in it looks like you had an anti-tank round hit it, it looks like someone hit it with a chain saw or 'jaws of life' blade. So a long slender gash. The armor took about 10 HP after defenses. The sword is enchanted, but it's not doing anti-tank damage, other than the armor divisor.

I do like armor divisors for enchanted weapons because it makes them highly effective while not making them all that much more dangerous against humans (IE: That same slash would have done about the same damage to the PCs, not cut one in half).

Now that the boards are stabilizing, I'll give people another day or so to post before I push on.

It's been quite bad most days I didn't notice I was logged out from the site and just thought nothing was happening.

I'm still finding that my quick links aren't auto logging in, so I go to my campaign page and everything shows no activity because I have to manually log in, and then I see the new post indicators.

Only had to log in once to day, so far. That's good.

I am here and reading but unsure how to contribute at the moment. Why are we still in town? what else do we need to accomplish here? Seeing shades of Blackhawk Down...

You are not in town, Daniel.

You are half-way to the country's capital, and Brona wanted to stay at an inn and get a hot bath for a change, since you are passing a major inn on the road.

I hope they fixed whatever was wrong with the site. Almost every time I sit and wanted to write in one of my games, the forums went down. Talk about luck.

Things have been stable for a few days now, I'll start pushing us forward tomorrow if nothing else explodes.

I've got the flu. Will be back when I don't feel like losing my lunch all the time.

oops, I saw me listed as perc by 2 and thought that meant i knew about it.

Nope, perc by 2 means make a perception by 2. Gurps doesn't have DC's, it has thresholds (in this case, the threshold is make it by 2), so if you have a 14 perception, you need a 12 or less. If you have a 12 perception, you need a 10 or less.

When i first read it, I thought you made the roll for us.

I did as well...

I haven't forgotten the game, I just had some issues with my dad this weekend and today, so I haven't had time to sit down and make all the new icons I need for the combat map. I'll try to get it done this week.

Busy myself so I certainly understand. Had to miss work today to attend a funeral for my wife's aunt. 17 days from diagnosis to death. Some type of blood cancer. At least there was very little pain.

Condolences

Sorry to hear that, Skorn.

I'm sorry for your loss.

May the love of your family and of your dear departed one live on through God forever.

Happy thanks giving all

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it today!

That was a nice thought Jacob. Thanks, and safe travels to those traveling. I'll go see family tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving, and one way less eventful than mine. *sigh*

I got most of the NPCs on the map, and I'll get the rest tomorrow and the PCs.

Just checking in.

Hope everyone is doing well as 2017 comes to a close.

Sorry all, work is killing me right now. I'm sniping posts in games as I can, but set up of new stuff is a time I can't find lately. I'll try really hard to get the map up soonish.

GURPS is kind of generic on combat rounds. Each one is, by default, 1 second long. That's a bit short for reality, honestly, so I'll probably be calling it 3 seconds to keep my mind from breaking. :P

Anyway, you can take the following Maneuvers :

Free Actions : Free Actions are things you can do as part of any maneuver. Talk, Miantain Spells, Drop an item, Crouch/stand from crouch (If crouching, you can't sprint, and your movement is reduced).

Do Nothing : You just stand around. Everyone who hasn't taken actions at start of combat is assumed to have used this maneuver immediately before combat starts. You are forced to take this maneuver if you are stunned or surprised.

Move : You may move a number of yards up to your Move Score.

Change Posture : You may change between any two valid postures. Valid postures are Standing, Sitting, Kneeling, Crawling, Lying Prone, or Lying Face Up.

Aim : You may aim at a specific target you can see. If you follow an aim (or chain of aims) with an attack or all out attack, you gain +1 per aim maneuver. You gain an additional +1 on crossbow/firearm attacks if you can brace the weapon on something solid. Maximum bonus is the Acc of the weapon. You may take a single step as part of aiming (1 yard) if you are not bracing.

Evaluate : Melee equivalent of Aim. Bracing not allowed. You may take a single step as part of evaluating (1 yard).

Attack : You make an armed or unarmed attack, melee or ranged, against a target or targets. You may step and then attack, or attack then step.

Feint : You fake a melee attack. If successful, gain your margin of success on your next attack. You may atake a step as part of feinting.

All-Out Attack : Attack any foe with a ready weapon, making no effort to defend. Determined Make a single attack with +4 to hit. Double Make two attacks against the same foe if you have two ready weapons or one weapon that doesn't have to be readied after an attack. Feint Make a feint and an immediate attack against the same opponent. Strong Make a single attack at normal skill. If you hit, you get +2 to damage or +1 damage per die, if that would be better (only applies to melee based attacks doing strength damage). If you are making a ranged attack, you must choose one of these two options : Determined Make a single attack at +2 to hit. Suppression Take the entire turn to spray an area with auto fire. This can only be done with weapons with ROF 5 or higher. You may move up to half your Move, but only forward. You may make no active defenses.

Move and Attack Move as a Move action, and during the movement, take an attack action as above. However, your attack is at -2 or -bulk of weapon, whichever is worse, and lose all Aim bonuses. Melee attacks are at -4 instead and adjusted skill cannot exceed 9. You can move your normal movement, but you gain a -2 to any skill checks to avoid obstacles, tripping,etc.

All-out-Defense : Choose one of Increased Defense Add +2 to one active defense of your choice until next turn. Double Defense Apply two different active defenses against the same attack. If you choose Increased Dodge, you may move up to half your move, otherwise you can move only a 1 yard step.

Concentrate : You concentrate on one primarily mental task (casting a spell, leadership roll, electronics operation, etc). You may make a step as part of this.

Ready : You take the ready maneuver to pick up or drawn any item and prepare it for use (sword, gun, etc). You can also use this to manipulate objects (open/close door, pick a lock, digging, lifting, etc). You may also switch an advantage on or off, if need be. You may take a step as part of a Ready.

Wait : You do nothing unless a particular event you describe occurs, if that happens, you may tranform your Wait into an Attack, Feint, All-out Attack or Ready maneuver. You must choose this when you set the 'trigger'. For example, I wait for someone to stand up, and if they do, I attack them with my readied gun. You may not move as part of your Wait, but you can still move as part of the final action if it allows movement when it's triggered.

I did not recall that readying a weapon was in effect a "full round" action in GURPS. Is there a quick draw type advantage? Could we have drawn a pistol under table in advance?

Back in the 3.0 edition days I knew all this and am surprised how much I have forgotten. But we never played modern so modern weapons are totally new.

There is a fast-draw skill, but you have to pick the type (long arm, pistol, sword, knife, etc) that you can fast draw.

You could have drawn one under the table, one person did post they did that.

I was honestly surprised that the guy shot Jacob for just standing up. And not just shot him but shot him like 4 times shooting to kill. Caught me off guard and Jacob was not even attacking. By all rights he is a criminal. Not knightly behavior in any sense of any code I have ever heard of. Hard to imagine this place, which is quite a large and sophisticated town, almost a city state, would not try to enforce law better than to allow this. I know he has not gotten away with it yet, but to me that was beyond brash.

You're halfway between cities, in a road side inn. There's no town watch, so nobody to enforce anything on him.

And the Empire claims that this is 'uncontrolled land' with just barbarian pretenders running around. In other words, they don't recognize any authority over here other than their own.

And the guy did say he'd kill anyone who got up. Jacob was just the first person to stand up. And no, he's not 'honorable knight' #1. He's 'Ruthless Imperial Knight' #2.

And finally, he's the equivalent of Calia, which means that, just as the town you were in before assigned someone to watch the dangerous lady and try to keep damage to a minimum, most local towns, confronted with a Bisharan Guardian or an Imperial Knight would assign a local to 'facilitate' them to keep damage to a minimum.

Those of us that had our hands on,near our weapons need to in the future make it clear those are ready actions themselves.

We effectively lost any reaction to the first round because we did not explicitly state we were readying oursleves for action.

The fast draw skill (specialized by weapon), does allow a draw and attack.

GURPS does drill things down to single second actions.

Remember all those times when you got frustrated that in the six second or ten second round of other games all you could do was swing once? Or take one 5' step?

Well GURPS tries to bring more realism.

Swinging a sword is really more like:

Ready
Swing
Ready
Swing

Actually, Genie drew her weapon under cover.

And I had forgotten we were at an Inn on the side of the road. I keep thinking we were in an inn in the last town.

No one translated for Jacob about getting up and he also thought if he did shoot the rest of the group could bring him down not counting on a magical machine gun crossbow

Yep, no worries on that Jacob, perfectly reasonable for Jacob to do. And the language barrier is a problem. I think Jacob will be motivated to learn the local language though after getting shot.

And not really a machine gun crossbow, more of a semi-automatic crossbow. No faster a ROF than a pistol...

Hmm. Our pistol shooter only shot once... We gotta learn the rules better as a group.

it appears that we have some people operating on one second turns and others not.

aim and fire is two seconds, doing it twice is four seconds.

So, going back and reviewing actions:

Round 1

Jacob stands
Guard activates readied action.

Round 2

"Jacob takes a serious wound and opens fire unslinging his rifle."
Technically this is two actions, ready the rifle, then fire it, Without aiming there is no acc bonus from the rifle.
Guard fires ROF 3 burst from repeating crossbow
Scott jumps up from the chair, unholsters the pistol and shoots the knight.
This is three actions, jump up, ready weapon, fire. If Scott had fast-draw pistol, he could have drawn his pistol while firing.
"Dawn rolls backward off the bench."
"Laine draws his pistol and starts aiming at the knights."
This is also two actions since Laine does not have fast-draw pistol.
Daniel "brings up his H&K MP7A1 and fires."
Daniel also doesn't have fast-draw, this is two actions, ready the weapon, and then shoot it.
"Genie dives under a table or any other form of cover that she can find around her" she already had her weapon drawn and fires a round.
DM deemed that the dive for cover counts as a "step" and allowed the fire in the same round.

Round 3
Guard fires at Genie, ROF 3.
Dawn "draws her pistol."
Laine fires, but doesn't get acc/aim bonus, ROF 3.
Jacob aim and fire, twice.
this is four rounds of action.
"Scott ducks under the table and takes aim at the knight."
This is two rounds of actions, and was noted as such.
"Weapon ready Daniel fires a burst at the crossbowman as he moves to take some cover."
Daniel can fire this round, though he doesn't receive acc/aim bonus. He can only take a step towards cover.

This is where we are now in the IC post.

Here is a good reference for everyone Combat Cards.

It would help speed things up for combat if players would post their actions for a couple of rounds, and note how many rounds.

For example, I posted four rounds for Dawn, which takes her up to firing her first shot.

We could do it one round at a time, but at the pbp posting rate, that would take a month or two to cover 5-10 seconds.

If we all post actions (and mdt shout out if you don't like this suggestion!) up to a die roll required, mdt can move things along as needed.

MDT can then resolve combat, and post each round, give anyone that needs to respond a chance to do so, then post the next round, etc.

Actually, DM said Genie could 'move and attack' which is a maneuver. It has penalties to hit (she rolled bad and missed).

As to posting multiple rounds, I agree that would speed things up. However, as this is the first real combat you guys have had, I thought round by round might be better to help everyone get used to it since some people are new to it.

Also, GM is about 8 years from having run GURPS, and ran 3rd edition last time, so he's rusty on the rules. If you see me doing something you think is wrong, feel free to ask about it in discussion. Just keep it polite. :)

Acceptable : Did you forget about rule A.4? I thought it applied in this situation.

Unacceptable : You flaming idiot, you didn't apply rule A.4, moron!

:)

Ok well I haven't played this game in 20 years or so and am on the ground bleeding out. Shrugs

Sorry. :(

I am sorta in the same boat, experience wise. I swear I one tim3e I was proficient a these rules.

Now our numbers should begin to make a difference, I hope.

It's been a long time since I played a table-top version.

I've been playing some pbp games for almost two years now, and I still find myself learning and relearning stuff.

Fortunately I can usually look stuff up before I post.

Since we aren't military, but our characters are...
In the second basic book, cover DR per inch of wood is only .5-1 DR.

We have a -2 to shoot him through the table...

Well, more like 3 DR, these tables are about 2 inches thick hardwood (that has a good bit of silica in it). But yes, you could attempt to shoot him through the table...

...I can also do the same for his bolts. I was going to go for a more cinematic fight with the tables taking the damage not the players. :P

well...

The standard repeating crossbow required a ready maneuver between shots and did less damage than a standard crossbow, but could hold 10 bolts. (Low tech pg 73)

A standard crossbow did thr+5, while the repeating crossbow was only thr+1.

1d6+10 is also equal to 3d6+3 when doing dice+ conversion. Which means that the guard has a crossbow that puts out about 33% more damage than our 2d6+2 pistols (average of 13.5 for the crossbow compared to 9 for most of the pistols). A crossbow also doesn't have a piercing modifier and is considered standard piercing, while our pistols are large piercing and have greater penetration.

3d6+3 means the crossbow has a pull of ST >34!

A crossbow that was loaded with a cocking lever took 20 1-second ready actions (basic 278), and was limited to ST of 4 over your own, while the repeating crossbow required ready actions between attacks. The benefit of the repeating crossbow was a higher ROF while sacrificing range and penetration.

Ranged weapon quality normally adds to accuracy, which requires aiming, which is different than a ready action. Aiming requires a specific target. Technically, the guard was using a wait maneuver that can then be converted to attack, feint, all-out-attack, or ready.

So considering that the guard probably doesn't have a str of 30, isn't using a ready action between each shot, and can get acc bonuses when not aiming...

This pretty much means the crossbow is magical. Therefore all rules are kinda out, or at least changed.

A very fine repeating crossbow should only be doing thr+1 damage with an accuracy of 1+2. The ST of the weapon can be increased, probably magically.

Which means that the crossbow allows the user to outgun us.

Not saying there's anything wrong with this. We are all rusty with our GURPS.

As far as the guard shooting through the tables? Well they all know that you use wood as a target because the bolts don't go through it. We're using guns, and we know that you shoot to the sides of the door and window before rushing in to clear the building.

You've already pointed out that the normal crossbow has half or a third the damage of a pistol.

The magical crossbow has 1/3rd more power, and is AP. So, if you want to shoot through the tables, I'm fine with that, the Knight will also shoot through the wood, and cut it's DR protection for you (due to the AP).

I was going for cinematic, but if you want gritty realistic, I got no problem with that.

aww? not giving us a tactical advantage?

He's going to immediately realize that what he's always "known" doesn't apply anymore?

People always stand next to the door and forget that the wall is just a couple sheets of drywall.

Most of our guns are pi+ and do 1.5 damage after DR.

Ok, shoot through the table. I'll have him start doing the same.

You have a tactical advantage (you outnumber him significantly), and he still isn't sure exactly what's being used to attack him, which is why he moved and took cover, rather than attacking last round.

Gritty it is, no complaints when the bolt rips through the table into someone though.