[gurps] Rule of 16: GURPS 3e versus 4e

[Holmes, Erik]

>Holmes, Erik wrote:
>>
>> No, who cares if they had high mental skills. If you use the rule of
16 even high spell levels
>aren't unbalanced.
>
>A nice high skill in Armoury or an Engineering skill and some nice
>gadgeteering ads didn't bother you?
>

Why would it bother me? I really don't understand why anyone would have
a problem with this. If a player came to me and said, "Uh, I want my
character to be the best Dwarven Engineer around," I'm sure not going to
call him a cheap ass munchkin and tell him that his character would be
too powerful.

(Serious, if you want power, invest in social skills. We once had a
character in a Cyberpunk game make a charisma god. Loads of charisma,
silver tongue, the works. He was unstoppable. If we needed a place to
hide out he would just talk one of his girlfriends into letting us crash
at their place. When we needed stuff, we got it. Hell, the GM had to
fudge the rolls just to get the bad guys to attack us.

Sadly that character died a tragic death. We were playing a Cyberworld
adventure and being chased by this Cybernetic-God guy with like 20 ST,
built in weapons, and enough dermal armor to take a shot from a 12 gauge
touching the back of his head. We were searching for some informant and
this cybergod was following us. While I searched the men's room the
charisma god searched the ladies room. While in the ladies room he found
two lesbians in a stall going at it and talked them into letting him
join (what can I say, we were in high school at the time). My character
got into a gunfight with the cybergod and the charismagod ran out to
help, nude with nothing but his guns. The cybergod killed him with a
needler. His armor totally would have protected him if it hadn't been
for those lesbians!)

>> A 25 broadsword skill on the other hand, with a little weapons master
was some serious shit in 3e,
>and very hard to obtain.
>
>IT's not that cheap in 4e either.

It's 60 points in 4e. The cheapest way to get it in 3e would be to spend
112 points in the skill and buy it from 10. The best way would probably
be to buy a 15 DX for 60 pts, then spend 88 points to bring it up to 25.
You're paying a little more, but all of your physical skills will be
decent this way.


>
>>> +10 to one spell, or +4 to all spells and +4d6 to spell damage.
>>> Again, my inner munchkin says take 4 more magery. (actually, my
inner
>>> munchkin says take 150 pts, 75 disads and make a young Harry Rotter
>>> with 10 magery, 15 IQ and 25 points in skills and spells).
>>
>> Of course this only works if your GM has said "no limits to Magery".
>> -----------
>>
>> Yes, but just the fact that it works UNLESS THE GM MAKES A HOUSE RULE
TO RESTRICT IT seems to show
>just one of the problems with points, skills and character creation in
4e.
>
>It's not a house rule, but a standard option of the game. By your
logic,
>once GURPS Myth came out Magery would be unlimited in 3e as well
anyway.

The point is that it can be done. Really I don't have too big a problem
with it. My only problem with it is that its not balanced at all with
what a fighter of equal points could do. In 4e you can still make a good
mage off of 100 or 150 points. Your fighter is going to blow though.
Don't even bother trying to make a thief.

I always loved GURPS because whenever we started a game, whatever idea I
had I knew I could make work in GURPS because the system made sense.
Characters from books, movies, TV shows could be converted over with
ease.

In 4e it doesn't feel that way. Instead of a system based on the bell
curve and realism you have this system based on abstract numbers that
tries to be less complicated but to me just doesn't make sense.

Shoby187