Topic: Shields Block, Shields do not really Reduce damage Idea.

[jdale]

It's Passive Defense. On any defense roll in GURPS, you add your Passive Defense for armor including shield to your appropriate Active Defense skill for Block (with a shield), Parry (based on weapon skill), or Dodge -- you only get to apply one of these to each attack. (Actually just half or a third of those, but you get the point.) That's your effective skill you are rolling against for defense. If successful, the attack fails.

GURPS also gives you a Damage Resistance (DR) value for your armor. So armor helps two ways -- its Passive Defense gives it a chance of deflecting the attack safely, and if that fails the damage done is reduced by the DR. Some armor is better in PD, some in DR, but usually you have at least a little of each.

[Peter R]

I never played GURPS, I think the name put me off even looking at the system. Merp's good, gurps bad. How shallow can one be?

[jdale]

It's a very flexible system, I like it for cross-genre games, it handles a range of magic, technology, and other abilities very smoothly. I also like it for SF. I ran a world-hopping game for a while, then settled down and ran Cthulhupunk. I don't like it as much for fantasy because I prefer stronger archetypes for fantasy (i.e. professions), and because of the various magic systems it includes, the default one doesn't seem very magical and the alternative ones top out too easily. Admittedly I am at least an edition behind the times.

Anyway... GURPS' PD/DR system is a fairly simple attack/defense mechanic which is suited for a streamlined game with low hits (typical PC 10-15, does not increase to any meaningful degree with experience) and without RM's style of hits+criticals. Even with the extra roll, combat is faster than RM because normally there are no table lookups. Attacker rolling only needs to take into account their skill and situational modifiers, they either beat it or not (small chance of a critical). Then defender only needs to take into account their own PD + active defense, the attack is either canceled or not. Then roll damage and subtract DR.

[Malim]

GURPS is to me a system where you are not locked down by proffesion, stats, random crit rolls, etc...
IF you good you hit people in the head or neck to chop their head of, if you wanna be a swordsman but also wanna be a engineer you do so, carry more armor you get DR so you take less physical dmg, you get Passive defence so you activly can avoid attacks with dodge, block, parry.
If you want a very flexible combat system that allows fighting while you move drive etc.. play GURPS.
In many ways i like GURPS so much more then any other system because it is so flexible and it dosnt have all the limits that i find in RM sadly.
And it has like.. tons of settings books with very detailed source stuff.
I have played GURPS for about 20 years while also playing RM2 for 25 years.
GURPS can have a future setting and still have swords and shields.. and it works together.

well hurra GURPS
I still love RM2 for some reason

[Spectre771]

I've played GURPS Supers and GURPS Toons and they were very easy to learn and very free form to play.  3d6 system.  It's something I've been thinking of getting my kids started on too.  They already love RM2, so they should be able to grasp that system pretty quickly.  It does require a lot of on-the-fly thinking for the GM if you play Toons.  Anything the player can think up for a cartoon character, or they have seen in any cartoon, they can throw at you in the game.  It's a wild, very fast paced game.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

Just joining this thread, so I apologise if anything I say repeats anyone else's suggestions/comments.

As far as I can tell, the DB that the system already provides shields is based upon the obstacle that it presents the attacker. It's much the same as the target being made smaller because they are standing behind a wall. They get hit less because they are more difficult to hit. This reduces the damage since it makes the attackers roll less than it would have been. Simply that.

The number of opponents are affected is based purely upon the size and it's relative position. It doesn't take into account any active defensive skills that the user may attempt with the shield. Any parry that the defender uses (probably derived from a weapon skill) serves to further increase the difficulty of the attacker to make a telling blow. In order to do that NO skill roll is required...

But... lets say that the defender has ONLY a shield to defend themselves with?  They can just passively hide behind it , absorbing blows raining down on them... or if they are competent (and strong enough) attempt to make active attempts to interpose the shield, increasing it's effectiveness. That part, really, is no different to using a weapon to parry, still NO roll, just an application of parry using a shield skill.

Shields do absorb blows (until they fall apart).. but much like plate armour and sloped armour on tanks can also deflect harmlessly. *That's* what an active skill could conceivably be used for.. in that case the skill is rolled. If it succeeds then there is a derived % chance that the attack is deflected harmlessly... However, the user MUST dedicate activity specifically to do so... some GM's might also want to want the skill developed in the same sort of fashion as Two-weapon fighting.

However, the truth of the matter is, if anything hits a Shield hard enough, the concussive effects WILL affect the wielder or perhaps even unbalance them if it isn't deflected.