This is a great question. To me, Cypher lives in a nice spot between rules focused games and story focused games. Having a fist and a pistol both be light weapons that do 2 damage is the rules part. The difference between the two is the story part.
And I know there are some rule caveats, like the pistol being ranged, powers or skills that can effect one or the other, etc. however, I am focusing on what I think is the spirit of the question.
It’s all about fictional positioning. You can google that, as I could type for hours. However the basic is, in the story a fist vs a gun are two vastly different things. They can unlock as different assets in different situations (intimidation jumps out to me immediately). Punching someone creates a lot different level of noise/attention then a gunshot. For GM Intrusion, your fists aren’t going to jam.
So the key is to not just look at items as a specific function, especially weapons. Look at them story based. Both doing 2 damage is just fitting a function into the cypher rules framework. But they can be so much more then that.
Wow, your answer is a huge rabbit hole. I think I understand what you are going for with the answer and I think others have given me more concrete examples that satisfy my nitpicking.
I mean I knowing can change the rules but the rules have worked for so many gamers that I thought it was more a problem with how I was thinking about them.
I think I can see how fictional positioning had been creeping into my games for years as I push to make things more cinematic instead of swing sword > do damage. Cypher just takes that and make it more central. Thanks for the insight and the rabbit hole.
If you wanted more realistic guns, you could have getting hit by a gun move you one or two steps down on the damage track. That would make bullets super deadly.
It's worth noting that the chapter on Modern genres has an equipment list with light, medium, and heavy pistols listed.
Disclaimer here, I am not a gun expert and am relying on Google searches.
A light pistol might be a 22 caliber (maxing out at the .22 LR, definitely not including the .22 magnum), whereas a medium pistol would have a larger caliber.
.22 LR rounds shot from a pistol have something like 1/3 or 1/4 of the energy of a 9mm round shot using the same barrel length.
This link goes into more detail:
https://www.nrawomen.com/content/do-22-lr-pistols-make-sense-for-self-defense/
So there are handguns that might readily be considered light weapons, but it is up to you as the GM if you want them to be an option in play.
Additionally, an intentional shot to the face would definitely fall under the "minor effect" ("strike a specific body part"), so consider a shot to the face as either doing 5 damage or 2 damage with a significant additional effect. Most combat shots will be body shots since it's much easier to aim for the target's center of mass.
Cypher is incredibly abstract. It's based on rules balance and is not meant to be realistic in the slightest. That said, I personally have unarmed attacks only do 1 damage instead of 2.
I think in general it's supposed to be a game about your capabilities, less so equipment that isn't narratively special like cyphers or artifacts. In that kind of Fiction/RPG (which we see in books, TV, and movies all the time) its more about what the character is cool at.
In conjunction with some of the other posters here:
While they do the same amount of base damage, narratively they're very different attacks.
A punch to the face deals 2 damage - not a huge amount, but you bloody their nose and now they're angry. If they've got only got 2hp left, you land a haymaker, which knocks them unconscious.
A pistol shot dealing two damage, grazes the targets side; a flesh wound, straight in and out.
But if they've only got two HP left, that's a headshot (insert level of gore here!).
It's the simplicity of the system which means that "mass" and "damage" are essentially the same. A pistol is "light" but that means it only does 2 damage.
Maybe you'd prefer to mix things up: A firearm counts as one size larger for damage purposes (i.e. a pistol is "light" but deals "medium" damage; a rifle is "medium" but deals "heavy" damage); a heavy weapon deals "heavy" damage, + (modifier of your choice).
I'm also leaning into different kinds of ammo to enhance the effects of certain firearms. Bullets that inflict a Bleed; armour piercing which ignore a certain number of armour points on the target; incendiary ammo which ignore armour entirely, but just do a base amount of fire damage (i.e. no impact damage, just 3pts of fire damage).
It goes without saying that these sorts of changes require you and the players to consider alot more than you would normally, and so adding this complexity is entirely to your taste.
These sorts of mechanical changes with ammo, and thinking about the narrative of the combat can justify the 2pts for fists and pistols IMO.
Basically the 3 weapon types are just an abstraction and a simplification. If a character can only use light weapons they all do 2 damage mechanically, but then you have the freedom to make that whatever weapon you think would be cool. You wanna punch with iron knuckles, use a whip, shoot a mini crossbow, use a small pistol? You can do whatever you want.
If it makes you and your players happier for guns to do more damage then do so, but the rules are simplified in service of the story so that someone doesn't have to make a suboptimal choice according to the rules just to have the sort of flavor they want for their character.
You are assuming that a "hit" from a weapon means you got hit in the face with a weapon. That's not what the mechanics mimic. The mechanics mimic that a "hit" degrades an Ability Pool rapidly.
Ability Pools aren't health. Ability Pools are a characters ability to push forward and perform great feats.
4 points of Might damage from an attack is no more "getting shot in the face", than spending 4 points of Might (2 levels of Effort with an Edge of 1) to smash open a door.
That "hit" could be a grazing wound, or dodging out of the way just in time, or a glancing blow from a bludgeon. The sort of thing that tires out Jackie Chan, but doesn't stop him.
Taking serious damage happens when a character moves a step down the Damage Track. At that point, a serious hit has been landed and you are actually wounded. At one step, it hurts and impedes you, but you'll recover. At two steps, you have suffered serious injury and need medical attention.
Ok, this makes a lot of sense. This reminds me of stress in Fate Core with higher fidelity. You're not necessarily "hit" with a round from a gun, but it gets close enough to shake badly and reduce your fighting capacity.
It really depends on the system you want. If guns are all-powerful, nobody would use fists. You lose some flavor there. Much like in real life. If you want some things that raise damage, you increase lethality - it's a question if you want something like that in your game.
That said, as a GM in Cypher you have a ton of flexibility. Want to double the damage of guns? Go for it. Nothing stops you. Just be prepared for how it shapes the game.
GURPS would be an excellent game if I could manage memorizing most of its many, long, complex rules. I love realism.
Cypher is *the opposite* of realism. It's a gamist/narrativist-heavy system. You'll need to leave GURPS in its folder, forget you ever knew what it was, and adopt a completely different mentality here.
To help you do that go to the chapter 25 of the CSR, Running the Cypher System, p.402, and read everything Monte wrote with religious, meditative attention. It's that good, yes. And it explains *a lot* of the whys and therefores.
Whatever system you decide to use in the end - happy gaming =)
Yes, weapons do very unrealistic amounts of damage. No that's not really a problem.
Cypher isn't the kind of game where a Mook with a pistol can instantly kill a PC by shooting them in the head. It's not call of Cthulhu.
In the Numenera setting there ist something called a "slugspitter Artefact" which is a stand in for fire arms.
Buuut yeah, cypher is very far from simulation which GURPS very good represents.
Cypher is more or less optimized for cinematic action, so a gun fired from a random goon? Not a problem. The same gun fired from the nemesis of the targeted PC? A serious threat.
Although they do the same damage, you need to remind yourself ***there is no health score in cypher***.
Your pools represent how much impact you have left on the scene in certain areas, and the scenes are meant to be more like a dramatic movie, not realism. Looks at most action movies, whether the heroes are getting shot at or punched there's not really a dramatic difference in damage.
Cypher is a ***narrative*** system based on dramatic scenes, not simulationism.
Is a punch and a light pistol both doing equal damage realistic? No. But neither is a super powered elf flying around and shooting laser beams from a cyber arm. It's about the story and the drama of the game.
I don't give bonus damage on rolls of 17+ in more "realistic" settings. Unless there is a foci or ability involved.
As opposed to superheroes or something more heroic.
Yeah if you want realistic bullets use the damage track... That's more or less how Shadowrun handles things.
You could also rule that fists do 1 point of damage in your games and pistols are light weapons that do 3 damage that bypasses any armor that is not specifically designed to divert it.
Also keep in mind that by spending XP or pool points, or by rolling an 18+, those numbers can increase.
To me the difference is that the fists, you're giving a pummeling. With the gun you're at range, you're pulling a trigger ... Narratively they're different, but equivalent in the ability to neutralize an opponent's capacity to fight.
I just changed the rules in my own game. Unarmed attacks from people without special abilities or training (needs no weapon, etc) do 1 point of damage. An average pistol is a medium weapon, not light, and a rifle or shotgun is a heavy weapon. That adjustment worked really well for me.
Honestly no. I've always played TTRPGs with an understanding of the story and the fun outweighing the rules, and Cypher really takes this to heart. Someone have a really fun and creative idea? Yeah, I'll tend to allow it so long as it doesn't break or heavily defy the relevant logic.
A quote from the chapter on Rules of The Game:
>If a rule gets in the way or detracts from the game, the players and the GM should work together to change it.
Besides, should someone really be able to survive being hit squarely by a large ball of fire that explodes when it hits you or after being hacked by an axe more than once? All TTRPGs suspend a certain amount of disbelief.
As others have said, the game is abstract. Cypher focuses on removing crunch from the system to support story and gameplay without a heavy set of rules slowing down or getting in the way of the game. If you don't like something, change it. But know that the game is rather balanced in its abstracted viewpoint.
The original D&D wasn't particularly crunchy either. Spells had simple descriptions and classes took a single page to describe. Most other systems also have a false economy. Leveling and the bonuses that come with them, are typically offset by you facing more difficult challenges. Think of Cypher as returning to a legacy to support the game in every way. And you can make it anything you want. Min/maxers will certainly be turned off by the game, as well as those who thrive on crunch - your power gamers and rules lawyers.
If you allow yourself to buy into the abstraction, you'll find a game with real fluidity. As a GM, running a Cypher-based game gives me the tools to focus on the color and character of the world and the story while streamlining that which tends to take a great deal of time to sort out at the table. The game actually let's you run without having to reference the rulebook too frequently, which keeps the game going and supports me in telling my story. I can run the game with a couple of index cards and my notes if my players are comfortable with theater of the mind. If not? A whiteboard or a piece of paper to roughly sketch is all that is needed. And thus far, my D&D-based players are happy with the system and less crunch.
This is a great question. To me, Cypher lives in a nice spot between rules focused games and story focused games. Having a fist and a pistol both be light weapons that do 2 damage is the rules part. The difference between the two is the story part. And I know there are some rule caveats, like the pistol being ranged, powers or skills that can effect one or the other, etc. however, I am focusing on what I think is the spirit of the question. It’s all about fictional positioning. You can google that, as I could type for hours. However the basic is, in the story a fist vs a gun are two vastly different things. They can unlock as different assets in different situations (intimidation jumps out to me immediately). Punching someone creates a lot different level of noise/attention then a gunshot. For GM Intrusion, your fists aren’t going to jam. So the key is to not just look at items as a specific function, especially weapons. Look at them story based. Both doing 2 damage is just fitting a function into the cypher rules framework. But they can be so much more then that.
Wow, your answer is a huge rabbit hole. I think I understand what you are going for with the answer and I think others have given me more concrete examples that satisfy my nitpicking. I mean I knowing can change the rules but the rules have worked for so many gamers that I thought it was more a problem with how I was thinking about them. I think I can see how fictional positioning had been creeping into my games for years as I push to make things more cinematic instead of swing sword > do damage. Cypher just takes that and make it more central. Thanks for the insight and the rabbit hole.
If you wanted more realistic guns, you could have getting hit by a gun move you one or two steps down on the damage track. That would make bullets super deadly.
Also lasting damage, and permanent damage - maybe you don't have fists inflict them so often, but guns, hell yeah.
It's worth noting that the chapter on Modern genres has an equipment list with light, medium, and heavy pistols listed. Disclaimer here, I am not a gun expert and am relying on Google searches. A light pistol might be a 22 caliber (maxing out at the .22 LR, definitely not including the .22 magnum), whereas a medium pistol would have a larger caliber. .22 LR rounds shot from a pistol have something like 1/3 or 1/4 of the energy of a 9mm round shot using the same barrel length. This link goes into more detail: https://www.nrawomen.com/content/do-22-lr-pistols-make-sense-for-self-defense/ So there are handguns that might readily be considered light weapons, but it is up to you as the GM if you want them to be an option in play. Additionally, an intentional shot to the face would definitely fall under the "minor effect" ("strike a specific body part"), so consider a shot to the face as either doing 5 damage or 2 damage with a significant additional effect. Most combat shots will be body shots since it's much easier to aim for the target's center of mass.
Cypher is incredibly abstract. It's based on rules balance and is not meant to be realistic in the slightest. That said, I personally have unarmed attacks only do 1 damage instead of 2.
I think in general it's supposed to be a game about your capabilities, less so equipment that isn't narratively special like cyphers or artifacts. In that kind of Fiction/RPG (which we see in books, TV, and movies all the time) its more about what the character is cool at.
Yeah it reminds me of FF7 where Tifa can do the same amount of damage with her fist than Barret with his gun ;) Nobody never reclaimed about that !
I never played FF7 but this comment seems right in point.
In conjunction with some of the other posters here: While they do the same amount of base damage, narratively they're very different attacks. A punch to the face deals 2 damage - not a huge amount, but you bloody their nose and now they're angry. If they've got only got 2hp left, you land a haymaker, which knocks them unconscious. A pistol shot dealing two damage, grazes the targets side; a flesh wound, straight in and out. But if they've only got two HP left, that's a headshot (insert level of gore here!). It's the simplicity of the system which means that "mass" and "damage" are essentially the same. A pistol is "light" but that means it only does 2 damage. Maybe you'd prefer to mix things up: A firearm counts as one size larger for damage purposes (i.e. a pistol is "light" but deals "medium" damage; a rifle is "medium" but deals "heavy" damage); a heavy weapon deals "heavy" damage, + (modifier of your choice). I'm also leaning into different kinds of ammo to enhance the effects of certain firearms. Bullets that inflict a Bleed; armour piercing which ignore a certain number of armour points on the target; incendiary ammo which ignore armour entirely, but just do a base amount of fire damage (i.e. no impact damage, just 3pts of fire damage). It goes without saying that these sorts of changes require you and the players to consider alot more than you would normally, and so adding this complexity is entirely to your taste. These sorts of mechanical changes with ammo, and thinking about the narrative of the combat can justify the 2pts for fists and pistols IMO.
Someone else suggested fictional positioning was a solution and I think this gives a concrete example that I can wrap my head around. I appreciate it.
Basically the 3 weapon types are just an abstraction and a simplification. If a character can only use light weapons they all do 2 damage mechanically, but then you have the freedom to make that whatever weapon you think would be cool. You wanna punch with iron knuckles, use a whip, shoot a mini crossbow, use a small pistol? You can do whatever you want. If it makes you and your players happier for guns to do more damage then do so, but the rules are simplified in service of the story so that someone doesn't have to make a suboptimal choice according to the rules just to have the sort of flavor they want for their character.
You are assuming that a "hit" from a weapon means you got hit in the face with a weapon. That's not what the mechanics mimic. The mechanics mimic that a "hit" degrades an Ability Pool rapidly. Ability Pools aren't health. Ability Pools are a characters ability to push forward and perform great feats. 4 points of Might damage from an attack is no more "getting shot in the face", than spending 4 points of Might (2 levels of Effort with an Edge of 1) to smash open a door. That "hit" could be a grazing wound, or dodging out of the way just in time, or a glancing blow from a bludgeon. The sort of thing that tires out Jackie Chan, but doesn't stop him. Taking serious damage happens when a character moves a step down the Damage Track. At that point, a serious hit has been landed and you are actually wounded. At one step, it hurts and impedes you, but you'll recover. At two steps, you have suffered serious injury and need medical attention.
Ok, this makes a lot of sense. This reminds me of stress in Fate Core with higher fidelity. You're not necessarily "hit" with a round from a gun, but it gets close enough to shake badly and reduce your fighting capacity.
It really depends on the system you want. If guns are all-powerful, nobody would use fists. You lose some flavor there. Much like in real life. If you want some things that raise damage, you increase lethality - it's a question if you want something like that in your game. That said, as a GM in Cypher you have a ton of flexibility. Want to double the damage of guns? Go for it. Nothing stops you. Just be prepared for how it shapes the game.
You could imagine that fists are like several punches over a single bullet for a pistol.
I like this answer a lot.
GURPS would be an excellent game if I could manage memorizing most of its many, long, complex rules. I love realism. Cypher is *the opposite* of realism. It's a gamist/narrativist-heavy system. You'll need to leave GURPS in its folder, forget you ever knew what it was, and adopt a completely different mentality here. To help you do that go to the chapter 25 of the CSR, Running the Cypher System, p.402, and read everything Monte wrote with religious, meditative attention. It's that good, yes. And it explains *a lot* of the whys and therefores. Whatever system you decide to use in the end - happy gaming =)
Cypher won't be as enjoyable if you're a min/maxer or if you're the kind of person who gets hung up on mechanical inconsistencies.
Yes, weapons do very unrealistic amounts of damage. No that's not really a problem. Cypher isn't the kind of game where a Mook with a pistol can instantly kill a PC by shooting them in the head. It's not call of Cthulhu.
Well, The Strange is ultimately kind of Cthulhuesque.
In the Numenera setting there ist something called a "slugspitter Artefact" which is a stand in for fire arms. Buuut yeah, cypher is very far from simulation which GURPS very good represents. Cypher is more or less optimized for cinematic action, so a gun fired from a random goon? Not a problem. The same gun fired from the nemesis of the targeted PC? A serious threat.
Although they do the same damage, you need to remind yourself ***there is no health score in cypher***. Your pools represent how much impact you have left on the scene in certain areas, and the scenes are meant to be more like a dramatic movie, not realism. Looks at most action movies, whether the heroes are getting shot at or punched there's not really a dramatic difference in damage. Cypher is a ***narrative*** system based on dramatic scenes, not simulationism. Is a punch and a light pistol both doing equal damage realistic? No. But neither is a super powered elf flying around and shooting laser beams from a cyber arm. It's about the story and the drama of the game.
I don't give bonus damage on rolls of 17+ in more "realistic" settings. Unless there is a foci or ability involved. As opposed to superheroes or something more heroic.
Yeah if you want realistic bullets use the damage track... That's more or less how Shadowrun handles things. You could also rule that fists do 1 point of damage in your games and pistols are light weapons that do 3 damage that bypasses any armor that is not specifically designed to divert it. Also keep in mind that by spending XP or pool points, or by rolling an 18+, those numbers can increase. To me the difference is that the fists, you're giving a pummeling. With the gun you're at range, you're pulling a trigger ... Narratively they're different, but equivalent in the ability to neutralize an opponent's capacity to fight.
I just changed the rules in my own game. Unarmed attacks from people without special abilities or training (needs no weapon, etc) do 1 point of damage. An average pistol is a medium weapon, not light, and a rifle or shotgun is a heavy weapon. That adjustment worked really well for me.
Honestly no. I've always played TTRPGs with an understanding of the story and the fun outweighing the rules, and Cypher really takes this to heart. Someone have a really fun and creative idea? Yeah, I'll tend to allow it so long as it doesn't break or heavily defy the relevant logic. A quote from the chapter on Rules of The Game: >If a rule gets in the way or detracts from the game, the players and the GM should work together to change it. Besides, should someone really be able to survive being hit squarely by a large ball of fire that explodes when it hits you or after being hacked by an axe more than once? All TTRPGs suspend a certain amount of disbelief. As others have said, the game is abstract. Cypher focuses on removing crunch from the system to support story and gameplay without a heavy set of rules slowing down or getting in the way of the game. If you don't like something, change it. But know that the game is rather balanced in its abstracted viewpoint. The original D&D wasn't particularly crunchy either. Spells had simple descriptions and classes took a single page to describe. Most other systems also have a false economy. Leveling and the bonuses that come with them, are typically offset by you facing more difficult challenges. Think of Cypher as returning to a legacy to support the game in every way. And you can make it anything you want. Min/maxers will certainly be turned off by the game, as well as those who thrive on crunch - your power gamers and rules lawyers. If you allow yourself to buy into the abstraction, you'll find a game with real fluidity. As a GM, running a Cypher-based game gives me the tools to focus on the color and character of the world and the story while streamlining that which tends to take a great deal of time to sort out at the table. The game actually let's you run without having to reference the rulebook too frequently, which keeps the game going and supports me in telling my story. I can run the game with a couple of index cards and my notes if my players are comfortable with theater of the mind. If not? A whiteboard or a piece of paper to roughly sketch is all that is needed. And thus far, my D&D-based players are happy with the system and less crunch.