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Old 09-29-2019, 04:08 AM   #2
Mailanka
 
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Default Re: [DF] How Many Abilities Should A Race Get?

You can add as many abilities as you want; they tend to be self-limiting because GURPS has limited point budgets (ie, if you make your succubus worth 500 points, most DF player characters won't be able to afford to be a member of the race).

Beyond that, you should consider the mental load of the character. Personally, I prefer simpler races that you can describe in a few sentences that are more interesting than "Elves get +1 DX and IQ but -1 to HT and ST while Orcs are +1 ST and +1 HT and -1 DX and IQ." As a rule, I try to give no more than three distinct, well-defined abilities, and I largely build the template around that, though naturally get little cosmetic things ("...and Sharp Teeth.")

If you give them more than this, then the player starts to think more about their race than their occupational template, and this might not be a bad thing. There's a Pyramid Article about treating races as classes. In such a case, the succubus might have a whole range of unique abilities that she may or may not have access to. For example, if the GM wanted to include the Fae as a race, but you had to pick the Fae template as your template (There are no Fae Barbarians or Fae swashbuckler, only Fae, though they might have lenses or something) and there was a whole, unique magic system available only to them from which they drew unique abilities, from a player perspective that might be a lot of fun. From a GM perspective it might be a lot of work, so I'd think twice about it.
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