Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
But the ST 50-race-guy-with-ST 10 doesn't break the system. Neither does the genius ogre with IQ 18 - they both pay the same net point cost for the characters as anyone else would with the same collection of attributes. That's one of the reasons why GURPS doesn't give a discount or other incentive on racial attributes.
The guy who bought his ST down to 10 especially doesn't bend the system out of shape if you're using the technically-optional-but-recommended disadvantage point limits - he's eating up his entire point budget (presuming he could afford that at all) and not actually getting much for his efforts. Playing a crippled Wug might get him some natural DR or other exotic advantages that he couldn't get by playing a ST 10 human - but the crippled Wug still has to pay points for them, they're not "Free".
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Sorry, I was not directly implying that those two examples I gave were breaking the system. Those were meant to be two different points...which came together ove time...
I remember (wow, coming up on 5 years ago!) one player picked a race with the most negative traits (since those wouldn't count against his Disad limit) which also gave a +2 DX bonus. His outright stated goal was to try to get the most DX bonus he could for cheapest via race. He then proceeded to buy DX up to 19, HT up to 13 and +2.00 Basic Speed to bring his Basic Speed up to 10 ==> Dodge = 13. Throw in a large shield, 2 or 4 points in acrobatics (from DX 19) for acrobatic dodge and retreating. He had a ridiculous dodge and very fast movement.
Anything I threw at the party that could catch and hit him would murder the rest of the party. And if I targeted his weaknesses (low Will, sniper missile attacks he couldn't see coming and thus couldn't dodge, etc.), I was accused of punishing that particular player by taking away his 'trick'.
This was just one instance. There were a few more instances of players becoming SUPER one-trick ponies for something and I'd get accused of punishing players for playing something they wanted to play when I'd exploit their weaknesses. I guess I got tired of that.
Thus The Guidelines were originally created as a first attempt to get them to stop trying to power-game certain things and (I'm a little shamed to say) genericize the stats of the players so they would focus more on the RP of the characters and campaign and less on the numbers of their characters.
I do not want to come off as though I'm bitching/whining about players I haven't played with in at minimum 2 years. I'm more trying to give some idea of the frustrations which motivated implementing these guidelines in the first place. Maybe the correct solution was what eventually happened: I just stopped playing with those guys. We were a bad GM-player fit.