Last Week: Acute Senses
Next Week: Ally; Ally Group
This week we tackle a difficult one for me:
Affliction. Why is it so challenging? It not only is it an Advantage that can be tailored to represent a variety of real world and fictional abilities, but its also something that (to my recollection) didn't exist in 3e, where essentially all of my play experience comes from.
For someone often playing the third edition of GURPS in what would later best qualify as "Power heavy" settings, distillation of so many Advantages used to represent some form of attack into three generic fields (Affliction, Binding and Innate Attack) was huge. Afflictions (Basic p.35-36; Powers p.39-41) cover baneful, nondamaging effects... and potentially some positive ones. By default an Affliction is treated as a ranged attack with 1/2D 10, Max 100, Acc 3, RoF 1, Shots N/A and Recoil 1: these can all be changed by using Modifiers, including causing them to work more like the Spells of the standard Magic system via Malediction (Basic p.106).
Under the default design guidelines, a target hit by an Affliction rolls again [HT+1-(Levels of Affliction)]: so a single level of Affliction means a roll against HT, two levels means HT-1, etc. If the target makes its HT roll, it is unaffected, while failure means the target is stunned, plus possibly more depending on the Enhancements that may be on Affliction; using its many modifiers, Affliction can cover the natural defenses of many animals, the supernatural, superpowers, technological devices, and probably some other areas I think fall under those headings but shouldn't. Unless you take an Enhancement, Afflictions don't stack; the strongest effect takes precedent. Multiple effects can even be inflicted at the same time if the Affliction is designed as such, and in those cases some effects can be secondary, which only kicks in if the subject fails its HT roll by five or more. This reduces the value of any such Enhancement by a factor of five; the +300% Enhancement "Heart Attack" drops to +60%... and yes that means an Affliction can directly kill you if it is designed as such.
Afflictions can reduce Attributes, negate Advantages, or inflict Disadvantages... but also can also be designed to Enhance a targets Attributes, negate Disadvantages or grant Advantages! The material is quite extensive, and at the risk of seeming lazy, I will simply allow everyone to look up the finer details themselves, though I will address such things upon request; I am never certain where I should draw the line when transcribing rules.
So how have Afflictions functioned in your campaigns? Do you regularly have to prohibit certain Enhancements or how many levels? Do you find it easy to represent existing things with Affliction or is it a pain tailoring it to the reality (even the fictional reality)?