[Icelander]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If a GM wants to do it differently, they can just have them benefit from early maturation or just give them 60 points from age 10 to age 15, whatever they choose. If they want a 10-year-old to have reached their adult potential, no one is stopping them other than themselves.

That's not the point. The point is that the NPC is only worth the points it actually has if bought as an Ally or Dependent, not points it may be worth in the future. Infants are pretty useless as adventurers, which is why they are worth negative points and thus give back a lot of points as Dependents. It's patently illogical and unfair to make players pay for them as Allies according to what they might become ten or fifteen years later, as most campaigns never reach that point.

Which is also why Terminally Ill (In 10-15 years) is not allowed as a Disadvantage that gives any points back. Point costs aren't measuring hypothetical capability in the far distant future, from the perspective of the players. If they were, all mortal characters would be worth negative points, because eventually they die, lose all Advantages and all Attributes reach 0.

GURPS character points don't measure potential, inborn worth, ability or anything else actually present in the context of the campaign world. They solely measure player choices during character creation and aren't designed to measure anything else. As such, nothing that can't at least potentially be an Ally, Dependent, Enemy or similar really makes sense expressed in terms of point value. And those traits use their own rules, where it is absolutely valid to have PCs spending points to buy off their Dependent Disadvantages as their children grow up and perhaps replacing them with Ally Advantages.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I just use the maturity pool as an accounting mechanism, as it does not matter in GURPS whether points are spent or unspent for determining character points, as just giving every human being in existence 260 points from birth to age 15 just seems unrealistic to me.

Unless they are PCs or their point value is being tracked because they are part of a trait on the PC's character sheet, they don't even have a point value.

If they are, then how can it be unrealistic? You really don't think that there is huge gap between the capabilities of a typical infant and a typical adult as adventurers? You don't think that playing the adult will give a player more choices, more abilities to affect the campaign world and a better chance of success against adcenturing challenges? You really think that given the choice, the average player would not opt for the adult over the helpless infant as their character in a typical GURPS campaign?

Remember, that's the only thing character points are supposed to measure, the desirability of traits to players for their characters in a GURPS campaign. The points don't exist outside the context of the gaming table, they aren't abstracted representations of anything that exists in the game world. The traits themselves are, but the point values are simply a character creation and advancement system for players.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Without a maturation pool as an accounting mechanism, the adult character would have to spend 18 points to keep them as Ally (12-) to keep their Ally over the next 5 years because the adult character would only gain 25 points while the child character would gain 125 points due to maturation and normal character advancement (meaning that the adult character would be 125 points and the child character would be 150 points).

Yes. The PC spends the points when he gains the Advantage of an Ally. He doesn't spend the whole cost of an adult Ally to gain a helpless infant to help him on his adventures.