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Mark Skarr · 07-27-2020, 02:39 PM

GURPS is a toolkit. It’s not meant for you to use everything in each game. That said, there are some rules that we just don’t like/use. Here are some of ours, and our reasoning behind them. What are yours?

Increasing the versatility of Side Effect. (B109/P106) Basically, we just use this to turn an Innate Attack into a more-useful version of Affliction. It makes ability-creation much easier and most abilities then follow the same mechanics. Only some abilities require the use of Affliction.
You can’t block bullets/beam weapons with a shield. (B327, 375) Enough examples exists in media of this being invalid. It’s as valid to block a bullet/beam with a shield as it is to dodge them—the same logic applies to both: If bullets/beams are too fast to block, they’re too fast to dodge with human reflexes. Instead of erring on the side of “you can’t do that,” we’re erring on the side of “this will be more fun.”
This really only tends to come up in Supers games, but even so, we’ve allowed the use in non-supers games.
Allowing Extended Duration on Create. (P92) It’s our opinion that the “creation pool” (P93) is an incredibly poor kludge that just doesn’t work. We allow the addition of the Extended Duration enhancement on Create. While it has potential for abuse, just getting a character with Create past the GM requires extensive work, and the GM has general oversite on the power. And, Extended Duration, Permanent is a pretty huge modifier that counter-balances the need for the creation pool.
Reliable not allowed on ranged attacks. (P109) Contrary to popular belief, Accuracy (B102/P99) is not Reliable (P109) for ranged attacks, it does a slightly-different thing. You can put Reliable on a melee attack—only ranged attacks are forbidden. Accuracy is Reliable with Takes Extra Time.
Allowing the addition of Reliable on Ranged Attacks to represent increased-accuracy attacks hasn’t negatively-impacted our games at all. That said, changing Reliable to +10% for offensive abilities seems to be a better price-point. We also allow the inclusion of Reliable on Afflictions because otherwise, it’s prohibitively-expensive.
Margin-Based is Awesome! (CotN1; 4) This enhancement is awesome and a blast. If you don’t use it, give it a try. Spoon it right in! How this didn’t make it into PU4 is beyond me.

07-27-2020, 02:39 PM	#1
Mark Skarr Forum Pervert (If you have to ask . . .) Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Somewhere high up.	Rules you ignore/alter. *GURPS* is a toolkit. It’s not meant for you to use everything in each game. That said, there are some rules that we just don’t like/use. Here are some of ours, and our reasoning behind them. What are yours? Increasing the versatility of Side Effect. (B109/P106) Basically, we just use this to turn an Innate Attack into a more-useful version of Affliction. It makes ability-creation much easier and most abilities then follow the same mechanics. Only some abilities require the use of Affliction. You can’t block bullets/beam weapons with a shield. (B327, 375) Enough examples exists in media of this being invalid. It’s as valid to block a bullet/beam with a shield as it is to dodge them—the same logic applies to both: If bullets/beams are too fast to block, they’re too fast to dodge with human reflexes. Instead of erring on the side of “you can’t do that,” we’re erring on the side of “this will be more fun.” This really only tends to come up in Supers games, but even so, we’ve allowed the use in non-supers games. Allowing Extended Duration on Create. (P92) It’s our opinion that the “creation pool” (P93) is an incredibly poor kludge that just doesn’t work. We allow the addition of the Extended Duration enhancement on Create. While it has potential for abuse, just getting a character with Create past the GM requires extensive work, and the GM has general oversite on the power. And, Extended Duration, Permanent is a pretty huge modifier that counter-balances the need for the creation pool. Reliable not allowed on ranged attacks. (P109) Contrary to popular belief, Accuracy (B102/P99) is not Reliable (P109) for ranged attacks, it does a slightly-different thing. You can put Reliable on a melee attack—only ranged attacks are forbidden. Accuracy is Reliable with Takes Extra Time. Allowing the addition of Reliable on Ranged Attacks to represent increased-accuracy attacks hasn’t negatively-impacted our games at all. That said, changing Reliable to +10% for offensive abilities seems to be a better price-point. We also allow the inclusion of Reliable on Afflictions because otherwise, it’s prohibitively-expensive. Margin-Based is Awesome! (CotN1; 4) This enhancement is awesome and a blast. If you don’t use it, give it a try. Spoon it right in! How this didn’t make it into PU4 is beyond me.