Increased Range

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

Could you please provide an example? I'm not sure how exactly this would work based on your description.

Say you want to ignore range penalties for Bow skill. Bows mostly have a 1/2D range of x15, for PC STs that's 150 to 300 yards, which are -11 and -13 respectively. Call it -12. For an additional 48 points you could always buy your Bow skill up 12 points and completely negate that, therefore if I charged you 48 points for ignoring range with your Bow, you certainly wouldn't be getting a discount that is massively unfair to the other players.

We can quibble about how much of a limitation "only for negating range penalties" is relative to full skill, but frankly for missile weapons it's quite a lot of it. Still you are probably shooting at close range more often than really long. I could perhaps be argued down the multiplying by 3 instead, for 36 points.

My main goal here is to get a ballpark number I can use to arbitrarily price the advantage, rather than trying to calculate it from the enhancements and limitations system, which isn't going to yield a number that is any fairer. We spend a lot of time on the forum rules lawyering trait costs, and it's a sometimes entertaining mini-game in itself, but I rarely bother for actual use in a game. Anything that needs more than two or three *standard* modifiers is far too likely to yield nonsense, never mind if I need custom ones.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Warden

How would you go about creating an advantage that allows a character to negate the penalties for a ranged weapon attack?

Increased skill, only to negate range penalties. Increased skill is normally 4/level; based on Accessible that's probably -10-20%; if we're being generous and want simple numbers, go with -25% so 3/level (to negate penalties with a single skill).

[Warden]

It's quite surprising that GURPS doesn't have rules for reducing/removing penalties for ranged attacks with archaic weapons like bows, crossbows etc.

I quite like your suggestion Anthony, it's nice and simple and doesn't require looking up anything.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Warden

It's quite surprising that GURPS doesn't have rules for reducing/removing penalties for ranged attacks with archaic weapons like bows, crossbows etc.

It does: Zen Archery.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It does: Zen Archery.

Does anybody else think Zen Archery has a terrible mechanic? Double the number of die rolls, and add some additional math - divide by 3 isn't *hard* but it's not one of the divisions that most people can do without thinking like 2 or 10.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Does anybody else think Zen Archery has a terrible mechanic? Double the number of die rolls, and add some additional math - divide by 3 isn't *hard* but it's not one of the divisions that most people can do without thinking like 2 or 10.

Not really, no. You'll end up making fewer dice rolls to actually take out an opponent in the range bracket where it's useful, assuming you have Zen Archery at a high enough skill level that you can cope with some penalties. And dividing integers in the range 3-30 by 3 is much quicker than general division, at least for me.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Does anybody else think Zen Archery has a terrible mechanic?

Yes. Most of the TBaM skills are atrocious.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Yes. Most of the TBaM skills are atrocious.

They are their own system, worthy of being compared with any magic system.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It does: Zen Archery.

Back to Telescopic Vision, it looks like the more "canonical" way to do it, particularly not needing TBaM, and it's an Advantage.

It'd be much slower to use than malloyd's version though, requiring enough seconds of Aim to gain the added Accuracy.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ericthered

They are their own system, worthy of being compared with any magic system.

A magic system with 15 spells.