Code of Honor (Honesty), point value?

[DocRailgun]

Isn't this pretty much the behavior expected of a normal, well-adjusted person (human or otherwise) or at least of a "civilized" person?
I "respect the law" in real life but I've driven over the speed limit before, I've jaywalked, and I've ignored street lights/stop signs ehen the road is too icy to safely stop.

I don't steal or cause harm to innocents and I wouldn't ingore pleas for help if I was able to, even to the point of putting myself in danger... and I expect that other people are going to act this way too. People who don't are sociopaths or criminals.

A Disadvantage has to make life difficult or it's just a quirk. At best this is a zero point campaign feature. If you want it to cost something I would want it to be like the PC has an obsessive need to find out what the local laws are and follow them to the letter, never try to barter (because that would be cheating and causing harm to others) and offer to help those in need with all resources at tbe PC's disposal, no matter how terrible the supplicant. ("I know he massacred thousands of viegins and bathed in their blood but I had to help him escape to that safe haven because he begged me sincerely").

Originally Posted by Sorenant

How much points should the following Code of Honor be worth? It's a mix of softened/limited Truthfulness, Honesty and a few different vows. I eyeball between -5 to -10, more likely the former than the other.
Code of Honor (Honesty): Respect the law, local customs and honorable people. Don't steal or cause material harm to innocents. Keep your word and avoid lies. Do not ignore pleas for sincere pleas for help.

Uninmportant Context: After reading a few threads about the Honesty disadvantage, I realized I've underestimate how crippling it is. I thought it would be an advantage for someone who's law-abiding but not blindingly so. No theft, no speeding, no illegal drugs and so on, but apparently someone with disadvantage would also have no trouble with any acts against human rights if it were committed by the state (say Pol Pot's open massacre of the religious). With this in mind I decided to use some Code of Honor to represent what I thought Honesty did. I consider the above writing a rough "draft" and I would be happy for any suggestion to improve it.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Isn't this pretty much the behavior expected of a normal, well-adjusted person (human or otherwise) or at least of a "civilized" person?
I "respect the law" in real life but I've driven over the speed limit before, I've jaywalked, and I've ignored street lights/stop signs ehen the road is too icy to safely stop.

I don't steal or cause harm to innocents and I wouldn't ingore pleas for help if I was able to, even to the point of putting myself in danger... and I expect that other people are going to act this way too. People who don't are sociopaths or criminals.

A Disadvantage has to make life difficult or it's just a quirk. At best this is a zero point campaign feature. If you want it to cost something I would want it to be like the PC has an obsessive need to find out what the local laws are and follow them to the letter, never try to barter (because that would be cheating and causing harm to others) and offer to help those in need with all resources at tbe PC's disposal, no matter how terrible the supplicant. ("I know he massacred thousands of viegins and bathed in their blood but I had to help him escape to that safe haven because he begged me sincerely").

If a PC has not taken any disadvantages, he has no obligation to behave like a normal, well-adjusted person. He can act like a movie sociopath or any other, cool, vast, unsympathetic intelligence, focused only on what goals he sets himself.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah. There's no law against that. Not in the United States. Not actually in any English common law nation.

There might not be a law against abstract Vigilantism, but there are certainly laws against what most vigilantism would entail, which basically involves the use of force and other illegal actions baring certain mitigating circumstances . Common law tends to involve a hefty dose of "reasonable standard".

Originally Posted by jason taylor

And Superman lives among modern nation states. But in any case it is hard imagine him living without being a walking sovereignty.

Be that as it may that is not the only scenario. This CoH can work in a feudal society.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Superman does not look for heroine dealers to beat up. He doesn't look for heroine dealers and he doesn't look for people to beat up. Superman isn't Batman.

Even by comic book standards Superman is basically an OOC problem for earth society / legal system, and to be fair comics are designed to make vigilantism work smoothly in a unrealistic way* even before we get to Superman's level.


*E.g Batman is comic book levels of competent not just in fighting people but in self control and not making mistakes as a private vigilante, but also often is set in the context of the usual system being removed as a viable option.

Originally Posted by Sorenant

How much points should the following Code of Honor be worth? It's a mix of softened/limited Truthfulness, Honesty and a few different vows. I eyeball between -5 to -10, more likely the former than the other.
Code of Honor (Honesty): Respect the law, local customs and honorable people. Don't steal or cause material harm to innocents. Keep your word and avoid lies. Do not ignore pleas for sincere pleas for help.

Uninmportant Context: After reading a few threads about the Honesty disadvantage, I realized I've underestimate how crippling it is. I thought it would be an advantage for someone who's law-abiding but not blindingly so. No theft, no speeding, no illegal drugs and so on, but apparently someone with disadvantage would also have no trouble with any acts against human rights if it were committed by the state (say Pol Pot's open massacre of the religious). With this in mind I decided to use some Code of Honor to represent what I thought Honesty did. I consider the above writing a rough "draft" and I would be happy for any suggestion to improve it.

To me it comes across as a pretty nonspecific "be a reasonably good citizen", according to the rules your in. If it actually came up much in play as an impediment I'd give it -5 (and that's mainly from the don't ignore sincere pleas for help). It may just be a wording thing but "avoid lies" seems to infer a pretty soft limitation, as in "try to avoid doing this if you can, unless you have compelling reason to do it" and well a lot of adventuring is compelling reasons!

The thing is in terms of repercussions and trade off's for not doing this stuff, doing this stuff tends to come with it's own benefit. For example "obeying the law". If you don't obey the law then you risk falling foul of it.

That point is v.dependent on how you as a GM run the repercussions of not obey the law though!.

Of course if you have a PC with this in a campaign where keeping to this is going to be particularly hard than yeah I'd up the value. e.g. you are running an amoral thieve's guild campaign (but at that point you could just as easily call it an unusual background as well!)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Icelander

If a PC has not taken any disadvantages, he has no obligation to behave like a normal, well-adjusted person. He can act like a movie sociopath or any other, cool, vast, unsympathetic intelligence, focused only on what goals he sets himself.

Pretty much any consistent way of playing your character should be good for a -5 point disadvantage of some sort. You can after all get 5 points for just consistently playing 5 trivial personality quirks, anything at all comprehensive is fairly clearly worth at least that much.

I have no real problem with Code of Honor (normally socialized civilized person) [-5]. It actually does impede a lot of the sort of stuff PCs propose doing from time to time - it cuts against a lot of the escapist fantasy stuff some players are there for.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

I'm not sure this makes much sense as a Code of Honour, for two reasons.

1) All the existing Codes have an "in-group" to which they would naturally apply, some kind of distinct subculture relative to the wider population. This CoH/Honesty lacks that feature.

2) More importantly, the point cost depends on how much trouble the code would get you into through maintaining the code. Since it's basically "follow the law, or be good where the law is evil", it's basically no trouble at all unless your campaign is set in an inherently evil regime. In contrast, all five of the CoH in Basic contain elements of risk (either physical risk or loss of standing among the CoH's in-group) for the character that are unrelated to the law.

I don't think it's much more than a Quirk. It's basically free points in any campaign that isn't explicitly an "evil PCs" campaign. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise, but for that to happen, you'd need to show me how it could cause disadvantage to a character in a campaign set in a country that has a "good" government.

Remember in the Pilot when Simon was told, "You'd do that, you're gonna kill a lawman in cold blood"? That few seconds hesitancy it bought threatened his and his sister's life. Simon was used to thinking of the Alliance as said good government and in his neighborhood, and for his class of society it usually was. Of course there was also the factor that he just did not like killing. But the fact that it was a lawman he was pointing a gun at made him hesitate more. And a few seconds can make a difference for a character accustomed to a good government suddenly finding himself having to deal with being on the lam.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Not entirely independent, because the actual law reflects what humans think it should be and some are as it happens just and moral while most desire others to behave justly and morally to them more then they desire that others behave thuggishly toward them.

People and societies often change MUCH faster than laws. And laws exist as defined singular objects, while nations are made up of millions of opinions and views.
There are countless partly enforced and completely unenforced laws still on the books.
Anyone on the internet knows just how common the idea that torture is a just and proper punishment for certain crimes or even merely the accusations of such.
So I simply cannot believe that most humans think very similarly except in more immediate and selfish terms. Don't hurt ME, don't steal from ME, etc. oh yeah to minimize hypocrisy don't do that to them either... unless they hurt ME or "mine".

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

People and societies often change MUCH faster than laws. And laws exist as defined singular objects, while nations are made up of millions of opinions and views.
There are countless partly enforced and completely unenforced laws still on the books.
Anyone on the internet knows just how common the idea that torture is a just and proper punishment for certain crimes or even merely the accusations of such.
So I simply cannot believe that most humans think very similarly except in more immediate and selfish terms. Don't hurt ME, don't steal from ME, etc. oh yeah to minimize hypocrisy don't do that to them either... unless they hurt ME or "mine".

The speaker said that they were independent. Whether or not that is true, the point is that there is overlap and the overlap is not coincidental.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Isn't this pretty much the behavior expected of a normal, well-adjusted person (human or otherwise) or at least of a "civilized" person?
I "respect the law" in real life but I've driven over the speed limit before, I've jaywalked, and I've ignored street lights/stop signs ehen the road is too icy to safely stop.

I don't steal or cause harm to innocents and I wouldn't ingore pleas for help if I was able to, even to the point of putting myself in danger... and I expect that other people are going to act this way too. People who don't are sociopaths or criminals.

A Disadvantage has to make life difficult or it's just a quirk. At best this is a zero point campaign feature. If you want it to cost something I would want it to be like the PC has an obsessive need to find out what the local laws are and follow them to the letter, never try to barter (because that would be cheating and causing harm to others) and offer to help those in need with all resources at tbe PC's disposal, no matter how terrible the supplicant. ("I know he massacred thousands of viegins and bathed in their blood but I had to help him escape to that safe haven because he begged me sincerely").

Pacifism: Reluctant Killer or Cannot Harm Innocents or Cannot Kill are things we expect from normal well-adjusted people too.

Following the law - not stealing, not murdering, not beating people up where convenient, no breaking and entering to search for clues - is a fairly significant limitation for an adventurer. Things that are not really restrictive to you or me would be very restrictive to the majority of GURPS characters.

Your examples would include Vow: never refuse a request for aid [-15], Fanaticism: local law [-15] (to reflect the obsessive need) and Delusion: haggling is harmful [-5 or -10]