04-02-2020, 02:09 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
A simple solution I've used that still allows for complicated builds is that you can 'buy' any armor and then get a perk to replace the 'gadget' limitations to 'can't wear armor'. Considering that Signature Gear in my houserules removes the money part and just costs 1pt for any piece of gear, this is effectively a variant of that. This means that you can have any DR you're already allowed access to built in to you and it be as fair as it would be for anyone else.
Is that fair? Does it even make sense to do? I'm not sure, I don't do enough high TL campaigns. What one GM did with the above idea was a second step that you actually have to buy off the gadget limitations with extra points (effectively letting you spend money in place of cp to make DR cheaper in a roundabout way) which in turn would let you stack it with actual armor. |
04-02-2020, 02:41 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
In my games I use a TL based scaling for the DR advantage cost. The idea is that the cost is relative to the best armor normally available as gear.
The current table normalizes the cost at TL4 at the RAW 5 pt/DR. Code:
TL best Pt/DR cost for best 0 4 12 48 1 4 12 48 2 5 10 50 3 6 8 48 4 9 5 45 5 12 4 48 6 18 3 54 7 20 2.5 50 8 48 1 48 9 75 2/3 49.5 10 105 0.5 52.5 11 150 1/3 49.5 12 225 0.2 45 best: is the best DR in a commonly available armor, this is the number that is compared to get the costs. Pt/DR:This is how many character points one level of the DR advantage costs. Is is so that the cost for best is as close to each other while being usable numbers, so some rounding to a "nicer number" cost for best: This is just a comparison number, the two before multiplied to check that the result is close enough. |
04-02-2020, 03:24 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
One of the big things to remember with differently priced DR is that it can be both enhanced (Hardened, Force Field, Reflection, Absorption) and limited (Ablative, Can't Wear Armor, Tough Skin, Limited). CWA and Tough Skin are a common combo, letting you get DR50 for 51pts (Added perk allowing wearing of clothing for modesty). Limited and Absorption really matter; Limited gets far worse when DR price goes up (Limited: Fire/Heat is already maybe overpriced at 3/lvl), while absorption gets kind of nuts when DR gets cheap (and it might even be worth it for getting traits!).
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04-02-2020, 07:38 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
Then you change the cost to match the value in your specific setting.
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
04-02-2020, 09:19 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
Quote:
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04-02-2020, 12:41 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
Quote:
That said, I think the balance of the advantages in GURPS is impressive, and the OP asked for thoughts. My thought is that this is not really a problem with the pricing of advantages such as DR (again, TL10 guys in a "standard" game shouldn't, it seems to me, be impervious to punches to the face just because somebody has invented high-impact plastics that can be formed into cheap armor) but rather a problem related to how your game handles gear, a topic that has been pretty widely discussed on these forums in the past. Gear at higher TLs is better, and wealth is correspondingly a more valuable advantage at higher TLs because of that. Just because these things change with TL doesn't seem to me to be a good reason to start changing the price of advantages (again, Power-Ups 9 notwithstanding). If a pistol is a cheap way to outclass a lot of points somebody spent on an Innate Attack, then you can either lower the cost of Innate Attack or you make characters pay character points in order to buy a pistol and model the pistol as a gadget-based innate attack, right? Should a PC have to pony up some CP on short notice in order to be able to pick up a pistol dropped by a bad guy and start attacking with it? I don't think many people would want to do that in their games. So why make DR less expensive just because I can buy a flak jacket? It seems to me that this solution of changing point costs creates more problems (while destroying verisimilitude) than making somebody buy a pistol with character points. If anything, I think DR should be more expensive. A half-inch thick iron bar has DR 6. Basic (non-hardened) DR 6 is 30 CP, well within reach of most starting PCs in any type of game, if the GM allows them to buy it. In that game world, people whose faces are as hard as iron bars (!) should be about as common as, say, people agile enough to be trapeze artists.... But I get that other people's assumptions about game play may be totally different than mine. |
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04-02-2020, 02:31 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
In the end, the value of DR should be the cost normal armor, plus the cost of negating any penalties that the armor normally applies. The normal penalties of armor are:
Natural Armor (5/level): your skin functions as armor. Pick an armor (or combination of armors) with a weight that does not exceed (level*BL/2) and a cost that does not exceed (level*base starting wealth/2), and your skin emulates that armor. The GM might require Cannot Wear Armor in the case of a rigid armor, but it's not required; a robot with a hard shell might still be able to wear armor on top of it.
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04-02-2020, 06:00 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
That might bring about different issues, namely making limitations worse overall. CWA/Tough Skin becomes less attractive and Ablative especially. On the flipside, enhancements become fairly 'expensive' in comparison. At -10% per TL, Hardened 1 is free at TL10, but the second level effectively doubles the cost of DR.
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04-02-2020, 06:21 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Damage Resistance and Tech Level
It might be better to have a ([4 - TL] × 10%) modifier for ST, HP, Afflictions, Binding, DR, Innate Attack, Lifting ST, and Striking ST. For example, otherwise unmodified DR would then be 7 CP/level at TL0, 6 CP/level at TL2, 5 CP/level at TL4, 4 CP/level at TL6, 3 CP/level at TL8, 2 CP/level at TL10, and 1 CP/level at TL12.
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damage resistance, limitations, tech level |
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