4th ed. No Youth Disadvantage?

[PBarone714]

Hello,
Did 4th ed Characters get rid of the Children Attributes table and the Youth Disadvantage?

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by PBarone714

Hello,
Did 4th ed Characters get rid of the Children Attributes table and the Youth Disadvantage?

I tripped over that one myself back at the edition change.

it got a name change: Youth [3ed] -> Social Stigma (Minor) [4e]

(my quote edited for spelling)

Originally Posted by roguebfl

My question with Youth gone from 4th Ed, What disadvantage covers the legal restriction of being a Minor?

Originally Posted by Kromm

Social Stigma (Minor), p. B155.

Oh you also Asked for Attribute Table! Yes the at dead as a doe-doe., it now It costs what it costs. but B20 has guaide lined of what a child's stats should be as a percentage of what their adult stat would be. and I made a graph based on that GURPS 4e Children

[Anaraxes]

If you're looking to adapt existing material to 4e or just double-check those lingering 3e memories, you might want the (free) GURPS 4e Update. It details all the changes from 3e to 4e, with charts for conversion and mapping one item to another. Under "Youth", for instance, it notes that it's no longer a specific Disadvantage, and points you to B20 for the rules on building children.

[PBarone714]

Thanks man!

[Bicorn]

Note that the scaling is fairly different between the 3rd ed table and the 4th ed guidelines. The most noticeable change is that HT is no longer reduced for children, but the others are changed too - an average baby has ST 1, DX 1, IQ 3 in 3rd ed, but ST 3, DX 4 and IQ 5 in 4th ed.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Bicorn

Note that the scaling is fairly different between the 3rd ed table and the 4th ed guidelines. The most noticeable change is that HT is no longer reduced for children, but the others are changed too - an average baby has ST 1, DX 1, IQ 3 in 3rd ed, but ST 3, DX 4 and IQ 5 in 4th ed.

The reason for the change in HT is obvious. 3e HT did double duty as hit points, to the point that it had to do gymnastics to handle cases (often poorly) where those two factors were not in line with one another.

[Bicorn]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The reason for the change in HT is obvious. 3e HT did double duty as hit points, to the point that it had to do gymnastics to handle cases (often poorly) where those two factors were not in line with one another.

Indeed. Everything that wasn't human-sized had to have a "split" HT score. 4e's ST-based hit points are a fair bit more sensible.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Bicorn

Indeed. Everything that wasn't human-sized had to have a "split" HT score.

Which introduced other problems, such as when to use HT and when to use HP. For example, a HT 10 character had about a 50% chance of surviving two hits from a rifle, while a HT 10/HP 15 had about a 25% chance of surviving the same (firearm damage was limited by Hit Points, while death check threshold was based on HT).

[Bicorn]

It didn't help matters that 3e had a bad habit of using "HT loss" interchangeably with "damage"; it often wasn't clear if something was supposed to cause damage or actually adjust the HT attribute. (Usually it meant the former, but I've seen quite a few players assume otherwise for ambiguously spelled rules like bleeding.)

[hal]

part of the problem in all of this was the issue of sticking with 4 stats, but treating a lot of things as if they were their own stats. Perception is a perfect example of this.

What gets to me in all of this is that historically, older people and younger children suffered disproportionately from many of the diseases because their immune systems were not fully developed properly or because their immune systems were compromised the older they got past their prime. Visual Acuity tends to suffer the older we get, and it is more a function of aging than anything else. The running gag is that if you pitch a phone properly, that children and very young adults can hear it, but older adults can not.

It is said that children can pick up new languages faster than an adult can, and that children recover from fatigue somewhat faster than adults do. Healing in general seems to be a bit more better for youth than for older adults.

Yet, all of these things are largely ignored for children as a whole in GURPS.

In the end, it is but a game and you go with the rules, or you simply create your own house rules to fix those things you feel the rules as written fall short. Then you discover what I call the domino effect where a simple change in one thing can or does affect other things down the road. The perfect example is that of the HT/HP issue. ST 12, HP 15, HT 10, FT 12 individuals will have some interesting unexpected effects over those whose attributes use the original 3e rules. Maybe Hit Points should have been its own stat from the getgo?