Blessed Ghost Weapon, or Enhancements as Advantages

[Yako]

Originally Posted by PK

Not quite. Imbuements were created because there was no way (and still remains no other way) to add a given "enhancement" or "transformation" to any weapon attack you make, regardless of the damage done by the weapon. (Some Imbuements add follow-up damage, which can be done via normal enhancements, however.)

Despite what sir_pudding implied, Imbuements are still the only way to do this. For example, if you want to make any rifle you shoot into a Homing attack, you have to use Imbuements. The rules in PU4: Enhancements only work for a single weapon that does fixed damage -- if you buy it for your old reliable .306 but then later have to set that down and pick up a .50 anti-materiel rifle, you get no benefit. But the skill Homing Weapon (Rifle) will work just fine on both -- as well as on any rifle you pick up. (And, with a modest default penalty, on any gun at all that you pick up.)

Personally, I admit I am not really content with the fact.

Imbuements and Advantage based methods have a certain overlap, both can support martial artists who use unarmed attacks (modifying those, unlike weapons, does not resrict one to "my right foot only" or such), both can give you the ability to add damage on top of any other attack.

Why not make an advantage based alternative to Imbuements?
If it is really the issue of "no fair price for both a ST 10 man and a ST 40 hulking werewolf", then Imbuements should base difficulty or FP cost based on the damage of the modified attack, if it is the issue of flexibility, well, a cosmic enhancement should work if it works for follow-up.

I do think using a fixed value instead of the usual damage / basic thrust damage could work, I am not sure yet where it should lie and how affecting ANY attack, including vehicular weapons and such should be priced compared to only affecting one class of attacks (all unarmed attacks, all attacks with muscle powered melee wapons, all attacks with one class of weapons are limitations that would be needed).

I think it is not really correct to view it just the same as enhancing one innate attack, this ignores that GURPS does not usually charge differently for advantages based on your other traits.
Danger sense could be seen as a kind of cosmic enhancement of perception, allowing one to detect things one cannot normally perceive, but it is unaffected by how high your Per is.
Claws change your crushing punches into cutting attacks regardless of how high basic thrust is.

As it stands, there is a weird kind of breaking point where it starts being better to switch to Imbuements regardless of whether it is for one attack or all, based on both how high your damage is as well as what DX you have and while there are also bad cost/efficiency interactions between other skill VS advantage systems, this one seems particularly inelegant to me...

[Agent]

In cinematic games, picking something up and hitting hard with it might not need to be a weapon so much as a melee IA with 'Requires Appropriate Prop -10%' (Or -5%. Or even +0% if something is always handy) - i.e. the item is irrelevant and the numbers all come from the hero and their ST+IA. Covering all the types of damage doesn't seem that difficult. Limitations and enhancements then go on the IA, then for ST-Based they pay for whatever they need to on the Unarmed per Power-Ups.

Naturally it gets more problematic when you factor in guns and so on. All I can think of is a specially constructed Modular Abilities build that can be reconfigured to suit the situation. Effectively building a version of the 'weapon' being used but with a bunch of cool modifiers and enhanced damage. Quite fussy though.

Alternately something like the above built as a Wildcard Power.

But I get the basic gist that you probably want an 'elegant' pure advantage-based way to literally add enhancements to 'Everything I Wield'. Doesn't seem too self-explanatory to price, but constructing things like the above might create ballpark figures. Or maybe not...

Perhaps the Wildcard Power multiplier is an appropriate guideline? x4 final price?