GURPS Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by bert

Thanks for all the suggestions with regard to the Sanity rules! :)

I wrote up a system in Pyramid #3/103: Setbacks as well. The title is "Mad as Bones."

[dataweaver]

That's the one that treated madness like After The End's Long Term Fatigue, right?

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Including Turning with Holiness and the Empathy as an attribute on p. 27 suggest the option.
I'm currently toying with two variations. One for Spirit Empathy and one for regular.

In my attribute setup (which I'm now working on in a separate thread), each of the Body, Mind, and Soul realms has a set of attributes, including a pair of Auxiliary Attributes. These differ from the others in their set not just in that they differ between the three Realms (Body's Auxiliary Attributes are Mobility, or Speed and Agility; Mind's are Perception, or Awareness and Insight; and Soul's are Social, or Presence and Guile; Guile is mostly Charisma); but they're also customizable: by default, Mobility is ground-based; but you can choose to make it water-based or air-based instead or (for a price) as well as land-based. Perception defaults to your primary sense (Sight for humans), but can be generalized to other senses. And Social defaults to humans, but can be specialized for spirits, animals, machines, various aliens, etc.

In some cases, you get these alternatives automatically: humans have five senses, for example. In other cases, you need to “unlock” the variants through appropriate Advantages. I'd be using Animal Empathy and Spirit Empathy as the “gateway advantages” that unlock the appropriate variants of the Social Attributes. As such, I'm not inclined to fold them into Talents. In the other hand, I'm considering treating the variants as Secondary Characteristics: I'll shave to review the relationship between GURPS' Perception and Acute Senses to see how well it generalizes.

(Still working on specifics; that's just the general idea.)

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

That's the one that treated madness like After The End's Long Term Fatigue, right?

That was part of it, yes. :-)

[bert]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I wrote up a system in Pyramid #3/103: Setbacks as well. The title is "Mad as Bones."

Oh! I will check it out! Thanks!

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Looking over Charisma, a thought struck me: in addition to being the Attribute that controls Social Intelligence skills, maybe it should also be the Attribute that you roll Lahaina for certain Advantages: for example, Empathy. More generally, maybe the Reassigning Skills section should have also addressed the reassignment of advantages that feature attribute rolls.

The Talents section even suggests the possibility of folding Empath and Empathy together into a new Empathy attribute; though my own thought on that matter is that Talents work better when converted into new Secondary Characteristics. That said, I could see Empathy as a Secondary Characteristic that's based off of the Charisma Attribute.

Thoughts?

I'm leery of conflating a perceptive focus (Lightman, Holmes) and influential focus (Shepard, Sheridan).

[dataweaver]

To me, the question is whether the two things track together often enough to say that they should be the same by default, and vary from each other only occasionally; or if they generally don't track together, such that when they do coincide it might as well be a coincidence. I tend to think that Charisma and Empathy track together reasonably well.

Also, I'm not talking about conflating Empathy with Perception — although now that you mention it, that might not be a bad idea: split Perception between Awareness (noticing things) and Insight (understanding what things mean; what Holmes does), and fold Empathy into the latter.

Or maybe Empathy should be a calculated trait that's one part Charisma and one part Insight, much like Basic Speed is one part DX and one part HT. Holmes tends to have an above average Empathy because he's extremely insightful but isn't particularly charismatic, while Sheridan tends to have an above average Empathy for the opposite reason: he's not especially insightful, but he's extremely charismatic.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

More generally, maybe the Reassigning Skills section should have also addressed the reassignment of advantages that feature attribute rolls.

There's actually a reasonable amount of discussion of the topic in the book. See, for instance, What else does Magery govern? (p. 27), Chi (p. 27), the penultimate paragraph of Dividing Up Per (p. 31), several places under Attribute Rolls (pp. 37-38), and of course all of Reassigning Advantages and Disadvantages (p. 42). It's just that whereas everyone has a fair number of skills, advantages controlled by attributes aren't possessed by all or even a significant minority of characters in most campaigns . . . and whereas skills exist by the hundreds, only a handful of advantages are governed by attributes. For those reasons I felt that a monolithic, multi-page treatment of the subject – like that for skills – would be overkill.

[Kromm]

As for possible splits between social attributes, there's no One True Way. It depends on the campaign. That's why the supplement suggests many options, not all of them compatible!

For instance, there are campaigns where it would be reasonable to have:

Charisma or Charm (CH) as an analogue to IQ in the social realm, intended for taking action and affecting the world. It would govern Acting, Brainwashing, Carousing, Leadership, Merchant, Panhandling, Politics, Propaganda, Public Speaking, and all Influence skills; Enthrallment skills and Musical Influence; all Communication and Empathy or Mind Control spells that make people do or perceive things (Bravery, Charm, Compel Truth, Control Person, Dream Projection, Emotion Control, Mind-Sending, Panic, Persuasion, Possession, etc.); and advantages like Illusion (Mental), Mind Control, Possession, Rapier Wit, Telecommunication (Telesend), and Terror (Active).

Empathy (EM) as an analogue to Perception in the social realm, intended for perceiving the world. It would govern Body Language, Criminology, Detect Lies, Fortune-Telling, Interrogation, and Psychology; all C&E or Mind Control spells that "read" people (Mind-Reading, Mind-Search, Sense Emotion, Sense Foes, Soul Rider, Truthsayer, etc.); and advantages like Empathy, Mind Probe, and Mind-Reading. It would be weaker than the previous attribute on the whole, because it would govern less stuff. It might be worth building in the Empathy advantage to balance things.

Both of the above might affect reaction rolls. One way to keep this from getting out of control would be to use (CH + EM)/4 - 5, rounded down, as a universal reaction modifier. Thus, someone with a 10 and a 9 would have -0.25, which rounds down to -1; someone with a 12 and a 14 would have +1.5, which rounds down to +1; and so on. Even someone with a pair of 20s, the maximum, would get just +5, which is extreme but fair at that level.

Of course, there'd be arguments about the split! Some people would point out that Interrogation includes torture, and doesn't make sense for someone with a lot of empathy, or that good leaders have empathy for those they lead. In truth, many skills would float between CH and EM, or even be best based on (CH + EM)/2, dropping fractions, if you're into that sort of thing. Many gamers would dislike the need to buy both attributes to be a good telepath or wizardly mentalist . . . and they might still need IQ, too, for all the abilities and spells that neither read nor influence people, like Gift of Tongues and Keen Vision. Not splitting things up after all might be the best way to keep the peace.

Conversely, certain GMs might want even more:

Resolve (RE) as an analogue to Will in the social realm. It would mostly resist attempts at social manipulation, as by Acting, Brainwashing, Interrogation, Propaganda, and Influence skills. (It probably wouldn't resist Detect Lies . . . that seems like a CH thing.) It would be up to the GM to decide whether it extends to advantages and spells or if those are still resisted by the traditional Will attribute. I like the idea of using RE against all fear and influence – social, supernatural, and other – and basing Mental Strength and Mind Block on it while I'm at it.

All of this totally sets aside the possibility of a Social Standing (SS) attribute for actual social position and resources (possibly with Resource Points based on it, to be spent as resources) – and perhaps also an Appearance (AP) attribute for looks as distinct from social intelligence (after all, it's easy to imagine a totally ugly person who's a charming manipulator, an expert reader of people, and highly resistant to being influenced . . . or a beautiful airhead who lacks any and all social clues).

The judgment calls here are legion, and knife-edge affairs. I doubt two gaming groups or even two gamers would ever agree entirely.

[AlexanderHowl]

It could be argued that Wealth should be an attribute rather than an advantage, considering how essential it is to most character concepts. With 10 CP/-10 CP per level and increments of 2/5/10, you could have a smoother transition than with the default advantage. A character with Wealth 6 would earn 5% as someone with Wealth 10 and a character with Wealth 14 would earn 20x as much as someone with Wealth 10.