Challenge: Deliberately Miscost a Trait

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I'd never slap on an Unusual Background on something just because I thought it was "too cheap" though.

I'd use UB to reflect an advantage that is, for situational reasons, abnormally powerful. For example, magic in a world where it's unknown.

[Blood Legend]

Originally Posted by martinl

Another thought: Half value for all negative reaction mods. I am sick and tired of parties where everyone is an outcast or worse, or n-1 outcasts plus a single social munchkin.

I've found a wonderful solution for this. Most of our games always have -75 in disadvantages, regardless of point total unless it's a supers game. I've found that at -75, most people keep picking the same disadvantages, like that one guy who always has nightmares or other sleep problems, or myself with Overconfidence+Impulsivesness, but admittedly I just find that fun.

What you can do is drop the disadvantage limit, simple as that. Sure that decreases the power level of the game, but just increase the point total by a like amount. You'll get less broken characters with the same power level. When generating characters, I've noticed that most players only need about 30 points of room to generate a personality they wish to play, with an easy 20 extra going toward fluff or increasing whatever psychosis they have. Those last 15 to 25 points are just there to max out.

If a player honestly needs more disadvantages, I lower his positive character points by a like amount. If he wants to play a broken person, that's up to him. It's fair in the sense that they're still equally as strong as everyone else, and probably would have roleplayed those extra disadvantages anyway.

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would tend to reduce the price of almost any trait that can be mostly replaced by gear, because the point value of such a trait is really just equal to the point value of "doesn't have to buy and carry item X".

Sounds like Mitigator. A limitation I like to read as "Something in the game world is making this cheaper."

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I'd use UB to reflect an advantage that is, for situational reasons, abnormally powerful. For example, magic in a world where it's unknown.

Isn't that 100% wht the RAW is (/are)?

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Dusqune

I bring up Unusual Background, here, because to me, it is the opposite of what you have described--making a trait cost more to (arguably) make the game better.

Actually, too expensive is miscosted as well, it's just RAW miscosted. I will admit that is can act as a weirdness tax, but IME it's usually used as a genre enforcement or munchkin tax instead. This ability would mess with the atmosphere, but not so much that I will forbid it; that ability is overpowered in this setting, this will balance it.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

If a player honestly needs more disadvantages, I lower his positive character points by a like amount. If he wants to play a broken person, that's up to him.

IIUC, that's RAW. Disad limits don't stop you from taking more disads than the limit, they just stop giving you compensation points after the limit.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Icelander

What about campaigns where some PCs are cyborgs and others are the bastard children of anthropomorphic gods? The cost of DR and Innate Attacks and all sorts of Advantages would vary widely depending on the source of the power, technological or not.

Actually, IIUC, the point of the "sig gear plus payload" school (we need a better name for this) is Icelander's point is not true. The idea is to use this idea to cost everything you can cost with it and use the special effects you want.

Cyborgs, godchildren, and rich normals all buy powers that are equivalent to available equipment as equipment, with sig gear and payload as appropriate. Use the special effects you want, allow for fudging a little (Pyrus' flame jet is not exactly the same as a built in flamethrower, but it is not significantly better or worse), and run with it. This isn't the first time GURPS has presented you with two equivalent options, one of which is 10x the cost of the other, after all.

It gets trickier if you want something better than available equipment, admittedly.

[martinl]

Theory:
Any GURPS rules thread of sufficient length with eventually be about redesigning the points costs of the entire system.

Lemma:
If the thread starts off as about points costs, eventually is sooner than you think.

Allow me to make a small request as the OP: if you can, try to focus on single traits or small groups of traits. We redesign the GURPS system on most of the longer threads already.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by martinl

IIUC, that's RAW. Disad limits don't stop you from taking more disads than the limit, they just stop giving you compensation points after the limit.

Yes. GURPS' uses misleading language here, talking about players not being allowed to "take" traits, which as you point out is stupid. Of course players are allowed to take as many negative traits as they wish, no limits whatsover. What happens is that they don't get compensation beyond a certain point.

I'm anal-retentive about using the term "compensatory points" in my Sagatafl rules writing, for exactly that reason.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I'd use UB to reflect an advantage that is, for situational reasons, abnormally powerful. For example, magic in a world where it's unknown.

Unusual Backgrounds are also useful to allow access to special abilities. Weapon Master and TBAM have strong UB components aside from the other benefits they offer.

In a previous Supers game, I separated various character types such as
-Supers (one of a kind, full access to any type of ability)
-Gadgeteers/Item Users (only can have stuff w/gadget limitations)
-Members of a Race (select abilities and non-unique)
-Mages (select list of abilities)

with UBs to balance the difference in utility you get with different access to abilities. For example, in a 500 point game you might have a 100 UB for being a Super leaving you 400 points where as the super normal has the full 500 to spend (excluding disadvantages, of course). It worked rather well to encourage a mix of character types.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by naloth

Unusual Backgrounds are also useful to allow access to special abilities.

I am strongly opposed to using UB for that purpose, unless those special abilities are also disproportionately powerful.