08-03-2017, 03:43 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2017
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Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
I'm currently building a magical girl with an alternate form, and while messing around with it I found what seems to be a pretty big issue with the Once On Stays On (OOSO) enhancement. If this has already been discussed and solved, please refer me to the solution; I did check the google machine but I wasn't able to turn up anything relevant.
Now, normally, with Alternate Form you apply only a flat 10% cost reduction to the alternate form point value, which makes sense as a combination Accessibility and Requires Time limitation that prevents point-crock abuse. However, with the +50% OOSO enhancement clarification in Powers, you pay full price for the abilities of the alternate form. Now, I agree that limitations that don't actually limit anything shouldn't be worth points. Being able to stay in your alternate form forever, with no way to change you back against your will, should be worth more points than the default Alternate Form. But having OOSO on an alternate form is MORE expensive than just buying up the powers on your base form, even though it requires a 10 second concentrate to shift into or out of. There should be some sort of limitation that should be applied to those points, especially if it's unfeasible for the character to remain in that form forever due to social constraints (magical girls with parents and school, supers with a secret identity and dependents, etc). I understand that this is much more cost-effective when you have multiple templates on your Alternate Form, but what about for characters with just a single template? In the case of the magical girl I am constructing now, having Alternate Form (OOSO) actually costs me more points than buying the abilities straight, which I would prefer not to do for thematic reasons. Is there something I'm missing, or are single-template Alternate Forms just not balanced for OOSO? |
08-03-2017, 05:50 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
The OOSO special modifier only applies to the base cost of the form, increasing it from 15 to 23 (assuming no other modifiers). See the second paragraph under Shapeshifting in Powers p74.
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08-03-2017, 06:09 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
That's true, but it also takes the "difference in point cost" and make it go from 90% to 100%. Which means, essentially, you pay full price for the abilities you only get to use in your AF. This isn't bad if you have 2+ AF's, but if you have only one AF there's not a lot of incentive to pay full price for abilities you can only use part of the time.
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Eric B. Smith GURPS Data File Coordinator GURPSLand I shall pull the pin from this healing grenade and... Kaboom-baya. |
08-03-2017, 06:41 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
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But sure, costing Alternate Form is all kinds of broken, mostly because it has to be in order to get away with treating it as something separate you can "add" to a character sheet rather than something that has to be built in with different limitations for different features from the beginning.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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08-03-2017, 06:43 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
Alternate Form is an alternate appearance power that also can swap out some traits. Even if you don't swap out your traits, you still look different.
It desperately needs a limitation to help distinguish between "I look nothing at all like my other form" and "I'm nearly impossible not to recognize as my other form". Having switchable traits is an enhancement in GURPS and Alternate Form + OOSO is basically a big wad of Switchable traits with a combination of obligatory Link +10% and Accessibility: Only when using $trait, +10% as appropriate - except you can have switchable disadvantages and mutually incompatible traits via this build, which is an important bit of rule breaking. If every single trait on your AF template is already inherently switchable, you don't have problematic things like disadvantages or incompatible traits, you have no disguise value, and you only have one form, and you want OOSO then I would say you don't want Alternate Form at all, you have zero need for it, and you shouldn't use it.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
08-03-2017, 06:57 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
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That's a considerably more complex and mathematically fussy build though. Edit: Most indicative of the problem of the broken costs is does it make a difference which form you pick as your "base"? If picking the most expensive one as your base, paying full cost for that, and taking all your others at 15 points each comes out drastically more expensive than picking one of the others as a base, what justifies the savings? RAW we pretend it's that can be forced out limitation. If you lack that, and there is still a cost difference, there's a problem.
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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 08-03-2017 at 07:05 AM. |
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08-03-2017, 10:43 AM | #7 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2017
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
Quote:
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08-03-2017, 11:10 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
Well, of course that costs more points. You could just leave them on forever if you want to, but NOW you also have the option of turning them off, if and when it suits you. You have more choices, therefore it costs more points. If you can't understand why you'd ever want to on any given trait, then just don't take Switchable on it.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
08-03-2017, 11:19 AM | #9 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
Really? That was literally the biggest draw for my Players when they contemplated Alternate Form characters.
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08-03-2017, 12:00 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Jul 2017
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Re: Alternate Form And Once On Stays On
I just wanted to have powers that weren't active by default (to simulate a normal person by day) and a magical girl transformation sequence (complete with different outfit, equipment, and hair color). Someone on the forums pointed out Alternate Form, and it happened to be the thing that fit the bill best. I'd never used it or even contemplated using it before, so I hadn't really thought through all the implications.
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