Is Area Effect too Cheap?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by malloyd

My personal rule of thumb is if it has more than two modifiers on it, I'm suspicious. We definitely need to talk about what you expect it to do, because frankly when you are putting together something with that many modifiers, your concept probably doesn't match the rules for them in the first place, and will probably be pricing it by feel rather than whatever the rules say anyway.

I have to say, that's a fairly restrictive number of modifiers. I think it's quite common to have lots of modifiers to get the exact power you want, and there are any number of canon abilities with way more than 2 mods. Choose almost any random ability from Psionic Powers, or half of them from Powers, to see a long stack of mods.

I get what you're getting at, that the mods have to be coherent, but I think the system is working as it's intended when an attack has a list of modifiers. You might have more of a case for non-attack powers, though.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, it would allow for more versatility than normal area effect while increasing the cost. I would just add +50% for every doubling in height as well as doubling in area (allowing for column or pillar attacks). The city killer would need a +1100% modifier for an area 4000 yards in radius and 4000 yards in height while a planet killer would need a +4700% for an area 16 million yards in radius and 16 million yards in radius, which would make the powers 140 points and 500 points respectively (holding true the other assumptions). A similar effect could be added to cone attacks (+10% per yard) to represent attacks that grow in height as well as width.

[Kelly Pedersen]

While the others have definitely explained that abilities like this are subject to GM oversight, who can always veto abusive combos, I'm actually going to argue that, at 50 points, this isn't a particularly unbalanced trick.

First, you have to remember that points, in GURPS, are not strictly balanced based on utility, or at least combat utility. Rather, they're based on what I call "spotlight time" - they measure how effectively a character is able to use whatever they've focused their points into to solve problems, achieve their goals, and generally look cool in the process.

So, the question you have to ask for abilities, including this one, is not necessarily "how many people will it kill". Rather, it's "How effective will this be at achieving my goal?" And I'd say that for most goals, this ability isn't actually that effective, and your opportunities to use it are going to be limited. To the first point, "kill as many people as I can" is very rarely the goal. Sure, "kill all my enemies" is a good goal, but almost all characters will have some riders on that, like "without indiscriminately killing innocents as well". This ability fails that test in almost all circumstances - you pretty much have to be sure that only targets you want to use it on are within range, and that they'll die from it before infecting anyone you don't want it to (which includes you, since you have no immunity to being infected by your attack).

It's reusability is also low, since using this, even on people trying to kill you, is likely going to count as wide-scale biological warfare, and most people take a very dim view of that. Using it once is probably going to get you declared a war criminal, and now hunted. And since people know about this ability and what it can do, the next batch of people coming after you will be equipped to deal with it, with things like hazmat gear, vaccines, and so forth. Remember, as well, that the assumption for all abilities in GURPS, unless you've paid for an appropriate Unusual Backgroud, is that they're known to exist and appropriate ways of dealing with them are assumed to exist. So surprise isn't going to be that useful once you've used it once.

So, basically, you've got an ability that doesn't necessarily solve many problems, and you can only use it once or twice before getting attacked by everyone else in the setting. I can think of a lot of better ways to spend 50 points, personally, even completely ignoring the moral issues.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

While the others have definitely explained that abilities like this are subject to GM oversight, who can always veto abusive combos, I'm actually going to argue that, at 50 points, this isn't a particularly unbalanced trick.

First, you have to remember that points, in GURPS, are not strictly balanced based on utility, or at least combat utility. Rather, they're based on what I call "spotlight time" - they measure how effectively a character is able to use whatever they've focused their points into to solve problems, achieve their goals, and generally look cool in the process.

So, the question you have to ask for abilities, including this one, is not necessarily "how many people will it kill". Rather, it's "How effective will this be at achieving my goal?" And I'd say that for most goals, this ability isn't actually that effective, and your opportunities to use it are going to be limited. To the first point, "kill as many people as I can" is very rarely the goal. Sure, "kill all my enemies" is a good goal, but almost all characters will have some riders on that, like "without indiscriminately killing innocents as well". This ability fails that test in almost all circumstances - you pretty much have to be sure that only targets you want to use it on are within range, and that they'll die from it before infecting anyone you don't want it to (which includes you, since you have no immunity to being infected by your attack).

It's reusability is also low, since using this, even on people trying to kill you, is likely going to count as wide-scale biological warfare, and most people take a very dim view of that. Using it once is probably going to get you declared a war criminal, and now hunted. And since people know about this ability and what it can do, the next batch of people coming after you will be equipped to deal with it, with things like hazmat gear, vaccines, and so forth. Remember, as well, that the assumption for all abilities in GURPS, unless you've paid for an appropriate Unusual Backgroud, is that they're known to exist and appropriate ways of dealing with them are assumed to exist. So surprise isn't going to be that useful once you've used it once.

So, basically, you've got an ability that doesn't necessarily solve many problems, and you can only use it once or twice before getting attacked by everyone else in the setting. I can think of a lot of better ways to spend 50 points, personally, even completely ignoring the moral issues.

Quoted for agreement. And also wanted to point out a reference:

Originally Posted by Kromm

To be fair, I know as a fact that in GURPS, First Edition, advantages were indeed priced for desired rarity in the game, not for their utility. I know this because the designer told me! Combat Reflexes is far more useful than most 15-point traits and many traits worth quite a bit more, but it's priced cheaply because it's common in adventure fiction and not meant to be rare. Warp costs more mostly because it's an outré superpower, and just about always rare when it's innate rather than technological.

Points pretty much only matter against other players, not against the world. People have been quoting these super awesome abilities they can build cheap, and I have yet to see one even attempt to show up in a game.

It's one of those theory crafted, but never practical arguments. Such as the infinite featureless plane fighting questions... Although I think there needs to be a GURPS game that just takes place on those.