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Old 10-11-2019, 02:12 PM   #11
martinl
 
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Originally Posted by Hide View Post
Man, I don’t want to be that guy… but I can't help thinking this is overpowered

... Luck, several levels of serendipity and maybe daredevil. Each of them is worth 15 points, assuming you picked 2 levels of serendipity, that’s 60 CP in total.
... Let’s analyze the shrapnel & pilot situation in your narrative (the las part):

...Can you see why is your suggestion seemingly overpowered? You need a lot of conditions to make the stunt work.
I disagree, for several reasons.
  1. Serendipity is nebulously defined for a reason - it's execution is always going to be made up on the spot. This makes it ideal for nebulously defined effects.
  2. In every example, canonical non-limited Serendipity would just solve the situation. Bomb badly timed or concealed, find a dead body with a good canteen, there is a car here to steal, there happened to be a filing cabinet in just the right place. However, the proposed version is weaker - something less bad, but still bad, happens.
  3. The advantage, as described is not better than Luck, let alone 4x better.
  4. The advantage, as described, facilitates awesome roleplaying, so should be encouraged.
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Old 10-11-2019, 02:13 PM   #12
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
I disagree, for several reasons (...)
Please read below.

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Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
(...) "John Doe is mostly okay but his gear isn't so lucky" (...)
Look, let’s put this into game-play:
  1. “John is deployed in a hot-zone…
  2. Something happens.
  3. Final result: “All of his gear is broken, he has minor injury”.
Your example is omitting step 2: John enters the game, the he plays several hours of campaign trying to get away from the hot-zone: At some point he loses ammo, breaks his rifle and sustains injury, etc. It could have been worse if he did not have daredevil to move along the enemy lines, if he did not spend his luck on that final shot with his rifle and if he did not employ serendipity to find water instead of using his survival/scrounging skills under high penalties. The advantages of John mitigated a series of negative events to succeed in surviving the hot-zone.

On the other hand, maybe you want an advantage to skip parts of a campaign:
  1. GM: You enter the game, John is deployed in a hot-zone…
  2. Player: “I skip this part of your campaign, put me through all of this narrative I suggest to you”
  3. GM: Ok… “All of his gear is broken, he has minor injury”.
But then, “could be worse” acts as if you did some sort of time-skip, this is not serendipity; escaping the hot-zone is the result of a process.
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Last edited by Hide; 10-11-2019 at 02:16 PM. Reason: Merging posts.
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Old 10-11-2019, 02:30 PM   #13
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

1) John Doe is sent doing some recon, and grabbed some operation critical intel againt irregular fighters.
2) John Doe's signal is jammed by localized ECM. He has to move out of range of the jammer to call for extraction.
3) The way out of the area is dangerous John Doe fails his check to notice an IED. Roll damage, John Doe is at -3(max HP). No way he would make it.
4) John Doe uses his discount Serendipity to avoid the IED putting him in a coma.
5) John Doe caught a lucky break, thus he is alive, lightly injured (1D worth of injury), can't call for extraction even when he moves out of ECM Jammer range (radio is busted) nor a resupply, and has to make his way back to base with limited equipment (thus risking starvation, dehydration, or plain getting ambushed with only his sidearm, which is less effective than his service rifle) to report his findings.

It's coherent (lots of soldiers in real warfare did survive for the sole reason that they caught lucky breaks (a few of them caught a lot of lucky breaks)), consistent (the player had an in-game ability to catch a lucky break), and more engaging than either his character dropping dead because of a failed roll or negating said failed roll outright.

As for comparing it and Luck, Luck can alter dice rolls, which 1) still isn't a guaranteed result, and 2) Luck can not generate a non-dice related lucky break.
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Old 10-11-2019, 02:47 PM   #14
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

IMO these seem to be aspected Impulse Point uses more than Serendipity. But if I squint a little, I could see it going either way (or both).
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Old 10-11-2019, 02:58 PM   #15
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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1) (...)
3) The way out of the area is dangerous John Doe fails his check to notice an IED. Roll damage, John Doe is at -3(max HP). No way he would make it.
4) John Doe uses his discount Serendipity to avoid the IED putting him in a coma.
5) John Doe caught a lucky break, thus he is alive, (...)

It's coherent (...) As for comparing it and Luck, Luck can alter dice rolls, which 1) still isn't a guaranteed result, and 2) Luck can not generate a non-dice related lucky break.
Okay, you finally outlined a situation in which John is exposed to a single event that the player could have assessed with serendipity.

Once he failed to notice the IED, the player could have suggested the GM that John noticed the IED because he spotted the IED when he wanted to tie his boots. Lucky break! Had he decided to tie his boots one step further than now, he could have died!

Or Had John decided to run along the enemy lines, aware of the risks of possibly stepping over IEDs, he could have employed his daredevil advantage to have +1 to notice them and possibly avoid one or several of them.

Sadly, the player did not suggest anything like that. The player decides taking regular action and then taking the IED’s damage because he thinks serendipity will help him. But no, serendipity does not make for his failed HT rolls or other skill checks. He should have bought very fit or luck to help him his HT checks. Also, serendipity does not buy success. John fails his HT roll, and falls into coma.

Nevertheless, thanks to his serendipity (the one he failed to apply before), a member of John’s unit noticed the explosion and managed to call some help. John will be available until the next campaign.

And still, there is no reason to buy a discounted serendipity.
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Old 10-11-2019, 03:03 PM   #16
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Serendipity is explicitly a free pass. Seredipity-but-it's-not-a-free-pass ... is worth a discount.
Yes, and literally everyone else in the thread agrees with -20%. So, I'd roll with that.
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Old 10-11-2019, 05:05 PM   #17
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Okay, you finally outlined a situation in which John is exposed to a single event that the player could have assessed with serendipity.
Literally in the opening post of this thread, literally the first sentences of said post, literally what you claim has finally been delivered:

Quote:
Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
Example:

John Doe is a soldier deployed in a hot zone, and is caught in the blast zone of an IED. The player says "Okay, I use "Could be worse", John Doe is alright but his gear is not so lucky."
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Old 10-11-2019, 07:35 PM   #18
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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On the other hand, maybe you want an advantage to skip parts of a campaign:
The proposal is explicitly about "making bad results less bad, but not actually skipping them." Normally these sorts of advantages allow you to just skip over bad things.

The fact that you can argue that it might be modeled by a different GURPS advantage doesn't mean it HAS to be that way. Lots of GURPS stuff can be done many different ways.
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Old 10-11-2019, 07:57 PM   #19
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
Literally in the opening post of this thread, literally the first sentences of said post, literally what you claim has finally been delivered:
Please read below.

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
The proposal is explicitly about "making bad results less bad, but not actually skipping them (...)
As I see it, this serendipity is intended as a fail-safe for bad role-playing; something disguised as “I accept the negative outcome, but I mitigate it like this (still playing it on my side)”.

So, a -20% under what assumption?

An “emergencies only limitation” is worth -30%, and it basically means you lose control of your advantage. The lesser version of “emergencies only” is worth -20%, and it’s for advantages that cannot work at full power; serendipity is not cut for this, serendipity either works or does not.

Serendipity is not a free pass for anything, if that was the case, one could buy serendipity “combat only” and strike critical hits on final bosses as desired, and at discounted price: "I play my combat only serendipity, oops i beheaded the final boss", and then you could argue that beheading the final boss is likely to happen because he is an elf and you got short-sword (15). (This would be a fail-safe attack to win the final battle really quick, and on top of that, at a discounted price).

In the example, John steps over the IED, then he should die. However, the take is having John stepping over the IED, losing his gear sustaining marginal damage instead of dying… That’s a wish enhancement (+100%)!

Definitively, a normal serendipity is not there to save you from situations like this, this is just too forced. Or is John Doe a messiah within the matrix?

In the other example, “John does not have water, but uses serendipity with ‘could be worse’ to solve his situation”, the proposal is something like this:

“John finds a neutral guy (in the middle of a battlefield) that sells water at high price (that’s the 'bad thing')”. “He abused John because he sells water at high prices”. However, the fact John had to give something in exchange for the water is worth nothing, because it’s very likely to be like this (given the context).

If you want a limited serendipity, maybe you could do something with Unluckiness. Unluckiness is worth -10 points, so it roughly (at most) becomes a -10% when you apply it to serendipity “something good happens, but something about it is rotten”. And the effect should be detrimental, beyond the regular consequences of the situation.

Following the previous example, maybe John finds the guy and buys the water, but the water is poisoned. Now he needs to roll an HT each time he drinks water or he falls unconscious and loses 2 HP. And this would be worth a -10%, not a -20%.
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Old 10-11-2019, 11:45 PM   #20
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Default Re: "Could be worse" advantage

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Please read below.
Please read the first post of this thread.
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