[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Guilt Complex

[johndallman]

Guilt Complex [-5] is a mundane mental disadvantage. You have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility in your relationships, and suffer if anything bad happens to people you have connections to. This disadvantage appeared during the GURPS 3e period.

The disadvantage applies to anyone who is an Ally or Dependent, and to everyone to whom you have a Duty or Sense of Duty. It also applies to your adventuring companions, employers and subordinates, even if you don’t have advantages or disadvantages about them. If anything bad happens to any of these people you’ll suffer the effects of Chronic Depression for some time. If the bad event was your fault, the depression lasts (20-Will) days, minimum 2, and your self-control number is your Will-3. If it wasn’t your fault, depression lasts (15-Will) days, minimum 1, and the self-control number is your unmodified Will. Other people can try to talk you out of the depression, with Fast-Talk or Psychology rolls, modified according to the GM’s opinion of their arguments.

This disadvantage doesn’t seem to have been updated for 4e’s self-control rolls system. Doing so might produce something like this: If an event was your fault, the depression lasts a week, with a self-control number of 9. If it wasn’t, it lasts three days, with a self-control number of 12. It’s also arguable that this disadvantage ought to be a modifier for other disadvantages, rather than a stand-alone trait. That seems like a plausible idea, but keeping the stand-alone disadvantage for someone who behaves like this with respect to all their relationships seems reasonable.

Guilt Complex is a moderately common option on published templates, with bodyguards, detectives, medics and monster hunters being common examples. Bio-Tech regards it as a form of mental instability, and DF9 makes it a motive for ghosts. Horror and Madness Dossier have plenty of uses for it, all of them worse than the quirk-level version in Power-Ups 6. It can be a result of power crippling in Psionic Powers, and a motivator in Supers.

I’ve never used this disadvantage, as player or GM. Has it been significant in your games?

[RogerBW]

Never used it. Considering that Bad Stuff happening to one's Dependents, in particular, is to some extent what they're for, to get threatened/captured/attacked/etc. and need rescuing, it seems potentially crippling for anyone without a very high Will. (And it only pays for one point of Will.)