Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-14-2013, 03:17 PM   #1
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Bullet Time as an Advantage

Bullet Time is provided as an extra option for Enhanced Time Sense in Gun Fu, p. 14. It works by spending three character points - at that point you can effectively stop time so that you may act once out of turn, at any time, even between an enemy's attack roll and any defense or damage rolls that would follow. You then have one turn to do anything that you could normally do, which can include making attacks that targets won't be able to defend against, plucking bullets out of the air, or moving out of the way of attacks (effectively giving you a perfect defense assuming you could move out of the area of the attack given only one turn).

How much should it be worth to enter Bullet Time, and how would you build it?
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-14-2013, 03:59 PM   #2
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

The cost elsewhere of a "one use ever" power is 1/25 of the base cost. Working backwards, that suggests 75 points for reusable Bullet Time, not counting ETS as a prereq.

Sounds cheap at that price, though.
Anaraxes is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-14-2013, 04:19 PM   #3
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
The cost elsewhere of a "one use ever" power is 1/25 of the base cost. Working backwards, that suggests 75 points for reusable Bullet Time, not counting ETS as a prereq.

Sounds cheap at that price, though.
That kind of reverse engineering is never valid. What it really is, is a level of Altered Time Rate that can be invoked when it isn't your turn. This of course could just be "I always hold my second action". But maybe a better way to go would be to have it be a level of Altered Time Rate that can be invoked when it isn't your turn...but only once per hour.
David Johnston2 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-14-2013, 06:07 PM   #4
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
That kind of reverse engineering is never valid. What it really is, is a level of Altered Time Rate that can be invoked when it isn't your turn. This of course could just be "I always hold my second action". But maybe a better way to go would be to have it be a level of Altered Time Rate that can be invoked when it isn't your turn...but only once per hour.
Certainly ATR is a pretty good start for it. Maybe a suitable Cosmic? Based on the power of Bullet Time, and what it does, it should probably be +300% for Godlike Tricks (as per Power-Ups 4: Enhancements). After all, it is "completely unfair: ignoring a target's defenses, affecting subjects it should not be able to, and so on." Those are all things Bullet Time can do.

That would let you take an extra maneuver anytime each turn (yours or anyone else's). That's [400]. For that much, maybe it's fairly priced? After all, at the rate of spending [3] per Bullet Time use, it would take about 133 independent uses before you catch up to that massive [400] price tag. Not to mention making ETS a prerequisite on top of that in order to take that Cosmic.

My only concern now is how ATR is meant to interact with the Bullet Time rule by RAW (I wouldn't want this to, at [400], be a ripoff). It isn't clear. Hence, my starting this new thread here.
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 12:45 AM   #5
Walrus
 
Walrus's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Chelyabinsk, Russia
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

There's actually some build of Jumper (Time; Freezing Time +0%) which allows something similar. But I can't find it. It seems to be proposed by Kromm somewhere on forums.
__________________
MH Setting. Welcome to help.
Walrus is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 12:49 AM   #6
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

No, that kind of time freeze doesn't let you change anything in the real world.
David Johnston2 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 07:23 AM   #7
lexington
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by JCurwen3 View Post
That would let you take an extra maneuver anytime each turn (yours or anyone else's). That's [400]. For that much, maybe it's fairly priced? After all, at the rate of spending [3] per Bullet Time use, it would take about 133 independent uses before you catch up to that massive [400] price tag. Not to mention making ETS a prerequisite on top of that in order to take that Cosmic.
Remember that CP costs have the hidden limitation of you not having an arbitrary about of CP to spend, most people will run out of loose CP fairly quickly. The [400] points is what you might be paying to do it every turn of every combat. It should be outrageously expensive.
lexington is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 08:18 AM   #8
benz72
 
benz72's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Chagrin Falls
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

With a [400] cost as a base, judicious use of limited use or takes recharge with costs fatigue could emulate an 'exceptional effort'

As a curiosity, if two combatants each had this advantage how would their fight sequence progress?
__________________
Benundefined
Life has a funny way of making sure you decide to leave the party just a few minutes too late to avoid trouble.

Last edited by benz72; 08-15-2013 at 08:25 AM.
benz72 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 08:27 AM   #9
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by lexington View Post
Remember that CP costs have the hidden limitation of you not having an arbitrary about of CP to spend, most people will run out of loose CP fairly quickly. The [400] points is what you might be paying to do it every turn of every combat. It should be outrageously expensive.
I'm unaware of any rules that require a player to spend all (or indeed any set fraction) of his character's CP at character creation. So, a character with ETS could easily have [400] left over from character creation that the player intends to only use for Bullet Time, getting 133 uses out of it (which is likely to be enough, unless it's a particularly long-running campaign). A character with the ATR (Bullet Time +300%) does have the advantage of being able to use it each round with impunity, rather than only using it when necessary, which isn't too dissimilar to Emergencies Only. Perhaps we could assume the calculated [400] is when this Limitation is already applied? That is, assume [400] is a fair price for Bullet Time (Emergencies Only -30%), getting us a final cost for the unmodified Advantage as [572].
Of course, pretty much all serious combat could qualify as activating Emergencies Only, and our theoretical CP-hoarder is only going to use his Bullet Time when it's fairly important, not just every round of combat, which would be a further limitation. I'd eyeball [800] (making Serious Emergencies Only a -50% Limitation) as perhaps being fair, although you could make a case for a lower base cost (personally, I'm more inclined to go with [600]).

Quote:
Originally Posted by benz72 View Post
As a curiosity, if two combatants each had this advantage how would their fight sequence progress?
I'd allow one combatant to interrupt another's use of the ability, using something akin to Cascading Waits to determine who gets to go first. Regardless of the winner, each character reacts to the other normally (so each can still defend, for example).

Last edited by Varyon; 08-15-2013 at 08:31 AM.
Varyon is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2013, 08:44 AM   #10
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Bullet Time as an Advantage

Quote:
Originally Posted by lexington View Post
Remember that CP costs have the hidden limitation of you not having an arbitrary about of CP to spend, most people will run out of loose CP fairly quickly. The [400] points is what you might be paying to do it every turn of every combat. It should be outrageously expensive.
On the other hand, the cost might also be compared to Super Luck though (limited to causing automatic failure on your targets' defense rolls, and automatic success on your own defense rolls; and you can't use it to cause critical failures or successes). Are there any other seriously unfair or unbalancing effects to Bullet Time?

To get the ability to use Super Luck once per second, it's 12 or 13 levels. Unmodified, that's [1200] - [1300]. If we say the above is a -50% limitation (too harsh? or too soft?), then we're looking at a cost of around [600], more or less depending on how much the above limitation should be.
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
altered time rate, bullet time, enhanced time sense, gun fu

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 07:54 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.