02-18-2016, 04:06 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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However I wanted to address this part... Saying GURPS cant handle large scale stuff because it costs too much is just incorrect. Epic characters should be on an epic point budget. I built the Silver Surfer in GURPS once. Did he cost lots more then daredevil or most other Supers we built? Of course he did, but he's a lot more powerful and rare also, so I am fine with that. It does not mean GURPS cant do Supers because you cant build a lot of them on under 250 or even 500 points. The Witch or mage who can curse an entire kingdom is rare in fiction or any game system I can think of. Most sources would do this as a very limited type of spell that just cant be done with a seconds concentration.
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02-18-2016, 04:50 AM | #32 | |||
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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Do you want to be a scary witch that curses the land? Well, that's prohibitively expensive, but you could create a witch that casts a bunch of afflictions on tons of people, that's no problem. Your costs funnel people's choices. If you make Control (Natural Phenomenon) unacceptably expensive, people are going to go somewhere else? I mean, why would you even take it? "Well, what if I want to control Natural phenomenon." Okay, sure, you'll take it then, but someone else might say "I want to be a scary witch who curses the land," and then realize that the "scary witch" part is more interesting than the "curses the land" part when she sees the pricetag and then revises the specifics of her concept so she can also afford other things she might want ("Like a totally cool demon familiar! Oh look at how cheap Allies are!") What benefit is gained by making Control (Natural Phenomenon) prohivibitively expensive, compared to other abilities and powers? I suspect that Control itself is as expensive as it is because it's so open-ended (though if that's so, we should compare it more closely to alternate abilities, modular powers, and wildcard powers). But Natural Phenomenon largely isn't. It basically boils down to "You can apply +/- per 120 points you spend" which is... very heavy. For that matter, if I'm going to complain further, I don't like how are and effect are tied together here. Why not let me buy, at most, +/- 1, and then set the radius to whatever I want, like just a single farm, or perhaps an entire kingdom! And, furthermore, we should have a more reasonable scaling. Being able to curse a 10 mile radius or an 11 mile radius should be a pretty minor difference, but here, it's +400 points. Why is that? I'd rather see area treated like it is in the core book, where each doubling is +100%, or something. Quote:
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02-18-2016, 05:11 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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Burning attack 1d [32] Area 2000 yard radius +550% Emanation -20% Selective Area: +20% Affliction 1 [80] Advantage (Higher Purpose [5]) +50% Area 2000 yard radius +550% Emanation -20% Selective Area: +20% Maledicition +100% Ally group (50%, 100, Almost all the time) [180] Summonable +100% Minion +50% Control 9 (Natural Phenomenon, Common) [360] None of these have any casting costs or power-source or anything like that. Of course, in a real game, you'd have those things. These are just to give an order of magnitude look. If you're right, then I would expect things like being able to blast a mile radius area over and over again would be in the same ballpark as Control 9 (same radius, control has more flexibility, but less impact), but it's a tenth of the cost. Simply applying a +1 to everyone in a mile radius for doing something that you support is about a 5th of the cost, and summoning an entire army of fairly compentend critters whenever you want is a half the cost. If your intent is to rain hell on your foes and bless your allies, would you rather spend ~100 points on the first two abilities, or ~400 points on Control (Natural Phenomenon)? I get that the generic should be a bit expensive to take care of edge cases and clever tricks, but if we constantly favor the specific this heavily over the generic, you create a situation where people are rewarded for going into excruciating detail in their characters, especially at high power levels, and that can become very unwieldy very quickly.
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02-18-2016, 08:28 AM | #34 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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02-18-2016, 08:50 AM | #35 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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02-18-2016, 09:57 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
The base cost of Control may be a little high, certainly some builds seem expensive. But there is an incredible amount of versatility your paying for.
A for the Area that was addressed above. I kind of like the gradual. So I had this Super who was a killer whale with hydrokinesis. Originally in Champions I ported him to GURPs as a mental exercise. Don't have his stat sheet anymore but roughly it was something like... Control (Water/Ocean) 20 with Natural Phenoma, Selective and a bunch of limitations. Also a lot of AA with it as the base power. He pretty much ruled the ocean with this power. Tidal waves, high and low tide to mess with harbours and shipping, sink ships, change the path of icebergs and even affect the weather a little. Back to the Weather example. With it you can create Per penalties or remove some (Fog, drizzle, heavy cloud cover). You can give penalties or bonuses to Archery skills by changing or stilling the Wind. Effect morale and economics, block or open travel routes, flood or dry up an area, muddy fields (bad footing), snow, ice up a lake to cross it then melt it behind you, mess with supplies, feed your army better with fresh drinking water or help the crops grow, do the opposite to your enemies, etc. Add Range or Remote or a good set of movement abilities to more easily affect large areas. It really is a limited MA and a good foundation for more powerful but limited effects like attacks as AA. And its neat :) You said its common in other sources so give me some examples and I bet their either highly limited or epic charecters. In Supers its Storm and Thor that I can think of. Excalibur had Merlin create a fog but it seemed like something that cost him, not a casual spell. Things like Prep required 8 hours don't hurt strategic powers as much as tactical ones either. I do not understand the concept that strategic powers should be cheaper then tactical ones because they come up less often. An assault rifle is more common and useful tactically then a nuclear bomb but the latter should cost more IMO. Strategic powers may not come up as often but when they do their more dramatic and tend to have larger effects in the game. Also fewer countermeasures. And you can use this power tactically as well.
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02-18-2016, 10:04 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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As to the Bless the Land of my Kingdom I go with Special Rapport and if I'm being picky the Meld Enhancement from Permeation. Yeah not actually RAW but I like it.
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02-18-2016, 10:26 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: America
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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I believe the arguments was strategic powers should not be an order of magnitude more expensive than tactical ones. 2-3x the cost maybe, but not this degree of distance. Further, as pointed out by Mailanka, this is a strategic ability that costs an order of magnitude more than other stigmatic abilities. More importantly, as far as I know Control (Natural Phenomena) only does one thing mechanically: give +/- X to rolls. Is this true? Does it do anything else that isn't a special effect?
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02-18-2016, 10:51 AM | #39 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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He also posts why should Storm cost more then Cyclops or Wolverine. My answer is she is a lot more powerful in the eyes of the world at large. Quote:
It is an easily understood mechanic and can be used to give an idea on how drastic a change you can make. This gets into where the base cost may need adjustment but its pretty hard to figure. Edit: Honestly Create and Control need a Power Ups book to provide examples and round them out.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries Last edited by Refplace; 02-18-2016 at 11:04 AM. |
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02-18-2016, 11:04 AM | #40 | |
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: America
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Re: Why is Control (Natural Phenomena) so expensive?
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If I create an affliction that does the same thing, at a lower cost, and say the affliction works by "controlling the weather" it should work exactly the same as Control (NP). I am currently working on such an ability to present, although there are two big problems. First: Advantages that give blanket Bonuses/Penalties are hard to come by to my knowledge. My current solution, after Higher Purpose for the first +1, is to use Advantage (Increase ST, DX, IQ, and HT) for each +1 and Negative Attribute (Decrease ST, DX, IQ, and HT) for each -1 in the afflictions. While this will give bonuses/penalties to almost any roll I can think of, it does do more than that which relates to, Second: limitations are needed to make it as weak as Control (NP), but do not assist in decreasing its cost by any noteworthy amount, so why use them? It is already coming out cheaper than Control (NP) so...
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