GURPS Affliction

[HYBRIDHAWK6]

Hello all.

I need a hand understanding Afflictions.

One of my players wants to make Bardic Powers that buff the party and debuff the enemy but we are both pulling our hair out trying to get our heads around how it all works.

The Afflictions will be Sense Based and Speed/Range Table, But the problem that we found is it would be very easy to stack Debuffs like Attributes negatives for only a few % in modifiers? is this intended?

Also Affliction 1 would mean that the person targeted gets a HT+0 Roll. However when kitting out an innate attack like this is would be very cheap again to add HT affecting rolls to make someone more easily affected.


if anyone is able to explain it would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

[weby]

Basic attack ability for afflictions should likely have Malediction in some form unless you only want it to affect low power creatures. Without malediction the cost to make it useful against someone with bit higher attributes gets really high.

Other things you should likely have is area of effect so it affects more than one target and selective if you want it to affect only selected targets in the area.

If you want the same power to buff some targets and debuff some targets you need to have two abilities with linked. One to buff and other to debuff.

And adding HT debuff does not really help against the initial attack as the debuff only affects them if they fail the roll.

How much they can reduce things depends on the GM judgement on what is balanced. In my current game any primary effect has to have reduced duration to 1 second/fail by and secondary on fail by 5+ 1 minute/fail by. Further they have an increased immunity modifier to give cumulative -2 each extra attack on the same target.

Some example mind control abilities below:

All the Attack Mind spells are Afflict 1(Will based: +20%, “Disadvantage(magic) +???”,Secondary:“Disadvantage 2(magic) +???/5” Malediction 2 +150%;Increased 1/2D, 10x, +15%;Sorcery, -15%, reduced duration 1/60 and none -17.5%, Increased Immunity 1:Cumulative -2 lasting one hour: -10%)[24.25+disadvantage/2 +Disadvantage 2/10] Additional levels: +5/level add area effect.
The primary effect lasts 1 second/fail by and if the Will roll is failed by 5+ the secondary for 1 minute/fail by.

Spells:
Unconsciousness: Attack mind( Daze:+45% Secondary: Unconsciousness +36% )[33]
Sleep:Attack mind( Daze:+45% Secondary: sleep +27% )[32]
Bad temper: Attack Mind(Bad Temper 12- +45% Secondary: Bad Temper 6- +18%)[31]
Drunkenness: Attack Mind(Tipsy +9% Secondary: Drunk +1.8)[16]

You can see more examples from my game in the body and mind control colleges in https://hups.kivinen.iki.fi/k2011:sorcery#mind_control