My Alternate Attributes

[MrCrowley]

After reading through Power-Ups 9, I've decided to take a crack at designing my own Attributes and Secondary Characteristics. I would love your feedback and constructive criticism, and hopefully help with some potential problems I haven't been able to crack. Or if you think I've got good ideas here, please let me know!

My Goals

• Bring swg damage down
• Make DX less of a master attribute that governs every combat skill and most physical skills
• Address some of the realism problems PU9 brought up (such as a GURPS character's speed on foot being tied to their reflexes)
• Bring in my favorite rules from various Alternate GURPS articles
• Hopefully do all this while keeping the cost of every Basic Attribute combined at 60 points per level. I want to be able to adapt most characters and templates from my 4e books without changing their point value, and this is a big part of that. However, if it can't happen then it can't happen

Basic Attributes

• Strength (ST): Largely unchanged from the original rules. Still determines Basic Lift, Damage, and Hit Points, however I have made changes to those SC. 10 points per level
• Agility (AGL): My first big change. Represents "whole-body" coordination, agility, and flexibility. Covers the vast majority of original DX skills including grappling skills and ranged combat skills (Bow, Guns, Thrown Weapon, etc.), however many skills were given to my new version of DX and my new FGT secondary characteristic. Helps determine FGT and Basic Speed secondary characteristics. 10 per level
• Intelligence (INT): Essentially the same as IQ, but no longer influences Will or Per. 10 per level
• Health (HT): Mostly the same as original HT, however it no longer influences Basic Speed, it is the only Basic Attribute determining Basic Move, influences FGT, is tied to Action Points, and may reduce injury (see RT below). 10 points per level
• Perception (Per): Now a Basic Attribute, Per does everything it did in the original rules but also helps determine Basic Speed. 10 points per level
• Will: Now a Basic Attribute, but functionally the same as the original rules. 5 points per level
• Dexterity (DX): The final and arguably least important Basic Attribute. Essentially the same as the High Manual Dexterity advantage, it covers the Knot-Tying, Lockpicking (an IQ skill in Basic Set but whatever), Pickpocket, Sewing, Sleight of Hand, and Typing skills. Otherwise INT-based technical skills may require DX-based rolls for especially fine or delicate work. 5 points per level

Secondary Characteristics

• Damage (Dmg): Still based on ST. Thrust damage is unchanged, however Swing damage is now 1.5 x thr damage or the damage on the original damage table, whichever is less. This is to keep swg damage from quickly outdoing thr damage.
• Basic Lift (BL): Unchanged from the original rules
• Hit Points (HP): Still based on ST. However, it is used to find Robustness Threshold and weight from the Build Table. 2 points per level
• Robustness Threshiold (RT): From Alternate GURPS V. Uses rules from that article. Especially tough humans (such as professional boxers) may buy Ablative DR up to their RT score.
• Fighting (FGT): Calculated from (AGL+HT)/2. Determines Unarmed Striking skills, Melee Weapon skills, Parry Missile Weapons, and Shield. 10 points per level, however if your base FGT is not a whole number (ex. AGL 11 and HT 10 gives you FGT 10.5) you bring it up or down a "half-level" for +/-5 points
• Action Points: From Alternate GURPS II, uses those rules. 2 points per level
• Fatigue Points: Uses the rules from Alternate GURPS II. 3 points per level
• Basic Speed: Calculated from (AGL+Per)/4. No longer influences Basic Move. 4 points per 0.25 speed
• Basic Move: Equal to HT/2 by default. 5 points per level, however you may bring it up or down a "half-level" up for +/-3 points if your base score is not a whole number.

Possible Problems

• I worry I've made HT too important for a mere 10/L cost, but I don't see a way to change it without interfering with my final goal.
• I'm not super happy with how my FGT score is calculated. I really like dividing up the combat skills among different traits and I feel it makes a modicum of sense (you'd expect melee warrior to be fit and coordinated), but I'm not sure if it holds up under closer scrutiny regarding its realism
• I'm not super happy with the pricing of Basic Speed. One level of original rules Basic Speed for 20 points is equal to one level of Enhanced Dodge and one level of Basic Move, with the "who goes first" function being useless after one round so closer to a 0-point feature. Now I essentially have Enhanced Dodge for 16 points a level. I wouldn't mind having some skills based on 2 x Basic Speed, but I'm not sure what. (Not combat skills. I don't want dodge, parry, and to-hit rolls all coming from the same trait).

[AlexanderHowl]

From my perspective, it seems unbalanced. Some suggestions:

Agility should govern defensive actions. Dodge should be equal to Agility/2+3 (rounded down) and Block and Parry being based off the (AGL + combat skill relative level)/2+3 (rounded down). Other uses are for full body actions.

Dexterity should govern offensive actions. Any attack roll should be based on Dexterity, as should any fine motor control use. Increase DX cost to 10 CP/level.

Fighting should just disappear, as should Action Points and Robustness Threshold, as they are difficult to balance. Action Points just add needless complexity to combat while Robustness Threshold can be replaced by a setting rule that allows characters to purchase up to their HP in DR (Semi-Ablative, -20%; Tough Skin, -40%) [2 CP/level].

Damage should be unchanged. Swing damage is not unrealistic, I can deal much more damage swinging a baseball bat than poking someone with it, and the difference caps at +2d at higher ST.

Basic Speed determines turn order and should provide a bonus to Fast-Draw Contests (based on [AGL+Per]/4, keeping fractions), so it can be worth 1 CP per +0.25 CP, and Per cost can be reduced to 5 CP/level.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by MrCrowley

• Make DX less of a master attribute that governs every combat skill and most technical skills

I'm not sure what you mean by "technical skills" here. The obvious reading is things like Armoury, Mechanic, and so on, but those are IQ-based in vanilla GURPS.

[MrCrowley]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'm not sure what you mean by "technical skills" here. The obvious reading is things like Armoury, Mechanic, and so on, but those are IQ-based in vanilla GURPS.

I'm not sure why I put that in either, no idea what I was thinking. Let's say "physical skills"

[dataweaver]

You might want to look at David Pulver's “Playing With Health” article in Pyramid #3/83. While the nominal purpose of the article is to suggest ways to increase the importance of HT in the game, out makes some interesting arguments about dividing physical skills up along DX, Speed, and Per.

In a nutshell, the article suggests moving long-ranged missile combat skills to Per (i.e., Beam Weapons, Bow, Crossbow, Innate Attack, Liquid Projector, Gunner, and Guns), and suggests some others where the question of whether to assign them to Per or DX is more debatable: shorter-ranged attack skills (Bola, Blowpipe, Spear Thrower, Throwing, Throwing Art, Thrown Weapon) and some vehicle operation skills (Piloting, Driving, and Boating). You might consider using a base of (Agl+Per)/2 for these. It also suggests the possibility of moving melee combat skills to (Speed×2): Boxing, Brawling, Cloak, Fast-Draw, Judo, Karate, Lance, Net, Parry Missile Weapons, Shield, and all melee weapon skills. But you're pretty much already doing the something like that with your Fighting characteristic.

Incidentally: since Speed is only used for initiative (which only cares about the order and not the difference) and Dodge, you could make Speed into something that works more naturally with skills by doubling its calculated value and saying that Dodge is Speed/2 instead of Speed. This also suggests that vehicle operation skills, which provide a vehicular dodge score, might more naturally be based off of Speed.

[MrCrowley]

Ooh, I like the idea of basing vehicle skills off Speed x 2. I disagree that Per plays a huge roll in ranged weapon skills after you've identified your target (though Bad Sight should certainly give you a penalty) based on my real world experience with Bow Sport and Guns

[johndallman]

Can I suggest renaming your sawn-off DX as "Precision"? It will save confusion.