New Advantage: Blood Brothers

[Anders]

Blood Brothers

5 points

You have undergone a ritual that makes you blood brothers with up five other people. As long as you fight alongside all your blood brothers, you get +1 to all skill rolls involved in that battle. Should a blood brother be absent or dead, you gain no benefits. It's important to keep your blood brothers alive! A kind GM may give you the bonus on missions to free/raise/otherwise bring the blood brother back to the team. You cannot add blood brothers to the bond later - if a character is removed from the game permanently, you lose the invested points.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anders

Blood Brothers

5 points

You have undergone a ritual that makes you blood brothers with up five other people. As long as you fight alongside all your blood brothers, you get +1 to all skill rolls involved in that battle. Should a blood brother be absent or dead, you gain no benefits. It's important to keep your blood brothers alive! A kind GM may give you the bonus on missions to free/raise/otherwise bring the blood brother back to the team. You cannot add blood brothers to the bond later - if a character is removed from the game permanently, you lose the invested points.

Looks fairly reasonable to me, though arguably a little cheap depending on how many rolls it applies to. How about bumping it to 10 and including some of the benefits of Teamwork, or Special Rapport (you always know when a blood brother is injured or in trouble, i.e. when the advantage would have helped him if only you had been there, seems like a natural fit).

[Anders]

The reason I opted for a 5-point cost was that you gain no benefit if even one blood brother is absent and when one dies, you lose the entire investment. But I like the idea of Special Rapport - I'll think about it.

[Kuroshima]

Technically, I say it's Higher Purpose (Fight alongside my blood brothers). I would couple it with special rapport though.

[Figleaf23]

It seems expensive for something with such particular conditions.

[The Benj]

I can't imagine why you'd ever do it with more than one person.

[Peter Knutsen]

There is something a bit like that in the GURPS Action-themed volume of Pyramid v3.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Technically, I say it's Higher Purpose (Fight alongside my blood brothers). I would couple it with special rapport though.

Pretty much.

Originally Posted by The Benj

I can't imagine why you'd ever do it with more than one person.

Because there are more than one person in your platoon? It's not just the game benefits, it also shows that you are committed to more than just your own survival. It's more a roleplaying element than a rules benefit argument.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Anders

Because there are more than one person in your platoon? It's not just the game benefits, it also shows that you are committed to more than just your own survival. It's more a roleplaying element than a rules benefit argument.

Rules-wise and roleplaying-wise, it's foolish to have a bond that will fail as soon as one of your number falls. And doesn't work if anyone's absent.

[Anders]

Or if they try to restore the bond - by freeing someone, raising someone, etc. Yeah, from a cool calculating POV it is stupid - but this is a matter of honor, a matter of commitment, a matter of showing that you're ready to go to the end of the world to bring your friends back. People have done a lot of foolish things for that.

See here for a famous example

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

I want it to work as a carrot to keep the group together. How would you alter it to attain that goal?