Design Discussion: Alternate Energy Systems

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by dcarson

For Spirit/Divine powers something like Learned Prayers for the routine uses so that those don't cause problems might work. If you are asking a "good" Divine power for help the Corruption might not be in the sense of becoming worse also. Getting Honesty, Sense of Duty etc added is a cost also even though they aren't bad things.

Money can be another cost of power. Having to sacrifice rare items, expensive gems etc. can be a cost of power. To level Wealth make it based on Cost of Living. PCs can also sacrifice things they got adventuring of course.

What do you mean by "Learned Prayers"?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

EDIT: Also, I try to make sure that players are never really screwed in the long run by using powers in basic ways. This is my biggest worry about the corruption system, that every time you use an ability it's a permanent mark against you. I don't mind this being an option the players have, but I don't like it being a necessity for using powers at all.

Note that Corruption can be cleansed (Horror p148) or you can borrow some of the healing mechanics for Derangement on p144 as well, if you can make them fit.

[dcarson]

In GURPS Powers: Divine Favor the ability to ask the gods for favors is the expensive part. You can get Learned Prayers for commonly used things as Alternate Abilities. Things like Heal, Turn Undead etc.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Note that Corruption can be cleansed (Horror p148) or you can borrow some of the healing mechanics for Derangement on p144 as well, if you can make them fit.

That's actually a good point. Those rules do include rules for recovering from mental disadvantages CP by CP, which could be easily adopted to corruption by simply changing the skills involved. I'd probably change the time frame of recovery from months to weeks, just because of the time frames at which my games typically take place.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

I'm mostly using systems that are stated to be that in various resources (tally, fatigue, energy reserve, corruption, and sanity.) So the question is: where do you think that this is not the case? Where do you think that these things are more punishing than fatigue?

EDIT: Also, I try to make sure that players are never really screwed in the long run by using powers in basic ways. This is my biggest worry about the corruption system, that every time you use an ability it's a permanent mark against you. I don't mind this being an option the players have, but I don't like it being a necessity for using powers at all.

My concern would be that you're mixing systems that were never intended to be balanced against each other. Only to be appropriate to their native genre. For example, corruption or sanity affecting systems are expected to support an appropriate level of magic use to CoC-like games rather than dungeoncrawls.

For simple Basic set FP rules a player has 10-20 FP and can use 2/3rds of that without affecting his basic combat abilities. then he can recover that FP within 30 -120 minutes depending on exact numbers and things like Fit. He could run through this cycle 5-10 times per day with fortunate pacing of encounters.

I'm not familiar with which long-term fatigue system you're using but I'd expect that a PC could still see power use equal to FP every day.

For a Threshold system if you used the suggested base of 30 Threshold and 8 REC there is some compensation in that you can use 30pts worth of special powers within a very short period of time but it will take 4 days to get it all back. That might be special powers 3x as powerful at base but 4-40 x as rarely used.

You choose Threshold as GM when that's the balance you want rather than choosing it as a PC v. FP systems unless you've got very specific plans for what you're going to do with that base 3x. Thresh and FP generally don't compete with each other for the same niche.

At least Threshold does reset to good as new over that 4 day (or whatever) period. When you get to Sanity or corruption -base systems they're designed the way they are to limit special power use on a _campaign_ level of time.

So, different systems for different purposes in different settings and genres. I don't think any of them were really designed to give balanced multiple choices within a single game.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by dcarson

In GURPS Powers: Divine Favor the ability to ask the gods for favors is the expensive part. You can get Learned Prayers for commonly used things as Alternate Abilities. Things like Heal, Turn Undead etc.

I'm not familiar with that system. I'll see about acquiring asap.