Do SM/Other discounts to attributes affect Racial Template Prices for Alt Form?

[Pseudonym]

I am a SM+8 Foo who has no additional racial ST; Average ST for whatever reason is 10.
I have purchased ST+ 10(-80%)[20]
What is the cost of Alternate Form (Human)?
Does it account for the fact that I would have paid 80 more points for the ST if I were just human?

[Ulzgoroth]

It almost certainly should, yes.

Though, uh, SM+8 racial ST 10 is weird.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

I am a SM+8 Foo who has no additional racial ST; Average ST for whatever reason is 10.
I have purchased ST+ 10(-80%)[20]
What is the cost of Alternate Form (Human)?
Does it account for the fact that I would have paid 80 more points for the ST if I were just human?

To be fair, yes, I think it would have to. My favoured approach for this sort of thing is to give the human form the ST that the points you spent on ST would buy, without the SM discount. So, in the case you've laid out, with 20 points in ST, the human form would have ST 12.

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It almost certainly should, yes.

Though, uh, SM+8 racial ST 10 is weird.

It's a weird example I made on the fly to make the question more obvious. It's probably possible to get to another weird combination of no fine manipulators, high sm, some disadvantages, etc. and have a racial template that is somehow worth more points than the human template, but the human template is somehow worth more points because of personal levels of ST and DX; but this illustration was meant to be straight to the point.

On the one hand, it looks like it might be an exploitable loophole in the edge cases, on the other, this looks like a real cumbersome thing to deal with, a la enhancing natural attacks via the method mentioned in Powers. Obviously, no one is going to make a template that is "a normal human that just so happens to be SM+8," but with enough creativity you can probably come up with a "magic dextrous boa constrictor with tons of SM, ST, and DX and no fine manipulators, that can turn into a human form" which also has the same potential edge case.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

To be fair, yes, I think it would have to. My favoured approach for this sort of thing is to give the human form the ST that the points you spent on ST would buy, without the SM discount. So, in the case you've laid out, with 20 points in ST, the human form would have ST 12.

This is the way I do it as well, its more complicated but more fair and balanced.

[Celjabba]

krommquotes .

Originally Posted by Kromm

When using Alternate Form, NOTHING you acquire racially transfers, with no exceptions at all. Alternate Form very specifically replaces one racial template with another. An SM +3 quadruped with something like ST+35 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%; Size, -30%) [105] on her racial template turns into a human with ST+0 [0] on her racial template. So does a tiny rat-man with ST-9 [-90] on his racial template, when he transforms into a human. Only personal traits transfer between forms. And attribute levels are technically rated in levels, not points . . . if the massive quadruped had a personal +4 to ST costing just 12 points, she would become a human with ST 14.

If the GM feels that levels are unbalanced, then it wouldn't be especially hard to go with points instead; in the SM +3 quadruped example, the human would have 12 points in ST, which would round to ST 11. Yet another option would be to scale attributes proportionally; e.g., if our big quadruped has racial ST 45 and personal ST 49, she would have ST 10*(49/45) = 10.9 as a human, which the GM might opt to round to ST 11. However, all of these schemes are house rules.

The scaling houserule make a lot of sense, otherwise Super-Housefly, who gained an incredible +1 ST from a steady irradied spinach diet, would make an unimpressive ST 11 human, while the old but still mighty dragon, with his racial ST +120 and ST -10 would become a crippled ST 0 human barely able to lift a feather.
It is, however, horribly easy to abuse ...

But by raw, you ignore any racial bonus/malus and you add your non-racial bonus/malus levels, ignoring point cost and relative levels.

Hope this help,

Celjabba

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

krommquotes .



The scaling houserule make a lot of sense, otherwise Super-Housefly, who gained an incredible +1 ST from a steady irradied spinach diet, would make an unimpressive ST 11 human, while the old but still mighty dragon, with his racial ST +120 and ST -10 would become a crippled ST 0 human barely able to lift a feather.
It is, however, horribly easy to abuse ...

But by raw, you ignore any racial bonus/malus and you add your non-racial bonus/malus levels, ignoring point cost and relative levels.

Hope this help,

Celjabba

Interesting, thanks for the Kromm quote. It was mostly a theory-crafting curiosity than an actual problem I've encountered, but all the methods of attack make sense in their own way, and I guess one applies them as appropriate. The one specific thing I cared about was whether or not a 0 point human template might have a cost that changes when you change your own traits which would seem a serious problem to me, but in all those examples, that is never the case.

Needless to say, I wouldn't allow the obvious point crock of someone saying "I want a race that has no manipulators and alternate form (human)," but the possibility amuses me.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

I am a SM+8 Foo who has no additional racial ST; Average ST for whatever reason is 10.
I have purchased ST+ 10(-80%)[20]
What is the cost of Alternate Form (Human)?
Does it account for the fact that I would have paid 80 more points for the ST if I were just human?

I solve this by assuming you get 20 points worth of ST in human form, not 10 ST (this only applies to ST that is not part of your template, of course).