Dirty Cheap Unkillable [Powers]

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

If, in your game, Extra-life only cancel a failed HT check (and bring you back above -5HT if you got below), then it is not worth 25cp but 2 or 3 cp at most.

We already have a mechanic for changing your own rolls, how much it costs depends on where you began.

It's 1 to change normal fail to normal success

Healing all but 1 of the hit points lost can be done for a point also. Total 2 points.

These are reactive payments, so if you paid in advance for these it should be probably be only a perk for "the next time I fail a HT roll to survive due to lost HP, it is a pass" and "all but one of the HP that I lost is recovered".

This won't help if you crit-failed your HT roll (those cost more to improve) or if you suffered so much HP loss that you would have needed to make a 2nd HT roll to survive at -2xHP though.

Plus it won't help you with your HT roll to avoid stun/knockdown.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

perk : sacrifice this perk to cancel an injury that got you below -5hp - the perk is gone after that single use.

I don't think there's precedent for that. A reactive "flesh wounds" will HEAL all but 1 of your lost HP (it doesn't actually cancel the injury, just restores the HP, whatever the injury caused still happens).

I think you could invest in "stocked up on two Flesh Wounds" as a perk in advance, but "the injury never happened" goes beyond the scope of it.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

For 25 cp, an unmodified Extra-life rewrite history, so that an action that killed you somehow didn't - detail to be discussed with the GM.

I think the best is to have GMs only spend as many of your Extra Life points as necessary to prevent death, only going so far as all of them if there's no other option.

Like for example if a single undodgeable attack took you beyond -5xHP.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Plane

We already have a mechanic for changing your own rolls, how much it costs depends on where you began.

It's 1 to change normal fail to normal success

Healing all but 1 of the hit points lost can be done for a point also. Total 2 points.

These are reactive payments, so if you paid in advance for these it should be probably be only a perk for "the next time I fail a HT roll to survive due to lost HP, it is a pass" and "all but one of the HP that I lost is recovered".

This won't help if you crit-failed your HT roll (those cost more to improve) or if you suffered so much HP loss that you would have needed to make a 2nd HT roll to survive at -2xHP though.

Plus it won't help you with your HT roll to avoid stun/knockdown.



I don't think there's precedent for that. A reactive "flesh wounds" will HEAL all but 1 of your lost HP (it doesn't actually cancel the injury, just restores the HP, whatever the injury caused still happens).

I think you could invest in "stocked up on two Flesh Wounds" as a perk in advance, but "the injury never happened" goes beyond the scope of it.

But making the impulse buy into predefined perk allow you to make them a bit more powerful. Here, I included preventing failing and crit failing for 1 cp (see Psionics powers p44 for that exact exemple).

Likewise for the flesh wound healing all hp lost instead of all but one. - I intended it as a flesh wound use, so yes, restore instead of cancel - wrong word choice, sorry.

Originally Posted by Plane

I think the best is to have GMs only spend as many of your Extra Life points as necessary to prevent death, only going so far as all of them if there's no other option.

Like for example if a single undodgeable attack took you beyond -5xHP.

So making extra-life as "here are 25 cp set aside for impulse buy in the event of death" ?
It is an option, I guess.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

making the impulse buy into predefined perk allow you to make them a bit more powerful.
Here, I included preventing failing and crit failing for 1 cp (see Psionics powers p44 for that exact exemple).

If you're referring to "Lucky Break" that's not the exact example. It can prevent a normal failure (upgrading it to a normal success) or a critical failure (upgrading it to a normal success) but not both.

It says "This can be cheaper" (not WILL be) compared to B347 because it normally costs 2 character points (not 1) to go CF>NM or NS>CS.

In the case of NF>NS it's not cheaper, so people will be loathe to waste the perk on that. That's a situation where it would seem fair to reduce it to 0.5 (allowing another NF>NS use later)

PK making this cheaper than after-the-fact spending bonus points to me just seems like a variation on how "Potential Advantages" work, but kind of like a new category of them. The closest concept from Basic is probably Schrodinger:

"I'm paying half now, do not benefit, but I am owed the right to buy it later when I need it, GM"

You can already Buy Success whenever you need to, though, so paying the 2nd half of the price to get the ability with the point you already allocated seems like a good tradeoff for the usual benefit of giving you access to something not accessible.

I can't remember if Impulse Buys talked about this specifically but there's two things I think are extremely related:

pg 8 (Favors in Play) "If the NPC isn’t present because the GM put him there, but simply appears, double the cost"

pg 11 (Miraculous Recoveries) "decree that wishing Extra Life into effect retroactively
costs double, just like conjuring an NPC out of nowhere."

"Buying Success" is an inherently retroactive rule, so applying this math in reverse (paying for Buying Success in advance as Lucky Break does) means if it's double-price to buy something RETROactively, then it should be half-price to buy it PROactively.

There actually does seem to be a special benefit to Lucky Break compared to Buying Success though (just not the one you specified) because it can apply to "any success roll" whereas buying success (in Basic Set, anyway) was originally limited to "his success roll".

Impulse Buys broadened that though: pg 5 (Paying Fate's Price) "Friends" option also lets you upgrade other player's rolls. LB still seems to go further though (just not as RELATIVELY far, since this upgrade), since you could use it to upgrade NPC rolls too.

That seems like a moderate enough benefit to balance out "upgrading a normal failure costs double" which is effectively what charging 1 point at half-price does.

If that's not considered enough of a drawback, we can consider the three other ones:

1) it's a psionic perk, so you can't use it when your powers are neutralized
2) it can't use IB3's "Buying Failure"
3) it can't use IB4's "Upgrading Margins"

FOUR drawbacks is a lot to pay for "I can upgrade NPC rolls in addition to other players" so you could say "1 is enough". In the case of Lucky Break keeping it psionic, but maybe picking something else if you wanted this to be a "Wild Perk".

Being able to buy failure for yourself when you want to fail is on concept for Lucky Break (it's lucky if you pass out before yo ucan be tortured, and lucky if you avoid hurting an innocent)

"Upgrading Margins" being the same price as NF>NS means it only really works using the "spend half your perk" approach on consecutive rolls.

You can't really spend them both on the same roll, since UM is based on upgrading "regular success" into "superior success", but you already get a "superior success" margin when you use NF>NS.

UM is actually a pretty horrible deal since you're no better off having succeeded in the first place than if you failed...

Rather than it upgrading to a fixed number I could see maybe having it do a little better in some circumstances.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Likewise for the flesh wound healing all hp lost instead of all but one. - I intended it as a flesh wound use, so yes, restore instead of cancel - wrong word choice, sorry.

Having it heal merely 1 extra HP is pretty underwhelming, paying for Flesh Wounds in advance should probably just allow 2 uses of it.

That or, if the effect is "you are injured, then are healed of Injury-Minus-One HP" then maybe advance-purchase should heal you of 2x(I-1)" where somehow getting hurt HEALS you, but that's hard to justify conceptually.

A slightly more believable option is that you bundle "Flesh Wounds" (1pt impulse buy) with another 1pt impulse buy. Either:

a) IB10 "Second Winds" (restore all FP and ER)
b) IB12 "Points for Energy" (gain 25 extra FP for one task, or a non-refillable ER 25 for up to 25 tasks with powers)

You would reduce the normal 2 point total it would cost to the pair on the fly to 1 point to buy both in advance.

If you activated just one then you could track the unused one as a "half perk" (0.5cp)

If they could only be activated together, that's kind of like a drawback...

It might be interesting if GMs charged retroactive "use cost" for impulse buys, like "you must take Do Nothing maneuvers for as many seconds as CP you spent" in which case it might normally be 2 seconds to recover from taking such a pair...

In that case, if buy buying them in advance you effectively "Link+10%" them (only takes 1 second recovery) the benefit of "I recover faster" would offset "I can't activate them separately".

Link+10% is meant to be a net benefit so you should even add a -10% limitation (like a psionic power modifier) to make up for it.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

So making extra-life as "here are 25 cp set aside for impulse buy in the event of death" ?
It is an option, I guess.

It would certainly be more appealing if it were more flexible like this. Otherwise people might instead want to set aside 50 bonus points which they might use for that, or use for smaller attempts instead.

UB10's "John the Fair" deals with this kind of dilemma. It mentions how spending "Defense vs Effect" to minimize damage done by a dragon bite would be wasted because even the minimum amount would still be enough to sever his hand.

It seems sort of like metagaming to just KNOW how much damage a dragon bite is going to do though. But then it's the player making the choice, not the character, so it should be okay?

"points are spent before the roll" for UB6 means there's going to be some gray areas of wasted points though. I think in this case if you wanted to have a "Defense vs Effect" perk it could work two ways:

1) change 4d into 4 if you declare you're using it before rolling
2) change 2d into 2 if you declare you're using it AFTER rolling

Same thing with damage:

1) change 4d into 24 if you declare you're using it before rolling
2) change 2d into 12 if you declare you're using it AFTER rolling

[Aldric]

I think I'd try for Unkillable with Granted by Familiar if I wanted to make it cheap, along with maybe a somewhat rare achille's heel (if it fits the concept).

But generally, I don't think you want to go cheap for something your life depends on.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Aldric

But generally, I don't think you want to go cheap for something your life depends on.

This sums up my thoughts concisely. Limitations that don't get in the way of it working (Mortal) or I was already going to do (Pact) are good and fine. Granted by Familiar is definitely an iffy area because it is, by definition, a built in way to remove your "I don't actually die" advantage, similar to Gadget (in fact, I'm pretty sure a breakable gadget basically means you aren't actually Unkillable).

Actually, if you want cheap Unkillable, I'd go for Duplication (Construct). As long as you never let anyone know you have it and stay somewhere safe and off the grid, dying is annoying but not permanent. 56pts for "Costs 10FP whenever I feel like it, then gotta travel" isn't bad.

[Aldric]

Well, liches everywhere seem to "live" just fine with a type of unkillable that requires an object.

And there are also several examples of immortality granted by someone else

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Well, liches everywhere seem to "live" just fine with a type of unkillable that requires an object.

Closes to this in GURPS might be M160's Wraiths but they just have IT/ITMH/DR

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Well, liches everywhere seem to "live" just fine with a type of unkillable that requires an object.

And there are also several examples of immortality granted by someone else

I agree, but I have a much different approach to things when I'm the player versus building an NPC, namely in how I see weaknesses in the defenses. My players probably more so, I've seen a few times people take No Vitals and No Eyes as cinematic 'luck' traits to avoid getting x3-4'd.

For instance as a lich player, the game quickly goes from "I'm invincible" to "how well am I hiding my artifact?" If that's the goal, cool, but if the goal is "I don't die, how cheap can I get that?" then I'll look for limitations that don't get in the way of coming back.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Well, liches everywhere seem to "live" just fine with a type of unkillable that requires an object.

Yes, the PC's never manage to slay liches. ;)

Teasing aside, it is a decent point, but remember that as PCs you're giving the GM permission to smack you with whatever Limitations you include in the trait, with a frequency and/or severity determined by their value.