04-22-2017, 12:48 PM | #41 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
Well, yeah, it has a game effect; it potentially eats up all of your downtime. I'm arguing that that isn't necessarily a zero-point feature thing.
As I see it, benefitting from the Talent is part of what you spent points on the Talent for, which is why the corresponding (and intrinsic) part of the Power Mod is trivial, equivalent to a zero-point feature. The effects of the mod itself are entirely negative, adding nuisance without adding any benefit. |
04-22-2017, 01:12 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
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Compared to Disciplines of Faith or the Chi power modifier this seems more severe if you have more than a few abilities.
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04-22-2017, 02:50 PM | #43 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
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° The Chi power modifier says that if you don't do this, your power fails you the first time you call upon it under stress. I think that's more severe than "gradually over the course of the following week," as Trained provides. ° The time to rebalance is 1d days for Chi, 1 week for Trained. That's a bit harsher for Trained. ° Until you've rebalanced, the Chi power modifier has you suffering from an irritating condition. Trained does not; you just don't have the power. I'm calling that less severe for Trained. Basically, the primary effect of Chi is that you spend about three-quarters of your time meditating and exercising, and you have social inconveniences. That's -10%. Trained is +0%, and its primary effect is that you work maybe half time on studying and exercising, with no social inconveniences worth points. In both cases the maintenance time will mostly be handwaved, as it is in the source material: We don't see James Bond at the pistol range, or Kwai-chang Caine doing kung fu exercises, and we only rarely see Clark Savage Jr. doing his daily regimen of physical and mental exercises. But I think the inconvenience of Chi is enough greater to justify a percentage difference.
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04-22-2017, 03:12 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
OK, you convinced me. A telling point is its per ability, not per point in abilities which is actually how I first read it.
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04-22-2017, 03:19 PM | #45 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
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This is why Disciplines of Faith (Chi Rituals) [-10] from Dungeon Fantasy (p. 21) would be superior in this case - you simply spend 1d hours a day keeping your abilities honed. I'd say it's worth -5 just for that aspect if you ignore the need for double cost of food and supplies. It keeps "I need to train or lose my abilities" without the issue of "I have 20 powers so I need a teacher to study under for 20 hours a week or spend 40 hours on my own. or loss my powers." What about the cost of the teacher? Is that included in the power modifier? What if you're Batman - how do you find a teacher better than you? That means you have to dump X hours every week from patrolling Gotham to stay swol. Looking at the modifier, it actually kind of reads like the Chi Rituals Disciplines of Faith to me: Quote:
Further, what Powers can it be applied to? There aren't many I can think of. Maybe Body Alteration if you avoid some of the flashier traits. This may have been better as a Power Talent and a Power Modifier. I'm not saying it's a bad power modifier - and it's a SMALL section. So y'all should take that into account. It's hard to fit those sort of answers in when you have a word count limit. Quote:
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Dungeon Fantasy Goes to War (by Matt Riggsby): Matt presents excellent material as always. Bonus points for calling out Elric. Treating ally groups as elements is a stroke of genius IMHO, you could easily add a modifier so they can only be used when appropriate or even 1/5 the cost. "Yeah, I have an army ready to go, but we need to find the Eye of Al'co'rasta first. Then we can take on the Lich King." Seeing some giants for DF is also pretty awesome. Overall, both col and useful. The Harvest - Invasion Earth (by David L. Pulver): ...X-Com? Is that you? I particularly like the Communion and it's basically a marriage of convenience between people who actively hate and depend on one another. That's got a lot of dramatic potential. I really like the superscience/variant TL spaceships in the back. that's something we've needed more examples of for a while now. Be very useful for Mars Attacks to. Overall, very cool - but unlikely to see use from me. Götterdämmerung (by William H. Stoddard): I don't use Infinite Worlds much, but I do like the Ideal power modifier and Trained has potential. A lot of rehash here from previous works (which isn't an issue, having it all collected in one place can be useful and I've done the same in the past). The idea of giving racial abilities a power modifier via Invented is intriguing. You could easily do this with wet- or hardware beings. Many Lives, One Adventure (by J. Edward Tremlett): This was instantly and immediately useful to me since my new campaign starting up has a concept called a "phoenix soul" that effectively reincarnates like this. This was well-written, thought-provoking, and full of little niggly bits (as most of J's work is). The Sense of Ahhh (by Steven Marsh): As I said upthread, this article was beautiful. Steven always has this way of taking a complicated concept or invisible pillar of gaming and simplifying or shining a light on it. This is no exception. I've read this about three times now and I'm still finding useful bits. One particular one I want to call out: Quote:
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04-22-2017, 03:19 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
The devil's always in the details with these things; I've found my intuition falsified more than once by working out the math, or having someone else do it. I hadn't actually done it till you and dataweaver raised the question, so thanks!
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04-22-2017, 03:41 PM | #47 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
I've come up with five powers and 24 abilities. I'll try to fit in designing a sample Trained character sometime in the next few days.
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04-22-2017, 03:58 PM | #48 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
Sounds like a plan.
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04-22-2017, 05:30 PM | #49 |
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
The key here is that this is something you can do in DF but not generally in GURPS. Mass Combat is excellent at defining what kind of people various troop types are, but there's an issue doing this sort of thing when you get to troop quality. There's no pan-GURPS rating of "average," "good," and so on. But by being unabashedly PC-centric, DF sets a pretty good point level for heroes, and Peter's outstanding and thoughtful work in DF15 further creates models for different levels of capabilities. Low-point henchmen make sense as standard troops, higher-point ones as better troops. Huzzah, DF!
He does, doesn't he? That's why he gets those mad game magazine editor dollas.
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04-22-2017, 05:36 PM | #50 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Pyramid #3/102: Epic
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He really does. I'm not pandering or being sarcastic. I hope my level of skill one day reaches the point where I can synthesize an advanced or arcane topic into one that is simple to understand, but still complex. Douglas Cole does this very well too. It's a skill worthy of emulation in either case.
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