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Old 02-24-2021, 04:54 PM   #21
Rupert
 
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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In both cases, use proportional aging, with every year translating to 32 years of life for the character with Extended Lifespan 5.
Or just accept that Extended Lifespan is effectively 'resistance to ageing attacks', and Unaging is 'immunity to ageing attacks'.

In terms of pricing, I'm inclined to see Extended Lifespan as a levelled quirk (thus 1/level), Longevity is about right at 2 points (because mechanically it's better than a level of Extended Lifespan, generally). That would put Unaging at 7-8 points, but that seems too high and GURPS does so very much like its 5-point steps, so I'd go with 5 points for Unaging.
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Old 02-24-2021, 05:23 PM   #22
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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For example, imagine a race of dwarves with the combination that becomes fairer as they grow older. When they reach the age of 800, their body starts to metamorphosis into marble, leaving a marble statue of the dwarf behind as their corpse. I imagine that many older dwarves would be careful to take a dignified pose when they felt death coming on, so their corpses could be eternally displayed by their descendants. Destroying such a statue would be a grave insult to their descendants and would likely be considered an act of war if the dead dwarf was revered enough by a dwarves nation.
Wouldn't the place slowly fill up with statues of dwarves? I mean, the body doesn't decompose and go away it turns to stone.
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Old 02-24-2021, 05:44 PM   #23
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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Wouldn't the place slowly fill up with statues of dwarves? I mean, the body doesn't decompose and go away it turns to stone.
Maybe the corpses of the poor and unimportant end up broken up for rubble. The city of the Dwarfs is literally built upon the bodies of their ancestors.
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Old 02-24-2021, 07:49 PM   #24
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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Wouldn't the place slowly fill up with statues of dwarves? I mean, the body doesn't decompose and go away it turns to stone.
Only very slowly. Dwarves generally live quite a long time and don't have huge numbers of offspring.

Even in a place that has had a stable population for a long time, the number of statues is only the age of the place divided by the average lifespan of a dwarf times the current population, so a 40 generation old city (several thousand years given dwarvish lifespans) needs to house 40 times as many statues as people, which seems like a lot, until you realize that a statue doesn't take up nearly as much room as you need to live in. I could easily cram 40 statues into my bedroom, and yeah if they were my *respected* ancestors I might not want to pack them in that much, but I could certainly manage 10 respectful display niches in that same room, so I could easily fit more than 40 of them into an additional house. That is they still wouldn't take up more than about half of the space in town - and 40 generations is a pretty old settlement.
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Old 02-24-2021, 09:22 PM   #25
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

Could also have elves that turn into trees. Might technically still be alive, but as far as playability is concerned, they're dead.
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Old 02-24-2021, 09:23 PM   #26
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

[QUOTE=Rupert;2368833]O

In terms of pricing, I'm inclined to see Extended Lifespan as a levelled quirk (thus 1/level), Longevity is about right at 2 points (because mechanically it's better than a level of Extended Lifespan, generally).

Huh? With 1 level of Extended Lifespan you make no aging Rolls til age 100. With Longevity you have made 400 Aging rolls between 50 and 100 and failed 7.4 of them.

Even after 100 when the EL guy starts making Aging rolls it'll take 4 years for him to have made 2 rolls for each attribute and failed 1 of them assuming HT 10 and TL3.

Meanwhile, Mr. Longevity has made 16 rolls for each Attribute and very likely turned his 7.4 pts lost to a full 8. So EL Guy is ahead by a full pt in each Attribute. With Mr. Logevity rolling 8x as fast even inanother 4 years EL Guy might be a few decimal pts ahead. They're both probably pretty feeble and good candidates to pass away in the next round of winter flu.

At TL10 where both of these Traits can be gengineered the TL gives +7 to Aging rolls and EL guy will probably be halfway through his second century before his Attributes start declining.

You buy Longevity when you can't buy Extended Lifespan. Of course, if you're really concerned about this sort of thing you probably buy both.
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Old 02-24-2021, 10:04 PM   #27
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

Extended Lifespan is always better than Longevity when you do the math, especially as TL increases. Let us examine another example, two people at age 120, one with Extended Lifespan 1 and one with Longevity, both at HT 10 and TL8. The former makes 40 aging rolls against an effective HT 15, failing two of them. The latter makes 720 aging rolls against an effective HT 16, failing 16 of them of them. The former individual loses an average of two attribute levels by age 120 while the latter individual loses an average of sixteen attribute points.
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Old 02-25-2021, 12:24 AM   #28
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

Now check age 120 at TL3. Because ageing can affect HT, when the checks are against mid-low numbers HT declines very fast, and that pulls the other attributes down as well.

You're right about Longevity at higher TLs (and for high attribute people, for that matter), at low TLs A single level of Extended Lifespan means you're better off until you start ageing and then you rapidly (comparatively) decline.

Also, though getting rid of it is considered a feature in the RAW, Extended Lifespan means having to suffer through a much longer period of immaturity, being considered a minor, etc.

All that said, I will concede that for player characters Longevity isn't as good as I thought, and could reasonably be also considered a quirk.
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Old 02-25-2021, 02:37 AM   #29
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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Or just accept that Extended Lifespan is effectively 'resistance to ageing attacks', and Unaging is 'immunity to ageing attacks'.

In terms of pricing, I'm inclined to see Extended Lifespan as a levelled quirk (thus 1/level), Longevity is about right at 2 points (because mechanically it's better than a level of Extended Lifespan, generally). That would put Unaging at 7-8 points, but that seems too high and GURPS does so very much like its 5-point steps, so I'd go with 5 points for Unaging.
I've priced them as perks/5 points since pretty much the beginning of 4e - Longevity is better than EL, but not twice as good the difference will almost never come up.
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Old 02-25-2021, 06:24 AM   #30
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Default Re: Combining Extended Lifespan with Self-Destruct [Basic]

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Wouldn't the place slowly fill up with statues of dwarves? I mean, the body doesn't decompose and go away it turns to stone.
Only dwarves who manage to survive to 800 turn into statues - those who die from mining accidents, fighting (monsters, elves, humans, other dwarves, etc), alcohol poisoning, disease, starvation, cave-ins, asphyxiation, suicide, stupid dares, etc would just decay normally.
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