[Homebrew/Not Mine] Fusion Advantage

[Adelus]

I decided to see if there was much in the way of GURPS stuff on Tumblr, and found this while browsing:

http://sgurps.tumblr.com/post/119246...brew-advantage

It's an advantage for representing multiple characters fusing together into a single entity.

Was just curious what others might think of it and how balanced it and its modifiers look; I tried looking for something similar on the forums afterwards and most seem to be a bit more complex workings involving Possession.

[Cybren]

It seems odd that it counts points spent directly for secondary attributes but it does a psuedo average for primary ones, and the modifiers seem way overpriced just eyeballing them

[Refplace]

Been discussed on the forums several times and ended up in Power Ups: Limitations in at least one form.

[Adelus]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Been discussed on the forums several times and ended up in Power Ups: Limitations in at least one form.

I'm browsing through PU:Limitations right now and I can find nothing at all to do with this topic. Do you have anything more specific? Maybe it is in a different supplement?

[Refplace]

I just checked and cant find it.
Ok here is a forum link
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...04&postcount=7
Its been talked about elsewhere too but I think that post covers the key idea.

[Adelus]

I see. I think the problem is that method does work, but it requires very specific team-ups, like a Super Sentai/Combining Robo thing.

This Fusion write-up, while maybe not the greatest, would permit any two people with Fusion to combine roughly on the fly - and if the Global modifier is taken, it only needs one person with the Fusion advantage.

That sorta thing is what I find interesting about it and was wondering if there were any other existing approaches or tweaks that could make this one a bit better.

[malloyd]

Well the first problem is there can't be a fixed cost. If a 0 and a 1000 point character fuse, the one with 0 points is obviously gaining a lot more from the deal.

Like Shapeshift, it needs to depend on how different the final form is from your starting one, and has all the same problems of fair cost that Shapeshift does. For specific combinations, you might be able to use Shapeshift directly - stat the combined form, adding Split Personality to represent the other character(s) mind(s) and charge them both for the difference from their base form. For combining with anybody, well, pretty much the same problems as can shapeshift into anything.

Also, I think if you can fuse with somebody who lacks the trait, that's not an enhancement, it's Affliction (Advantage), and again its cost doesn't depend on how the fused form differs from you but the person you are afflicting with it.

[Adelus]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Well the first problem is there can't be a fixed cost. If a 0 and a 1000 point character fuse, the one with 0 points is obviously gaining a lot more from the deal.

Like Shapeshift, it needs to depend on how different the final form is from your starting one, and has all the same problems of fair cost that Shapeshift does. For specific combinations, you might be able to use Shapeshift directly - stat the combined form, adding Split Personality to represent the other character(s) mind(s) and charge them both for the difference from their base form. For combining with anybody, well, pretty much the same problems as can shapeshift into anything.

Also, I think if you can fuse with somebody who lacks the trait, that's not an enhancement, it's Affliction (Advantage), and again its cost doesn't depend on how the fused form differs from you but the person you are afflicting with it.

I think the idea of Fusion in this sense is fairly similar to Possession. You certainly have a fixed cost with that, and if you can pull it off a feeble psion could possess a dragon - but if they want to keep it, THEN they pay points. That's always been the balancing mechanism for that - someone who wants to be a feeble psion with an average joe and a combat monster as their puppets needs to take the combat monster as their main and the other two as puppets, despite the fluff of it. So there's already an advantage that lets you "ride" almost anything, and for a little bit more you could take Morph and with the right modifiers shapeshift into virtually anything too.

I would imagine being able to fuse with anyone organic would be somewhere in the ballpark between Possession with the Parasitic limitation (40 points) and Morph with Improvised Forms or Unlimited, or both (200, 150, or 250 points respectively), with some extra morph capacity to taste.

Honestly, thinking about it, Fusion of this sort seems like Parasitic Possession with some kind of Super-Assimilation; instead of just being able to "forget" your own skills and use the points freed up to buy skills from your host, you and the host both combine skills, advantages, and attributes in a way that averages them out.

In which case, maybe instead of a whole new advantage like this homebrewer did, it could be done with a few enhancements and limitations on Possession. An enhancement to refluff Possession as Fusion, enhancements and limitations like the existing ones for the homebrew version, etc.