Shapeshifter's and the CP cost of Toasters

[James P]

Sub-Title: "How Much Is That Toaster In The Window?"

As per B84 and P75, a Shapeshifter with Unlimited can, potentially, assume any form. Even, as mentioned, a brick or a toaster. And those two would be 0 CP or less.

So I have two questions that I can't find any answer for, nor even any discussion about:

1. How do you determine the CP cost of a toaster? Or a Hyundai? The CP cost of a getaway motorcycle? Do you have to go through a detailed build, adding ST and... I'm not sure what-all, including Advantages and Disadvantages necessary to produce a motorcycle, just because the character sees one drive past and says, "I'll turn into that"?

2. Even if a toaster were given -50 CP, I'm assuming you would have to add a pool of 50 Points to your Shapeshifting, if you wanted to have human IQ, while in that form. Because assuming "toaster" status, without, would be the same as saying, "I'm going to permanently lobotomize myself". So a toaster that can think normally would require Shapeshifting 150 pts?


And, for the record, I'm fairly comfortable doing some hand-waving, here... but it feels like there's very little ground to work on. If I really did detail a toaster Template, it would have to include things like DR and Doesn't Breathe and etc.. Essentially, all the elements that would be necessary to allow the character to still live, after the change... so obviously this can't all be necessary, and I'm happy to hand-wave that he has this power, so he can change into a toaster and he doesn't suffocate... I'm even okay given him an awareness of the world around him, so that he can do surveillance as an ordinary object. But... I can't figure out how much any of these objects would cost, in CP?

Am I missing something obvious?

[Sam Baughn]

Write up meta-traits for 'homogenous object', 'immobile object', and 'portable object'. Use those along with the machine meta-trait and the vehicle body meta-traits from Template Toolkit 2 and you have some very simple building blocks to make a racial template from. The only characteristics which really matter are ST, HP, SM and Move. The first three are pretty easy to look up on a table, while the last only really matters for vehicles and can be found in the vehicle stats. After that you need to know what DR they have (almost always 2-3 for normal machines) and any Enhanced Move (again, only for vehicles and hopefully obvious from vehicle stats). Ignore any other traits and you can knock out a racial template in minutes.
For inanimate objects you can save even more time by just defining the largest thing they can afford and assuming anything smaller is OK.
I'd force the player who took the advantage to do it, because that's still a lot of work if they use it frequently, especially with vehicles.

[Anaraxes]

The question that matters isn't "exactly how many CP is this form worth", but "is the cost less than the size of the character's pool"? Most options can be eyeballed, simply because they won't be close to the boundary. A few examples can be useful to get a feel for where the builds tend to wind up, but you don't need an exhaustive catalog of all objects.

In practice, often enough the player just says "I turn into a motorcycle" and the GM says "ok, you're a motorcycle", the character speeds off, and you never needed any of the detailed stats anyway. It's not usually going to matter whether that was an 80 mph motorcycle or a 160 mph motorcycle.

Combat forms you'll probably work out in detail ahead of time.

Players or GMs that must have everything all worked out and polished, probably just shouldn't use the ability in their games. It's one of the relative freeform and improvisational abilities, which does call for some flexibility and lack of anxiety when you occasionally bend a rule or step over a line rather than stop play. (Players or GMs on the other end of that spectrum, who prefer the story to be all, willing to improvise everything, probably aren't using GURPS in the first place.)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by James P

2. Even if a toaster were given -50 CP, I'm assuming you would have to add a pool of 50 Points to your Shapeshifting, if you wanted to have human IQ, while in that form. Because assuming "toaster" status, without, would be the same as saying, "I'm going to permanently lobotomize myself". So a toaster that can think normally would require Shapeshifting 150 pts?

Start with the human template, rather than a normal toaster template, and ignore most of the trivial details.

What Advantages does a super-intelligent toaster gain? A little bit of DR, a small Payload, a minor Burning Attack with Internal Only (or maybe Aura for an old school metal bodied toaster), a Surge Burning Attack with major limitations, and Doesn't Breathe.

What Disadvantages does a super-intelligent toaster gain? Legless (Portable), No Manipulators, Increased Consumption (Constant power supply), virtually no ST or DX.

Without even looking up the prices, I'm reasonably comfortable saying that this is probably a net negative. Mostly because I don't want to have to figure up what "Accessibility: Only when someone sticks a fork in your body" should be worth.

[James P]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Mostly because I don't want to have to figure up what "Accessibility: Only when someone sticks a fork in your body" should be worth.

Ha ha ha... But jokes aside, thank you. That approach makes a LOT of sense, works out, pointwise, and makes me feel like an idiot for not seeing it.

Thanks, again!

[Anders]

DX 0 is -200 points - it's hard to overcome that.

[James P]

Thanks, everyone! I love that you people are out there, helping out.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by James P

How do you determine the CP cost of a toaster? Or a Hyundai? The CP cost of a getaway motorcycle? Do you have to go through a detailed build, adding ST and... I'm not sure what-all, including Advantages and Disadvantages necessary to produce a motorcycle, just because the character sees one drive past and says, "I'll turn into that"?

If the GM is reasonably confident that the target has a lower racial CP modifier than your own, he can just let you change into it without worrying about exactly how much less it costs.

It's more an issue if you have a negative racial template at which point toasters might be better than your native species. Basically it's the GM's risk to take, if he wants to let you do it or not. He can save himself math to just let you do it, but then might result in giving you free toaster-based CP boosts if he discovers toasters are actually a higher-CP template than humanity.

Originally Posted by James P

2. Even if a toaster were given -50 CP, I'm assuming you would have to add a pool of 50 Points to your Shapeshifting, if you wanted to have human IQ, while in that form. Because assuming "toaster" status, without, would be the same as saying, "I'm going to permanently lobotomize myself". So a toaster that can think normally would require Shapeshifting 150 pts?

It seems like there's two possible options: either you make it a "smart toaster" template (ie you're not literally assuming the toaster template) or else you do something like buy a cosmic enhancement for some of your IQ so that it applies in altered forms.

Another idea for simplicity is perhaps you could consider some of your IQ to not be part of the human template and instead something independent of it.

Like for example what if we only considered the human minimum on an IQ 0 baseline to be sapience: IQ+6 [120] and those who have the racial average of 10 actually have an IQ+4 [80] advantage relative to the baseline template?

This way, the IQ 0 of the toaster would only need to be IQ-6 [-120] instead of IQ-10 [-200]. You'd drop to 0 as an IQ 6 shapeshifter but only to IQ 4 (not sapient, but at least sentient) if you were an average-IQ human.

I do know there's some cosmic enhancement/power options for retaining advantages in other bodies (Powers 21 "any body he occupies" Weird 19 "any bodily form their possessor") though I don't know if it would work for Shapeshifting, since it might be intended for Possession.

Another approach could be something like buying IQ that only works in your alternate form. You wouldn't be smarter in human form but it would be cheaper.

You can get -10% for stuff like Only While Flying or Only While Insubstantial. It's a bit iffy with shapeshifting though since you could in theory remain in an altered form with little nuisance... though one might say the same of flying, doing a half-inch hover at all times to maintain your discounted IQ bonus.

[Anders]

It's 100 points. It should be an awesome advantage.

[James P]

Originally Posted by Plane

or else you do something like buy a cosmic enhancement for some of your IQ so that it applies in altered forms.

Jesus... that's simple!

I can just Cosmic +50% it, with "IQ remains constant in all forms". I'll put that in the "easy Cosmic solution" column.