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Old 08-15-2010, 07:03 PM   #11
Ejidoth
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by lexington View Post
1d burn link 1d pi gets you 2d of damage against a target and is more useful than 2d pi or 2d burn alone. Image shooting at a Homogeneous target, the piercing damage is rendered nearly useless but the burning damage still has full effect.
On the other hand, a 1d pi attack with a 1d burn followup doesn't cost +10%, it costs +0%, and has otherwise the same effect (except that if the 1d pi gets through DR, the 1d burn skips it, which it doesn't get to do with Link).

So, odd example, because the RAW actually allows a better version of what you're suggesting is inherently broken.

EDIT:

Sorry, I may be coming off as a bit venomous here. I'm glad for the discussion.

You're not wrong. Link works fine. I'm suggesting a +0% version of Link would be better, but the actual benefit to the game is pretty minimal. It makes the math a little more consistent and logical for the reasons I've outlined, and thus appeals to my sense of game design aesthetic, but the point difference between my version and the RAW probably won't make more than a 10-cp difference even on most Supers.

Last edited by Ejidoth; 08-15-2010 at 07:09 PM.
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Old 08-15-2010, 07:09 PM   #12
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
I'd be willing to call that a 0-point feature if shapeshifting /requires/ you to throw your fireball attack (and throwing your fireball attack requires you to shapeshift!),
And I would disagree. Normally, Shapeshifting is 10 seconds of pretty much helplessness. If you have the ability to throw up, say, an aura of fire around to defend yourself, that's worth more than usual for the shapeshifting - you're suddenly much less defenseless.

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth
Citation is the description of Link in Characters, specifically the phrase, 'you cannot use them separately.' That's pretty clear.
Except you're not really using them "separately". You're trying to activate them both, but one of them happens to be blocked out, so you only get one effect.

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth
The description of Pattern Analysis actually is consistent with requiring you to analyze data (which does not necessarily mean just sitting in front of a computer;
It says that you have to have access to "prodigious amounts of raw data", and uses examples of the Internet and live news feeds. That suggests to me that scanning someone's footprints would normally be insufficient. But the description of Pattern Analysis suggests to me that it would be useful where Intuition and Common Sense would normally be useful - you could use it to make a snap decision in a labyrinth, for example.

In addition to the Pattern Analysis example, having Link shut down all the Linked powers when one goes down puts down too many other concepts. For example, if I was creating a character with a built-in gun that fired incendiary bullets, I'd do it as a piercing attack Linked to a burning attack. It doesn't make sense, given the description, for me to be unable to use this ability in a room full of Halon, or when Ice-Man is suppressing all fire within a 1-mile radius.
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Old 08-15-2010, 07:12 PM   #13
Ejidoth
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
And I would disagree. Normally, Shapeshifting is 10 seconds of pretty much helplessness. If you have the ability to throw up, say, an aura of fire around to defend yourself, that's worth more than usual for the shapeshifting - you're suddenly much less defenseless.
Keep in mind, though, you can't use your aura of fire except for during those 10 seconds of shapeshifting, too. That's not worth nearly as much as an aura of fire you can use all the time, but you're actually paying more for it.

Forcing an innate attack to be linked to shapeshifting is actually a huge disad on the innate attack's side, so counting it as +0% doesn't seem like a big deal.

Though, aura's an odd example again, because it's passive. An aura of fire with Accessability: Only While Shapeshifting would be perfectly valid by the RAW and wouldn't require Link either.
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Old 08-15-2010, 07:15 PM   #14
Ejidoth
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
In addition to the Pattern Analysis example, having Link shut down all the Linked powers when one goes down puts down too many other concepts. For example, if I was creating a character with a built-in gun that fired incendiary bullets, I'd do it as a piercing attack Linked to a burning attack. It doesn't make sense, given the description, for me to be unable to use this ability in a room full of Halon, or when Ice-Man is suppressing all fire within a 1-mile radius.
I'll concede that you're right, there, but it's tangential to the thread's topic. It's a good reason not to count Link as a Limitation, perhaps, but since I'm suggesting changing it form a +10% Enhancement to a +0% Feature...
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Old 08-16-2010, 07:42 AM   #15
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
Also, taking off is just a move action, I believe. You'd just be making a move and attack to fire while taking off, and so far as I can tell, linking wouldn't actually change that (since taking off isn't 'activating your flight', flight is essentially a passive ability that just states that you're capable of Air Move instead of just Ground Move).
And therefore isn't eligible for Link to fireball in the first place, right? Link is only suitable for abilities that require activation, and its advantage is it lets you activate more than one of them at once. You can't link an always on ability to an activated one. And indeed, if an ability takes so long to activate that you can't bring it up usefully in combat time, there's likewise not much point to a link.

Not all enhancements are suitable for all advantages. This is one of my main objections to them in the first place really, by sticking them into the core rules you encourage people to think builds that don't make sense should be fine, since they follow all the rules.

If you don't think a link is worth +10% *don't take it*. If you are correct and it genuinely is worth nothing, this won't matter right? Your character loses no abilities for not having it. If you want a zero point feature for having to use two abilties together add "only while using second ability -0%" on one of them rather than link.
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Old 08-16-2010, 08:05 AM   #16
Ejidoth
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
And therefore isn't eligible for Link to fireball in the first place, right? Link is only suitable for abilities that require activation, and its advantage is it lets you activate more than one of them at once. You can't link an always on ability to an activated one. And indeed, if an ability takes so long to activate that you can't bring it up usefully in combat time, there's likewise not much point to a link.
Link isn't applicable in the case of flight, yeah. We've already gone over that - it was a brief distraction from the topic.

As for this:

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
If you don't think a link is worth +10% *don't take it*. If you are correct and it genuinely is worth nothing, this won't matter right? Your character loses no abilities for not having it. If you want a zero point feature for having to use two abilties together add "only while using second ability -0%" on one of them rather than link.
We're falling back into the 'it's wrong because it's not RAW', which is kind of pointless on a houserules discussion.

It's true that one option for an over-priced ability is 'pretend it doesn't exist and don't ever use it', but another option is 'figure out the correct price for it'. I much prefer the latter - it takes more effort, sure, but it's more rewarding.

Last edited by Ejidoth; 08-16-2010 at 08:09 AM.
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Old 08-16-2010, 08:14 AM   #17
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Default Re: Link House Rule

Ideally, there are a few specific things I'm hoping for from this discussion:

1) A good reason for Link to be as expensive as it is; or even better, a description of something bad that might happen if I implement my houserule. That is, I'm looking for honest criticism that isn't just the standard reactionary 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' defense of the RAW which tends to bog down house rules threads.

2) If it won't break anything, some confirmation from other people that have given it some thought. Possibly also some suggested modifications to make the house rule work even better.

3) Some discussion on the secondary part of my house rule, which nobody's even touched so far: the 'if two linked abilities have Costs FP 2, it only costs 2 FP to use both of them together' thing. I think it's balanced, but I honestly expected having to defend myself a lot more over the fallout from that, than having to defend myself against cutting the (obviously, I think) overpriced 10% Link cost.


On the topic of #3, I should explain my reasoning there. It goes similarly to the Link reasoning. Basically... if you have a 100 point ability with Costs Fatigue 2, it costs 90 points.
On the other hand, if you have a 100 point meta-ability (which is, say, really three passive abilities stuck together) and you want it to cost 2 fatigue to use, it ends up costing FP or more character points, because you either apply the Costs Fatigue 2 to all three sub-abilities and end up paying 6 instead of 2 to use it, or you apply Costs Fatigue 2 to one of the abilities and don't save as many points.
Now, this makes sense if the abilities are wholly unlinked; if each one can be independently active or inactive, it makes sense that you'd pay the fatigue individually for each one you have active. If they all have to be active at once, though, the savings for Costs Fatigue 2 should be the same whether it's a 100 point ability or a 100-point meta-ability made of a few different things.

Last edited by Ejidoth; 08-16-2010 at 08:18 AM.
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Old 08-16-2010, 08:22 AM   #18
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
It's true that one option for an over-priced ability is 'pretend it doesn't exist and don't ever use it', but another option is 'figure out the correct price for it'. I much prefer the latter - it takes more effort, sure, but it's more rewarding.
My point is if you think it's worth +0%, you are effectively saying it doesn't do anything useful. If it does nothing useful, what's the point of taking it no matter what it is priced at?

One can of course construct hypothetical situations in which it is both useful and disadvantageous, and those approximately balance, but you will have to make assumptions about the hypothetical situation which are even less generic than for the RAW. In effect, this converts the argument into not "Link should cost +0% instead of +10%" but "the benefits and drawbacks of Link are so variable it can't be assigned a fair cost as a straight percentage". Which I'd agree with, and for almost all enhancements and limitations, it's an unavoidable flaw of trying to apply simple modifiers across too many situations.
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Old 08-16-2010, 08:37 AM   #19
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
Ideally, there are a few specific things I'm hoping for from this discussion:

1) A good reason for Link to be as expensive as it is; or even better, a description of something bad that might happen if I implement my houserule.
Since very few prices are actually balanced so carefully that 10% is going to break them, the only real candidate is people with the +0% link getting an unfair advantage over people with exactly the same powers without it.

I think link is intended for is abilities that need to be activated in combat time. So say you have a DR forcefield and switchable Magic Resistance that require an action to ready. The character with Link can activate both at once, on his the first turn, the guy without it lacks one of those defenses until his second turn. Given that combats may only last a few seconds, this can be a pretty significant slice of the situations in which those abilities would be useful.

In a sense Link is something like a Fast Draw (Power) technique that lets you draw two of them at once. If that isn't something that sounds useful for this pair of powers, link is probably the wrong choice.
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Old 08-16-2010, 08:40 AM   #20
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Default Re: Link House Rule

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
Keep in mind, though, you can't use your aura of fire except for during those 10 seconds of shapeshifting, too. That's not worth nearly as much as an aura of fire you can use all the time, but you're actually paying more for it.
No, once you begin the transformation into a pink poodle, or whatever, you activate the fire aura. Until you turn off the power you burn. Link is NOT a limitation and your arguments have all treated link as if it were a limitation.

Limitations lessen abilities. Enhancements improve them. Basic rule of thumb here. You're apparently using your own definition of the word 'link' to impose a vulnerability of one trait to those of another. Unless the description of link EXPLICITLY attaches these limits onto the enhancement, it doesn't behave the way you're claiming it behaves.

Alternate abilities is a pretty hefty limitation (-80%) attacking one power should affect the others.

That Flame Aura works and Shapeshifting doesn't due to a static or Neutralize attack by a foe means Shapeshifting shuts down. The Static or Neutralize would have to specifically also take out Flame Auras or...

It does not take them out.
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