GURPS Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by scc

This is great! I've been meaning to post asking about adding Wisdom to GURPS, particularly DF, because I've never really liked the one mental stat model and setting things up so that not all spellcasters use the one stat is a good idea, but using a dedicated, and unitary, magical stat doesn't sit well with me.

There is a Holiness Stat in the suggestions, its rather powerful in that it includes True Faith

[Greg 1]

I must have this one!

One thing I would love to see is a collection of examples of these rules being used to tailor the GURPS rules to specific campaigns and settings.

[bert]

So, when adding Sanity (San) as a secondary attribute (based on IQ, or preferably Will if the latter is independent from IQ), I have always felt that the most appropriate way of losing San is the following: the number of San lost equal the margin of failure on the Will roll.

How would you guys do that?

Second question/idea: if we were to emulate the Sanity mechanism in the big famous horror RPG, we would actually not roll against Will, but against San... however, I think this might be a bad idea, as the downward spiral would be too strong. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that if you are already scared and off-balance, following Fright checks will be harder to manage. I would simply ignore this, or add a flat -1 for every recently failed San/Will check. Comments?

[dataweaver]

Use the Stress sand Derangement rules from GURPS Horror (pp.141–142) as your starting point, but have Sanity substitute for Will where Sanity-Blasting Fright Checks are concerned; possibly just call them Sanity Checks. In that system, you don't “lose Sanity”; you build Derangement until it overwhelms you.

[Gnomasz]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Use the Stress sand Derangement rules from GURPS Horror (pp.141–142)

Shouldn't Stress Sand Derangement rules be in GURPS High-Tech: Glass and Concrete?

I'm sorry, this fruit was hanging way too low.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by bert

So, when adding Sanity (San) as a secondary attribute (based on IQ, or preferably Will if the latter is independent from IQ), I have always felt that the most appropriate way of losing San is the following: the number of San lost equal the margin of failure on the Will roll.

How would you guys do that?

Second question/idea: if we were to emulate the Sanity mechanism in the big famous horror RPG, we would actually not roll against Will, but against San... however, I think this might be a bad idea, as the downward spiral would be too strong. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that if you are already scared and off-balance, following Fright checks will be harder to manage. I would simply ignore this, or add a flat -1 for every recently failed San/Will check. Comments?

It's been a while but the distinguishing game effect of Sanity in CoC was that it was a limited and expendable resource. You took psychic damage just like physical damage and you needed time to recover. No matter how brave you were, there was always a breaking point. If I wanted to replicate that in GURPS, I'd treat Sanity as psychic Hit Points defaulting to Will. Loss of Sanity would cause shock just like physical damage, losing more than half your base Sanity in one blow could cause Knockdown and Stunning, Sanity at 0 would leave you catatonic, etc. Fast Talk, Leadership or Psychology could act as First Aid for Sanity. Psychology would be the equivalent of Physician as well. I'd probably leave Fright checks as is - Sanity checks in CoC are on a percentile/linear system which handles gradual decline better than a bell curve of 3-18.

[dataweaver]

The aforementioned Stress and Derangement rules function more or less like that: the Stress penalty is recovered at a rate comparable to Fatigue recovery and can be thought of as “psychic fatigue”, and the Derangement penalty is recovered at a rate comparable to The healing of HP loss, and can be thought of as “psychic hit points”. All that's needed are psychotherapy rules that are to Derangement as Physician is to HPs.

Even if you decide not to use those rules, you should at least review them, as they've already addressed a number of the issues that you'll want to address with your own Sanity system.

[dataweaver]

Looking over Charisma, a thought struck me: in addition to being the Attribute that controls Social Intelligence skills, maybe it should also be the Attribute that you roll Lahaina for certain Advantages: for example, Empathy. More generally, maybe the Reassigning Skills section should have also addressed the reassignment of advantages that feature attribute rolls.

The Talents section even suggests the possibility of folding Empath and Empathy together into a new Empathy attribute; though my own thought on that matter is that Talents work better when converted into new Secondary Characteristics. That said, I could see Empathy as a Secondary Characteristic that's based off of the Charisma Attribute.

Thoughts?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Looking over Charisma, a thought struck me: in addition to being the Attribute that controls Social Intelligence skills, maybe it should also be the Attribute that you roll Lahaina for certain Advantages: for example, Empathy. More generally, maybe the Reassigning Skills section should have also addressed the reassignment of advantages that feature attribute rolls.

The Talents section even suggests the possibility of folding Empath and Empathy together into a new Empathy attribute; though my own thought on that matter is that Talents work better when converted into new Secondary Characteristics. That said, I could see Empathy as a Secondary Characteristic that's based off of the Charisma Attribute.

Thoughts?

Including Turning with Holiness and the Empathy as an attribute on p. 27 suggest the option.
I'm currently toying with two variations. One for Spirit Empathy and one for regular.

[bert]

Thanks for all the suggestions with regard to the Sanity rules! :)