Mailanka's Musings -- GURPS Content Post

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by SCAR

The problem I see is whether you can count the cost of Divine Favor 12 [110 points] in your 'base form' against the cost of the Alternate Form Template.
While you are correct that you don't have access to Communion (i.e. the Divine Favor), you don't have access because you are using an Alternate Ability of the Divine Favour - being the Learned Prayer 'Lesser Avatar' (which happens to be an Alternate Form).
If your Alternate Form does not have Divine Favor, it doesn't have access to any of the Learned Prayers (Alternate Abilities), so you can't use the 'Lesser Avatar' ability to invoke the Alternate Form.

I really hope it does work the way you've written it up, and there are too many 'Alternates' for me to properly wrap my head around how this works.
Any clarification would be great.

Here's a more complete post discussing the theory behind it.

The crux of it is this: Alternate Form is not an alternate ability of Divine Favor. It's just Alternate Form.

You have Divine Favor 16 for [200]. You can have Heavenly Zapping 6d [100] as an alternate ability for [20] points (1/5). We call that a learned prayer, but it's really an alternate ability. While you are heavenly zapping people, you can't use Divine Favor to heal people or... whatever. You also can't use any other Learned Prayers. That's how Alternate Abilities work.

You have Alternate Form. Alternate form is 15 points + the cost of the new form, if it exceeds your "base template." For example, if we replace your racial template with that of a mouse, the cost is 15 points. We can do this in a more extreme form, though, mixing and matching stuff ("You're a mouse, but you have your normal ST!"), however we like, as long as we follow the rules: 15 points + the cost of the new form if it exceeds the old form (well, I believe it's actually 90% of that cost, but you get the idea).

The Avatar forms in Communion cost 15 points + the cost of the new form, which is your old character traits, plus new traits, minus Divine favor. This is not an alternative ability (it doesn't get the 1/5 cost discount), though I've treated it as a "learned prayer" because it functions in a very similar way. But it's actually not. It's an alternate form that exists within the framework of the Divine Power set, but is not actually "under" Divine Favor, except in the sense that a Divine Patron could certainly change your form, if he wished.

EDIT: The post above now has a diagram that I hope clarifies how it works.

[SCAR]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Here's a more complete post discussing the theory behind it.

The crux of it is this: Alternate Form is not an alternate ability of Divine Favor. It's just Alternate Form.

Yes, thanks - that clears it up. (and I remember previously reading you post with the Pope Hulk!)

I suppose technically its the Divine Favor which is an alternate to the Alternate Form, being part of the 'Base Form' cost against which you price the Alternate Form.

[lvalero]

Some ideas for additional archetypes :)

Ego Communion.


The redeemed

You was a beast, you was in the wrong side of the community. Maybe you race is inherently evil, or you have been a former thief, or you have been a corrupted policeman, or you have dedicated you life to persecute the good people for wrong reasons. You are not more, you have seen the light and changed sides. You have the resolution of the converse. You know the paths of the enemy and you use this knowledge to fight against the evil. You don't use evil ways! But you have the "weapon of knowledge" in your arsenal as you know how the enemy thinks and reacts, their laws and their weakness.

Inspired by Angel from "Buffy", Saint Paul, Drizzt do Urden, ...

The white king

You are in charge. But with great power comes great responibility. You really cares for those under your position. Perharps, you disguise yourself to live as a commoner sometimes, to really understand their needs. You only choose your companions based on their merits and their moral. You don't care much about blood rights, or old traditions. However you do respect the old traditions as long as they are not bad for the common people. People really loves you, but sometimes you are very very far away for their real problems. This bothers and worries you.

It's not uncommon that the white king has a dark whisperer as a close friend! (see below)


Dark Communion.

The fallen hero

You should have been the hero of the history. You were destined to great deeds. The gods, or the prophets, or the scriptures seemed to point you as the new salviour... They were wrong! Or maybe you didn't understand well the signs. The fault was only yours. Your selfishness, your pride, your fears or your survival instincts made you take the wrong path. You probably was a good fellow at the beginning, but you are not longer one. You are now a traitor and a villain. Inspired in Lord Soth, Annakin, Saruman, and many others.

The fallen hero is the dark reflection of the redeemed.

The dark whisperer

You are the one with the real power, but you prefer not to show it directly. You are the dark whisperer, the good friend of the emperor, the counselor, the ambassador, the priest who gives confession, the retired teacher that gives advice to his former students. The people who knows about you fears you... but most people don't know who you are or your real power.

Inspired by Vampire the Masquerade "Lasombra" clan, Grima Wormtongue, Richelieu, and many others.

[ericthered]

I just had a strange thought. Communion may actually be fairly close to the way most magic works in Lord of the Rings: archetypes, deep abstracted power that only shows up at critical moments, and so forth.

[Mailanka]

Today, I have the Paths of Broken Communion for you. Happy GURPS Day!

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by lvalero

Some ideas for additional archetypes :)

Ego Communion.


The redeemed

You was a beast, you was in the wrong side of the community. Maybe you race is inherently evil, or you have been a former thief, or you have been a corrupted policeman, or you have dedicated you life to persecute the good people for wrong reasons. You are not more, you have seen the light and changed sides. You have the resolution of the converse. You know the paths of the enemy and you use this knowledge to fight against the evil. You don't use evil ways! But you have the "weapon of knowledge" in your arsenal as you know how the enemy thinks and reacts, their laws and their weakness.

Inspired by Angel from "Buffy", Saint Paul, Drizzt do Urden, ...

Dark Communion.

The fallen hero

You should have been the hero of the history. You were destined to great deeds. The gods, or the prophets, or the scriptures seemed to point you as the new salviour... They were wrong! Or maybe you didn't understand well the signs. The fault was only yours. Your selfishness, your pride, your fears or your survival instincts made you take the wrong path. You probably was a good fellow at the beginning, but you are not longer one. You are now a traitor and a villain. Inspired in Lord Soth, Annakin, Saruman, and many others.

The fallen hero is the dark reflection of the redeemed.

I'm picking these out not because they're better or worse than the rest, but because I want to highlight how I intend paths and how they can work.

A path can be a character archetype. You could say "Oh, I'd rather play a Righteous Crusader Jedi than an Exiled Master Jedi!" You can treat them as a sort of "prestige class" for Communion, if you wish.

They can also represent the paths people tend to follow. That is, things like milestones and symbols become ways of building characters. Say you're a Psion in tune with Communion and you meet a soldier who wears an eyepatch and heavy armor with blue tones. Your knowledge of Communion (if you have Hidden Lore (Communion), Occultism or the right forms of Philosophy) might recognize that he is inadvertently walking the path of Righteous Hero and you have a good idea of what his Destiny might be, even without access to ESP ("You are destined to save these people from the threat that they face." "How can you know that?" "I understand Communion.")

But you can also treat it as a source of power or a form of religion. These represent ideals that psions can draw from, patterns of power that they can follow and exploit. I offer you the idea of a cult.

An obvious example of this might be the Sith and Jedi orders. The Jedi very precisely pattern themselves on the Righteous Crusader and the Exiled Master. They seem to do it intentionally, knowing that there is power there. The Sith seem to pattern themselves on the Path of Death. They know that by killing those close to them, by wearing black and wielding red, they become more powerful.

I bring this up because there's a concept called the "Grey Jedi," someone who chooses to walk a middle path. I've tinkered with this for awhile, this idea that there's a cult that follows 2-3 paths and their members move between those paths as necessary, such as witch craft moving between the maiden (the Beautiful Fool), the Mother (The Bound Princess) and the Crone (Death, or perhaps the Mystic Tyrant).

Your Fallen Hero and Redeemed make for an excellent source of power for a Grey Jedi order. The heroes there would deliberately abandon their comrades and become villainous and then deliberately turn against the evil forces they had sided with. It would be a lonely path of alienation, but one where the character always turns at a vital moment, shifting the balance of fate between both forms of Ego and Id communion. They might even do this for a greater reason: to fight Broken Communion. Id has more power to defeat Broken Communion, so by becoming a Fallen Hero, the character has the strength necessary to defeat the demons of Broken Communion, and then when that's done, he could shift back to the Redeemed and Ego Communion, to rebuild the community that the demons of Broken Communion had riven.

Jedi would call them evil. Sith would call them fools. But neither would understand the power of what it is they're doing.

Originally Posted by ericthered

I just had a strange thought. Communion may actually be fairly close to the way most magic works in Lord of the Rings: archetypes, deep abstracted power that only shows up at critical moments, and so forth.

Lord of the Rings, like Star Wars, has a deeply mythic structure. I suppose you could say Communion as a concept works very well whenever you want to give a story these deep, mythic undertones.

[Mailanka]

Today, a look at how Communion interacts with objects in Psionic Resonance and Relics.

[Mailanka]

I've noticed that I've been getting the occasional surge of viewers on my earlier posts in sequence, which suggests I've been getting new readers who want to know more about what Psi-Wars is. For those who want a quick primer on which posts matter and what they're about, I've put together a Psi-Wars Primer, which I'll maintain as Psi-Wars moves forward. I'd like to eventually include links to any Psi-Wars documents I create (I've been building the "final" version of psi-wars onto my website, but I'm dissatisfied with the result).

So, if you're interested but now sure where to start, there ya go!

[DouglasCole]

You forgot to post a link here to what may well be your Best Post Ever.

The Riddle of Systems


It's not strictly GURPS, which is why it's not here, I presume. But it's awesome, and deserves attention.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You forgot to post a link here to what may well be your Best Post Ever.

The Riddle of Systems


It's not strictly GURPS, which is why it's not here, I presume. But it's awesome, and deserves attention.

I appreciate it your approval.

It wasn't GURPS, indeed, and it was something that was keeping me up in the night, so I got up, slammed it out and posted it. It's the sort of thing I rant about to my friends, and rather than rant, I posted. I actually closed it out, went back to bed and when I got up, it hadn't really received much of a response and I felt guilty, like I had been self-indulgent and shouldn't have posted it. Then I came home from work, and it was at +11. It's at +16 now. So some people agree with it. It is my best rated post thus far.