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Old 04-07-2015, 08:16 AM   #11
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
Someone who is on Dialysis would have Terminally Ill, and requires treatments in order to remain healthy.
Sounds legit.

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
Someone who requires a medicine to remain alive
Sure.

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
Would a heart transplanted into a person count as a mitigator, if it requires that the person take an immune-suppressant drug in order for the transplant to continue?
Yep.

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
What if the transplanted heart does NOT require any treatments, but is functional as if it were a normal heart?
A transplanted heart that requires no treatments is functionally the same as a normal heart. Getting such a transplant would remove Terminally Ill outright. A character who started play with it would simply have it as a Feature.

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
What about a heart that can cease to function, but can in general, come back online within 2 minutes automatically?
This has no bearing on Terminally Ill, and sounds like something akin to Extra Life or Unkillable 2.
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Old 04-07-2015, 08:26 AM   #12
Zeta Blaze
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
No.

No.

If you don't have a condition that will kill you without something you might not have, then you aren't terminally ill.
I agree that his plan looks fishy, but how would you model someone whose heart stops for two minutes periodically and who will be fine if they can deal with that bearing in mind that under normal circumstances people suffer brain damage at about the one minute mark with zero blood flow.
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Old 04-07-2015, 08:35 AM   #13
davidtmoore
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

Yep to pretty much all of it. As well as treatments and devices, I also allow Pacts, skill or trait rolls, and pretty much anything the players' creativity can come up with, if there isn't a more RAW way of handling the problem. Basically, I elide the specified Mitigators in the limitation and use a simplified list:

Mitigator is not a significant inconvenience: -70%
Mitigator is an occasional inconvenience: -65%
Mitigator is a fair inconvenience: -60%

Way I see it, it's like this because it's got to be a heavy limitation (ie. -60% or more), since "you don't suffer from this disadvantage" is a pretty heavy limitation on a disadvantage, and any player's going to look to game the mitigator as much as possible to limit its impact; but it's still hanging over the player's head, ready for the GM to exploit, so it shouldn't be too big a limitation (ie. more than -70%). So you got a narrow range of limitations to play with.

This, to my mind, frees me up wonderfully. I don't have to sweat whether Mitigator: Pact, Vow, Cannot Kill, -65% should be worth more or less than Mitigator: Roll vs Meditation, -65%: I just gotta ask if both are worse than "monthly treatment" and better than "glasses."
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Old 04-07-2015, 08:39 AM   #14
davidtmoore
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze View Post
I agree that his plan looks fishy, but how would you model someone whose heart stops for two minutes periodically and who will be fine if they can deal with that bearing in mind that under normal circumstances people suffer brain damage at about the one minute mark with zero blood flow.
Well, assuming you use the Heart Attack affliction rules as soon as the heart stops, and someone has to restart it (or there's a skill or trait roll or something), then this seems a fair model to me.
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Old 04-07-2015, 09:34 AM   #15
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by davidtmoore View Post
This, to my mind, frees me up wonderfully. I don't have to sweat whether Mitigator: Pact, Vow, Cannot Kill, -65% should be worth more or less than Mitigator: Roll vs Meditation, -65%: I just gotta ask if both are worse than "monthly treatment" and better than "glasses."
It really does work better if you forget about Mitigator and have them buy Not Disadvantaged with limitations. There's a whole host of rules for pricing advantage limitations based on how inconvenient they are. Glasses are a gadget limitation, regular treatments are a requires maintenance limitation, but with this model you have some guidelines for all kinds of other conditions.

Roll vs. Meditation for example is Requires Skill Roll, that's normally -5% or -10% depending on which attribute you base it on, so as a Mitigator ought to be -90 or -95%.
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Old 04-07-2015, 11:01 AM   #16
davidtmoore
 
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Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
It really does work better if you forget about Mitigator and have them buy Not Disadvantaged with limitations. There's a whole host of rules for pricing advantage limitations based on how inconvenient they are. Glasses are a gadget limitation, regular treatments are a requires maintenance limitation, but with this model you have some guidelines for all kinds of other conditions.

Roll vs. Meditation for example is Requires Skill Roll, that's normally -5% or -10% depending on which attribute you base it on, so as a Mitigator ought to be -90 or -95%.
That was the third-edition solution, IIRC, and I'm assuming it was scrapped for balance.

Not Disadvantaged isn't the same as Advantaged; the former you try to make as accessible as possible while still keeping the price down, while the latter you try and make as cheap as possible while still keeping it usable.

An advantage where you need to be holding a silver ankh, with your legs crossed, and shouting a prayer to Ahura-Mazda? No problem; I'll carry around an Ankh and get with the leg-crossing and the prayer when it's time to get my laserbeam on. A disadvantage that afflicts you whenever you're not doing all three things? Big time pain in the bum. Ultimately, an advantage is only an advantage when you use it - even "always on" things like DR only become important when someone hurts you - while a disadvantage is a disadvantage whenever the GM wants.

The 60%-70% range suits mitigated disadvantages better than the Not Disadvantaged model did. Far as I'm concerned, anyway; YMMV.
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Old 04-07-2015, 11:30 AM   #17
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
If Mitigator for Terminally Ill is permitted (and the rules even give a specific example on page 112), then the question becomes one of whether or not the mitigator can be anything OTHER than some form of treatment.
Yes to all of your questions, I'm fairly sure. It might not always be a -70% Mitigator, though. Sometimes it might be more appropriate to use 65%, 60%, 55%, 75% or even 80%.

But, basically, yes. Go for it!
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Old 04-07-2015, 12:30 PM   #18
RyanW
 
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Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by Nereidalbel View Post
If the GM isn't going to enforce the effects of a disadvantage, they shouldn't allow it in their games, period.
Which is half of why I don't allow Terminally Ill, even with Mitigator. Either the GM will enforce it, meaning the player will eventually make a new character*, or he doesn't, meaning it was a free pile of points.

* In which case, really, why would "will be retiring from adventuring in a few weeks" not be worth the same number of points?
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Old 04-07-2015, 12:39 PM   #19
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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An advantage where you need to be holding a silver ankh, with your legs crossed, and shouting a prayer to Ahura-Mazda? No problem; I'll carry around an Ankh and get with the leg-crossing and the prayer when it's time to get my laserbeam on. A disadvantage that afflicts you whenever you're not doing all three things? Big time pain in the bum.
So your argument is Accessible (only while praying cross-legged and holding a silver ankh) isn't worth much as a limitation on an advantage? I can see a case for that, but that seems to be the inverse of your point, the rules *would* give you a decent discount for that (probably -30%), which would make Not Disadvantaged with that limitation a non-trivial problem (it's functionally equivalent to a -70% Mitigator, right in the range you want). The case you seem to need to change is dropping it back to -0% for the advantage....

I will admit that Accessibility requiring some sort of complicated rituals is one of the weaker cases, but as this points out, it's one of the more questionable price issues for limiting advantages *too*.
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Old 04-07-2015, 12:45 PM   #20
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Mitigator for Terminally Ill?

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
* In which case, really, why would "will be retiring from adventuring in a few weeks" not be worth the same number of points?
It is, as long as the GM is going to enforce it.

The fundamental assumption of a lot of disadvantages is that the player *wants* to keep playing this character. If you don't, then On the Edge or Easy to Kill or Vow (never refuse a suicide mission) or anything else that make it more likely you will die aren't problems either.
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