GURPS ATE1 Template File

[ericbsmith]

I just found a minor bug in the Quirk Selection lists for all the templates which causes some quirks to be replaced with disadvantages that share the same name. I've re-uploaded the main ATE1 data file to fix the issue.

http://www.motoslave.net/gcarepo/view.php?pkgid=188

[Bruno]

Remove Unnecessary Traits is removing the Innate Attack (Breath) skill, which is required for two mutations (Bellows Lungs and Mighty Roar).

[PK]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Remove Unnecessary Traits is removing the Innate Attack (Breath) skill, which is required for two mutations (Bellows Lungs and Mighty Roar).

I'd just leave all the Innate Attacks in there, just to be safe. There's one official mutation coming out . . . let's just say "soon" . . . that uses Innate Attack (Projectile) because I could not find a way to justify it using (Breath), despite trying.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by PK

I'd just leave all the Innate Attacks in there, just to be safe. There's one official mutation coming out . . . let's just say "soon" . . . that uses Innate Attack (Projectile) because I could not find a way to justify it using (Breath), despite trying.

Alrighty, I'll get these fixed.

[Bruno]

The Hulk template is doing something really weird for the Extra ST advantage - it's not using the one in your GCA library, it's rolling a bespoke one that costs 9/18. This means if you change your mind and take Gigantism off your character, the Extra ST advantage does not adjust its cost. Likewise, if you have houserules for the price of ST (as my GM does), it utterly ignores them.

Why are we not using the library one with the library-provided Size Modifier modifier that's supposed to do the adjustments for you? It worked just fine in the Dungeon Fantasy templates. :/

EDIT: ... no, somewhere along the line it seems that Barbarian is using a hard-coded advantage. At least it's actually using the modifiers though.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Why are we not using the library one with the library-provided Size Modifier modifier that's supposed to do the adjustments for you? It worked just fine in the Dungeon Fantasy templates. :/

EDIT: ... no, somewhere along the line it seems that Barbarian is using a hard-coded advantage. At least it's actually using the modifiers though.

It has to use the #newitem() directive to create a new Extra ST advantage because the default one does not include the Size limitation and the only way to automatically add the Size limitation in a selectx() dialog is by creating a #newitem(). The author of the ATE file chose to just reprice the advantage rather than include the Size limitation on it, and I hadn't bothered to go back and rewrite it to have the size limitation instead.

Honestly, though, I've always seen the Extra [ATTRIBUTE] advantages as being there as necessary place-holders. If you want to remove Gigantism then remove Extra ST and increase the characters ST attribute first. I think I will, however, go back and set it up to correctly use the Size limitation.

[ericbsmith]

I've updated both my After The End data files to fix the previously mentioned issues.
After The End 1: Wastelanders

After The End Remove Unnecessary Traits

In addition these fixes the character templates contain the first run of a new feature I've been integrating into the character templates for the next Data Update - all templates now contain a list-injection in the Advantages, Disadvantages, and some Skill selections allowing you to inject traits you wish to make available in most templates. This allows you to subtly push traits you want to be taken (for me it's Luck, Combat Reflexes, Fit, and Sense of Duty (Friends) I tend to push).

This works particularly well in Advantages and Disadvantages, but not so well in skills. The reason being many of the older templates lack sufficient skill selections to allow a reasonable place to inject a random assortment of skills into - having random skills show up in a dialog that says "pick two weapon skills" just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I have tried to make sure most templates have at least one skill injection point, though this was far more difficult before sufficient Background Skill selections were included in all templates.

This also helps alleviate one minor "bug" I've seen with a lot of templates, especially older ones - they want you to take X points of traits, where X is a multiple of 5 or -5; then they offer traits that have a cost in multiples of 5 or -5, except for one or two traits that aren't. i.e. Appearance cost is 4/level, and sometimes isn't even paired with a single Perk (or sometimes is paired with just a single Perk or 1/level advantage), so either it is impossible to take Appearance in the dialogs and make the cost come out right or every single Handsome character just happens to have Night Vision +1. Now you can inject a few Perks and Quirks, allowing some of those off-cost traits to be taken more easily.

What follows is a list I've been using for testing, and really what I plan on including in my future use. Note that I only use the Background skills here; Primary and Secondary skills tend to be very template or genre dependent (e.g. in Dungeon Fantasy most Secondary Skill selections with an injection are for combat skills), so I don't bother including them here.

************************************************************************************************************************
[L I S T S] <<< NOTE This should be LISTS, without spaces, but the the forum software
// uses that code. You will need to fix the section header and remove this NOTE.
************************************************************************************************************************
<GMAdvantages>
AD:Acute Hearing,
AD:Acute Taste and Smell,
AD:Acute Vision,
AD:Combat Reflexes,
AD:Extra Fatigue Points,
AD:Extra Hit Points,
AD:Extra Perception,
AD:Extra Will,
AD:Fit,
AD:Luck,
AD:Signature Gear,
AD:Trading Character Points for Money,
PE:Alcohol Tolerance,
PE:Autotrance,
PE:Deep Sleeper,
PE:Honest Face,
PE:No Hangover,
PE:Penetrating Voice,
PE:Shtick,
PE:_New Perk

<GMDisadvantages>
DI:Sense of Duty (Friends),
QU:_New Quirk,
QU:Alcohol Intolerance,
QU:Code of Honor,
QU:Delusion,
QU:Dislikes [specify],
QU:Expression,
QU:Habit,
QU:Likes [specify],
QU:Obsession,
QU:Trademark,
QU:Vow

<GMPrimarySkills>

<GMSecondarySkills>

<GMBackgroundSkills>
SK:Axe/Mace,
SK:Beam Weapons (Pistol),
SK:Beam Weapons (Rifle),
SK:Bow,
SK:Brawling,
SK:Broadsword,
SK:Carousing,
SK:Climbing,
SK:Cooking,
SK:Crossbow,
SK:Diplomacy,
SK:Driving (Automobile),
SK:Fast-Draw (Knife),
SK:Fast-Draw (Pistol),
SK:Fast-Draw (Sword),
SK:Fast-Talk,
SK:First Aid,
SK:Forced Entry,
SK:Guns (Pistol),
SK:Guns (Rifle),
SK:Guns (Shotgun),
SK:Hiking,
SK:Holdout,
SK:Interrogation,
SK:Intimidation,
SK:Knife,
SK:Leadership,
SK:Merchant,
SK:Observation,
SK:Riding,
SK:Scrounging,
SK:Search,
SK:Sex Appeal,
SK:Shortsword,
SK:Soldier,
SK:Spacer,
SK:Staff,
SK:Stealth,
SK:Streetwise,
SK:Swimming,
SK:Throwing,
SK:Wrestling

[ericbsmith]

I've updated both my After The End data files to fix one issue and try to mitigate another issue I ran into.
After The End 1: Wastelanders

After The End Remove Unnecessary Traits

The issue that's fixed is that the skill injection lists weren't working as intended. I had intended for the list that's created to include the SK: prefix, which would allow for injecting spells if desired as well. However, the code that actually injected the skills also included the prefix, resulting in the skills not showing up at all because they had two prefixes.

The issue I'm mitigating is the Error 6: Overflow issue that TorgSmith ran into a while back. The problem is that, in using the skill injections with a couple of the templates in this data file it *IS* easily possible to inject enough skills to reach the buffer size and get the Overflow error. I did a couple tweaks to the skill listings to reduce the amount of text that is being used, allowing for slightly longer skill lists. Just be aware that this only gives a little more headroom, it does not remove the possibility of hitting the buffer limit, so if you do run into the Error 6: Overflow issue while using any of these templates while also using a GM Skill injection the likely cause is that your skill list is just too long and the only current fix is to reduce the number of skills on the list or to just not load your custom list for use with that template.

What I did to reduce the text size is actually pretty simple, I removed the "downto 1pts" from all the #codes() commands. There is no real reason to limit the lower bound of points spent on a skill to 1 point, as that is already the lower bound of a skill, and in eliminating it I saved 13 characters per skill added (if you include the comma an space that precedes the codeword). If you're injecting 20 skills, and the list already had 20 skills, that's a reduction of 500 characters from the buffer. Sounds silly, but that's memory management in a limited memory space for you.