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Old 03-15-2018, 04:52 AM   #1
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
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Default Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

OK affliction on larger (living) targets hasn't really come up for me before, and I may well have missed something obvious because this kind of advantage isn't really my area. But is there some kind of penalty or increased difficulty for afflicting larger living targets?

Similar to the increase costs for targeting larger then SM0 targets with regular spells.

I guess it matters what the infliction does, but i'm thinking in terms of stuff that resisted with HT stats like heart attacks.

(I've seen the rules for the adding SM to HT for unlving targets in Powers, but they seem to be explicitly for unliving etc)

Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-15-2018 at 05:18 AM.
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Old 03-15-2018, 12:49 PM   #2
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

I generally have every SM difference give a +1 to the resistance roll of the target and require that the Affliction have enough area to cover the target with targets of greater size than SM+0. A SM+4 creature should receive a +4 to resist Afflictions and Affliction should have Area Effect 4 to have a chance of targeting them.
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Old 03-15-2018, 06:20 PM   #3
Kallatari
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

By the RAW, a target's SM has no impact on the use of Affliction. So if you have Affliction (Heart Attack), it's equally useful against an ant, a human, Godzilla, or even Unicron.

GURPS Powers introduced an exception if the target is Homegenous, in which case it may add it's SM to its roll to resist. This was meant to prevent you from, say, afflicting the entire planet with an Affliction. But it doesn't resolve the issue you pointed out.

It gets more complicated when trying to build a poison, where the size of the target would represent a change in the delay of a poison, or the number of doses required to affect them or give modifiers to their roll. You could rule it a "special effect" of declaring your attack to be a poison, but I personally think there should be a change in cost if it changes the effectiveness of the Affliction trait (which, arguably, I think it does).

The simple houserule solution is to have some sort of "dosage" modifier, where you add/subtract SM to the target's resistance. You would need to decided if that should be the default setting and there is an enhancement to remove it, or if it shouldn't be included and that could just be a new special limitation... assuming it doesn't work out to a +0% feature in which case it doesn't matter.

Although I haven't really tested it, I'm leaning toward SM being a modifier as the default feature (to everything not just Homogenous), and that being able to ignore the target's SM so it doesn't give a bonus should be a +50% modifier, based on the cost of Cosmic (rule breaking).

When dealing with FP cost, that's a different dilemma. I've come up with my own houserule there, which wasn't directly aimed at this but I suppose may be relevant. GURPS Powers introduced a feature where innate FP cost of an ability are multiplied by area if an Area Effect/Cone are added to it, but FP cost from the Cost Fatigue limitation are not. So, the innate FP cost of the Healing advantage would be multiplied by the area, but an Innate ATtack with Cost Fatigue 1 would only cost 1 FP even if Area Effect is added (thus not matching spells for Energy Cost)

Basing myself off of this, I just made that the default for all FP costs, whether the innate cost of a trait or the FP cost added by the Cost FP limitation, was multiplied by the area as my houserule. That allowed me to get an increase FP cost for larger Area Effects, just like a mage spell. I then created a Flat FP Cost +50% enhancement if you don't want the area to modified the fatigue cost.

While I didn't explicitly state it for Affliction, I suppose an Affliction with a Cost FP could multiply the FP cost by the SM+1 when dealing with larger targets. This would be essentially the same default assumption of multiplying for larger area of effects of my previous houserule. This would make them cost like mage spells. I'd also use the +50% to not have the FP cost go up.

Keep in mind, having both of these rules in effect makes Affliction somewhat weaker against larger foes. They get their SM as a bonus to resistance and they make you pay more FP (if applicable) for them. To get rid of that, you'd need two +50% enhancements, increasing the cost of the Affliction by an additional 10 CP... not all that much in the grand scheme of things, but does add up if you have multiple afflictions.

Hope that's useful.
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Old 03-15-2018, 06:26 PM   #4
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

It's a reasonable house rule to add SM to resistance rolls, or even relative SM, but it's a house rule.
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Old 03-16-2018, 12:42 AM   #5
Tomsdad
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

cool cheers everyone, (and yep I think I'd go with the +SM house rule)

TD
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Old 03-16-2018, 12:51 AM   #6
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kallatari View Post
By the RAW, a target's SM has no impact on the use of Affliction. So if you have Affliction (Heart Attack), it's equally useful against an ant, a human, Godzilla, or even Unicron.
Assuming Unicron doesn't have Immunity to Metabolic Hazards, or possibly Feature: Cybertronian physiology (affected by roughly equivalent but completely separate biological analogues).
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Old 03-18-2018, 08:02 PM   #7
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
Assuming Unicron doesn't have Immunity to Metabolic Hazards.
Afflictions are not required to be metabolic.
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Old 03-18-2018, 10:06 PM   #8
Rupert
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I generally have every SM difference give a +1 to the resistance roll of the target and require that the Affliction have enough area to cover the target with targets of greater size than SM+0. A SM+4 creature should receive a +4 to resist Afflictions and Affliction should have Area Effect 4 to have a chance of targeting them.
That seems like large creatures get to double-dip to me, and given how much extra levels of Affliction cost, it's pretty rough on the owner of the power.
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Old 03-19-2018, 04:49 PM   #9
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Possibly dumb question regarding Affliction on large living targets

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fanny View Post
Anything not metabolic would probably have to fit under some other criteria (like electrical) that you would need to tailor your ability to.
Canonically, Resistant only applies to afflictions with one of Blood Agent, Contact Agent, Follow-Up, or Respiratory Agent, though I usually allow it for Malediction as well.
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