An Odious Subject

[Railstar]

How do you handle Odious Personal Habit and how often it, the habit, comes up?

I’ve known some players (including former-me…) who would try to get free-points by taking Odious Personal Habits and then doing the sensible thing and practising them in secret whenever possible… thereby avoiding the penalties it causes because nobody’s there to witness them.

My current policy is to rule any OPH is by default “on” when the character interacts with anyone, and it’s a special case when the habit does not penalise reaction penalties. Essentially lack of discretion is one of the elements of OPH. In my mind it solves the issue of people trying to gain free-points for taking

However, on the other hand, I’ve seen templates like the Lilitu in GURPS Horror, who have Odious Racial Habit (Killing Babies) – now obviously, this is the kind of activity that is usually not done in public…

So how would you handle something like that? What experiences do you have with similar Odious Personal/Racial Habits being run in-game?

My current instinct is to say if it’s an Odious Habit, then they’d probably drop hints about it in casual conversation, so the Lilitu would be expected to regularly talk about the child they recently stole the breath from or something of that nature. What are your thoughts?

I did try to search for a thread on this topic already... I didn't find it, but what I did find was some absolutely gold examples of -15 point Odious Personal Habits...

[Anaraxes]

I agree with you that if the OPH only happens in secret, off-screen, then it's not worth points, or at most it's a Quirk.

If the character is hiding their OPH of stealing babies' breath, then they have really have Secret (OPH).

Players shouldn't take Disads that they aren't willing to play. The idea is to encourage interesting characters, not for powergamers to try and munchkin their way around the system. Traits that never actually affect the game aren't interesting. If the player doesn't want to play the OPH, one alternative is just to take it off the character sheet and put the character into character debt, with the next N xp going toward buying off the unwanted Disad.

Another possibility, if the player really didn't realize what they were getting into, is to modify the character and replace the Disad with something the player is in fact willing to play.

[Kelly Pedersen]

I think in the case of the Lilitu or other creatures with similar unpleasant habits, the difference is that it's not an Odious Personal Habit, as such, it's an Odious Racial Habit. Everybody knows Lilitu eat babies, that's part of the mythology about them. In fact, an individual Lilitu might not even eat babies herself, and she'd still get the penalty from the OPH, because "everyone knows it's true". She'd have to buy off the OPH from the template, and possibly even buy a Reputation, "Lilitu who doesn't eat babies", to avoid suffering that.

[Boomerang]

In my opinion the reaction modifier should apply regardless of how well they hide their weird behaviour. In my experience plenty of people give off a weird vibe even though their weird behaviour is never witnessed directly.

[patchwork]

Yeah, "avoiding the penalties because there's nobody there to witness them" is not how it works. You got the points because everyone knows about it.

If I had a player do that, my response would be "I see you're working really hard to suppress your OPH; so I guess you just spent these xp to buy it down then!" while the rest of the party gets to spend their xp however they like. I wouldn't even necessarily regard that as a problem - nothing wrong with taking a Disad at start for a few more points and intending to buy it off ASAP - but if they were of the "free points" mentality, a few sessions where everyone else gets xp and they don't tends to sort things quickly enough.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I think in the case of the Lilitu or other creatures with similar unpleasant habits, the difference is that it's not an Odious Personal Habit, as such, it's an Odious Racial Habit. Everybody knows Lilitu eat babies, that's part of the mythology about them. In fact, an individual Lilitu might not even eat babies herself, and she'd still get the penalty from the OPH, because "everyone knows it's true". She'd have to buy off the OPH from the template, and possibly even buy a Reputation, "Lilitu who doesn't eat babies", to avoid suffering that.

That's a good solution for Odious Racial Habits, provided the creature is immediately recognisable as such. What about cases where the creature can pass for human (or at least something less-horrific)? Or what if, like a Lilitu in a modern-day campaign, they're something exotic enough that most people wouldn't know about that sort of thing?

However, I do really like the Reputation idea. I could see that being particularly appropriate, because it can scale (they need to build up their rep before people start to trust them), and frequency of recognition or how well known they are would also apply (because people who see a Lilitu doesn't know that it's that specific Lilitu).

Originally Posted by patchwork

Yeah, "avoiding the penalties because there's nobody there to witness them" is not how it works. You got the points because everyone knows about it.

If I had a player do that, my response would be "I see you're working really hard to suppress your OPH; so I guess you just spent these xp to buy it down then!" while the rest of the party gets to spend their xp however they like. I wouldn't even necessarily regard that as a problem - nothing wrong with taking a Disad at start for a few more points and intending to buy it off ASAP - but if they were of the "free points" mentality, a few sessions where everyone else gets xp and they don't tends to sort things quickly enough.

That's a really good answer on how to deal with disadvantage-abuse. My other question is really whether I'm right about assuming OPH should be in-effect essentially all the time.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Railstar

That's a really good answer on how to deal with disadvantage-abuse. My other question is really whether I'm right about assuming OPH should be in-effect essentially all the time.

That would be a typical but not a mandatory answer. If you do it only at intervals but are known to do it by more or less everyone you encounter, I think it counts.

[Yako]

I usually made use of odious personal habbits specifically for players where I know anyway that they will act to offend or antagonize all NPCs.

Given how it is priced, it should definitely be in effect all the time.
It seems to me that 5 points equals a more or less always on point of reaction penalty / bonus is a pretty solid general guideline and avoiding the penalty should be just as hard as getting a bonus for a good approach or such would be.

Granted, I do not always roll reaction rolls, but I pretty much always let NPCs react based on how much the reaction modifiers would shift the baseline reaction I assume for the current situation.

I would only deviate from always applying the penalty if there were as many times where the reaction would be even worse as there would be times where it does not factor in.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

I find the pricing of -15 for that a bit odd...

When we look at B152 for the value of secrets, that's cheaper than the -20 for "imprisonment or exile" which would seem like the bare minimum of punishment for baby-killing in most societies, if not the -30 for 'possible death'.

Why is "this thing definitely kills babies" worth less than "this thing secretly kills babies and will get in trouble if someone finds out" ?

Mostly because it's Odious Racial Habit "Kills babies". As mentioned in other posts, an Odious Racial Habit isn't a Secret. "Everyone" who knows about that race knows they have that Odious Racial Habit.

The -20 point level of Secret translates into -40 points of disadvantages when the secret is revealed. In a case like this, it's perfectly fair to assume that the racial template includes all the -40 points that would have accrued from the secret being revealed, even if not all of the -40 points seem to be accounted for numerically.

Once a character is revealed to belong to that race, people stop reacting to the character as another human and instead react to it as whatever race it really is and in this instance, they might well go for "kill on sighting.",

Likewise, the vulnerabilities and limitations that come with the template may be sufficiently well-known to at least give the hunters an equalizer, if not making the character's destruction all but guaranteed.

Consider Dracula for a moment. Once it was known that he was a vampire, all sorts of equalizers came out. He has to sleep on his native soil, so destroying his coffins limits him. He can't cross running water, so putting running water between you and him stymies him. He is vulnerable to the cross and to holy water. You can identify him because he casts neither shadow or reflection. Not every race's template will be that limiting but knowing what you're dealing with probably accounts for a lot of the difference between the punishment the secret would bring about and what the character's revealed disadvantage is worth.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Railstar

However, on the other hand, I’ve seen templates like the Lilitu in GURPS Horror, who have Odious Racial Habit (Killing Babies) – now obviously, this is the kind of activity that is usually not done in public…

How secretive can they be when they compulsively break into people's houses to kill their infants? Considering that they're spectres who fly around as owls and you'll only see them in their humanoid form when they are in yer base killing yer babies, it's kind of a moot point.