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Old 11-25-2017, 02:32 AM   #1
scc
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Recover Energy And Learning

B292-294 has rules for gaining gaining points in skills based upon time spent studying them, but I'd like some advice on how they'd apply to the Recover Energy spell.

Obviously Recover Energy should be treated as Learning on the Job, but then the question becomes what fraction percentage of a characters life counts as studying/practicing the Recover Energy spell? If you restrict it to just waking hours, that's 16 hours a day, or 4 hours into the study bank. Now the default for Mages seems to be Magery 3, which means 140 hours, or 35 days, results in a single point put into the spell.

This might not seem like much, and the Recover Energy spell stops giving benefits after you get it to level 20. The problem is that it still keeps raising your point total for free and this affects the power level of any Allies you might have!

So what percentage of hours in a Mages life do people think should count.
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Old 11-25-2017, 03:19 AM   #2
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

The increase in the power of your Allies is an issue for all kinds of Learning on the Job and unlike Recover Energy, most other skills don't stop giving benefits like that. Remember that you "may claim a maximum of eight hours on the job per day", so Recover Energy on the job learning comes at the expense of being able to do such learning for other skills. If you still find that problematic, you might want to change, or stop using those learning rules for all skills.

As for how many hours per day it should count for, that would reasonably depend on how much time the mage spends casting the spell in question, or if you don't want to track that, however much the player wants it to count for.

Last edited by Andreas; 11-25-2017 at 03:26 AM.
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Old 11-25-2017, 05:42 AM   #3
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

If it were me? Only the time actually recovering energy spent on spells should count as on the job learning. Once the energy is recovered, the process stops.
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Old 11-25-2017, 10:07 AM   #4
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

You are unlikely to claim on the job learning for Climbing and Innate Attack anyway. It should be competing with things like Thaumatology, job spells like Enchant, and language immersion, though.

At any rate the maximum is 2 hours a day (1/4 of eight hours) so you can gain a point of Recover Energy about every seven months, if you don't learn anything else from your job.

It is also reasonable for the GM to require those hours to be put into the skills you actually use for your job roll, which can't be Recover Energy, because you don't roll it.
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Old 11-25-2017, 12:28 PM   #5
scc
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
If it were me? Only the time actually recovering energy spent on spells should count as on the job learning. Once the energy is recovered, the process stops.
The problem with this is that it requires you to keep track of just how how much time you need to spend recovering energy during adventuring, which isn't too hard, but also during travel and downtime, these last two would require figuring out how much spell casting you do in a normal day.

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Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
To the original question, iirc the rules state that you can claim no more than 8 hours a day for learning on the job. I would let the player decide how to allocate those hours among any skills they used in that day, but if you are claiming 8 hours of on the job learning in recover energy then you can't claim any hours of learning for climbing or innate attack or anything else. So I don't see this as likely to be a balance issue, nor do I see players choosing to improve Recover Energy past 20.

Even if I have misremembered the 8-hour cap, the point is that you can't doublecount - an hour counted as on the job learning of one thing can't also be counted as something else, so if all the PCs spend the same amount of time adventuring, they will gain points at the same rate, regardless of how you treat any particular spell or skill.
Do, I think you're right about the 8 hours thing

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
You are unlikely to claim on the job learning for Climbing and Innate Attack anyway. It should be competing with things like Thaumatology, job spells like Enchant, and language immersion, though.

At any rate the maximum is 2 hours a day (1/4 of eight hours) so you can gain a point of Recover Energy about every seven months, if you don't learn anything else from your job.

It is also reasonable for the GM to require those hours to be put into the skills you actually use for your job roll, which can't be Recover Energy, because you don't roll it.
I think that Recover Energy is in a position that few other skills are with regards to learning it in that you can learn it whilst also learning another skill, a bit like someone working on an underwater construction site can assume to be honing both their swimming and building skills.
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Old 11-25-2017, 01:05 PM   #6
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

I generally find Breath Control to be superior to Recover Energy, as it is effective in low mana areas and it allows the recovery of 1 FP/two minutes regardless of skill. I generally encourage players to take Breath Control rather than Recover Energy.
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Old 11-25-2017, 01:50 PM   #7
scc
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I generally find Breath Control to be superior to Recover Energy, as it is effective in low mana areas and it allows the recovery of 1 FP/two minutes regardless of skill. I generally encourage players to take Breath Control rather than Recover Energy.
Breath Control and Recover Energy don't compete. Breath Control CAN NOT restore FP spent on spell casting (and other paranormal activities) while Recover Energy can only restore FP (and ER) spent on spell casting (and not to other paranormal activities)
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Old 11-25-2017, 02:21 PM   #8
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
Breath Control and Recover Energy don't compete. Breath Control CAN NOT restore FP spent on spell casting (and other paranormal activities) while Recover Energy can only restore FP (and ER) spent on spell casting (and not to other paranormal activities)
Since when? Fit and Very Fit cannot recover FP from supernatural expenditures, but Breath Control only states that it cannot be combined with magical spells that recover FP, not that it cannot be used to recover FP spent on spells or other supernatural abilities. If you have a citation, please share.
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Old 11-25-2017, 02:30 PM   #9
scc
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

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Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
You can learn both simultaneously, but you still only get 8 hours of "credit" per day, which translates to 2 of the 200 hours you need to earn a character point. Someone working on an underwater construction site might count 1 of those hours toward swimming and one towards building, such that after 200 days of such work both skills would gain 1 CP.
OK, I phrased that wrong. My intent was to say that hours logged towards Recover Energy shouldn't preclude those same hours being logged towards other skills.

Compare driving, if I spend 8 hours driving around a race track or test track I should get 2 hours logged towards upping my Driving skill. If I spent those same 8 hours driving around a city however, as a courier or taxi driver I should still get 2 hours towards Driving but I should probably ALSO get some hours towards Navigation. This is a very narrow edge case in the rules and Recover Energy is likely the only non-movement skill that it applies to.
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Old 11-25-2017, 03:01 PM   #10
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Recover Energy And Learning

Quote:
Originally Posted by scc View Post
Obviously Recover Energy should be treated as Learning on the Job, but then the question becomes what fraction percentage of a characters life counts as studying/practicing the Recover Energy spell? If you restrict it to just waking hours, that's 16 hours a day
No. If I were inclined to allow it at all, you might be able to count the time you spend "resting quietly" while recovering energy. You certainly can't count time the effect isn't doing anything. Note that resting quietly is not actually compatible with doing anything else that might be earning you points. You're *resting*, not studying. Actually I wouldn't allow even that - you don't earn on the job training for *maintaining* spells after all - so you should only count the time spent casting it. What, there are no rules for time to cast it? Well zero hours then.

Seriously the most logical interpretation of Recover Energy is probably that it's a kind of Enchantment you cast on yourself (nobody counts it as an On spell reducing your skills in all other spells once you've learned it right?). Not something you are actively using while resting that somehow still counts as rest.

And I wouldn't allow OTJ training raise your skill above 20 for no effect - you can only acquire on the job points by stuff you are still challenged by. A job that never requires a skill roll you could possibly fail doesn't teach you anything no matter how many hours you do it for. I suppose if you actually spent earned points to raise the skill above 20 for some reason, I'd let you count them toward stuff your point value matters for like Allies, but I think you could make a case for ruling they are just "wasted" and lost, by the same reasoning as disadvantages that aren't problems are worth 0 points.

Of course I generally don't allow Recover Energy at all - it's a legacy spell from before any other methods of enhancing fatigue existed at all that really should have been tossed and converted to an advantage about the same time as Fit and Energy Reserves were minted. There are several other "skills" that should have been advantages but aren't mostly because 3e GURPS limited acquiring advantages in play.
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