ALT GURPS II: Last Gasp (new optional FP rules from Pyramid)

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Sort of. You only can "burn" a fatigue point (or bonus point) if you have depleted yourself down to 0 AP. You don't CHOOSE to burn that point, you're FORCED to burn it if you push yourself. [Edit to Add: this was not made clear enough in the article, or perhaps 'this wasn't made clear at all' is more accurate. Still, you'll have to trust that this was my intent.]

I think the Second Wind section helps make that intent more clear.
Still I suppose a play tester should have caught that :(

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I think the Second Wind section helps make that intent more clear.
Still I suppose a play tester should have caught that :(

How does that make a difference to the analysis I posted above?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

At the start of every fight you have 10 FP*,

Actually this will vary. If you have been hiking, are encumbered, slept poorly, rough weather, skipped a meal, etc all are reasonable situations where you start with less then full FP. Some of those would be covered by the Regeneration but not all so I include them as other examples for different builds.

Another thing to factor in is that your assuming no other FP use.
Extra Effort, spell casting, powers that cost FP all will make you more vulnerable to spending FP to recover AP but the Regeneration (AP) wont be affected.

Further drains and attacks against your FP wont be stacking on the same thing as much. Mostly this was for things that do not have FP like machines, golems, etc.
So if you do have FP it is definitely less useful then if you do not but it still has utility and GURPS does not lower cost of abilities based on abilities as a general rule. So a fair cost was set for a killer robot rather then a person who would have both.
For someone who wants both I would opt for a AA and use a ready maneuver to switch modes.

EDIT TO include additional note

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

How does that make a difference to the analysis I posted above?

The Second Wind reference was not a reply to your price analysis, it was a reply to the bit about it being free to just spend FP to recover.
Since if you could just spend 1 FP at any time to recover there would be no purpose for the Second Wind section.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

For 100 points I can buy:

Regeneration (AP Recovery) 4 [100], and recover 4 AP per round.

Or

Regeneration: Fatigue Recovery 1FP per second [100], and spend 1 FP per round to recover 5 AP*, per round, and also regain FP fast.

*50% of HT 10

Is this correct?

To amplify a bit for HT 10:

100 points for AP Recovery 4 gives +4 AP per round, no matter what.

100 points for FP Recovery at 1 per second will basically mean as long as you only make expenditures of 1 FP at a time, you'll gain it back the next turn. So if you spend (say) 4 AP per turn for whatever reason, you will spend down AP for two turns. On your third, you'll spend 4 AP, but in so doing, lose 1 FP and gain back 5 AP (of which you must spend 2), so you'll be at 9 FP and 3 AP. You will suffer no real penalties unless you're using the (very) optional rule about partial ST loss, but even so, those are low (5% ST loss).

The next turn, you'll be back up to full FP, but down to 3 AP, and if you spend another 4 AP, you'll need to burn yet another FP/bonus point and you'll have 9 FP and 4 AP when you're done.

In the first case, you simply won't ever lose FP, and your AP will float between 6 and 10.

In the second case, you will be losing 1 FP per turn after a few seconds of action, but getting it right back. You'll be oscillating between 1 and 5 AP on any given turn, but at expenditures per turn of less than 5 AP, I think the net result of your 100 points is the same: you're either at 9 or 10 FP at all times, and no action will be forbidden to you or any penalties accrue

So net/net, for that level of AP expenditure, these are two basically equivalent ways of doing the same thing.

OK, let's get nuts. 10 AP per turn expenditure (say you're doing a funky runaround attack every second because you're a ferret on crack).

At 10 AP per round spent, but getting 4 AP back, this is a net of 6 AP per second. In any case, you'll be probably taking some Recovery events (Evaluate will likely be a popular choice, and Antoni was agitating for a version of AoD that didn't give you the +2 extra AP for defending but allowed a recovery roll if you didn't spend more than 2 AP defensively on your turn) or else you'll rapidly burn down your fatigue pool.

At 10 AP per round spent with 1 FP per second recovery, on turn 1, you spend 10 AP (down to 0), immediately burn 1 FP and get 5 AP back. Next turn, you flip back to 10 FP, but you're only at 5 AP. You spend 10 AP again, immediately burn 1 FP as you drop to 0 AP, gaining back 5 AP . . . I think this is lather/rinse/repeat territory. Unless you have other reasons to ALSO spend FP, this means FP recovery is no longer equivalent to AP, it's better.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

But when you hit 0 AP you can spend that 1 FP immediately?

Yes.

Why?

Because from the instant you spend the FP until the beginning of your next turn when you recover it, you're at 9 FP instead of 10. If you only make expenditures of 1 FP at a time, ever, then as you point out (and as *I* pointed out as well) then you'll only ever be hit with a temporary -5% to ST *IF* you play with that optional rule, otherwise you're fine.

If you have to spend more than 1 FP per turn, because your burning through AP like crazy, you can still rack up significant penalties.

Still, I think you're on to something important here, which is that by (more or less) increasing the base recovery of FP from 1 per 10 min to 1 per 120 min for a HT 10 person, (about an order of magnitude, ish), I should probably have changed the base cost of FP recovery as well.

If we assume my base costs for FP recovery aren't broken if AP don't exist (because you can use one without the other), then what we have for someone of HT 10 is a case where you can ALSO recover HT/2 AP per FP recovery cycle. Based on HT 10:

That would look like this:

Points	FP/hour	Points	FP/min	Points	FP/sec
25	1	50	1	160	1
30	2	62	2	235	2
35	5	75	5	310	3
40	15	95	15	380	4
45	30	120	30	515	6
-	-	-	-	775	10

The formula is basically the cost of the FP recovery, PLUS AP recovery at FP per second * 25 points/AP * 5 AP recovered per FP / every two seconds (for HT 10).

That makes recovering 1 FP per second VERY expensive when combined with AP, which perhaps it should be.

This didn't come up, really, during writing and playtest. Sorry I missed it.

[DouglasCole]

Note: the every two seconds thing is a bit of a fudge; you don't NEED to spend a full FP every second at most sane rates of AP expenditure, and our previous examples more or less show you can recover every other turn just as easily as every turn. So most of the time, it's not worth quite as much as "full HT/2, every second."

If you DO think it's worth full price, the upper end FP/second point cost shifts DRAMATICALLY, like this:

Points	FP/hour	Points	FP/min	Points	FP/sec
25	1	52	1	225	1
30	2	64	2	350	2
35	5	80	5	500	3
40	15	110	15	625	4
45	30	150	30	900	6
-	-	-	-	1400	10

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Actually this will vary. If you have been hiking, are encumbered, slept poorly, rough weather, skipped a meal, etc all are reasonable situations where you start with less then full FP. Some of those would be covered by the Regeneration but not all so I include them as other examples for different builds.

All things being equal, it's either equal or favours the guy with Regeneration FP:

You've been hiking:

In this instance the guy with Regeneration (Fatigue Recovery) is going to regenerate his FP faster than losing it to hiking, and so will start at 10 FP.

In this instance the the guy with Regeneration (AP Recovery) will be missing FP and so take penalies for that.

Regeneration (Fatigue Recovery) wins!

Some instance where you can't regenerate fatigue:

Both characters lose FP and take penalties.

It's a draw.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Another thing to factor in is that your assuming no other FP use.

No, I'm not, I'm assuming Equal FP use.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Extra Effort, spell casting, powers that cost FP all will make you more vulnerable to spending FP to recover AP but the Regeneration (AP) wont be affected.

No they won't, because the guy with Regeneration (AP) is also going to be losing fatigue for Extra Effort, spell casting, powers that cost FP, etc, and he doesn't recover quickly.

In order to do a fair analysis, you have to assume equal conditions, and you don't seem to be doing that.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Further drains and attacks against your FP wont be stacking on the same thing as much.

Vs. Fatigue drains, the guy with Regeneration (Fatigue Recovery) rapidly recovers, but the guy with Regeneration (AP Recovery) is in trouble for the whole fight.

Originally Posted by Refplace

The Second Wind reference was not a reply to your price analysis, it was a reply to the bit about it being free to just spend FP to recover.
Since if you could just spend 1 FP at any time to recover there would be no purpose for the Second Wind section.

So when can't you spend FP? When you have AP you don't need to spend FP, and when you don't have AP, you can spend FP.

[Langy]

I'd suggest instead changing the cost of AP regen, not FP regen. FP regen is already overpriced compared with HP regen in normal GURPS; we don't need to cripple it even further.

So, make AP regen 20 for 1 AP per second. That'll make it so it comes out to a wash at the 100 price point - both effectively give 5 AP per second. Just say that regen over should just be handled by FP regen, or (my personal preference) make it so AP regen follows the 'high HP regeneration' rules - if you've got 20 AP, then each time you'd normally regen 1 AP, you regen 2 instead. But FP regen doesn't follow those rules, so it's out of luck.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Refplace

So if you do have FP it is definitely less useful then if you do not but it still has utility and GURPS does not lower cost of abilities based on abilities as a general rule. So a fair cost was set for a killer robot rather then a person who would have both.

I think his point was that for Fatigue Recovery that's rapid enough to matter on a combat time scale there mightn't be a reason to take Action Point Recovery AT ALL. FP Recovery is "just better."

If you look at FP Recovery as ALSO providing AP Recovery at full cost: 25 points per each 1 AP per second, even recovering FP at 1 FP every 2 minutes could legitimately add 1 point worth of AP recovery to it (5 AP recovered every 120 seconds x 25 points per (AP/sec) = just over 1 point of utility).

As you ramp up from there, the AP recovery portion of that equation dominates quite quickly.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Langy

I'd suggest instead changing the cost of AP regen, not FP regen. FP regen is already overpriced compared with HP regen in normal GURPS; we don't need to cripple it even further.

I'm not sure I agree (but I'm not sure I disagree, either). We'd need to get out of theory-land and play some games. The thing about AP is that in the few fights we ran, they dictated the pace of combat - which is to say, the pace of FUN - more so than HP seemed to. If you have an ability that means you can play effectively as if you have unlimited AP (because even as you drain AP and spend FP, you recover your FP back) that's going to be more important than when you run out of HP, and more still when you recover all your HP back. FP can also be considered to be more valuable than HP for reasons stated in other threads (capture someone who's at 0 to -FP pretty easily as they're KOed or taking Do Nothing maneuvers, you often won't go to jail for making someone sleepy, etc.). So I'm not with you on FP and FP regeneration being overpriced wrt HP.

So, make AP regen 20 for 1 AP per second.

I'm trying to recall how I priced it to begin with; we mucked around with the basic cost of AP in general a lot towards the end.

That'll make it so it comes out to a wash at the 100 price point - both effectively give 5 AP per second.

While true for those with HT 10 and 10 FP and 10 AP, someone with HT 8 spending 1 FP will instantly take penalties until he regenerates his FP, so it's not ENTIRELY equivalent. In that (admittedly limited) case, AP recovery is superior.

For most game-relevant cases (HT 10-14, heroic even if not cinematic games) I think a 20-25 point per level getting you back 10% of your starting AP each turn is probably the right ballpark. 20 wouldn't break anything, certainly, though I think it was priced as "the equivalent of double your start AP at HT 10, 20 points, and an extra 5 'cause the never stop coming back")

Just say that regen over should just be handled by FP regen

I would never do this. FP regeneration has that side effect of actually decreasing down time after you spend FP, and given the longer FP recovery times posited in the article, that's a big deal.

I do like, at least as a first step, considering the 20 points to grant Starting AP/10 AP per second, instead of 1 AP per second. I'd considered scaling like this, but then, if you have 20 AP, you probably have HT 13 and 20 AP if you're in a realistic campaign.

No, I consider the point values for FP recovery OK if taken as the cost without the existence of AP. Adding AP to the mix increases the value of FP recovery, and while we can usefully quibble over the price, I *would* do it as a price increase.