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Old 11-07-2013, 11:54 AM   #59
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: (Unofficial) FAQ of the GURPS Fora

Q: Rapier Wit seems like a potentially scary ability. Exactly what are the requirements for using it?
A:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
You have to know something meaningful about your specific target, and then turn that into an insult. Rapier Wit is worthless against mysterious hit men and spies, randomly encountered thugs, golems and zombies with no personal life, strangers on the street, and anybody with any skill at all at hiding his true self or past. It's specifically intended for old rivals, public figures, and others you know something about. If you want it to work on just about any ordinary person, you must add Words of Power, +100% -- and if you want it to affect golems, robots, undead, and so on, you'll also need Cosmic, +300%.

I'm not saying that it still isn't somewhat cheap, but it's probably a good idea to start the price comparisons in light of the correct assumptions.

And I hasten to add that it's a cinematic trait for silly cinematic campaigns, where things like Bulletproof Nudity and Melee Etiquette are free for everybody already. You're effectively paying 5 points for another cinematic rule that only benefits you. Arguably, that's 4 points more than the perk it ought to be in a game like that.

Clarifications to clarification:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
Feel free to share this:

As written on p. B79, Rapier Wit can be used repeatedly on the same target and doesn't spell out very clearly that it requires any specific information. If the GM wants to use it as written, fair play.

However, also as written on p. B79, to affect a group, you must know something the entire group has in common. The intent is not "to affect a group, there's a new requirement that you know something about them all," but "to affect a group, the existing requirement that you know something about the target is narrowed to something common to all of your targets." Unfortunately, the rider requiring the user to know something about even a single target went AWOL somewhere between this trait's first appearance and its current incarnation. That omission is an unequivocal erratum. The intended level of knowledge is the name of an individual – or, for a group, a designation applicable to them all (e.g., Cardinal's Guard, the Turatello boys, or "you goddamned East Side scum") – plus some commonly known fact . . . which need not be intimate, much less truly secret.

As for repeated use, nothing says you can't allow that. However, it would be more flavorful to require a new taunt for each use (my main concern isn't balance but rather keeping this flavorful, slightly silly social ability from degenerating into a coldly mechanistic attack). If the player can't come up with a new fact per use, I'd at least start applying -1 per successive use. After all, p. B79 specifically says, "any modifier the GM assigns based on your description of the verbal attack." I'd deem it fair, even canon for the GM to invoke this to apply the generic -1 per repeated attempt on p. B348.

Dungeon Fantasy is an interesting special case: Going by the monsters in DF 2 and DF Monsters 1, 43% are IQ 0-5 and/or Bestial beings that don't even have a language, so you can't use witticisms on them; 35% are golems, Elder Things, or greater demons or undead with Unfazeable, and thus explicitly immune; and just 22% are sapient and affected by emotions. Thus, Rapier Wit is only an option about 1/5 of the time . . . and that 1/5 of monsters are mostly fodder, and of course they probably don't speak common languages. So you know what? Ignore all the stuff I said above and let Rapier Wit work repeatedly on targets, as long as the user knows their language. In DF, that's such a rare set of conditions that it seems only fair.
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