[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The second detective will doublecross you or just flake out if his reaction to you was low enough or the threats or bribes from your enemies are convincing enough. If you spent character points on the favour he will definitely play straight with you.

Buying an ally/favor usually requires RPing your reaction up to good (15+) to earn the privilege of buying it (unless you buy them as unwilling) so for the purposes of this comparison I want us to assume that in both circumstances he has ascertained having improved their loyalty up to that level.

This brings an interesting thing to mind though: how would a PC go about actually assessing (estimating) the loyalty stat of an NPC when negotiating the purchase of them as an ally with the GM?

To avoid metagaming a GM wouldn't be obligated to tell "under the hood" stats like the Loyalty number to a player...

So is it possible you could only say "I want to buy this NPC as an ally" but the GM would actually make it secret whether they're priced as "Unwilling" or not, and the player would just guess based on their behavior how loyal they truly were?

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It is not "offset to 0". Rather there are simply multiple game currencies.

"can't be traded in X country" (or time/dimension) seems like a good way to actually limit currencies if defining their possession as a trait of some kind

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What such a GM should do is never use skill based magic in the first place. That way he won't be forced to fit square pegs into round holes.

You'd face similar problems with something like Affliction (Advantage: Allies) as sorcery though: at what point short of permanent +300% should it become appropriate to start charging character points for allies gained by that spell, and what sort of discounts should you get for allies with a fixed duration who can be negated by Healing: Affliction?

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Have a look at who The Walking Dead's Governor keeps

That's "loved one" (x2) which is probably much more rare than "friend" (x1) or "acquaintance" (x1/2) zombies.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Minions really cannot be dependents because you are free to mistreat them, which runs counter to the idea of Dependent.

I think this depends on the FOA rolls, whether they "appear as an ally" or "appear as a dependent" or both.

Normally when you fail the FOA roll for a Dependent you don't need to worry about protecting them because they're not present in the adventure, so that safety should still apply if they are solely "present as an ally".

This wouldn't make them immune to harm, it should just mean that you shouldn't face consequences for neglecting them like docked bonus CP for bad RP.

Instead of facing "you let your dependent die" penalties, you basically face "you let your ally die" penalties instead, which aren't as bad.

You should still lose the disadvantage and have the points reassigned, of course. Though I think the option of "use their value as an ally to pay off your dependent debt" sounds like a fair approach, so long as you don't qualify for a situation where you would lose points spent on an ally, like pointlessly killing them.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Failing to protect your Dependent means gaining Disadvantages equal to twice the value of the Dependent

Where do I find this 'twice' thing? B131 says "you must make up the bonus points you got for him"

Originally Posted by Varyon

GURPS doesn't assume you gain some Advantage simply because you acquire the means of doing something similar to it otherwise.

My point is more that it COULD so long as whatever traits you gained in play added up to 0.

IE similar to many gender differences (groin vulnerability, ability to carry children) which don't get statted but in theory could just be 0pt meta-traits composed of advantages for male/female benefits and disadvantages for male/female drawbacks.

Another point of comparison would be the "built-in Damage Resistance" that skull DR is considered to be in the design notes of Thin Skull perk (Power-Ups) and "No Skull DR" disadvantage (Weird/Toolkit2)

Originally Posted by Varyon

That said, I'm fine with often assuming the character has some virtual Advantage while this is in play, and can use character points to modify it (so you could use the Ally guidelines to buff up a zombie, or Innate Attack ones to buff up a weapon, or whatever), but that's markedly more complex.

"Modifying ST-Based Damage" rules would be another example of built-in or virtual advantages (anyone with ST above 0 has a Crushing Attack)