Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Darekun

Potentially interesting idea — jargon copied from Shadowrun 2ed, mechanics copied from Consumable Signature Gear:

Karma Pool(5/level)
You have a pool of [Level] karma points. Each session, these refresh to full. You can spend a karma point from this pool in place of a character point to activate a transient rule like Influencing Success Rolls.

This way, a character who regularly uses such rules sacrifices a larger amount of power once, instead of a smaller amount of power on an ongoing basis. Other characters can still spend a smaller amount of power once to dip into the rule.

Be careful with it. It will work IF you severely restrict what the CP can be used for: not to fuel advantages with the cost CP limitation (multiplies cost by 1/5, just like Alternate abilities). Also, be careful as not all the options are equally powerful (and beware of bullet time at 3 CPs. 1 ue of bullet time per session at 15 CPs is a steal).

Just a degenerate example:

Crushing Attack 60 (6dx10, cost 1 CP per use) [60]+Karma Pool 1 [5] means that you have a one use per session artillery-level attack per just 65 points

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Be careful with it. It will work IF you severely restrict what the CP can be used for: not to fuel advantages with the cost CP limitation (multiplies cost by 1/5, just like Alternate abilities). Also, be careful as not all the options are equally powerful (and beware of bullet time at 3 CPs. 1 ue of bullet time per session at 15 CPs is a steal).

These would be pretty unbalancing; as long as you specify that Karma Pool can't be used to power advantages though it is pretty handy. I remember some stories on the forum about games in which one player would always burn CP for dice rolls while the others managed to save theirs. This was OK for a while, but eventually the CP burner got quite far behind the other characters in terms of capabilities. Worse yet, he had to continue to spend CP just to keep up with the other characters. An advantage like this, properly restricted, would have prevented this from happening.