Last Plea For Help With Powers

[munin]

Originally Posted by Raekai

... The reason I have Requires Concentrate is because I want the powers to be concentrated is that I want them to be focused on rather than just simply lasting a long time. How might I model that? ...

Malediction is the way this is usually done. It's designed to produce abilities that look and act like spells rather than ranged attacks. But there are other options.

GURPS Powers discusses the differences between abilities which are Always On, Switchable, and Transient (see Switchability, p. P153). It's a good read. An attack advantage -- like Affliction, Binding, or Innate Attack (and a few others) -- is, by default, Transient: you use it, it produces effects, and you move on to your next action. An advantage like Terror is Switchable: you turn it on and it stays on until you turn it off.

Requires Concentrate is usually only applicable to Switchable abilities. Although Affliction produces effects with a duration, they are not switchable (any more than injury produced by an innate attack is "switchable"). There are a number of ways to end the effects of an Affliction but the two that might be found in an ability write-up are Cancellation (GURPS Psionic Powers. p. 13) which allows the user to end the effects, and Terminal Condition (GURPS Powers, p. 112) which allows others to end the effects.

If you want the effects of the affliction to last only as long as the user concentrates, but you don't want to require a ranged Quick Contest every turn as with Malediction, I would use Terminal Condition, Attacker stops concentrating -- and I would price it exactly the same as Requires Concentrate at -15%, as figuring out how to end it falls somewhere between a skill roll (-10%) and common knowledge (-20%)*. The fact that, in addition to your foes being able to end the effects (by interfering with your concentration), you also can end the effects (by doing something other than concentrating) is already inherent in the Terminal Condition limitation (if others can end the effect, so can you if you choose).


* "Hey, Jimmy is paralyzed and that guy is staring intently at him. Let's try hitting that guy and see if Jimmy gets better!"