Price for a Universal Talent?

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Yeah, I'm getting a lot of "this is ridiculous munchkinism" vibe from almost everyone on this thread, but when I came up with that scheme ("skills only -20%"), I honestly was trying to come up with a limitation that made the advantage of +1 to all rolls end up costing a reasonable amount. 30/level honestly seems reasonable to me. Christopher Rice, who has published a lot of official GURPS content - more than anybody else on this thread except for Bill Stoddard, as far as I can tell (unless malloyd is Lloyd Blankenship?) - suggests that such a talent should be 20/level.

Ask an economist how to find out what something is worth, and he'll tell you to try to sell it. A thing is worth exactly what you can sell it for.

So try this experiment: offer an Omni-Talent for 40/level and see if a single player ever buys it for his PC. Then offer it at 35. Then at 30. I suspect you *might get a few takers at 30/level. I doubt you'd ever get any takers at any higher level.

As for game balance, talents that players actually buy in GURPS turn a handful of skills - almost always the ones that the player cares about and will end up rolling the most - into 1/level for up to 4 or 6 levels. So let's extrapolate from that and say that probably nearly as much as a third of most PC's rolls are already basically priced at somewhere very close to 1/level per +1.

Try selling +1 to all skills at 30/level and see if you get any takers. I wouldn't buy that trait myself.

I'm not against the idea of having some advantage that is +1 to all rolls.

Let's assume it has and is a base cost of 40 per level. OK. Perhaps few would actually pay it.

BUT...

So let's think that a player is going to make a character that has an artifact called "The Heart of Loki". A red pendant, similar to a ruby, on a string. Conceptually, it is the essence of the god Loki himself, which grants bonus luck on all rolls. This character will use this advantage as a base and make it as equipment.

The jewel is tough, has DR 20, but is breakable (-5%), and cannot be fixed normally (-15%). It has a small size, -8 (-5%). Can be stolen with an opposed DX or ST roll (-30%). And in addition it is unique (-25%). Total -80%.

Let's assume it's a character with a Dungeon Fantasy or Action score, 250 points and a 50 disadvantage. It takes 80 points to get 10 levels of this advantage (which would cost 400 points, but with -80% limitations, its cost drops to 1/5). There are still 170/220 points left for the rest of the sheet.

Then what starts with something that nobody would pay for, already starts to be attractive in the minds of some players. 80 points for +10 on all tests... who wouldn't? And theoretically everything within the rules.

It's not the kind of thing I would do, particularly, I'm more interested in interesting concepts than combos, but I have gamer friends who could easily have 1001 ways to beat the 80% limitation with this advantage.

Good or bad, I think it's good to keep that in mind when creating such advantages.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

The problem is with the brief, or unspoken implicit requirements within it. Talents are not for what you're looking for, and you don't like the pricing of doing with with Attributes. Oh well, GURPS won't let you price true invulnerability either.

And

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Then it sounds like the system it's self no longer supports the very premise of "Universal". Perhaps instead of throwing our hands up and saying "oh well", we take a look at fixing the system.

The problem is that invulnerability, by concept is being immune to infinite damage. And that would cost infinite points as a result.

BUT...

Powers discusses this, as does Pyramid 3 - 93, Cops and Lawyers, page 12.

Originally Posted by Pyramid 3 - 93, Cops and Lawyers, page 12

Invincibility and Immunity

For the GM who’s pondering how invincible is invincible when determining PLC for defensive measures (p. 11), the following suggestions may be useful. GURPS is built in such a way that traits with “infinite” effects cost infinite points – that is, there is no fair way to price them. The supers’ genre relies pretty heavily on some instances of infinite effects and this doesn’t play well with GURPS proper. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to create such traits. If the GM is willing to fudge the lines a little, recreating Superman’s invulnerability is as easy making a few assumptions and doing math. First, take the largest number of dice of damage that can be expected to be dealt in a given setting and multiply that by 6; Benchmarking Attacks and Defenses (GURPS Powers, p. 117) is exceedingly useful here. Next, use the rules for extended levels of Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) (Powers, p. 118) to determine a value that reduces that damage to 1 point of injury. Optionally, add “Cosmic, Rounds down” (+50%) to Injury Tolerance to ignore that. Finally, just note it as a new trait.

For example, in most typical TL8 settings, a 12.5 kiloton nuclear device is the largest source of damage anyone will face outside of superpowers (or superscience). Since it does a 6d¥10,000 crushing explosive attack with a linked 6d¥6,500 burning explosive attack (with radiation and surge effects), this translates to 594,000 damage (6 ¥ 6 ¥ 10,000 = 360,000 + 6 ¥ 6 ¥ 6,500 = 234,000, or 594,000). This would require 37 levels of Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction), which
would give an injury divisor of 700,000 and cost 925 points.
The nuke would thus only inflict 1 point no matter the roll.
For those who don’t want to take even that much damage add “Cosmic, Rounds down” (+50%) for a total of 1,388 points. The GM may wish to round to the nearest multiple of 5 for easy bookkeeping. Thus, “invincibility” might be listed as “Invulnerability [1,400].” The GM could even create “levels” for his campaign.

Narrowing down an immunity to a specific form of damage is trickier. Perform the steps as above, but at the end, add the Limited modifier (p. B47) so that it only protects against that one thing. For example, if a player wanted his character to be “immune to fire,” first decide how much damage the hottest fire could do (about 9d+2 burning damage for a blast furnace – much hotter than magma). Since 9d 6 + 2 = 56, he’d need Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction / 70) [275] and would add “Limited, Heat/Fire” (-40%) and “Cosmic, Rounds down” (+50%) for a final cost of 303 points.

Other traits may be necessary to fully protect a subject. For example, being immune to fire and heat also requires Immunity to Heat Exhaustion [10], Filter Lungs [5], and Temperature Tolerance (Heat) 411 [411]. The first removes the FP loss for Intense Heat (p. B434), the second protects against smoke inhalation, and the latter protects against the damage aspect of Intense Heat (the level assumes the hottest blast furnace in a TL8 setting). The GM could then price “Immunity to Heat/Fire” as 730 points.