GURPS Meta-Tech

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But making it obscenely expensive does seem to make it impossible to have Arthur as a player character in most campaigns. At least, if you give all the other player characters commensurate points, they're going to be incredibly powerful, probably more so than the actual knights of the Round Table. Do you think that's not a problem?

It's absolutely not a problem. Arthur with Excalibur, when worthy, *is* more powerful and trying to make everyone in the group the same power is folly.

Which is not to say you can't run a game with extremely powerful PCs, all equally powerful, but honestly it's a nonsense to complain that Arthur with Excalibur would be more powerful than the other PCs if the other PCs are playing characters that certainly were not as powerful because you feel some need to balance them all out?

And on that note, I'm done discussing this. Way too much of the thread is taken up with micro pedantry of an extreme case set against a desire to apply it to variations of rules and then complaining it's somehow not RAW - just bizarre.

Meta-tech is a broad, flexible, consistent, and enticing system to make cool stuff and have a price for it that can be reflective of the intended use, place in the game world, and the game world itself and I highly recommend using it because it's fun!

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's fine if you're building "young Arthur" as a character. But what if you want to build "mature Arthur, who's been on the throne for years"? A universal system should be able to build either.

If you want to build a "mature" Arthur, that means building him as a king, with a kingdom, multimillionaire, dozens of powerful allies and patrons (Merlin for example), and all his gear would be one of a kind artifacts that no one can buy.

King Arthur is worth thousands of points. If that is what you want as a PC then I bow to you for being able to handle a player wanting to create that.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But making it obscenely expensive does seem to make it impossible to have Arthur as a player character in most campaigns. At least, if you give all the other player characters commensurate points, they're going to be incredibly powerful, probably more so than the actual knights of the Round Table. Do you think that's not a problem?

This is an Epic Superhero version of Excalibur. If you aren't doing Epic Superheroes, you'd use a markedly toned-down version. For Excalibur itself, it typically cuts through things quite readily ("... sliced through iron as through wood") and is otherwise just a really good sword. The latter means it's probably a Very Fine Balanced Ornate Thrusting Broadsword or similar. The former would be the Meta Tech portion - as this is basically just an Armor Divisor, you'd use the Modifying Existing Damage guidelines; a Very Fine Thrusting Broadsword would do a maximum (for a character with ST 30) of 5d+5 cut, or 6d+1 cut... although if you don't intend for your Arthur to be capable of becoming that strong, you could make it for a lesser value. 6d+1 cut has a base cost of [43.8]; each level of Armor Divisor is +50%, or [21.9], rounding up to [22]. The weapon is SM -4 and Self-Powered, meaning it costs 0.625xStarting Wealth per point; that works out to 13.75xStarting Wealth per level of Armor Divisor. That's not cheap, but it's achievable - a wandering Arthur could afford even a +300% "Ignores DR" version while being Filthy Rich (although it would eat up a bit over 80% of his starting cash), while a settled one would be able to afford it with Multimillionaire 1 (where it would represent about 40% of his Adventuring Gear budget). Again, if you restrict it to a lower ST - say, 20 - you'll reduce the price (for ST 20, damage drops from 6d+1 to 4d+1, for [30.1]; that's [16] per level of Armor Divisor, or around 10xStarting Wealth per level). You could also have the item start out with a low Armor Divisor, but as Arthur sacrifices money he acquires during his campaign (donating it to the Church, say), the sword increases in power as he pays out the equivalent cost (so if it starts at AD (2) for 10xStarting Wealth, then when he's donated another 10xStarting Wealth to the Church, it goes up to AD (3)), making it more affordable for a less-established Arthur.

For the scabbard, not bleeding is Injury Tolerance: No Blood [5], while not dying from wounds is probably Unkillable 1 [50] (which means the wielder can die if literally hacked to pieces or burnt to ash; note the version in Meta-Tech takes this approach as well). The scabbard should be around the same size as the sword, and would similarly be Self-Powered as well as Uncomplicated, for 41.25xStarting Wealth. Note that's the same cost as the sword if it had Armor Divisor (5) (which would be my inclination for such a weapon - although note if Excalibur is meant to truly treat iron as wood you'd be looking at an armor divisor of around (40), at which point you might as well go with Ignores DR +300%). Of course, Arthur didn't value the scabbard very much and lost it shortly after acquiring it, so if adding it on is too expensive you can certainly decide this is after he lost it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Farmer

And on that note, I'm done discussing this. Way too much of the thread is taken up with micro pedantry of an extreme case set against a desire to apply it to variations of rules and then complaining it's somehow not RAW - just bizarre.

I'm sorry to have caused vexation. All this is relevant to a project of my own, where I want to fit in a pointer to Meta-Tech for GMs who want a more detailed system for defining objects that grant powers, and I'm worrying it because I'm trying to figure out how to make it compatible. This discussion has been helpful at least in persuading me that letting meta-tech be bought with a variant on Patron is far too inexpensive. But you're right about the space it's taken up, so I'll let it go.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Varyon

This is an Epic Superhero version of Excalibur. If you aren't doing Epic Superheroes, you'd use a markedly toned-down version.

Yeah, that's a fair point. For what I'm talking about I would probably want to build my own Excalibur, which could easily come out less expensive. Maybe I'll try that when I don't have a manuscript deadline facing me.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

I'm sort of following you, but the math still doesn't add up for me.

It makes sense that each of Mana Sensitive, Requires Powerstone, and Costs ER add -0.1 BCM. What we're confused about is why any one of those also removes the battery requirement. If Requires Batteries is effectively also a -10% limitation, then there is a -0.1 BCM missing. You emphasized that "baseline Enchanted Objects don't [require batteries]". Are you saying that Enchanted Objects just ignore the baseline assumption that all Metatech requires batteries?

Some origins swap around the battery requirement for another equal drawback. This is one of those. This can get crazy if you let players design their origins.

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

Something else I just noticed: Mana Sensitive effectively has two components: -5% for the actually being sensitive to Mana levels, and -5% for being subject to typical magical countermeasures (Powers pg. 27). This implies that an Enchanted Item being powered by a Powerstone or ER, rather than ambient Mana, is not subject to those countermeasures...
It seems like the break down should have been a starting BCM of 0, where the battery requirement is replaced by a sensitivity to Mana levels and being subject to countermeasures (because it makes sense that all magic items would have the standard limitations Mana Sensitive/Magical). Then adding batteries back, or Powerstone or ER, would each add -0.1 BCM.

Cutting off ambient energy effectivelly neutralizes a target's ability to cast spells. Dispelling is a moveable, short lifespan, low mana zone.

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

I suppose it makes sense to simply not entertain a hypothetical Costs Corruption limitation existing alongside Corrupting...but even accepting that I will still be annoyed because the baseline of the Corruption system is all about substituting Corruption for FP. ��

This is mostly because of the fact that corruption is effectively endless after 125 points. Additionally, each 25 points of corruption is 1 CP. Converting that using Cost's Fatigue adding we'd never 75 corruption for Costs FP 1 (-5%).

Now that probably IS too harsh. I don't know. It just doesn't feel like it would work.

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

(Also still annoyed that the limitation doesn't say if/how often to re-apply the Corruption for ongoing abilities. But I guess at least now I have the precedent of battery durations...)

Every minute (for switchable abilities) or every use (for most weapons)

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

On the off-chance there is still a possibility of errata, I really would clarify that using Corruption instead of Fright Checks for Cthulhutech changes the BCM to -0.2. The fact that it stipulates a cost change if added, but not one if swapped, syntactically implies that swapping doesn't change the BCM.
While we're at it, I would have had it reference the Corrupting limitation itself (pg. 22), which much more directly states the standard of Corruption = 20% point cost, rather than requiring the reader to make the leap that, out of the many suggestions in the main Corruption section, that specific convention is what's intended. As opposed to, say, the suggestions under Using Cursed Artifacts.

Send me an email to me and I'll vet it before sending it on.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If I'm parsing this correctly, this is a case of "one of three" with the three being Mana-Sensitive -10%, Requires Powerstone ~-10%, and Costs 1 ER -10%. I initially thought this was something a "pick one on the fly" situation, so in a no mana zone you could opt to attach a powerstone or burn some personal mana, but rereading it (and reading your explanation) it seems more likely that each item has a specific requirement that is immutable - one that requires ambient mana simply won't work in an NMZ, one that requires a Powerstone won't function without it, even in a very high mana zone, and one that requires ER calls for the character to burn ER (or not - half the time it costs 0 ER) regardless of the local mana. Of those, only Requires Powerstone seems appropriate to not call for a battery - you're getting a -0.1 BCM for requiring a rarer and more expensive "battery," while the others seem like they'd be on top of needing a battery.

I think the way I'd prefer to run it, while it's certainly counter to the book, is that an enchanted item by default requires either a Mana Battery (using the guidelines from (Alternate Technology)-Powered - which are awesome by the way) or a Powerstone, and you can freely swap out which you're using. One that is using a Mana Battery also requires ambient mana to function; in the absence of ambient mana, the character can instead burn 1d-3 magical ER (only) to power it (technically this means someone can get lucky and power it without losing any ER, but as they'd be required to invest in ER to be able to use the item in this mode, while normally MTD's don't have an enabling Advantage, I think that's fair). I'm not demanding others should do it this way, or even saying that's the way it should have been written (I think you've got good reasons for handling it this way, they just don't jive well with me), but if Enchanted Item's "Replace the battery requirement with needing mana, -0.1 BCM" bugs people like it does me, the above may be an alternative option.

Magic systems in 4/e outnumber almost everything else. I tried to make enchanted as generic as possible without watering it down.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are player characters supposed to buy the high levels of wealth that enable them to afford something that costs that much? What if the character concept is "a poor person who has this one extraordinary possession"?

That's not a problem with Meta-Tech, though, that's a problem with the GURPS system as a whole (and there are many, many systems with this problem). How do you build Han Solo, who would need to be obscenely rich to own a ship that's literally the fastest ship in the Galaxy? What abut Aragorn, who wields the Flame of the West?

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Anders

That's not a problem with Meta-Tech, though, that's a problem with the GURPS system as a whole (and there are many, many systems with this problem). How do you build Han Solo, who would need to be obscenely rich to own a ship that's literally the fastest ship in the Galaxy? What abut Aragorn, who wields the Flame of the West?

Don't you build those as non-sentient Allies (p. B37)?

Exception: The progression above extends indefinitely for nonsentient (IQ 0) Allies; each +50% of the PC’s starting points costs a further +5 points.

So Excalibur (at 1,184 points) is a 50-point Ally for 250-point Starting Arthur, but only 10-15 points for mature Legendary Arthur.

[Anders]

That's one way to do it,certainly.