The Rules of 14, 16, & 20

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

Are there any reasons or justifications beyond game balance for The Rules of 14, 16, & 20?

Apparently so.

Why the Rule of 14?

Originally Posted by PK

Kromm and SJ would know more about the details, but I can answer in general: To ensure that no one is immune to fear. (Except those who buy Unfazeable, of course.)

It's very easy in GURPS to accumulate Fright Check bonuses. Will is cheap, many PCs have Combat Reflexes, and Fearlessness is only 2/level. I've had PCs in my game whose effective "Fright Roll" was a base 20+, and "being fearless" wasn't even their primary niche! In a game that relies heavily on Fright Checks, that makes the horror aspect a joke. "You come face to face with the dread master demon! Roll a Fright Check!" "No problem, I've got less than a 2% chance of freaking out, even with the penalty."

So the Rule of 14 ensures that you can't just have a good Will then buy up Fearlessness to become essentially immune to fear. Unless you take Unfazeable, you've always got a real chance of being freaked out by something, and if Fright Checks are important in a given game, then the effects of fear are important.

(Note that there's some leeway in the Rule of 14 -- specifically, there is an official perk, called "Brave" or the more mundane "Rule of 15" in different supplements, that raises the autofail cutoff by 1. But no more than that; past that, buy Unfazeable.)

Why the Rule of 16?

Originally Posted by Kromm

Do please note that none of this is what GURPS Magic exists to represent out of the box. Yes, GURPS is generic; that's why it includes GURPS Thaumatology. However, Magic is one particular magic system, and not a generic one . . . Among its assumptions are that magic is essentially a low-level power easily managed by ordinary mortals who read a few books, that magic has a high failure rate against heroes, and that magic spells exist inside a metaphysical framework where they can be DWIM systems that treat inanimate and animate targets – and sapient and nonsapient animate targets – differently. That is, it assumes a classic hack-'n'-slash RPG: "Wizard is Just Another Job," "Saving Throws for Everyone!," "Magic Isn't Science," "Souls Are Special," and "Wizards Low, Gods High" (so if you want to overpower mortals, call upon a god, don't sling a spell). All of these assumptions are easily changed by fiat – and Thaumatology offers reams of advice on doing that – but when running a game by the book without anything but rules-as-written Magic, those are the assumptions you have to accept.

None of which is a criticism of anybody's fun. It's simply a remark that GURPS Magic is a particular system with a specific set of assumptions. I love GURPS but I'll freely admit that its basic magic system is kind of a bad fit to the magic of myth and grand-scale heroic novels, and that its fiat rules and eyeballed effects are frustrating if you actually want to take a quasi-scientific approach to magic. Since 1994, a huge number of the answers I've had to give to questions about it have amounted to, "That's just how it is. The spell simply 'knows' the target is living or has a soul or something, and reacts differently, giving the target a chance to shrug it off even if he's in a coma or totally unaware. The spell also somehow knows the caster's intent. Again, that's just how it is."

A very-quick search doesn't turn up existing threads for Rule of 20 (the Rule that's causing all the heat in this thread), but that may be because I'm only doing a search by thread tags.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Explain this to us, please? How, in your opinion, are they "broken", and what do you propose for altering them so that they are "fixed"?

Too much encouragement for creating a jack of all trades.

Originally Posted by pestigor

I'm not too technical in "Gurps theory" but where is that cap in the rules and is it explained?

There's a table for the cost of skills, and the maximum cost of +1 skill is 4 points.

[pestigor]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Too much encouragement for creating a jack of all trades.

There's a table for the cost of skills, and the maximum cost of +1 skill is 4 points.

I think I read too much into the tread and lost sight of the forest for the trees...and as usual I feel dumb for not realizing it, D'oh!

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Yes. The way IQ is structured means that you should basically only put 1 point in any mental skill, except one or maybe two skills you put 8+ points in. When you've got 200 mental skills, that's just stupid.

I'd probably go with an exponential cost:
IQ 10: 0
IQ 11: 10
IQ 12: 30 (+20)
IQ 13: 70 (+40)
IQ 14: 150 (+80)
IQ 15: 310 (+160)
etc.... and probably also remove the cap of 4/level on skills. Means you probably never see skills of 20+ (cheapest option for IQ/A at 20 is IQ 14 for 150, IQ+6 for 128), but I can live with that.

I like the concept of exponential IQ and DX costs, but keeping skill costs the same. This way, points spent on a skill would reflect how much time/effort/talent a character has in a skill rather than having it hidden within IQ/DX.
Regarding the rule of 14; if someone spends more points on will/fearlessness than they would on unfazable, they why not let them roll at the level they paid for. They might even fail if enough penalties stack up.

[trooper6]

Seems to me increasing the cost of skills so that that get more and more expensive would just further encourage stats over skills. That seems the opposite direction of what most people seem to say they want.

[Andreas]

The quoted justification for the rule of 14 by PK do not seem to make much sense to me. "You come face to face with the dread master demon!" is a situation which would presumably give a significant penalty to the fright check and thus one for which the rule of 14 would have a relatively small impact. What the rule of 14 mainly does is make it so that the heroes have a significant risk of failing fright checks for minor horrors.

There is also mention of a character having 20+ for fright rolls despite being fearless not being their "primary niche", but such a character would have to have levels in Fearlessness which is the most specific advantage for being less fearful or an extremely high level of Will. Being almost immune to something does not have to be a "primary niche" for characters in GURPS, especially for high-point characters. There are after all no equivalent rules for resisting other things.

The heroes being equally likely to be frightened by minor things and the main horrors of the story (which is the effect of the rule of 14 for characters with sufficiently high Will+Fearlessness) both seems rather silly and don't seem appropriate for most genres (certain comedic stories which have the characters being frightened by almost everything might be an exception, but for those cases, the limit should probably be lower than 14).

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If it were up to me, the rule of 20 would change to rule of 16, with defaults of 12, 11, or 10—still pretty good, but not "trained professional" as default.

When you're the GM... it is up to you. ;)


In my House Rules the Attribute Rule of 16: For defaults or skill purchases; any stat over 16 is treated as 16..

I reduced the cost of DX to 10/level above 16 and IQ to 2/level.


Ignore the grumblings of the Players, it's working as intended (promoting the purchasing of Talents which previously were only taken if required as a prereq... or were the equivalent of Magery (both prereq and horribly under priced)).

Originally Posted by Anthony

The rule of 20 is a patch for attributes being broken.

Ayup.

Originally Posted by Andreas

The quoted justification for the rule of 14 by PK do not seem to make much sense to me. "You come face to face with the dread master demon!" is a situation which would presumably give a significant penalty to the fright check and thus one for which the rule of 14 would have a relatively small impact. What the rule of 14 mainly does is make it so that the heroes have a significant risk of failing fright checks for minor horrors.

There is also mention of a character having 20+ for fright rolls despite being fearless not being their "primary niche", but such a character would have to have levels in Fearlessness which is the most specific advantage for being less fearful or an extremely high level of Will. Being almost immune to something does not have to be a "primary niche" for characters in GURPS, especially for high-point characters. There are after all no equivalent rules for resisting other things.

The heroes being equally likely to be frightened by minor things and the main horrors of the story (which is the effect of the rule of 14 for characters with sufficiently high Will+Fearlessness) both seems rather silly and don't seem appropriate for most genres (certain comedic stories which have the characters being frightened by almost everything might be an exception, but for those cases, the limit should probably be lower than 14).

In my home game I ignore the Rule of 14. I apply the "Rule of 20 minus BAD" instead. So a monster set at BAD 6* imposes a maximum Fright check of 14. A monster of BAD 0* imposes no maximum fright check.




* Generally the highest and lowest I set BAD at. For those unfamiliar with BAD (Basic Abstract Difficulty) it's in Action 2 - Exploits. I also assign both a general BAD (to represent the overall mission at that stage) and individual BADs to Main or Spotlighting NPCs. The NPC uses which ever is worse for the Players.

[Critical]

The only reason people didn't realize just how devastatingly high Einstein's stealth default was is that he was never caught.

[Critical]

Originally Posted by Andreas

The quoted justification for the rule of 14 by PK do not seem to make much sense to me. "You come face to face with the dread master demon!" is a situation which would presumably give a significant penalty to the fright check and thus one for which the rule of 14 would have a relatively small impact. What the rule of 14 mainly does is make it so that the heroes have a significant risk of failing fright checks for minor horrors.

There is also mention of a character having 20+ for fright rolls despite being fearless not being their "primary niche", but such a character would have to have levels in Fearlessness which is the most specific advantage for being less fearful or an extremely high level of Will. Being almost immune to something does not have to be a "primary niche" for characters in GURPS, especially for high-point characters. There are after all no equivalent rules for resisting other things.

The heroes being equally likely to be frightened by minor things and the main horrors of the story (which is the effect of the rule of 14 for characters with sufficiently high Will+Fearlessness) both seems rather silly and don't seem appropriate for most genres (certain comedic stories which have the characters being frightened by almost everything might be an exception, but for those cases, the limit should probably be lower than 14).

By your own logic and arguments, this will not happen. The guy with the 20 Will will be in much better shape against the minor things than he will against the "dread master demon" that imposes a -10 penalty to fright checks.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The rule of 16 makes sense to me, in that anyone, no matter how skilled, may once in a while fail at performing a task. If you want to have any failures at all, an 18 has to fail; if you want to distinguish ordinary and catastrophic failure, an 18 needs to be catastrophic and a 17 ordinary. The odds actually give you far more failures than are realistic; I tend to think of them as "this is the time when the heroes are on camera, and interesting things will tend to happen," and to assume that the time when they're not being roleplayed is time when everything is going smoothly.

If you had a story where the heroes always succeeded at their main skills, and were defeated only by hopeless odds, that wouldn't make a very interesting narrative or drama, I think.

I think you've misunderstood what the rule of 16 is.

Originally Posted by whswhs

As for the rule of 20, if you look at defaults, a character with attribute 20 defaults to 16 for Easy skills, 15 for Average, and 14 for Hard. All of these are greater than ordinary professional competence. You're not quite looking at Clark Savage, Jr. or Bruce Wayne, but you're not far short. That's already pushing at the limits of believability.

I think IQ 20 is meant to be the Batgod (Even Nolan's Batman is nowhere near IQ 20). As such, 16 for Easy skills, 15 for Average, and 14 for Hard, seems perfectly reasonable for what you would expect from IQ 20.

Originally Posted by Pyramid 83; page 16

While the Basic Set offers suggestions, it errs on the larger-than-life side, recommending improbably high upper bounds for humans. That might meet the needs of “cinematic” or “heroic” gaming, but it makes suspending disbelief difficult when dealing with more-or-less realistic people. Attributes are the worst offenders – scores as high as 20 (higher, for ST!) are permitted but produce implausible results.

For DX, IQ (and hence Will, and Per), and HT, it’s easy to keep the lid on: Treat the 6-to-15 range described in How to Select Basic Attributes (p. B14) as the scope of realistic ability for adult humans. To avoid implausible resistance to bleeding, poison, and so on, the GM might cap HT slightly lower; the 14 for the hardiest natural creatures (pp. B455-460) works, and even 13 is defensible. The GM may permit extraordinary people to buy one level over the usual limit if they take Unusual Background (Peak Attribute), which costs as much as a single level of that attribute; e.g., 5 points for Will or Per, 10 points for HT, or 20 points for DX or IQ. This extreme sets the “hard” limit on human ability.

Originally Posted by whswhs

If it were up to me, the rule of 20 would change to rule of 16, with defaults of 12, 11, or 10—still pretty good, but not "trained professional" as default.

If you use the above suggestion, realistic humans are capped at 16 anyway.

Originally Posted by whswhs

But imagine letting it go higher—IQ 22 would make you the equally of a highly skilled professional at Artist, Diplomacy, Engineer (all specializations!), and Physician, among others. The limit helps lessen the strain on the players' disbelief suspension.

In the type of game where buying IQ 22 is allowed, I don't have a problem with those results.