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Old 08-06-2021, 10:43 AM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

Does anyone recall any rules for that?

On one hand it's more appealing because you could choose to get rid of an advantage you didn't particularly need at that moment, and use any current/later bonus CP to buy something more useful (or just buy back the advantage you lost) as compared to losing bonus CP (the standard fee for Impulse Buys or getting new advantages) where you lose the option to buy a larger variety of things.

On the other hand, bonus CP can't just buy whatever advantage you want: it still needs GM permission for a lot of weirder advantages, often including special context that allows buying it, so paying with a hard-to-get advantage like Warp (ie which humans just can't randomly buy whenever they like without pretext) would be a bigger sacrifice than paying with HP, which humans can presumably just buy back up with bonus CP they acquire later.

The closest thing I can think of "lose an advantage to gain an advantage" is the "gain an advantage to lose a disadvantage" we see in Horror for Corruption: H148's hacksaw photo (If They Hand Offend) you for example could opt to gain a -15 disadvantage (One Hand) in exchange for losing some other mental disadvantage you gained from Corruption (like Bloodlust or Sadism)

Losing bloodlust/sadism boosts your CP total and is similar to gaining an advantage (ie "Not Bloodlust" or "Not Sadism") though there's a net zero because you gained a disadvantage of equal value (One Hand, One Arm, etc)

This is of course not a precedent to just casually swap disadvantages on a whim: you can't for example regrow your hand and regain your sadism (it's a one-way shift from mental disad to physical disad) and there's implications of other at least temporary problems (you're probably going to take HP damage from severing your limb, for example, and risk bloodlust if you can't cauterize your stump)

Not to mention aside from the process of chopping off your limb there is also a special ritual required to do this which PCs need to hunt down (and GM needs to stat). So maybe this ability to swap out points for points requires some kind of points investment to do?

I was thinking along the lines of stuff like "you have a ritual to empower the golem, but must permanently invest HP in that golem" which is effectively sacrificing HP to fully (or partially) offset the cost of a new Ally.

There are "CP powered" advantages you can get which consume bonus CP to use, so it might not be hard to tweak that to do something like permanently consume other advantages (like HP or FP or attributes) but that's still a "per use of an advantage you own" not "one time expense/trade to help buy an advantage".

How might we design spells that allow permanent trade-ins of some advantages for others, or some disadvantages for others?

Not so much looking for different versions of "If They Hand Offends" but more generic approaches to design spells (or advantages) that allow you (or others) to make these trades.
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Old 08-06-2021, 11:31 AM   #2
Stormcrow
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
Default Re: rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

If you could arbitrarily refund yourself character points and take other advantages, what would be the point of Modular Abilities?
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Old 08-06-2021, 11:45 AM   #3
Anders
 
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Default Re: rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

A limitation on Modular Abilities that says "Only between sessions" is... probably -30%? -40%? Something like that.
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Old 08-06-2021, 10:02 PM   #4
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
If you could arbitrarily refund yourself character points and take other advantages, what would be the point of Modular Abilities?
modular abilities lets you switch between things of equal value, I was thinking perhaps a net loss, like trading 2cp worth for 1cp somehow
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Old 08-09-2021, 08:11 PM   #5
The Benj
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Platform Zero, Sydney, Australia
Default Re: rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders View Post
A limitation on Modular Abilities that says "Only between sessions" is... probably -30%? -40%? Something like that.
The 8 hour version of Preparation Required is -60%, so I think it should probably be more than that.
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Old 08-10-2021, 01:35 AM   #6
transmetahuman
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Default Re: rules for losing advantages instead of paying BonusCP

If I did something like that at all, in a situation where the PC goes into "point debt"for whatever reason, it would be the GM who chose which advantages get lost - not the player. They wouldn't all be ones the player wants to get rid of, that's for sure. I wouldn't mess with core aspects of the character concept, but if the player objects he can always choose point debt from incoming xp instead.

I've been especially thinking of this in terms of suddenly needed Extra Lives when a PC fails a death check. Adding physical (or even mental) disadvantages on the table as well as subtracting advantages - and being mean about it, without ruining the character's playability. Death should hurt. But the player can always just choose for his character to die.
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