Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 02-06-2015, 10:46 AM   #1
Kromm
GURPS Line Editor
 
Kromm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

I can see the sounds
Hear all the sights and flavors
With my shining skin
— A sitar-toting superhero
It has been a while since we've seen a GURPS Powers supplement, hasn't it? Well, you'll be happy to hear the wait is over. This week's release is GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses.

Enhanced Senses is your one-stop shop for superhuman sensory gifts, whether you're a cyborg, a master of the mental arts, or a garden-variety mutant. It offers dozens of prebuilt, playtested abilities you can use "as is," as part of the included power frameworks, or (with minor modification) with your power source of choice. This isn't just a big, boring list, though. Each ability comes with an explanation of how the constituent advantages and modifiers work together in play – and if the capability exists in real life (the animal kingdom is truly amazing!), an effort was made to ensure verisimilitude.

There's more here than a pile of worked examples, too. Notes on sensory feats – from enhancing skills to power stunts – offer practical uses for these and other gifts. New perks and modifiers, and variant advantages and disadvantages, let you customize your character further and invent abilities of your own. And even a campaign with entirely mundane characters will benefit from the clear categorization of senses in game terms, as well as the expanded and optional rules for arc of vision, hearing in tunnels, illumination and loudness levels, reading speed, seeing things "in plain sight," and more.

Whether you're looking for comic-book telescopic and X-ray vision, weirdness like typing blood by tasting it and synthesizing all your sensory input into a unified impression, or just a clearer picture of how ordinary human perceptions work, you'll find what you seek in Enhanced Senses!


Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0150
__________________
Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com>
GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games
My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News]
Kromm is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 10:46 AM   #2
Kromm
GURPS Line Editor
 
Kromm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default temp

(Note: This is PK, cloning Kromm's post because it's the easiest way to interject right at the top of the thread.)

I've moved a few topics into their own threads:

Illumination Levels (p. 13)

Stealth roll mechanics

Let's keep those two contained. Meanwhile, everything else about the book is on-topic here -- from general thoughts on the book to questions about its rules.
__________________
Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com>
GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games
My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News]

Last edited by PK; 02-09-2015 at 04:34 PM.
Kromm is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 11:50 AM   #3
jeff_wilson
Computer Scientist
 
jeff_wilson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

And it is mine!
__________________
.
Reposed playtest leader.

The Campaigns of William Stoddard
jeff_wilson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 12:05 PM   #4
ErhnamDJ
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Does it include rules for putting a maximum range on a sense, such as Dark Vision or Detect?
__________________
"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics

My blog.
ErhnamDJ is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 12:14 PM   #5
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Quote:
Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
Does it include rules for putting a maximum range on a sense, such as Dark Vision or Detect?
As opposed to having range modifiers? Is there any known biological sense that cuts off at a specified distance, rather than being limited by energy intensity, material concentration, and/or angular resolution?
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 12:29 PM   #6
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Cool book. Has lots and lots of neat stuff related to its title.
Of particular niceness are:
  • The fact that it listed all/almost all non-Basic sense advantages.
  • Ways to modify existing senses, e.g. enhancing Vision with Time-Spanning or Long-Range for those weird ESPers.
  • The new perks are neat. Okay, I'm actually talking primarily about the scent-related perk directly related to the above bulletpoint. Awesome for wolves, bloodhounds, Short Canadian Foul-Tempered Antihero etc. I wonder if some sharks qualify for two levels?
  • Some extra definition clarifications are neat.
  • Some extra rule clarifications are neat.
Things that I don't quite like:
  • Ultraviolet Sight is possibly an oversight: "Ultraviolet penetrates water to greater depths than visible light, halving Vision penalties underwater – but in total darkness (-10), you’re still blind!" will likely spark protests. In fact, I find it something of a flaw that while IR vision got two new variants of the trait, UV vision didn't get; this was a nice place to put in a more realistic variant of the trait.
  • The original Scanning Sense (Field Sense) didn't make it into the book, which would be okay on its own, but the closest analogue costs the same [10] while being inferior in almost every way.
  • The light/darkness modifiers seem off by one line: should a normal day really be -1?
  • The sound volume table and the lines about Stealth. If read literally, they produce odd results and break down in situation of high-Observation-vs-high-Stealth duels. I suppose it should be read as 'success by +0 provides a noise level this loud/quiet', 'critical success provides at least this level' etc. Otherwise the table not only breaks down at high point totals, but also becomes incompatible with the game mechanics of Stealth everywhere else in the books.
  • I'm not sure if the +5 to some skills attributed to ETS is balanced. In fact, that seems to run counter to what has been said about ETS before. (I suppose a +4 for Powers Boosting Skills is plausible.)
  • ETS or the quick-reading perk makes Speed-Reading essentially useless, it seems.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 12:50 PM   #7
Dinadon
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
ETS or the quick-reading perk makes Speed-Reading essentially useless, it seems.
I don't see that. ETS converts words per minutes to words per turn, and then Speed-Reading is a further multiplier to that rate. Admittedly being able to out read the Flash doesn't much help if you then need to push a button when done, but it should at least help when the loosing bound documents become free in a strong breeze and they fly past you.
Dinadon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 12:57 PM   #8
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dinadon View Post
I don't see that. ETS converts words per minutes to words per turn, and then Speed-Reading is a further multiplier to that rate. Admittedly being able to out read the Flash doesn't much help if you then need to push a button when done, but it should at least help when the loosing bound documents become free in a strong breeze and they fly past you.
Okay. Make that 'the Perk is grossly cooler than the skill'. (Back in the day, 4e made a point of making psionics more expensive so that mundane detectives/negotiators/etc. would still remain competitive with them.)
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 02:05 PM   #9
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
[*]Ultraviolet Sight is possibly an oversight
It's hard to say "errata: the description of this ability is completely wrong".
Realistic UV Vision [0]
You can see near ultraviolet. Allows using UV lamps (note that, due to fluorescence, these are not particularly stealthy) and UV dyes; otherwise has few practical applications. On the minus side, effects of atmospheric haze are doubled, and you have a -1 to resist eye damage from sunlight, such as snowblindness. UV penetrates water poorly, and is generally useless more than a few inches underwater.
__________________
My GURPS site and Blog.
Anthony is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-06-2015, 02:09 PM   #10
ErhnamDJ
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
Default Re: GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
As opposed to having range modifiers? Is there any known biological sense that cuts off at a specified distance, rather than being limited by energy intensity, material concentration, and/or angular resolution?
I can only think of contrived realistic examples. Is the book not good for supernatural abilities? I can think of lots of those that have discrete cutoffs, which GURPS doesn't handle well at all.
__________________
"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics

My blog.
ErhnamDJ is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
powers

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 09:06 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.