Patron limitation: Long response time

[Anders]

Large organization are often somewhat... sluggish. If I want the Patron advantage to reflect this and have, perhaps, a week's response time - what kind of limitation would that be? Or should I just go with a low frequency of appearance and allow one try per week?

Edit: Also would you allow skills to work as Complementary skills for appearance rolls? I'm thinking of letting Administration do this, since a character that knows his way around a large organization should be better able to give an answer.

[Donny Brook]

I'd say a delay like that could be subsumed as a feature or variant of Minimal Intervention. Adding a skill roll requirement where it is otherwise not is canomically -5%.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Anders

If I want the Patron advantage to reflect this and have, perhaps, a week's response time - what kind of limitation would that be?

I agree with Donny_Brook here that this is worth about as much as Minimal Intervention. I'd say it should still be its own limitation, though, since you really should be able to combine this and Minimal Intervention.

Originally Posted by Anders

Or should I just go with a low frequency of appearance and allow one try per week?

I wouldn't, because that doesn't really represent what you're trying for, I don't think. A failed appearance roll usually means a response of "sorry, I can't help you right now", but the PC knows that's the response. This is more a matter of having to plan a week or so ahead for anything you want, but it's possible for the help, once it does arrive, to arrive reliably.

Originally Posted by Anders

Edit: Also would you allow skills to work as Complementary skills for appearance rolls?

That's pretty much what Pulling Rank does - its assistance rolls are pretty much calculated from frequency of appearance numbers, treating the organization the character has Rank in as a Patron. And Pulling Rank lets you make complementary rolls, using Administration for organizations, Leadership if you're the leader of a team, and so forth.

[whswhs]

GURPS Boardroom and Curia has rules for reaction time, and also for defining an organization's value as a Patron. But it doesn't appear that things that affect reaction speed have any impact on the base value of a Patron.

If you want substantial differences, I'd look at it this way: if you have availability of 15 or less, that's a mean of 1.049 days (or whatever your base interval is) to to get a problem dealt with. A 12 or less is 1.35 days. So going to 12 or less increases your response time by 28.75%. Similarly, 9 or less adds 154%, and 6 or less adds 930%.

Or if you start out at 12 or less, going to 9 or less adds 97.5%, and 6 or less adds 700%. And if you start out at 9 or less, going to 6 or less adds 305%.

So that's one way to handle it.

Another way would be to use the Minimal Intervention modifier (-50%), but instead of using the standard reaction modifier, use the reaction-time table on p. 16 of Boardroom and Curia. That gives you an average of 12 or 16 hours to respond. You will get the help you ask for, but you won't get it instantly!