Are Powers Overpriced?

[AlexanderHowl]

In my games, characters have to keep within point budgets. If a player is really unsure about what to play, I allow them up to 50% of their points as unspecified capabilities, but they have to allocate 10% per game session for the first five sessions. They still accumulate CP, but they cannot access their earned CP until they finalize their character.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Other times it flat-out kills concepts.

Many kinds of restrictions can flat-out kill certain concepts. GMs have to pick their poison.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Sometimes. Other times it flat-out kills concepts.

Some concepts deserve a bullet in the head.

[dataweaver]

And others don't.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Many kinds of restrictions can flat-out kill certain concepts. GMs have to pick their poison.

Are you familiar with GURPS In Nomine? It's a Classic GURPS adaptation of In Nomine, another SJGames RPG that deals with angels and demons. When the various character types and powers from In Nominee were adapted for use in GURPS, things that were reasonably balanced in the original game ended up having wildly different point totals in GURPS — sometimes with a hundred or more points worth of difference. GIN handled it by just giving the player however many points he needed to purchase his racial templates (where the discrepancies were the most serious) and then having him use his budget to but everything else.

For this thread, I'm not suggesting anything so radical; I mention it only to illustrate the point that slavishly following the point accounting system as written isn't always the best option.

For this thread, the option I'm exploring is to have the GM change the prices. We got on this tangent because AlexanderHowl insisted on not repricing things, and instead letting the point accounting system go ahead and kill off concepts that would otherwise be just fine. That's one option; but it's not what this thread is about. The fact that you can't play a flying brick in a TL9 Supers setting without him being seriously disadvantaged by the availability of gear that covers similar ground, per the RAW, is a problem with the RAW, because a flying brick is a perfectly viable Supers archetype and should be doable without seriously disadvantaging the character.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How much would it cost for the power to make your gun invisible and intangible?

That entirely depends on the game in question.

Are supers known/understood? If so, then, at best, it's a 1 point perk, on a par with concealed weapon permit. As law enforcement will have the ability to detect and deal with your powers fairly easily.

Beyond that . . . the same cost it should be to make any advantage invisible and intangible. Oh, wait, they're not intangible. Nor even invisible.

If your super can shoot blasts from their fingers, then cripple their hands. Problem solved, plus they can't use normal guns. Double-bonus!

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The ability to shoot stuff with your finger is already concealed.

Precisely once. Then the cat is out of the bag and you can expect that to be on social media before your target hits the floor and your secret identity is ruined.

This assumes that no one knows that supers exist. If they do, and you aggressively point your finger at someone, they can claim assault because they believed you had the ability to fire energy from your fingers.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Walking around in a secret ID with no weapons is. Of course I've never seen much point in designing a super who had powers that did nothing more than match off-the-shelf weaponry.

Again, that entirely depends on the game. If you're playing a low-powered supers game where the damage cap is 5d and the DR cap is 15, then off-the-shelf gear is sometimes superior to what you can buy with points.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

That makes it legal for you to carry a gun. It doesn't mean people won't look at you and say "Hey, that guys wearing a gun."

You don't deal with many people who carry concealed weapons do you? If you can tell they have a weapon, they're doing it wrong.

Being a "Licensed Super" would have much the same effect. Law Enforcement would have your information on file, and would be able to question you about your involvement.

Granted, if you were an ice-based elemental super, and their victim was killed with fire, you probably would only be asked if you knew any fire-types. But, if they were killed with ice, you'd be a suspect.

[Kelly Pedersen]

I tend to agree that abilities that duplicate equipment that's commonly available in the setting tend to be overpriced - while there's certainly some utility in having a concealable weapon, I don't think it's 10s or even 100s of points worth of advantage. At TL 10, for example, a heavy laser pistol (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 115) would cost a single point to buy as Signature Gear (and, at only -2 for Bulk, is actually pretty concealable already). Meanwhile, buying its stats as an Innate Attack costs about 60 points. 59 points for "somewhat more concealable" doesn't seem fair, to me. Especially when an attack that's completely invisible (one with No Signature) is only a +20% enhancement over one that's fully normally obvious.

That said, I don't think using Signature Gear to purchase your abilities is really the right way to go. There's a couple of issues with that approach. First, and most importantly, Signature Gear is actually too expensive, at high levels, compared to what it buys you. Once you get past about 30 points in Sig Gear, it's more point-efficient to just buy Wealth anyway. Second, Signature Gear comes with a built-in plot protection element that's often directly opposed to the idea of power limitations. You're basically paying to always have the possibility of having your gear handy, whereas a power limitation is usually about ways for the GM to deny, or at least weaken, your abilities. Finally, I worry that using Signature Gear will still end up with balance issues, because most pieces of equipment aren't priced based on point utility, but rather at least a vague idea of how expensive they "should" be in an actual economic system. So some abilities that are, character-point-wise, cheaper than others end up more expensive, money-wise, because they're just harder to make, or have less demand, or whatever.

So, that's why I don't think Signature Gear is the right approach. Here's an alternative proposal: for abilities that can be reasonably duplicated by gear readily available at the setting's TL, buy the abilities with points, but allow them to be bought with a 1/5th discount, as long as the corresponding equipment could be purchased with the character's available Wealth. This isn't quite an Alternate Ability to Wealth, note - if you lose the ability, you still keep access to your Wealth, and conversely, if you suddenly lose access to your normal resources, your cheaper abilities wouldn't abruptly become unavailable, and they wouldn't increase in price until the GM declared any Wealth loss permanent.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

GIN handled it by just giving the player however many points he needed to purchase his racial templates (where the discrepancies were the most serious) and then having him use his budget to but everything else.

For this thread, I'm not suggesting anything so radical; I mention it only to illustrate the point that slavishly following the point accounting system as written isn't always the best option.

There is an official Gurps product that takes that approach? I've used this for a number of years now, but I wasn't aware of many others who did. That's awesome!

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

That said, I don't think using Signature Gear to purchase your abilities is really the right way to go. There's a couple of issues with that approach. First, and most importantly, Signature Gear is actually too expensive, at high levels, compared to what it buys you. Once you get past about 30 points in Sig Gear, it's more point-efficient to just buy Wealth anyway. Second, Signature Gear comes with a built-in plot protection element that's often directly opposed to the idea of power limitations. You're basically paying to always have the possibility of having your gear handy, whereas a power limitation is usually about ways for the GM to deny, or at least weaken, your abilities. Finally, I worry that using Signature Gear will still end up with balance issues, because most pieces of equipment aren't priced based on point utility, but rather at least a vague idea of how expensive they "should" be in an actual economic system. So some abilities that are, character-point-wise, cheaper than others end up more expensive, money-wise, because they're just harder to make, or have less demand, or whatever.

I disagree with the bolded part. Signature gear is about always getting your gear back, not about it never being unavailable. Signature gear can and should be occasionally put out of commission. Star lord can be put in prison and stripped of his precious walkman, but when he breaks out, he has the chance to get it back. This is very similar to the way a power works.



I do agree that at high levels, signature gear is too expensive, and you should start looking for different equivalent advantages.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Some concepts deserve a bullet in the head.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by ericthered

I do agree that at high levels, signature gear is too expensive, and you should start looking for different equivalent advantages.

I've been using AtE's Sig Gear cost for awhile now... so... I have to say, never too expensive.

[AlexanderHowl]

At TL5+ Significant Gear only becomes 'too' expensive if you are using it to purchase large ticket items (spaceships, warships, etc). At TL8, you get $10,000 of protection gear per point, which the GM cannot take away from my character without good reason and which the GM cannot deprive of my character unless I sell it. For example, if I am playing a character like the Punisher, I can put 100 points into Significant Gear and have $1,000,000 of adventuring equipment that will always come back to me. If I wanted to, I could instead get $40,000,000 in adventuring equipment through purchasing Wealth (Multimillionaire 2) for 100 points, and get Status 3 for free, but my equipment is not plot protected and, more to the point, I cannot give my adventuring equipment special powers.

Of course, a character with both (Batman) would have the best of both worlds, as they have their Signature Gear for everyday adventuring and they use their wealth to purchase more specialized gear. In a 500 CP campaign, the character still possesses 300 CP for attributes, advantages, and skills, which means that they are effective beyond their Signature Gear and their Wealth. With Independent Income 5, they will earn $10 million per month, meaning that they can easily add to their mundane gear but, even if circumstances conspire to deprive them of their wealth, they will always have access to their Signature Gear.