Dose Lowering Will or Per when raising IQ count against the disadvantage limit?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If that's a concern for your campaign (it might not be for a strictly character-driven sort) and you run across the odd player who really would pile on extra Disadvantages without getting back points, you still might want to reign them in.

Maybe, but how? You could after all play your character as having all sorts of crippling problems without needing to write anything on your character sheet at all if you wanted. And honestly a role player sufficiently dedicated to the concept to try it for no point reward probably has a decent chance of carrying it off successfully.

[Nemoricus]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Maybe, but how? You could after all play your character as having all sorts of crippling problems without needing to write anything on your character sheet at all if you wanted. And honestly a role player sufficiently dedicated to the concept to try it for no point reward probably has a decent chance of carrying it off successfully.

At which point this becomes less a problem of game mechanics, and more a matter of sitting down with the player and going over why their character is causing problems.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Maybe, but how? You could after all play your character as having all sorts of crippling problems without needing to write anything on your character sheet at all if you wanted. And honestly a role player sufficiently dedicated to the concept to try it for no point reward probably has a decent chance of carrying it off successfully.

If they decide to play a bunch of Disadvantages that aren't on their character sheet, either:
A) They tell you in advance that they'll be doing that, and you can tell them you have a problem with that then just like you could if they were over limit on the sheet.
or
B) They don't, and when it becomes a problem and you want them to knock it off you've got the added point that they're not playing the character they tendered.

[AlexanderHowl]

No GM needs to let a player play a character that disrupts the campaign. GMs are providing a unique unpaid service to their players by running a campaign and, if the player does not see that, they should go off and play video games instead of tabletop games. If a GM sets a disadvantage limit during character creation (I generally use 100 points plus 5 points of quirks rather than 50% point total because I never run games at less than 200 points), players should adjust their character concept to reflect the limits of the campaign. It is not more unreasonable than forbidding supernatural abilities in a realistic game or forbidding laser weapons in a medieval campaign.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I've advocated moving Per to HT for quite a while now as a partial fix.

In some cases (for example, estimating angles, distances, and sizes) I'd actually move it to DX. And a lot of things probably shouldn't be perception rolls at all; most recognition tasks should be skill rolls, and sensory acuity is a cap on skill, not a bonus.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Maybe, but how?

"I decided to drop you from the campaign."

You could after all play your character as having all sorts of crippling problems without needing to write anything on your character sheet at all if you wanted. And honestly a role player sufficiently dedicated to the concept to try it for no point reward probably has a decent chance of carrying it off successfully.

I have very little tolerance for players who behave disruptively or try to steal the spotlight consistently.

Insisting that your character is a delusional narcissist who is convinced that he is a Napoleonic naval captain with a peg leg, fanatical intolerance for AI, and the willingness to commit war crimes at the drop of a hat, when as a RN military astronaut you wouldn't have been allowed to take any of those is hard for me to distinguish from deliberate sabotage of my campaign (which was the result in that case, certainly).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by malloyd

..
It's entirely RAW legal to take as many disadvantages as you want no matter what the disadvantage limit is - they just count as -0 points when figuring your point total. People who complain about disadvantage limits on the basis of "realism" don't like to hear that, because it completely undercuts their argument, but it's true. And yes, it means your character will be less effective than the others in the campaign - that's just enhancing the realism since real people do vary.

Though I will give you that basing Will and Per (and charisma) on IQ in the first place was probably sub-optimal. It's a legacy decision from adding a mental stat to Man to Man. I've advocated moving Per to HT for quite a while now as a partial fix.

I still don't like penalizing realistic characters, because of a gaming feature. Very intelligent people aren't much more if at all willful and perceptive than the general public. But these discussions never go anywhere as they seem to be based on fundamental differences in what games are supposed to emulate, promote, and allow.

I get sensory perception correlating with health to a degree, but not very strongly so. More so than with IQ, I suppose.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Do you have examples of this? Buying Advantages with Limitations does not qualify - a Limitation and a Disadvantage are, from a system perspective, totally different things.

This is a rules text question, GM discretion to act outside the published material is a given, but not relevant to the point from my perspective.

First thought that enters my mind is Hit Points - separated from ST entirely. Second thing that comes to my mind are "Energy Reserve points" as they are stripped away from the function of "Fatigue" which in turn, is a secondary attribute of HT. Ironically? Energy Reserve when stripped from FT and then modified for use with spells only, or for use with Psionic abilities only - have the added bonus of recharging separate of Fatigue and working concurrent with fatigue as far as a mage or psion is concerned. For example? I could build a mage with 10 HT, 10 Fatigue, and 10 Energy Reserve (Magic spell casting only). I could cast a spell for 18 energy, use 10 off my Energy reserve, and 8 from Fatigue - and gain both 1 point of fatigue back per given rest period and 1 energy reserve at the same time.

Then there is Sensory acuity (vision or hearing) that constitutes a separation of "perception" for specific sensory rolls. It is cheaper to raise hearing by +1 than it is to buy IQ up in order to gain a +1 bonus to any sensory roll.

One could easily go through GURPS page by page to find other examples. What is interesting here is the narrow definition of "Advantages with limits" not qualifying in your mind as valid examples. Having an ability that only works if you can roll its reliability value or less would be a perfect example of what I'm talking about with regards to taking limitations on abilities to make them cheaper and still have them act as disadvantages outright. How about the fact that some limitations could inflict headaches and the like on its recipient using a specific ability? Or, as an example, spells that can only be cast if the caster loses hit points (as given in GURPS FANTASY for 4e)?

In all? If you're of a mind to say that certain things aren't valid to your way of thinking, that's fine. I know that I'm not going to be able to convince you to believe everything that I use in my games as a GM are going to be the kind of things you would want to utilize in yours (and vice versa). For the first time in YEARS - I am experimenting with the use of what in BOND 007 would be called "HERO POINTS" for use in my cyberpunk campaigns. The one player tends to find himself in tight situations (truth be told - situations he should be able to avoid at times, but doesn't). Rather than have the campaign die out because it is a one on one campaign, I've had to adopt certain game conventions that I would NEVER adopt in a group play. So even for my own games, there are certain "conventions" that I would use under one circumstance, but in others, would disallow or be less enthusiastic about.

So, hopefully this answers your question. If you want to continue this discussion, simply email me and we can take it behind the scenes if you will. ;)

This thread is hopping, and I hope NOT to derail it too much!

[hal]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

"I decided to drop you from the campaign."

I have very little tolerance for players who behave disruptively or try to steal the spotlight consistently.

Insisting that your character is a delusional narcissist who is convinced that he is a Napoleonic naval captain with a peg leg, fanatical intolerance for AI, and the willingness to commit war crimes at the drop of a hat, when as a RN military astronaut you wouldn't have been allowed to take any of those is hard for me to distinguish from deliberate sabotage of my campaign (which was the result in that case, certainly).

While that is certainly an option - for some, that results in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Dropping a person from the table generally isn't taken very well by the player, which means (in general), you run the risk of them NEVER coming back to your table. That's fine if that's what you're willing to risk, but I have found over the years, that any voluntary congregation of people has a certain dynamic of "if person A shows up, he brings or keeps persons B and C happy. Person D doesn't much care about A, but wants to be in the company of C. Meanwhile, if B leaves, Person A isn't happy and is less inclined towards showing up.

I've seen games fold for just that reason. Hell, I've seen chat rooms fold for just that reason.

That's not a dig against you for it, just an observation that the solution you would employ may not be a viable solution for other groups.

Last but not least? Spotlight. For many, that's an important thing isn't it? Problem is, not all "players" on the stage are equal are they? Some move the plot of the story more smoothly than others do. "Equal time in the spotlight" for me, is a myth. Some players put more effort into the game than others. Some make an effort to cooperate with others, and yet, some also simply make life difficult from time to time (ie, not consistently disruptive, but more so than the others over a long span of time).

There are the movers - and there are the slackers. Sometimes the night goes well because everyone moves the story forward and life is good. There are times when as GM, you're just not in the groove and things falter. There are times when the players either fail to cooperate, or they fail to move the story forward simply because the inspiration just isn't there.

As Kromm has repeatedly stated: a character built on 150 points may be more viable than another built on the same point total, but less efficient for the general campaign, or just not effectively played well by the player. I could build a 150 point character that would in general, be an effective player character for the campaign, and give it to one player who'd run like the wind with it. Give it to another player, and he'd struggle with making it work (it doesn't fit his style would be one way to put it).

So - while your answer of dropping someone for attempting to hog the spotlight works for you, it doesn't work for me with my group.

Case in point: the group got to know a Dragon named Dristz (short for his real long Dragon name). The dragon got to liking one character enough to teach her "dragon tongue" - something that is only taught to humans that are trusted implicitely. The Dragon also enjoyed the company of the other player character that he'd teach him other things, including magic spells.

Then I introduced a time gate and a ring to control it, that permitted the players to visit the city before it became the ruin they were currently exploring and met Dristz(10's of hundreds of years in the past). That campaign ran for quite a while. Then one day, a new player shows up, creates a combat monster, who then proceeds to kill Dristz as he (the dragon) moulted (in my game world, Dragons would moult and go largely mindless when that happened, and thus, the new PC ended up murdering the dragon at a time when he had gone mad with the irritation of the loss of scales while the new ones pushed up from beneath the old scales.

What happened? The players decided to use the ring to go back to the city before it became a ruin. They knew the cave that Dristz would be born in near the city, and left Dritz a message telling him to destroy the alchemically created warrior that would be in a sealed brass vat that Dritz would open up some day. Said Alchemically created warrior would kill Dritz. The warning was in dragon-tongue, which made it all the more likely that baby Dritz would remember the warning and destroy the alchemical brass vat that would be his bane in time. As GM, I had to tell the player that his character had been destroyed before it could even get out of the vat. THAT made it so that we lost the player for well over 6 months before he cooled off enough to play again, and things were strained for a time when he came back.

So - maybe you have an abundance of players for your games, and that is a good thing in my opinion. Me? Although I used to have five of us playing together since the late 1980's - we're down to three of us now (the fourth is unable or unwilling to drive himself to the game and dinner at our table).

I don't know how others run their games, but at my house, we get together, chitchat a bit - eventually settle down to gaming together, taking a break for dinner and chit-chatting more, and returning to the game until it is time to call it a night. A social event as well as a gaming event. Sort of like how my parents would enjoy canasta get togethers and socialize as well as play games.

On that note - I'll have to hit the sack and get some shut eye...

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Maybe, but how? You could after all play your character as having all sorts of crippling problems without needing to write anything on your character sheet at all if you wanted. And honestly a role player sufficiently dedicated to the concept to try it for no point reward probably has a decent chance of carrying it off successfully.

For me if they want to do this that's OK, but if they introduce those disads as a GM I'll run with them. What I won't allow is them taking my allowance of it as tacit agreement of them swapping the CPs they would be worth for unofficial and assumed metagame "limelight points" (well not unless I'm running a game with that kind of metapoint system pre-agreed in play anyway)

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I still don't like penalizing realistic characters, because of a gaming feature. Very intelligent people aren't much more if at all willful and perceptive than the general public. But these discussions never go anywhere as they seem to be based on fundamental differences in what games are supposed to emulate, promote, and allow.

I get sensory perception correlating with health to a degree, but not very strongly so. More so than with IQ, I suppose.

I guess to me the thing is your not penalising them really unless you consider not being able to take anything less than the max full allowed percentage of Disadvantages as a penalty. Its an optional max, not a mandated spend.

Which to me isn't a complaint that fits well with appeals to realism anyway.

In fact as already stated realism and disads as a proportion of points are orthogonal anyway so hard to link in this way.

I guess my games are probably at the more "realistic" end of the spectrum than most. But even with that in mind I don't really worry about caps on disads in CP terms.

Because if you really want to make an unplayable character with umpteen disads chances are you won't be playing them long.

Originally Posted by hal

While that is certainly an option - for some, that results in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Dropping a person from the table generally isn't taken very well by the player, which means (in general), you run the risk of them NEVER coming back to your table. That's fine if that's what you're willing to risk, but I have found over the years, that any voluntary congregation of people has a certain dynamic of "if person A shows up, he brings or keeps persons B and C happy. Person D doesn't much care about A, but wants to be in the company of C. Meanwhile, if B leaves, Person A isn't happy and is less inclined towards showing up.

I've seen games fold for just that reason. Hell, I've seen chat rooms fold for just that reason.

That's not a dig against you for it, just an observation that the solution you would employ may not be a viable solution for other groups.

I guess for me there's always an unspoken "talk to them first" caveat. But ultimately disruptive players are a problem because in general they affect everyone else's enjoyment. And to be frank keeping them around to maintain a delicate game table political dynamic isn't worth the effort because if the game table it that politically fragile, that's a problem not a solution!

Also at the risk of making a broad statement on a theoretical situation. A player who's going to walk off in high dudgeon because I won't let them play as many disads as they'd like is likely someone who's going to find a reason to walk off in high dudgeon sooner or later anyway. So why wait.

Originally Posted by hal

Last but not least? Spotlight. For many, that's an important thing isn't it? Problem is, not all "players" on the stage are equal are they? Some move the plot of the story more smoothly than others do. "Equal time in the spotlight" for me, is a myth. Some players put more effort into the game than others. Some make an effort to cooperate with others, and yet, some also simply make life difficult from time to time (ie, not consistently disruptive, but more so than the others over a long span of time).

There are the movers - and there are the slackers. Sometimes the night goes well because everyone moves the story forward and life is good. There are times when as GM, you're just not in the groove and things falter. There are times when the players either fail to cooperate, or they fail to move the story forward simply because the inspiration just isn't there.

For me its not so much making sure everyone has the same amount of spotlight, as you say some desire it more than others, or at different times anyway. It's that spotlight is a finite resource and some will seek to keep it at the expense of others.

Now that's a fine line distinction I realise, but IME Mr "Oh which of my laundry list of disads will be the critical factor that I will showcase in this scene" often risks tipping over into the latter.

Also in my experience an even worse situation is when one player constantly limits the actions of the party because of one of their disads. aka "we can't do a pirate campaign because I've got Chronic debilitating seasickness -15, but if you insist won't it be cool/interesting if we centre the campaign on my inability to go to sea".

Basically this is a group activity when we all input our time and interest and we do so in different ways, in different amounts and at different times. It doesn't have to be all equal all the time, but neither should it be run on the squeaky wheel gets the grease basis.

So yeah there are movers and slackers, but sometimes the slackers are slacking because they can't get a word in when the movers are moving.