08-13-2015, 02:29 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Dec 2008
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The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
I'm working on a game that will involve Magic as Powers, including Costs FP and ER, as well as The Last Gasp. There are a few things about the interaction between these that I wanted some advice on.
First, off, with The Last Gasp, magic costing FP becomes extremely strenuous (and this is deliberate). Between Gradual Impairment, Persistance is Futile, Hitting the Wall and Painful Recovery, magic (which can cost several FP) is hard on the body and a well-trained mage will want high HT and Will. That said, this means that Costs FP is a much more severe limitation than it usually is. As such, I want to give more than a -5% limitation for it. What do people think? Is -10% appropriate? Then, we come to ER. I want some mages with experience to be able to mitigate the strenuousness for a limited amount of casting. In other words, I want ER to be available. The way ER is written, it's point-balanced against traditional FP. However, against The Last Gasp, it becomes a lot better. It recharges much faster and doesn't suffer from all the downsides of spending FP from TLG. As such, it should probably recharge slower, to put it more on par with FP and cost more points (to balance the advantage of not dealing with losing FP). This leads to two questions, though: How fast should it recharge? 1/2 hours, as Mild FP recovery for a 10 FP character? As the character's Mild Fatigue recovery? As the character's Severe Fatigue recovery (after all, mages will drop into Severe Fatigue sometimes)? How many points is reasonable? I was thinking [5], which is consistent with calling "Doesn't have to deal with FP loss consquences from TLG" a Cosmic +50% Enhancement. I'm not really sure if this is reasonable, though. What do people think? |
08-13-2015, 02:59 PM | #2 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
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Comparing it to things like Maximum Duration where 10 minutes is -50% and after that it shuts down for 5 minutes. Compare that to the 10 minutes of use you get for Cost FP -5% as normal person and the 100 minutes it takes until you can recover... I use -10%/FP and yet no one ever volunteers to take the bare minimum required, The real value should likely be something like -20%/FP... As for the last grasp: I would double the value likely to -20%/-40%.. as FP loss is kind of nasty in that system, basically a normal human will get -60% in aftermath like effects for using 2 FP and the aftermath takes longer than standard such. Quote:
As for recovery that is basically another cosmic at likely 100%(cheating) level. So the total of 10 minute recovery Er would be 8 points that starts to look much more correct. Alternatively you could go with the lower cost and have the ER only not cause loss off attributes, but use the % of ER used as the recovery time for ER like you do % of FP for FP. Last edited by weby; 08-13-2015 at 03:05 PM. |
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08-13-2015, 03:10 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
I'd say aim for no more than 10 ER (or even less) but remove it's standard recovery method. Instead have ER be recovered via a successful Meditation roll. 2 ER on crit success, 1 ER for regular success, none on a failure and lose 1 ER on a critical failure.
This lets mages throw spells around but forces them to take a few moments to recover. A recommendation on this is to remove all cost reduction for high skill.
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08-13-2015, 03:26 PM | #4 | ||||
Join Date: Dec 2008
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
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I'm using Magic as Powers. There is no cost reduction for high skill (nor any skill, for that matter). |
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08-13-2015, 03:29 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
Woops, missed that. Thought you were using straight Magic and TLG.
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GURPS Fanzine The Path of Cunning is worth a read. |
08-13-2015, 03:32 PM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
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08-13-2015, 11:25 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: The Last Gasp, Powers, Costs FP and Energy Reserve
In my samurai campaign, I used both the Last Gasp and Energy Reserves, and I allowed the latter to act as points for Extra Effort (since it represented Chi) which is beyond what you intend to do in your campaign. I did not charge extra for it. It worked out fine.
It turns out ER isn't priced "against fatigue," it's priced against spending it on powers and such, which is its purpose. Remember, the original role of fatigue is not just enduring hikes and such, but also powering spells. Since you want energy reserves powering spells, this seems perfect. In my game, Chi reserves were used to power Chi abilities, and it was much sought after... but not as much as you might think. I had a few perk prerequisites that made it a little tricky (but not too hard) to get and limited how much you could have, but again, I gave it more benefits than you did. Hit points also take a very long time to recover, but they're actually cheaper than fatigue points. In the original magic system, you could spend fatigue (which recovered quickly) or you could spend HP (which took forever to recover). When you use the Last Gasp and Energy Reserves, you get a similar story: You could spend from your energy reserves, which recover quickly, or you could spend from your fatigue, which took forever to recover and penalized you. In effect, ER becomes like Action Points in Last Gasp, or like Fatigue in the Fatigue/HP dichotomy of vanilla magic. So I wouldn't worry about it. Toss on a special recovery condition if you're really worried, but in practice, I think you'll find that it's not too much of a problem.
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Tags |
costs fp, energy reserve, powers, powers as magic, the last gasp |
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