Transient Advantages

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I think I got your point. I am challenging it. You think it's unfair for a character to use social Advantages to buy or obtain technology that supplies similar capabilities as innate traits. I am saying that if those technologies exist it's unrealistic to prevent characters from accessing them if they buy the right social Advantages to fit the qualifications to get them.

That basically means that the 250-point combat cyborg with 200 points of weapons and armor is a 250-point loser at fighter compared to a character who just used 100 of his 250 points to get the wealth and permission to get state-of-the-art suit of power armor that far overshadows the combat cyborg in every way.

Do you not see an issue with this?

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

You think it's unfair for a character to use social Advantages to buy or obtain technology that supplies similar capabilities as innate traits. I am saying that if those technologies exist it's unrealistic to prevent characters from accessing them if they buy the right social Advantages to fit the qualifications to get them.

Comparing "unfair" versus "unrealistic" is like comparing apples to oranges.

GURPS should be fair, but it doesn't have to be realistic. If you want to impose a rule like "you have to spend bonus character points to get cybernetics, even if you have the cash for it," that's fair, even if it's less realistic.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

That basically means that the 250-point combat cyborg with 200 points of weapons and armor is a 250-point loser at fighter compared to a character who just used 100 of his 250 points to get the wealth and permission to get state-of-the-art suit of power armor that far overshadows the combat cyborg in every way.

In a society that has suits of power armor that far overshadow any cybernetics you could buy, why would anybody get the cybernetics?

Your setting is where the conflict lies, not the GURPS rules.

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

So limit the character points they can put into skills, but leave everything else wide open.

I think this would be fine except that not all advantages are innate. Some of my magic systems may very well use talent with learnable advantages. I don't mind talent being innate but the learnable advantages look a lot like skills.

I think we are on the same page with the goal. It's how to word the instructions to the players of the characters. Perhaps I just tell them that I want a lot of the 80 points spent on innate things and just require all characters to be approved by me. Maybe intimate that the 20 points should be background skills and not all applied to their primary role in the group. I don't want to restrict players beyond just the concept. So I appreciate the advice on clarifying what the goal is for the campaign.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

In a society that has suits of power armor that far overshadow any cybernetics you could buy, why would anybody get the cybernetics?

Possibly because they want something harder to misplace, or just a bit less unwieldy, possibly because they were getting a prosthetic anyway and decided they might as well get a few abilities built in.

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The other way around would make sense to some people. Lots of 25 pt "normals" out there. The 100 pts would represent the things that made them different from those 25 pt normals.

I was thinking twice your age in skills so 12.5 would not be a typical normal. Obviously, there would be exceptions but an average 40 year old would have 80 points in skills.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

By my reckoning it would be very hard to make "super talented" people on 125 pts. You'd spend 120 pts giving your guy a 12 in each primary Attribute and by the usual Gurps standards a 12 is high average but not exceptional. I suppose you could do a 20 ST with a 12 HT and Fit with everything else left alone and that would represent a lot of talent but absolutely no experience.

For me super talented would be many stats at 12 or one stat at 15. Maybe even two at 13.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

<shrug> If you want to start at 125 pts that is of course your right but by other people's standards you may just be wanting to do low-powered fantasy. I'd doubt you'd ever get to really high-powered. It took my last Gurps group 2 years of very regular gaming to go from 250 to 400 (about 40-50 sessions).

Not really. I see the campaign progressing from 125 all the way to 600 which is where people would top out in my campaign.

I see early on 25 points being the typical dump of points. Maybe at the beginning that takes three sessions but it will slow down of course as a group gets better and better. So mid tier they are taking 5 sessions to get 25 and maybe at the highest tier 10.

Let's suppose it averages out to 5pts per session. Then 575 / 5 is 115 sessions. I've never had a group get to the highest tier in less than five years. Maybe I'm old school. I do think though I'd let them advance a little quicker early on and a little slower later on.


EDIT:
Here is a table to show my thinking....

Level Adventures Total Points
1 0 125
2 3 150
3 3 175
4 3 200
5 3 225
6 3 250
7 3 275
8 3 300
9 4 325
10 5 350
11 6 375
12 7 400
13 8 425
14 9 450
15 10 475
16 11 500
17 12 525
18 13 550
19 14 575
20 15 600

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

In a society that has suits of power armor that far overshadow any cybernetics you could buy, why would anybody get the cybernetics?

Your setting is where the conflict lies, not the GURPS rules.

Er, no. Who says the cybernetics are worse than power armor? The issue with cybernetics is that they cost character points, of which in the example we only have 250 (AND money, if bought post-creation). Power Armor doesn't cost anything except from a tiny bit of the enormous wealth you can buy for much less if handled as equipment.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Er, no. Who says the cybernetics are worse than power armor?

You did. "state-of-the-art suit of power armor that far overshadows the combat cyborg in every way."

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

I think this would be fine except that not all advantages are innate. Some of my magic systems may very well use talent with learnable advantages. I don't mind talent being innate but the learnable advantages look a lot like skills.

So give your players a limit on the number of characters points they can spend "on skills or learnable advantages."

And don't underestimate the idea of just explaining to your players in non-game language what it is you're looking for, and letting them make characters that conform to that idea. "I want you to make characters who are young, inexperienced, but talented. Keep your basic attributes and secondary characteristics within reasonable limits, as described on page B14. Only take as many skills as you would expect for fledgling adventurers. I'll look over your character when you're done and see if it fits into this framework." I've found that players usually WANT to build appropriate characters and will work with you to do that.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

That basically means that the 250-point combat cyborg with 200 points of weapons and armor is a 250-point loser at fighter compared to a character who just used 100 of his 250 points to get the wealth and permission to get state-of-the-art suit of power armor that far overshadows the combat cyborg in every way.

Do you not see an issue with this?

Whether I see an issue doesn't matter since you do.

What I'm pointing out is that it seems like your solution creates internal setting inconsistencies. For example, powered armor that exists for the military, except not for military PCs.