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Old 09-01-2021, 09:18 AM   #41
Gnome
 
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

This issue, or a similar one, comes up frequently here. My two cents is that in my many years of playing thousands of hours of GURPS 4e, I have seen PCs who spent a lot on attributes and made generalists who can do everything DX or everything IQ, and I have also seen PCs who focus on one or two skills, keeping modest attributes and raising those one or two skills to sky-high levels (typically a combat skill for combat-heavy campaigns, but it also could be, say, Physician for a doctor or Stealth for a ninja). I have also seen PCs go crazy with a Talent, which is sort of an in-between option to specialize in a slightly larger group of skills.

In my experience, of these the skill hyper-specialist is most likely to be a problem in an actual game, because they far outclass everyone around them at that one skill application and are useless whenever that one skill doesn't apply. The high attribute generalist can do lots of things, but none of them insanely well, and as a GM you should always expect that someone will be able to do X reasonably well anyway.

If the players talk to each other and try to occupy niches, or if you enforce the use of templates, then they won't really step on each other's toes.

Overall, I have found that the attribute prices are just about right (for me and my play group), while I have occasionally found the need to either cap or increase the price of skills, so that PCs don't end up with Guns-40 or whatever.
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Old 09-01-2021, 10:19 AM   #42
johndallman
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Indeed, the most realistic way to improve an attribute is probably to study a bunch of skills based on it until reducing all of those skills by one level and shoving the points that saves into the attribute raises the attribute by one level, thereby giving the same final skill levels.
I have been doing this for years. It's a good way to feel a sense of progress when bonus character points come in small, frequent tranches: you can usually buy something every session, or every two at most.

If you have enough points in skills that you can buy an attribute increase by reducing only some of your skills by a level, nothing seems to break. The skills that you only have one point in go up, as do others that you didn't pull points out of, which might offend some people. However, you don't get nasty snapping sounds, or bits of broken game mechanics flying around.

GURPS seems to hold up quite well if you let characters re-arrange points in skills and attributes, provided nothing goes down. Re-arranging 1, 2 or 4 points each in a bunch of Guns specialties into all those points in Pistol or Rifle works smoothly, provided you require that none of the specialties that have appeared in the campaign decrease.

RogerBW created a useful house-rule for characters who have hit attribute caps in long-running campaigns. Allow them to buy Talents that they did not start with, but reflect what they have been doing. Born War-Leader in a military game, Natural Copper in a police one, and so on.

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. . . I have occasionally found the need to either cap or increase the price of skills, so that PCs don't end up with Guns-40 or whatever.
Maybe you need a broader range of challenges?
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Old 09-01-2021, 10:28 AM   #43
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

I find that IQ is so cheap relative to its utility, or the defaults among IQ skills so generous, that it makes niche protection difficult at higher point levels. I think it's too much of a portmanteau when buying one attribute makes you good at technical skills, abstract reasoning, creative endeavors, and socializing. I know there are house-rule and GM fiat remedies available, but this is my view of the baseline condition.
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Old 09-01-2021, 11:49 AM   #44
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post

GURPS seems to hold up quite well if you let characters re-arrange points in skills and attributes, provided nothing goes down. Re-arranging 1, 2 or 4 points each in a bunch of Guns specialties into all those points in Pistol or Rifle works smoothly, provided you require that none of the specialties that have appeared in the campaign decrease.
Indeed, this is quasi-official, as p. B173 says:
When two skills default to one another and you have improved both, you may switch the "direction" of your default if this would give you better skill levels. Redistribute the points spent on both skills as needed. You may never decrease either skill level this way, however; you must always spend enough points to keep each skill at its current level.
I see nothing going sideways if you rearrange techniques, skills, Talents, and attributes in any configuration so long as: (1) no target number you would roll against ever goes down, and (2) it's all paid for, fair and square. If the GM feels that this flexibility should have a cost, they can always say that if the end state has equal or higher numbers at a lower point cost, the difference in points evaporates; e.g., 12 IQ/A skills at IQ+1 [4], for 48 points, become +1 to IQ [20] and 12 IQ/A skills at IQ [2], for 44 points, and 4 points vanish. To quote again:
This feels like an abstract number shuffle, but it works.
Frankly, if it works, that's all that matters. Only those hung up on meta-mechanics (like where points are spent and which way defaults point) can ever "see" this. In the game world, there's a smooth improvement of clearly related things, and nobody gets worse or better in some jarring way that ruins suspension of disbelief.

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RogerBW created a useful house-rule for characters who have hit attribute caps in long-running campaigns. Allow them to buy Talents that they did not start with, but reflect what they have been doing. Born War-Leader in a military game, Natural Copper in a police one, and so on.
This is also canonical, in that GURPS Action, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, and the other "pre-packaged genre series" provide many professional templates that have optional Talents on them, alongside a clear statement that characters built on a template may buy anything on said template with earned points. Thus, if I start as a barbarian without Animal Friend or a cleaner without Craftiness and later realize that I'm getting lots of mileage out of animal- or deception-themed skills, I can just toss points at the Talents rather than raise the individual skills. And if I've hit attribute caps, that's probably my best option.

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I know there are house-rule and GM fiat remedies available
And also published remedies in Alternate Attributes, which are neither house rules nor fiat, but official expansions of the game system. Yes, they're optional, but so is most of GURPS. I wrote that largely due to the fact that I somewhat agree that IQ is too broad . . . my examples there include an array that more-or-less splits IQ into Knowledge, Intelligence, and Charisma.
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Old 09-01-2021, 04:37 PM   #45
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

In my campaign I'd say that DX and IQ have probably been fairly priced. ST is probably also fairly priced (and the game's average TL is TL10). HT is the attribute that is too cheap and which I really wish I'd capped somewhere in the 14-16 range.

When you break HT up, 5 points goes to +0.25 Speed, 3 points to +1 FP, leaving 2 points to pay for +1 to all HT rolls and HT-based skill rolls. +1 to HT rolls is worth far more than 2 points...

I think HT at 15/level, and Fit 10 points would not be over-priced. Whether Very Fit should be 20 vs 25 points something I'm not sure on.
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Old 09-01-2021, 05:26 PM   #46
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

It seems like most people here feel the attributes are priced fairly. Do you guys also think the price of Surfing skill, at four points per level, is priced fairly? If you were running a Vietnam war game and one of the players showed up with a character where they had spent sixteen points to get Surfing-16, would you feel like they were getting their points' worth out of that purchase?
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Old 09-01-2021, 06:09 PM   #47
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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It seems like most people here feel the attributes are priced fairly. Do you guys also think the price of Surfing skill, at four points per level, is priced fairly? If you were running a Vietnam war game and one of the players showed up with a character where they had spent sixteen points to get Surfing-16, would you feel like they were getting their points' worth out of that purchase?
Things are worth what customers are willing to pay for them. I might advise that a watersports talent [5/L] would make a good investment.
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Old 09-01-2021, 06:41 PM   #48
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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If you were running a Vietnam war game and one of the players showed up with a character where they had spent sixteen points to get Surfing-16, would you feel like they were getting their points' worth out of that purchase?
Probably not.

But the alternative is having to come up with a list of point costs for every different game run. That's way too much work for me.
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Old 09-01-2021, 07:08 PM   #49
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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Things are worth what customers are willing to pay for them.
That works for goods in the real world. It doesn't make sense as a pricing philosophy in the games. These aren't good that are being exchanged. We're trying to make sure that all of the characters have an equal amount of utility or ability to effect their agency in the game world or coolness or whatever.

Let me demonstrate why this doesn't work with an example: if my character concept is to play a blind swordsman, and the only way I can achieve that is to *pay* fifty points for Blindness, due to a misprint in the book, and I'm willing to do that, then it doesn't mean that Blindness is worth fifty points as an advantage rather than minus fifty points as a disadvantage.

That someone is willing to pay a large amount of points for Surfing skill doesn't show us that Surfing skill gives an amount of utility, or that it enables players to effect their agency, or that it's as cool, or whatever other metric we might understand this by, as much as other things they could have purchased for that amount of points.

And where traits are not priced according to their utility, then players are heavily incentivized not to purchase them. It means that character concepts that utilize those traits are effectively off-limits.

If Blindness costs fifty points rather than giving back fifty points, then that's the same thing as blind characters being disallowed. Or worse, it means someone actually steps onto the landmine and pays fifty points to get to be blind.

Which sounds like a silly example, but I've seen players do the equivalent when building characters in GURPS. It's a complicated system that demands a high degree of system mastery. Since the trait pricing isn't based on utility, it allows for players to inadvertently waste all of their points on things that are worth less than a quarter of what they paid. This cripples their characters. I've seen it happen many times (and stepped on that landmine myself, when I first started playing).

It's not too difficult to make a robot character in a TL11 game with 200-points of worthless DR, 100-points of worthless ST, and another 100-points of worthless skills. That character might be literally useless, and is certainly worse off than a well-built seventy-five point character. Just look at the sample combat robots in Ultra-Tech for some example of landmines new players could easily step on. Enormous amounts of points spent on effectively nothing. For an added dose of fun, take a look at the Rocket Launcher power from Powers.

When you don't price things by utility, you are making certain character concepts either impossible or, worse, harmful.

I've run into both many times. I suspect that this has been present in every game I've played, though mostly as a silent BAN stamped on most character concepts. I played the combat robot. And then no one ever considered playing a robot again. It blew my leg off and then we never went back into that jungle.
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Old 09-01-2021, 07:11 PM   #50
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Default Re: Are there any supplements that have revisited GURPS attributes?

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But the alternative is having to come up with a list of point costs for every different game run. That's way too much work for me.
Have you looked at the skill pricing in BESM and in Tri-Stat DX? They use the method I am proposing and they don't seem like all that much work. All the GM has to do up front is declare which of the already-defined price lists they're using.
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