Afflictions Below Level 1

[ingeanus]

In the creation of a specific Affliction, I've found myself with a bit of a conundrum resulting from the problems between GURPS' leveling for Afflictions and the amount of competency that I was looking for out of an ability.

I've been attempted to create an Affliction (With Malediction) that can lower the IQ of a target — using the Margin Based Enhancement from Psionic Powers that lowers the attribute by the MoS instead of a set value. However, this Affliction is being made as a leveled set (Effectively as a pre-packaged advantage for PCs to simply acquire without have to make it themselves).

I intended for it to function from 1-8 levels in order to be in line with other pre-packaged abilities of this type, with Level 1 being quite low powered (Comparable to an amateur in the ability), Level 4 being competent, Level 6 being professional, and Level 8 being a Master. However, even at level 1 the Affliction is just far too powerful, causing around -3 IQ per roll when I was intending that level of competency to be around Level 7 or 8. This is really just because the Quick Contest was generally stacked in the favour of the Affliction-wielder here.

As such I wanted to see about Affliction levels that actually bestowed a bonus (In a similar fashion to the Resistible Limitations); where as Level 1 in Afflictions (with Malediction) provides a Will vs HT + 1 - 1 Quick Contest, Level 0 would provide Will vs HT + 1 - 0 and Level -3 would provide Will vs HT + 1 + 3. I haven't found any good sources or discussions on this, so headed here in the hopes anyone had good ideas on how this should be priced.

I've currently got two main ideas that are somewhat decent :
1. Treat each additional negative level as a -5% disadvantage similar to how Resistible does it / similar to a reverse of Reliable.
2. Halve the base point cost for each level below 1.

Any thoughts on these or better solutions?

[Ejidoth]

One option for the low levels might be to swap "IQ -1, Margin-Based, +30%" for "IQ -1, +10%; Secondary IQ -1, +2%", meaning success does -1 IQ and success by 5+ raises that to -2 IQ.

Another might be to do some kind of fractional IQ penalty, margin-based, and round the effect down. Like "IQ -0.5, Margin-Based, +15%": success by 2 gives -1 IQ, 4 gives -2 IQ, etc.

Technically there's also the Hard To Use limitation, on page 14 of GURPS Power-Ups 8: Limitations, but that's a really bad deal on an Affliction.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ingeanus

Treat each additional negative level as a -5% disadvantage similar to how Resistible does it / similar to a reverse of Reliable.

This is actually RAW, in the form of Easily Resisted (PU8:13). It's a pretty bad deal if your Affliction has a lot of Enhancements and you aren't using Multiplicative Modifiers, however; even if not normally using Multiplicative Modifiers, you may wish to make an exception and use them here.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Another might be to do some kind of fractional IQ penalty, margin-based, and round the effect down. Like "IQ -0.5, Margin-Based, +15%": success by 2 gives -1 IQ, 4 gives -2 IQ, etc.

love this idea

Originally Posted by Varyon

This is actually RAW, in the form of Easily Resisted (PU8:13). It's a pretty bad deal if your Affliction has a lot of Enhancements and you aren't using Multiplicative Modifiers, however; even if not normally using Multiplicative Modifiers, you may wish to make an exception and use them here.

Still sounds like a better deal to take this to save points rather than Hard to Use, especially since easy resistance isn't much of a problem at all if you have a malediction and targets willing to waive their contest.

[ingeanus]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Another might be to do some kind of fractional IQ penalty, margin-based, and round the effect down. Like "IQ -0.5, Margin-Based, +15%": success by 2 gives -1 IQ, 4 gives -2 IQ, etc.

I do really love an elegant solution, but it doesn't quite sit right to me when compared to alternative builds for the same power :

Affliction 1 (IQ-1, Margin-Based 1/3, +10%) [11] costs the same as Affliction 1 (IQ-1, +10%) [11] yet seems worse since you've got a very good chance of getting no effect even when you win (0-2 MoS), but maybe that's cancelled out by the chances of getting extra bonuses on really good rolls (-2 of MoS 6 and so on)?

As well,
Affliction 2 (IQ-1. Margin-Based 1/2, +15%) [23] seems largely worse than just Affliction 1 (IQ-1, Margin Based 1, +30%) [13], being that Affliction 2 has no effect when beating by 1, so the -1 penalty to HT doesn't make much difference and after that you still only get a -1 every 2 more levels. It doesn't seem to end up being worth nearly double the points.

Originally Posted by Varyon

This is actually RAW, in the form of Easily Resisted (PU8:13). It's a pretty bad deal if your Affliction has a lot of Enhancements and you aren't using Multiplicative Modifiers, however; even if not normally using Multiplicative Modifiers, you may wish to make an exception and use them here.

I did miss this one! I definitely agree with Plane that it makes much more sense than Hard to Use and the Multiplicative point already solves my immediate apprehension that it might not be worth the point drop. However, considering that Magic Resistance (versus this magical ability) would be fairly common the side effect of this in regards to Magic Resistance, etc seems like another problem itself. Would there be any general issue cost wise in waiving the Magic Resistance portion though?

As well this also give a kind of weird interaction with higher levels, such as Affliction 2 (IQ-1, Margin-Based, +30%; Easily Resisted 1, -5%) [25] being functionally equivalent to Affliction 1 (IQ-1, Margin-Based, +30%) [13] with the added negative of working less against Magic Resistance. Is this just a side effect of most limitations being priced conservatively to prevent abuse or more of a signal that this should not really be used on Afflictions (Despite it at least being relatively clear that Easily Resisted should be applicable to them for me)?

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by ingeanus

Affliction 2 (IQ-1. Margin-Based 1/2, +15%) [23] seems largely worse than just Affliction 1 (IQ-1, Margin Based 1, +30%) [13], being that Affliction 2 has no effect when beating by 1, so the -1 penalty to HT doesn't make much difference and after that you still only get a -1 every 2 more levels. It doesn't seem to end up being worth nearly double the points.

This is a known problem with Affliction 2+, for which there are a ton of house rules but no entirely satisfactory solutions, unfortunately. It's why a lot of people stick to Malediction-style Afflictions instead of buying the level up.

[ingeanus]

I do see that now. I suppose I'll be looking into some of those rules as well, but thanks for the great input on the Enhancement itself.

Edit : As well, I did the same math that PK Explained for Margin Based for larger margins and it works out pretty much as detailed up above (Coming to about 17% for 1/2 and 11% for 1/3), so it seems to have good merit there.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by ingeanus

it makes much more sense than Hard to Use

also when you max out Easy to Resist, if you still want to make it easier to resist there's some more options:

1) shorten the 1/2 D: shooting beyond that gives +3 to resist
2) give Armor Multiplier 2: that doubles the + resist that DR gives, or gives +1 to resist (akin to DR 1) to DR 0 guys