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Old 06-22-2021, 05:54 PM   #41
Black Leviathan
 
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Default Re: Transient Advantages

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Originally Posted by Emerikol View Post
So I've been pondering some of the advantages...Namely
Here's how we generally do it.

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Patron/Allies
These along with dependents, contacts, enemies and others do come and go a lot. If you eliminate a social disadvantage through play you either have to buy it off or you'll inevitably get another disadvantage in it's place. For allies if you gain the trust of a person or organization or useful contact an don't pay the points then they're not truly loyal to you when things come to the test, which as bitten more than a few of us in the ass when someone we though was our friend robbed or backstabbed us. If you buy a patron/ally/contact and they die or have to flee town, it sort of depends. If the story killed that person off then your points should be able to be put into a different advantage, hopefully a new ally or patron. If your stupidity got them killed? Shame about those character points..
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Wealth
I think we've played a total of one game where income has changed in play. Generally players are so removed from work once the campaign starts that the only thing that changes is getting fired. If you started out as a poor character but got a huge payout, most often that's free money. If something bad happens from loot generally I aim it at the poor characters if there are no unlucky ones because they're not meant to have wealth. If you try to invest that money into something else it generates wealth with your penalty for wealth. If the players go in together to buy a tavern with their loot, the poor players bring down the income from that tavern for everyone. Increasing Wealth requires a legitimate change in how your character derives income in game and is paid for in character points after it's available, taking effect when the points are paid. Likewise costly mistakes that cause poverty are new disadvantages that don't go away unless they're fixed In Game and paid off.
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Reputation
Reputation is an advantage or a disadvantage plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you're the greatest swordfighter in generations or if you beat an arch-fiend in a fiddle contest. If you don't spend the points, your legend just doesn't go far. People who are directly affected by your deeds probably think well of you, but again they're not fans if you don't buy them as allies. Like social disadvantages you can gain a negative reputation without compensation and if you're a jackass, you should.
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Status/rank
We've had a few games where we've risen pretty dramatically in rank/status. unlike softer social advantages these advantages take effect right away and are hard to soften the impact of. So if you gain Status, just like if you were gifted with a supernatural gift in game, you've taken on a character point debt you need to pay off before you increase other character abilities.
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Old 06-22-2021, 09:23 PM   #42
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Default Re: Transient Advantages

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
Here's how we generally do it.


These along with dependents, contacts, enemies and others do come and go a lot. If you eliminate a social disadvantage through play you either have to buy it off or you'll inevitably get another disadvantage in it's place. For allies if you gain the trust of a person or organization or useful contact an don't pay the points then they're not truly loyal to you when things come to the test, which as bitten more than a few of us in the ass when someone we though was our friend robbed or backstabbed us. If you buy a patron/ally/contact and they die or have to flee town, it sort of depends. If the story killed that person off then your points should be able to be put into a different advantage, hopefully a new ally or patron. If your stupidity got them killed? Shame about those character points..

I think we've played a total of one game where income has changed in play. Generally players are so removed from work once the campaign starts that the only thing that changes is getting fired. If you started out as a poor character but got a huge payout, most often that's free money. If something bad happens from loot generally I aim it at the poor characters if there are no unlucky ones because they're not meant to have wealth. If you try to invest that money into something else it generates wealth with your penalty for wealth. If the players go in together to buy a tavern with their loot, the poor players bring down the income from that tavern for everyone. Increasing Wealth requires a legitimate change in how your character derives income in game and is paid for in character points after it's available, taking effect when the points are paid. Likewise costly mistakes that cause poverty are new disadvantages that don't go away unless they're fixed In Game and paid off.

Reputation is an advantage or a disadvantage plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you're the greatest swordfighter in generations or if you beat an arch-fiend in a fiddle contest. If you don't spend the points, your legend just doesn't go far. People who are directly affected by your deeds probably think well of you, but again they're not fans if you don't buy them as allies. Like social disadvantages you can gain a negative reputation without compensation and if you're a jackass, you should.

We've had a few games where we've risen pretty dramatically in rank/status. unlike softer social advantages these advantages take effect right away and are hard to soften the impact of. So if you gain Status, just like if you were gifted with a supernatural gift in game, you've taken on a character point debt you need to pay off before you increase other character abilities.
I come from a background of many other game systems and I can tell you that this is what annoys and aggravates players about GURPS when they come from different systems.

In virtually every other game system out there if your group does something incredible and gains fame, fortune and maybe land title the feeling is "Go forth, enjoy your newfound wealth and fame" and the next adventure simply takes this into account.

In GURPS (and most point buy systems) it's "Great! You've earned Wealth and Fame and Title - now pay for it." Say what? Didn't I earn that by almost getting killed? What do you mean I don't get to develop my character the way I want to for the next few sessions because all my points are going to the fame and fortune I ostensibly earned? And if I don't all that stuff I earned just disappears into the ether? This never happened in D&D.

I mean really - how much of a reward is it if you then have to pay full price for it? "Congratulations! Through wit, intelligence and sheer grit you've won yourself a Lamborghini! We'll just take your paycheck until you've paid it off in full. Or you could just go home prizeless despite having won."

No. Basic set page 291 in the box - "Gaining Traits in Play". You don't pay for any of this, you just change your point total. Much better way of doing things and much more like every other game out there. I just apply it to anything that is gained that's external to the character.

I also don't allow the characters to gain any of these same things with points. They have to earn them in character, it has to be character actions. If they want a good reputation, they have to do things that people will recognize and appreciate, for example.

- Shane
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Old 06-23-2021, 12:13 AM   #43
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Default Re: Transient Advantages

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You did. "state-of-the-art suit of power armor that far overshadows the combat cyborg in every way."
Are you not reading my posts? You're completely missing the point here. Of course it overshadows the combat cyborg. It doesn't matter if cybernetics are overall _better_ than power armor when the characters only has 250 points to spend.

If good Combat Cyborg Sub-dermal Armor has DR 1000 (Cannot Wear Armor, Hardened 1) [5000] the Cyborg player will simply be unable to afford it (He only has 250 points, remember?), and will have to make do with much weaker combat Cybernetics, say DR with the same modifiers at level 20 instead of 1000. Installing cybernetics always costs character points (at least during character creation).

Meanwhile Mc Rich can put 100 points into Wealth and Rank and just have Power Armor before the game starts as regular equipment. Doesn't matter if the standard Power Armor only has 500 DR, because unlike the Cyborg he can actually buy the dang thing. All he needs is a few levels of wealth, because as standard equipment it costs money and not points.
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Old 06-23-2021, 12:47 AM   #44
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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.
That should be a maximum of twice your age in skills. 25 points in skills doesn't mean that you're 12.5 years old, only that nobody under 13 would be able to have that many points in skills. An average 40 year old doesn't have 80 points in skills, that would put every 40 year old on a par with or ahead of trained special forces soldiers! For a discussion of how a typical person at various point levels might look, see How to Be a GURPS GM, especially pages 12 and 26-29, and to a lesser extent Chapter Four.

EDIT: All of which assumes, of course, that you're implementing a rule that limits how many points a character can have in skills by the age of the character.
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Old 06-23-2021, 01:06 AM   #45
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If I recall, 3rd Edition had the rules for the cap on points in relation to age. I think it actually was points capped at twice your age, but someone more 3E savvy could verify. May well give its own rationalization for such cap as well.

Your average normie is probably only going to have a handful of points in skills, even more likely operating at defaults and with anywhere from +2 to possibly even +10 for Task Difficulty modifier for routine day to day tasks like driving to work or mundane job skill rolls, so I could see even middle aged people living off a scant amount of points invested in skills.
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Old 06-23-2021, 01:35 AM   #46
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If I recall, 3rd Edition had the rules for the cap on points in relation to age. I think it actually was points capped at twice your age, but someone more 3E savvy could verify. May well give its own rationalization for such cap as well.
That's correct. The idea was that a person has only had so long to learn skills, so they should only have a certain number of points in skills. It created problems for some realistic characters who would have been through very intensive training. If my memory isn't flawed, Special Ops had to pretend the rule didn't exist.

4e more explicitly allows a point in a skill to represent hundreds of hours spent practicing, dozens of hours of intensive training, a few hours of harsh real world experience, or just being naturally good at something the first time you try it.
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Old 06-23-2021, 03:34 AM   #47
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just being naturally good at something the first time you try it.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe that 4E covers this through Attributes (and related Advantages/Disadvantages) and Talents. Points in skills is purely time spent training, though the amount of time depends on the method of training and sometimes the skill of the instructor. Social Engineering: Back to School covers all of the details in depth.

Last edited by lugaid; 06-23-2021 at 03:38 AM.
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Old 06-23-2021, 05:16 AM   #48
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So give your players a limit on the number of characters points they can spend "on skills or learnable advantages."
Fine but isn't saying no more than 20 points on skills the same as saying 80 points on innate qualities. Not meaning to be argumentative but I just don't see why one is better than the other.
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Old 06-23-2021, 07:58 AM   #49
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If I'm not mistaken, I believe that 4E covers this through Attributes (and related Advantages/Disadvantages) and Talents.
Being good at mental activities or artistic activities, yes. Being specifically a natural gifted sculptor, though, can only really be done by putting points in Artist (Sculpture).

4e barely cares why you have a skill level, and Kromm has always been very clear that 200 hours = 1 CP is a one-way equivalence.
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Old 06-23-2021, 08:05 AM   #50
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Fine but isn't saying no more than 20 points on skills the same as saying 80 points on innate qualities. Not meaning to be argumentative but I just don't see why one is better than the other.
One Eye is an innate quality; Voice is an innate quality. Basic attributes are not purely innate qualities, nor are they purely learned qualities.

Maybe I can focus what I'm saying into this: building a GURPS character is an expression of what you want the character to be like now, but not so much an expression of how the character got there. It's not quite so simple to split traits between "things you have no control over" and "things you chose to make the way they are."

I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm just saying that character points don't give you a natural progress so much as they give you a game-like progress. If that's okay with you, try it out to see what characters look like with your limits. If they work to your satisfaction, then go for it.
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