Problems crating templates

[deanjday]

I am creating my first template for GURPS (a religious knight for my world of Solem thread).
I am having issues working out how I calculate the cost of the template as In the secondary and background skill categories I wish to give the players options to take some of those skills but not make them mandatory.

Is this ok to do this? I have made the primary skills mandatory with no options.

If i do make the other skill categories optional in how many they take, how to i calculate the final cost of the template?

[Aldric]

You can just list the skills you want and say "10 points spent among these skills". Or for example, you could like half a dozen skills with 2 points invested in each, and say "select 5 among these skills".

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by deanjday

I am creating my first template for GURPS (a religious knight for my world of Solem thread).
I am having issues working out how I calculate the cost of the template as In the secondary and background skill categories I wish to give the players options to take some of those skills but not make them mandatory.

Is this ok to do this? I have made the primary skills mandatory with no options.

If i do make the other skill categories optional in how many they take, how to i calculate the final cost of the template?

You don't. The template format as defined in GURPS always has a fixed total cost; you can give players options for what to take, but the different options have to add up to the same number of points. You can say, for example, "three of choice A [2], choice B [2], choice C [2], choice D [2], or choice E [2]"; or "10 points in the following: <list of options with point costs>." But each section has to have a constant subtotal cost, and the subtotals have to add up to a constant total cost, or what you have isn't a template as GURPS defines it. A GURPS template never says "take some of A, B, C, D, and E" with an indefinite cost.

That's not to say that players can't choose to take more of the options than the template requires. They might, for example, take A, B, C, and D for 2 points each, total 8 rather than 6. But the template would only require 6 points.

A compromise is to provide a template and provide lenses that turn the template into a higher-value subtype; for example, your "knight" template might have lenses for "captain" and "courtier" and "heroic warrior" each with its own total point cost.

There's nothing to say you can't provide just a "list of suggested traits" and leave players to take as few or as many as they like. But in GURPS that wouldn't be called a template, and the template format wouldn't really work for it. If you have GURPS Martial Arts, take a look at how it handles styles, with, for example, required skills and optional traits of various sorts; that might be a better fit.

[Michele]

What about just looking at how the books handle the templates? Use existing templates as examples.

Look at P. B160. The Secondary Skills of the Investigator Template begin by stating: "Select two skills from:...". If you look at the skill list that follows, you'll see that each one of them costs 2 points. That is achieved by adjusting the level, depending on skill difficulty, so that the cost remains always the same.

The result is that for the Investigator Template, Secondary Skills always amount to a total 4 points (two skills from that list, at 2 points apiece).

Yet one investigator, being more combat-oriented, might have (in a low-tech setting), Knife and Shortsword as his secondary skills, while another, more socially oriented, might use those 2 2-point slots for Acting and Fast-Talk.

That's why these are templates, not cookie-cutter premade characters.

[ham2anv]

You can also provide the maximum amount you want them to spend in a given section, and then say they can spend any leftover points in another section, like advantages.

[Gumby Bush]

Originally Posted by ham2anv

You can also provide the maximum amount you want them to spend in a given section, and then say they can spend any leftover points in another section, like advantages.

This is probably a good way to go. The other way to go would be to intentionally write templates for less than the total point level your campaign will start at, then write it as the minimum. Elsewhere (in a customization notes section, say) you would give pointers for spending further points in a less rigorous way than templates require.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by Gumby Bush

This is probably a good way to go. The other way to go would be to intentionally write templates for less than the total point level your campaign will start at, then write it as the minimum. Elsewhere (in a customization notes section, say) you would give pointers for spending further points in a less rigorous way than templates require.

That's pretty much what I did for a campaign that actually never started (it may still) I had templates, some with lenses to further customize them, but then I had in mind to start the campaign with more points than what was required to get most templates, so characters would have some points left over to get some odd stuff I.
And I had a "origin" "background" and "occupation" templates already, with players having to get one of each.

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by deanjday

If i do make the other skill categories optional in how many they take, how to i calculate the final cost of the template?

How optional do you want them to be? If you want them to be fully optional, simply leave those traits off the template and recommend them in the customization notes section.

Since you are dealing with new players, I would recommend having them spend X points on a list of items with identical point costs. That is simple and easy to handle.

It also makes it easier to determine when adding a Talent to a template will be less expensive than buying up individual skills and attributes.

[Anaraxes]

The point of a template is to provide suggestions and guides to building a character, which is especially useful for those with less experience. They also can serve a role for "niche protection" (making sure all the different characters have some areas that they "own" and thus will have some spotlight time, by omitting that area from the traits on other templates). They can also be used as examples to communicate the flavor of a setting.

Lots of good things you can do with templates. But they're not required at all, and GURPS and GURPS players got along just fine without them for decades, merely saying "spend X points on your character".

The 4e template is only moderately rigid. The Dungeon Fantasy (DF) line throws in a extra rule to make adherence to them mandatory (in part just to mimic classes from Those Other Games which inspire that line).

So, the right answer is "however much detail and rigidity you want". If you want to allow only those options already on the template, then you'll need to put in more work to make sure every possible option is listed and that all possible combinations add up to the proper starting point value -- practically a pregen character, but with some optional packages pulled out with a few choices of exactly the same point value. If you're somewhere in the middle, then you've got some typical core along with a checklist of things to consider in some proportion. On the other end, you just say "build your character on 250 points".

Any way you do it, it's a good idea to remain engaged with the players building their character, so you can help them remember stuff that they'll need, suggest ways to realize their concept, learn what their concept is all about so you can use it in the game appropriately, and get started on imagining how you can tie that concept in to the general idea of the game you had in mind.

It generally works out less well (at least to my mind) to just throw some rules (however detailed) over the fence and say "show up on Sunday with your character sheet", expecting every possible character to be faceless and interchangeable in the adventure (as with the "organized play" setups like the D&D Adventurer's League or Paizo's Pathfinder Society)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But each section has to have a constant subtotal cost, and the subtotals have to add up to a constant total cost, or what you have isn't a template as GURPS defines it.

One partial exception to that is that some templates allow spending points in one section on traits in another. So the subsections have fixed totals, but with the possibility of moving those totals around a bit.

For example, things like "Spend 20 points on any of the following traits or on additional spells."