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Old 08-22-2020, 10:59 PM   #1
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Storing criticals?

A few times I've seen where a player gets a critical in a situation where they don't think it's helpful enough and they would like to 'store' it for future use and convert the critical to a success. Considering that upgrading a success to a critical is 2pts, I let them do this for 1pt just as a quick ruling. But for future reference is this a good 'cost'?

Also, how much would it cost to do this for 'free'? I was thinking it could just be a variant of Luck but a critical is already rare and one you don't want moreso so 15pts might be too expensive.

Thank you ahead of time.
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Old 08-23-2020, 01:09 AM   #2
AlexanderHowl
 
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I would suggest making it as an enhancement on Luck. Let us call it Critical Manipulation (+100%). You are capable of banking up to two critical successes every hour (for Luck), every half-hour (for Extraordinary Luck), or every ten minutes (for Ridiculous Luck) instead of the normal use of Luck. Unused critical successes are lost at the end of a session.
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Old 08-23-2020, 01:25 AM   #3
Ejidoth
 
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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I would suggest making it as an enhancement on Luck. Let us call it Critical Manipulation (+100%). You are capable of banking up to two critical successes every hour (for Luck), every half-hour (for Extraordinary Luck), or every ten minutes (for Ridiculous Luck) instead of the normal use of Luck. Unused critical successes are lost at the end of a session.
Nah, this is pretty clearly intended to be an Impulse Buy option for a whole group/campaign, not a character-specific trait, so this needs to be balanced as an Impulse Buy type thing.

I'm having some trouble thinking of a good way to balance this, though. In general if a critical success isn't useful in the moment, it's because the roll wasn't that important and a critical failure probably wouldn't be a big deal either. So letting players bank criticals like this risks encouraging them to make more frivolous rolls in the hopes of stocking up on criticals in low-danger situations.
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Old 08-23-2020, 03:43 AM   #4
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I would suggest making it as an enhancement on Luck. Let us call it Critical Manipulation (+100%). You are capable of banking up to two critical successes every hour (for Luck), every half-hour (for Extraordinary Luck), or every ten minutes (for Ridiculous Luck) instead of the normal use of Luck. Unused critical successes are lost at the end of a session.
That seems quite overkill. Even at +0% it seems overpriced, regular Luck seems like it's going to help much more.

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Originally Posted by Ejidoth View Post
I'm having some trouble thinking of a good way to balance this, though. In general if a critical success isn't useful in the moment, it's because the roll wasn't that important and a critical failure probably wouldn't be a big deal either. So letting players bank criticals like this risks encouraging them to make more frivolous rolls in the hopes of stocking up on criticals in low-danger situations.
Well in particular, I've mostly noticed it in situations where success is great but critical success isn't much better and there's almost a 'feel bad' moment of rolling a 3 when a 16 would have done everything you wanted. In frivolous situations its almost the opposite, a success is kind of meaningless but crits are often awesome.
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Old 08-23-2020, 10:17 AM   #5
Gold & Appel Inc
 
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In frivolous situations its almost the opposite, a success is kind of meaningless but crits are often awesome.
Agreed. We still make jokes about the time someone got a regular success on Survival followed by a crit on Cooking. BEST DANG BADGER STEW EVER.
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Old 08-23-2020, 10:22 AM   #6
Tyneras
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

Impulse Points with point regeneration limited by rolled criticals.
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Old 08-23-2020, 10:30 AM   #7
ravenfish
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

As a GM, I would be against permitting the storage of criticals, insofar as it would tend to encourage players to find reasons (consciously or otherwise) to make as many success rolls as possible, thereby slowing down the game.
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Old 08-23-2020, 10:49 AM   #8
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by kirbwarrior View Post
A few times I've seen where a player gets a critical in a situation where they don't think it's helpful enough and they would like to 'store' it for future use and convert the critical to a success. Considering that upgrading a success to a critical is 2pts, I let them do this for 1pt just as a quick ruling. But for future reference is this a good 'cost'?

Also, how much would it cost to do this for 'free'? I was thinking it could just be a variant of Luck but a critical is already rare and one you don't want moreso so 15pts might be too expensive.

Thank you ahead of time.
If you can "store" actual numbers and swap them with bad die rolls I'd call that worth 15 points. IF that's two expensive (and I'm not sure that it is), then "Luck (Stored Rolls) [15]" should let you store up to three rolls and carry them with you between game sessions. Extraordinary Luck would let you store six and Ridiculous Luck would let you store nine.
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Old 08-23-2020, 10:52 AM   #9
Anaraxes
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

If success -> crit is worth 2 CP every time you use it, then the Character Point Powered Ability rule in PU5 suggests that the base ability to do so with no CP cost per use is a mere 10 points. "Only after having rolled a crit" is then a Limitation on that base ability (compare Special Recharge on Energy Reserve), as would be a cap on the number of crits that can be stored (size of the "Crit Reserve") and a decay rate (compare the points gained from DR with Absorption or Leech).

(Impulse Buys are usually campaign features, so the point cost is generally irrelevant. But it's the GURPS forum, so we can put numbers on it even if there's no point in doing so.)
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Old 08-23-2020, 11:20 AM   #10
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

I would not allow dice rolls to be 'stored'. It's fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of rolling, which is to incorporate a random factor in events.
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