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Old 08-23-2020, 11:29 AM   #11
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by ravenfish View Post
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.
A possible way to combat this would be to make it clear the GM has control over whether or not a given crit is eligible for being stored. Searching a random corner of a room probably isn't eligible (unless you actually have something you're looking for), while an attack against an enemy probably is. You can also threaten penalizing a character's Destiny points (or even character points!) if the player attempts to have excessive rolls, although hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

Another option, which could be combined with the above, is to require a reroll rather than simply downgrading to a normal success. You could even go a step further, and state that if the reroll fails, the character wastes the critical roll, being unable to bank it.
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Old 08-23-2020, 06:01 PM   #12
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
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.
Oh, the purpose is to only allow later successes to be upgraded to criticals (under situations that would be allowed). This also wouldn't apply to contests because criticals don't mean anything there (and upgrading a bad MoS is effectively the same thing as a bad roll). In effect, it would downgrade a critical to success and allow a later success to become a critical. I'm not even certain there'd need to be a limit, I can't see someone storing more than one usually and if they happen to store a few more that's fine (and if they store like 10 then that means they've likely gone many, many sessions with fewer crits than assumed and been effectively at a loss).

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
A possible way to combat this would be to make it clear the GM has control over whether or not a given crit is eligible for being stored. Searching a random corner of a room probably isn't eligible (unless you actually have something you're looking for), while an attack against an enemy probably is. You can also threaten penalizing a character's Destiny points (or even character points!) if the player attempts to have excessive rolls, although hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

Another option, which could be combined with the above, is to require a reroll rather than simply downgrading to a normal success. You could even go a step further, and state that if the reroll fails, the character wastes the critical roll, being unable to bank it.
Definitely the first paragraph. If a player is trying to abuse anything I do to help them, they deserve to have the help taken away.

I like the rerolling idea, but I don't think I'd further punish a failure. Rather, they are basically using a 'reverse' luck. If they end up failing a roll that was already a critical, that's punishment enough.
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While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.
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Old 08-23-2020, 08:12 PM   #13
edk926
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

Criticals are rare enough that storing them aren't too much of a problem. I'm sure I've seen systems that had some sort of 'storage system' like that. If you are worried about abuse, just put a cap on them. Just make it a feature of the game.
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Old 08-24-2020, 01:46 AM   #14
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc View Post
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.
I love stuff like that. I bet the rest of the party loved the meal, meaning that the cook likely boosted reactions with any NPCs who were with the party.

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Originally Posted by edk926 View Post
Criticals are rare enough that storing them aren't too much of a problem. I'm sure I've seen systems that had some sort of 'storage system' like that. If you are worried about abuse, just put a cap on them. Just make it a feature of the game.
I might start doing that myself as a GM, but I'm also interested in knowing the cost in case I want to take it as a player.
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Old 08-24-2020, 09:52 AM   #15
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by ravenfish View Post
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.
Certainly that's the main risk - that allowing players to do this leads them to fish for criticals in situations where it doesn't matter very much if they succeed or fail. I wouldn't go for a reusable ability, where you'd pay the cost once at character creation and then be able to fill it with a new critical each time you expended the stored one - that will definitely cause that sort of behavior immediately after each use in order to refill your reserve. But I think the case where you charge a character point for each critical they store *in play* might not be so bad.

A point is a major cost, nobody is going to be storing all that many. It competes with all the other things you might want to spend your small number of earned points on, which is a higher psychological barrier than spending a bunch of points from a huge pool like at character creation.

Edit: I think the reusable version where the GM chooses if crits are eligible to be stored is the worst of both worlds really. Not only will you have to deal with the crit fishing, but when you say no because the situation isn't important enough you're basically voiding the entire reason you thought this was a good idea. It no longer works as a method to avoid "wasting" criticals if you can't save them unless they wouldn't have been wasted in the first place.
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:31 AM   #16
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

I just had a player ask for something like this. On getting a uselessly good damage roll he asked if he could roll twice more and take the worst result in exchange for an extra Luck token.

Admittedly my answer was no, and this is only a meaningful question because of the non-standard way we do Luck with a fixed number of uses per session instead of tracking real time between them, but it did strike me that if "wasted good rolls" are actually a problem for you, this would be a fairly balanced way to implement a solution, and handing over Luck tokens in either direction and rolling a handful of nine dice (three different colored triples) is fast enough not to impact play much.
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:52 AM   #17
WingedKagouti
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
I just had a player ask for something like this. On getting a uselessly good damage roll he asked if he could roll twice more and take the worst result in exchange for an extra Luck token.

Admittedly my answer was no, and this is only a meaningful question because of the non-standard way we do Luck with a fixed number of uses per session instead of tracking real time between them, but it did strike me that if "wasted good rolls" are actually a problem for you, this would be a fairly balanced way to implement a solution, and handing over Luck tokens in either direction and rolling a handful of nine dice (three different colored triples) is fast enough not to impact play much.
I could see that use as a small enhancement to Luck with the way you're using it. To be able to take a bit of "Bad Luck" in a non-critical situation for additional "Good Luck" in a critical situation is better than basic Luck, but not astronomically better.
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Old 11-25-2021, 07:25 AM   #18
JulianLW
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

The "Flesh Wound" Impulse Buy allows a player to retroactively change injury to 1 HP. Based on this, Malainka's Psi-Wars has introduced a variant of Destiny called Flesh Wounds [5]: Once per session, you can change injury rolled against you to a 1 HP flesh wound.

My intuitive thought is that the ability to store a critical should have a similar mechanic and be based on Destiny Points. It costs 2 Impulse or Destiny Points to turn a regular success into a critical and, as has been suggested, that would translate to a 10 CP trait to be able to do it once per session. If you add on the limitation that the original roll is lost and must be rerolled and that a roll can only be saved after it's already been rolled, that's about a -50% limitation (maybe more, but since this is an invented trait, I think we should be conservative in the pricing).

So how about this?

Clutch Player: For 5 CP/level, once per level per session, a player may save/bank one die roll result for later use and reroll the banked result. The player may have a maximum of 3 levels of this trait for a total of 15 CP. And this trait may be taken as an Alternative Ability to Luck - as a +20% enhancement for ease of use - with each use costing one use of the Luck advantage. Banked roll results may be used at any time (i.e. three separate results banked over three hours may be used one after another at the end of a session), but they do not carry over from one session to the next. This is a cinematic trait.

Last edited by JulianLW; 11-25-2021 at 07:30 AM.
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Old 11-25-2021, 11:10 AM   #19
Dinadon
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Storing criticals?

I wouldn't waste game time with a reroll. Since Success to Crit Success costs 2 points, downgrading a Crit Success to Success returns 1 point to whatever pool is being used to support Buying Successes. Stopping the exchange being one to one seems like a reasonable limit to me.

Using Luck charges does also make sense to me, but I still wouldn't bother with rerolls, or banking results. I would, however, always have luck charges earn 2 points towards Buying Successes. Less does seem like a waste of a Luck charge.

No idea if I would use both of them together.
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Old 11-25-2021, 12:55 PM   #20
The Colonel
 
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Default Re: Storing criticals?

This would seem to work best with a metacurrency approach ... not really a GURPS thing unless you want to fit a narritavist skin to it, but very appropriate in things like that Conan RPG.

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Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc View Post
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.
Unless you believe in that old Harnmaster typo where they put a x10 error into the number of people you could feed with one badger. Which apparently was authenticated by people who had actually eaten badger who confirmed that most people had had enough after their first mouthful...
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