Campaign with Time Skips

[Lamech]

Not just time skips (or else really long campaigns) - there's also supernatural, ultra-tech, and disease-based aging "damage" to contend with. Having to face the villain with the "aging ray", or the Leech with Steal Youth, even a campaign lasting only 5 campaign years for normal humans could make Unaging, Longevity, or Extended Lifespan a big deal.

Forgot about that. Assuming those things are fairly rare it would be a five point resistance for unaging, and something weird but less for longevity. The resistance part should be sliced out of unaging. Plus that would allow it to be fairly priced if age attacks were more common.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Lamech

Forgot about that. Assuming those things are fairly rare it would be a five point resistance for unaging, and something weird but less for longevity. The resistance part should be sliced out of unaging. Plus that would allow it to be fairly priced if age attacks were more common.

Which is why, IMO, if there ever is a GURPS 5th Ed, or a 4th Ed book with expanded a revised rules covering aging, it should have a set of rules or guidelines that provides a multiplier / coefficient campaign feature that increases or decreases the value of all the aging related traits at the same time, depending on aspects of the campaign such as (1) presence, frequency, and duration of time skips, (2) projected length of campaign in campaign years, and (3) presence, frequency, and severity of aging damage attacks.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Simple - the GM decides what multiplier is going to be on all age-related traits (Unaging, Extended Lifespan, Short Lifespan, Longevity, and the Steal Youth enhancement for Leech). He decides what this will be based on (1) frequency of appearance of aging attacks and (2) projected length of the campaign in "campaign time". In a campaign where aging will be much less relevant, but not entirely irrelevant, this multiplier might be 0.5x - Unaging would be only 8 CP, and Extended Lifespan 4 would be only 4 CP (all age traits' costs halved). In a campaign where aging is incredibly relevant (lots of time skips, for instance), all age related traits might get a multiplier of maybe even as much as 10x, with Unaging valued at 150 CP and Extended Lifespan 4 at 80 CP. In some campaigns, aging will never come up, and the multiplier might be 0x (all aging traits are 0 CP features).

Something like the FoA mechanic for NPCs, then? Probably not as useful than that, because the effects of aging aren't as easily quantified. I think it's better to just let the GM sort out how it will work in a particular game, and adjust costs with the existing system (Accessibility, Unusual Background, etc.).

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Something like the FoA mechanic for NPCs, then? Probably not as useful than that, because the effects of aging aren't as easily quantified. I think it's better to just let the GM sort out how it will work in a particular game, and adjust costs with the existing system (Accessibility, Unusual Background, etc.).

I can live with that; it's just important that a GM keeps in mind that all the aging traits may have to be scaled up or down proportionally by the same factor.