Thaumatology Sorcery prohibitively expensive [Rant]

[Anthony]

This comes down to GURPS not really pricing advantages by utility (or not just by utility); pretty much every exotic advantage has a substantial built-in tax that makes them a lot less effective than mundane abilities (there are some exceptions; for example, flight costing a mere [40] is odd).

By comparison, Magery is extraordinarily efficient in the other direction.

This pretty much maps to when something was introduced. Essentially, anything introduced before 3e is going to be more cost effective than anything introduced after.

[Nedorus]

Thanks again for all the input, suggestions and thoughts.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As an aside, I think Kromm (and others) has suggested in the past that if you really want a particular spell, what you could do is buy up a limited version of Sorcerous Empowerment to the level where you'd qualify for that spell if it weren't limited, and then pay full price for the spell and 1/5th for Sorcerous Empowerment (and any other qualifying spell you opt for). So, in this case, you could buy Invisibility [84] + Sorcerous Empowerment 8 (Single College -40%; Solitary -40%) [3.6], with the latter rounding up to [4]. You can then buy any other spell that costs [84] or less and is in the same college.

What this basically amounts to is measuring the "prerequisite" by its level rather that its actual point cost ... that could be a way to handle this ...

As an aside: Shouldn't

Sorcerous Empowerment 8 (Single College -40%; Solitary -40%) [3.6]

amount to 18 points? 90 points times (100%-80%=) 20%?

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Not possible in a point buy system.

Trying to translate a class based, level system to a classless, point based system will show you how unbalanced the class based system is.

I've always played (the admittedly poorly balanced) original game using it's point cost system rather than the funny but even more annoying "priority system".
The thing is, that Rigger, Samurai and Hacker balance out to each other rather well. I've already translated/built all the drones/vehicles, cyberdecks, cyberware and other equipment from the basic rulebook of that game.
250 points is roughly equivalent to a character from the original game in terms of stats, skills & gear when using the "street level" rules from that game. "Full level" would amount to roughly 350-400 points. So I'm rather happy with how those turned out ... My issue is with the Mages only.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

The superhumanly strong, nigh-bulletproof superspeedster (oops, that's the "street samurai") is a 500+ point character. He really is. If you presented those powers in a normal Supers game, the GM would be okay with it, because those are Supers appropriate powers and come with a commensurate point cost.

See above comment. I've put enough disadvantage / limitation on the other stuff to tone things down to the level I aim to play at.

Originally Posted by Rupert

The sorcerer can improvise a lot of minor utility effects with ease,

Ah, there you have a point. In my head I didn't want to allow improvising anything other than the spells from the original game. That would be a significant limitation however. I see that now that you mention it.

Any ideas for pricing this "cannot improvise" or "can improvise only pre-defined"?

Originally Posted by mehrkat

Honestly I look at the cost of sorcery/alternative abilities spells and tend to add extra disads to the spells early and let the player increase them until over time they get powerful.

It's what I'm already doing with a lot of the spells. E.g. my version of Invisibility is not effective against thermal vision, doesn't affect machines/sensors etc, dispels automatically should you attack, needs a quick contest of Stealth vs. Per (vision) and doesn't affect insubstantial (projecting mages and spirits and such) and limits "can carry objects" to "No Encumbrance"... The Affliction giving this form of Invisibility to the target needs touch etc... So I end up at 30 points for this most basic version of the spell...

Originally Posted by Possible dialog from game

Steve the Bomber: Hey Marki McMage, make me invisible so I can sneak over and drop the explosive right there...

Marki McMage: Well, the explosives are too heavy, I can't make you AND the bomb invisible ...

Well, I'll continue down the road I've started on and finish this up. I'll need to accept that Mages at the level I want to play at are less powerful than their "original game" counterparts... Maybe that's fine and will produce more specalist "Mage"-builds...

P.S.: and maybe it's a good idea to be more lenient about "learn stuff later" and introduce a disadvantage of "can only learn this part of magic-skills". So if you don't learn some skill from the start you can still add them later (like conjuring or astral projection etc.) And if you decide that your Chara can NEVER learn those then that is a disadvantage ...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nedorus

Does this really sound balanced?

GURPS tends to price defensive/utility abilities a lot higher than offensive ones, in no small part because the latter are basically one-trick ponies and GURPS assumes players will do a lot of out-of-the-box applications of their abilities, which defensive and utility abilities - particularly utility abilities - lend themselves well to.

Consider that illusion again. On the surface, sure, being able to have a 2-yard-radius Holodeck of sorts doesn't seem like that big of a deal. But then you use it to conceal a trap, a monster, or a sniper nest, and suddenly it can be a lot more dangerous than a mere 10d burn attack. Also you can use it to conceal an entrance to a building (so it looks like you just ran into an empty alley and vanished), funnel targets into a killbox (by making it look like an alley keeps going rather than opening up), scare foes away (such as with the monster, which a reasonable person is going to try to get away from - and for unreasonable people, it also serves as a free instance of the Terror ability, provided you win the contest of your skill against their IQ/Per), disguise yourself and your allies (with an illusory overlay of someone else on each, which should be doable with Independent), etc. You can pass off $1 bills as though they were $100's ("Sorry, I don't have any small bills"), threaten a foe with an illusory weapon, make an actual weapon look like something innocuous, or similar.

Of course, as-written your illusion isn't going to be terribly useful in a cyberpunk setting, thanks to ubiquitous presence of cameras and the like. In a setting like that, I'd suggest either not applying such a Limitation, or boosting its value - you're probably looking at at least -40% (heck, -40% might be right for a modern-day setting if you're in a first world nation or similar, thanks to the cameras on smartphones - -20% is more appropriate for a setting where it doesn't work against security cameras, robots, and the occasional guy with a camera, not for a setting where basically everyone has a camera and a lot of people are frequently livestreaming and the like).

All that said, you do sometimes run into abilities that really aren't priced appropriately. Sometimes this is because, as Anthony indicates, a lot of the more exotic abilities have built-in unstated Unusual Background costs (this is part of why Healing is so expensive; part of me feels just making it an Innate Attack option - my inclination is [10]/level and being Reach C by default, but if you prefer defaulting to Ranged like most Innate Attacks it would be around [15]/level; note this is really only appropriate in a setting where magically-fast healing is expected to be extremely common, perhaps in the form of ubiquitous healing potions and the like, as otherwise basically everyone will want to have at least a weak version of it as an extremely cheap way to cut down on downtime after fights). Other times it's just a sacrifice to trying to remain simple (like how Obscure Smell has the same cost as Obscure Vision, despite the latter being much, much more useful).

Originally Posted by Nedorus

As an aside: Shouldn't [...] amount to 18 points? 90 points times (100%-80%=) 20%?

It's an alternate ability to Invisibility, although I failed to explicitly note that in the write-up (I'll go fix that now). That means it's 20% cost, and then 1/5th, for a total of 4% or 1/25th cost and [3.6].

[Nedorus]

Originally Posted by Anthony

pretty much every exotic advantage has a substantial built-in tax that makes them a lot less effective than mundane abilities

Originally Posted by Varyon

a lot of the more exotic abilities have built-in unstated Unusual Background costs

Yes, I understand that this is pretty much the general interpretation / consensus. But it does strike me as a bit odd for a Generic Universal RPS as I think that "unusual" or "exotic" really depends largely on the world you play in.

As a GM I'd much prefer to decide myself what is or isn't exotic in my world and add the price tag accordingly... well, that would mean a lot more work I guess... And my task of translating Elves you shouldn't trust and your own truths you should seek is enough work already (^_ ^)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nedorus

Yes, I understand that this is pretty much the general interpretation / consensus. But it does strike me as a bit odd for a Generic Universal RPS as I think that "unusual" or "exotic" really depends largely on the world you play in.

As a GM I'd much prefer to decide myself what is or isn't exotic in my world and add the price tag accordingly... well, that would mean a lot more work I guess... And my task of translating Elves you shouldn't trust and your own truths you should seek is enough work already (^_ ^)

Oh, I agree with you there. While I think GURPS largely gets the pricing on Advantages and the like right, there are some notable exceptions, a lot of which come with weird rules by default that feel like they should be campaign-specific - like Invisibility not working against machines, Healing having mounting penalties for healing a target multiple times in a day, the monstrosity that is Warp, etc.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Nedorus

Yes, I understand that this is pretty much the general interpretation / consensus. But it does strike me as a bit odd for a Generic Universal RPS as I think that "unusual" or "exotic" really depends largely on the world you play in.

Point costs in general really don't translate well between settings. IMO the runtime rules of GURPS are more important than the chargen rules--by the time I tired of GURPS and went back to D&D around 2012-2014 or so I had already given up on GURPS chargen entirely and was only using the runtime rules. I'm back now playing DFRPG only because it uses different chargen rules than GURPS does.

Things like DR and ST simply do not have the same cost-effectiveness in a dungeon crawl vs. modern military vs. ultratech setting. You shouldn't feel obligated to pretend that they do. Reprice things to make sense for your campaign!

Quoting Kromm indirectly quoting Steve Jackson:

"To be fair, I know as a fact that in GURPS, First Edition, advantages were indeed priced for desired rarity in the game, not for their utility. I know this because the designer [Steve Jackson] told me! Combat Reflexes is far more useful than most 15-point traits and many traits worth quite a bit more, but it's priced cheaply because it's common in adventure fiction and not meant to be rare. Warp costs more mostly because it's an outré superpower, and just about always rare when it's innate rather than technological."

Source: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...65&postcount=3

If you want something other than the default metacampaign, then you should change the point costs or other aspects of chargen (like race selection or stat randomization).

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

...

If you want something other than the default metacampaign, then you should change the point costs or other aspects of chargen (like race selection or stat randomization).

^ This, I do this all the time. If I run a game where Will is an important stat because, either magic runs off Will rolls or its a horror game with fright checks, I will change the cost and even separate it from IQ.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If you want something other than the default metacampaign, then you should change the point costs or other aspects of chargen (like race selection or stat randomization).

Originally Posted by zoncxs

^ This, I do this all the time. If I run a game where Will is an important stat because, either magic runs off Will rolls or its a horror game with fright checks, I will change the cost and even separate it from IQ.

I would pay real money for someone to do this for me and write it down.

(Simply stating a wish; not actually expecting anyone to do so.)

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

I would pay real money for someone to do this for me and write it down.

(Simply stating a wish; not actually expecting anyone to do so.)

Here's a simple version written down for you:

Create a character by selecting a DFRPG profession template and checking off all the skills and advantages that you want. Ignore point costs entirely--it doesn't matter whether you go over or under budget, and you don't need to write down their total. You can also pick a race, otherwise you are human.

I have found this kind of freeform construction works well for new players, to avoid decision paralysis.

There are other more complex versions you could write, and each of them leads to different gameplay. In a game with both modern guns and skill-based magic I would reduce ST to 5 points per level (still useful for HP and gear encumbrance including armor, but essentially zeroing out the value of striking ST). At that price I'd expect to see a lot of Amber-style characters who are good at swords, spells, and magic, because the sword ST is relatively cheap.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular set of revised chargen rules you wish for, or would you just like a big book of options with comments about each option and what kind of world it's designed to work with? (Exponentially-increasing skill costs to make skill-21+ swordmasters rare and prestigious, etc.)

[Nedorus]

OK, maybe it's time to clarify: I REALLY LOVE GURPS!
It gives me the possibility to GM in totally different worlds without needing to remember all the peculiarities of a dozen different game rules.
Obviously the power to do so comes at a price: the burden of LOTS of decision making / designing on my part, the GMs part.
This entire thread is not in any way meant to 'dis' GURPS. I really really do love it! I've dropped ALL other game systems and converted to GURPS. And that's where the power of GURPS really is imho.

OK, with that out of the way (^_ ^)

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

I would pay real money for someone to do this for me and write it down.

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

[...]would you just like a big book of options with comments about each option and what kind of world it's designed to work with?

Actually I think that most of the GURPS world books do just that. Besides introducing new rules (like the hacking rules in Pyramid 3-21 Cyberpunk) they give us lots 'to think about/consider' for our individual campaigns (like GURPS Space).

So considering it all, GURPS gives us an extremely powerful toolkit to adapt things to our particular play style and campaign setting.
[EDIT]I was thinking of down-pricing the modifier for "Based on [Attribute], Own Roll" as I want ALL magic to be QN-based and there is really not much of "player can optimize" here, which to my understanding is the main reason shifting from one attribute to another cost more.
I would shy aways from a general "this is rare" / "this is common" re-pricing but would not categorically dismiss it...[/EDIT]

What I do wish for however is what Varyon points at:

Originally Posted by Varyon

some notable exceptions, a lot of which come with weird rules by default that feel like they should be campaign-specific

Weeding out those defaults would make many rules less convoluted. They feel cluttered with dusty old special rules at times. I'm just thinking about the discussion on "Wall" and why it's an option to innate attacks (@ o @)...

But maybe we'll see a 5th Edition sometime in the future (^_^)