05-16-2012, 02:06 AM | #21 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
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05-16-2012, 02:10 AM | #22 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
and if you split the aliens up into "races" and "monsters" then you actually get a decent spread, though there are some funny changes when you go from 3e to 4e (my favorite is the Pachekki go from negative to positive), but a lot of them are really close to 0. 15 points isn't all that much.
The real question then becomes "what do you want in an alien?" some people want alien physiology with a human mind set. This often makes for a high point cost because the goal is "I want something that does cool stuff". The other option is to have an alien mind set. This often lends itself to even points, but is much harder to do. Of course, the best aliens are both. and with the bristling with arms case, is there a way that could be mitigated? I suppose you can lower its strength relative to the body as written, as far as I can tell, a tentacle is treated as superior to an arm, despite the lack of fingers. also, I think that people like to over stat things. There is an entry out there on how to do a puppeteer for 80 points (I think its 3e). A lot of the points came from IQ +4. you might argue a +1. you might also argue that you only see their special agents, who have a higher IQ (which I am not convinced of). They were also given common and danger sense. Much of this makes sense for a puppeteer, but I suspect it can be done on a 20 point budget. Last edited by ericthered; 05-16-2012 at 02:25 AM. |
05-16-2012, 03:06 AM | #23 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
Maybe that's one problem with GURPS, that you have to pay for each extra arm, with no reduced cost for having an extreme number of arms.
IIRC in Hero System, Extra Legs is a binary advantage. It doesn't matter how many legs you have. You pay simply for the privilege of having more than two. Clearly that can't quite work for Extra Arms in GURPS, but it might still make sense to introduce a diminishing cost effect, so that the first extra arm (3rd arm) has its normal cost, the next arm again (4th) costs less, and further arms after that cost nearly nothing. After all, the real utility isn't in having a lot of arms but in having a lot of Extra Attacks. But I still don't get smurf's problem, and I think this discussion would work much better if he'd post his alien species templates. |
05-16-2012, 03:06 AM | #24 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
There's also the issue that most settings with aliens are high tech. And high tech makes many expensive cool traits much less useful.
Hey you're an arthropoid with a natural DR 5 shell. That's nice, but I have much better armor for zero points.
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Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
05-16-2012, 04:58 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Yorkshire, UK
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
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If the Extra Arms can't attack, just manipulators, thats -50%, which brings the total to [50]. You can squeeze the arms limitations down to -80% quite easily, and if the Legs can't Kick (also -50%) you're down to [11] total, for the Arms and Legs. |
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05-16-2012, 07:11 AM | #26 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
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05-16-2012, 07:30 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Yorkshire, UK
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
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Add Short or Weak and you can get to [2] per Arm, which doesn't seem unreasonable. If it's a playable race, players will figure out how to use 27 such arms to their advantage in some way, so they should pay a few points! As to your second point, the discussion doesn't seem like it really has anywhere to go without a specific high point cost example alien racial template to discuss. |
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05-16-2012, 08:48 AM | #28 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
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I'm arguing that a non-linear cost would be much fairer. |
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05-16-2012, 09:16 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
Only if linking to non-linear advantages. A +12 to your grappling skill is pretty impressive.
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05-16-2012, 11:25 AM | #30 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: Hmm... Aliens?
I treat aliens as animal life. Then build from there. Name them George and give them a gray flannel suit to wear to work.
But in general, my aliens tend to be just giant insect bugs. |
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