Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS

[Maz]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

I wouldn't call that character hard to play, just very likely to die in the first five minutes of gameplay.

Impulsive and Overconfidence make for a suicidal combo, add in Greed and the character easily gets into big troubly quick. With Curious on top of that they're likely trying to break into the nearest place that looks like it could have valuables, regardless of the amount of security present.

If anyone presented me with such a character I'd immedately ask them what their next character looks like.

That was also sort of my point with "hard to play". :)

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

I wouldn't call that character hard to play, just very likely to die in the first five minutes of gameplay.

So worse than Terminally Ill [-100]? I have to call shenanigans on any GM that would force that nonsense.

Impulsive and Overconfidence make for a suicidal combo...

No it doesn't. That combo is far, far more forgiving than Berserk.

...add in Greed and the character easily gets into big troubly quick.

Why because they want that payday? Greed doesn't say "go rob that guy", it says "Say yes to this deal, there's a lot of money involved" even when the deal looks risky.

With Curious on top of that they're likely trying to break into the nearest place that looks like it could have valuables, regardless of the amount of security present.

No they aren't. There is nothing in that combo that says "Hey, go break some laws!"

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I am entirely in agreement. I has seemed plain to me since I first encountered Champions that disad caps are a concession that the rewards games pay for taking disadvantages are greater than the burden of the disadvantages. I suppose that the reason for it in Champions is that the designers wanted to make the PCs come out like comic-book superheroes. James Bond 007, which doesn't need to use disads to balance in features of characters who are very different from a healthy man of mainstream culture and military age, is much less generous with them.

Back in the day, I accepted a friend's offer to run a Champions campaign. He specified 100 point base and up to 150 points in disads. I built characters for myself and C, both of which were around 100 points in disads. He had a terrible time running games for us, and I think he was totally flummoxed that we hadn't gone all the way to the limit. But really, neither of us could think of disads past the first 100 points that fit our character concepts.

[edk926]

Honestly, I'd rather have the least amount of disadvantages a character concept could possibly get away with.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I kind of want Disadvantages to come with a frequency roll such that if you're not sure if it should come up in an adventure or situation you roll. Sure, some come with self-control rolls, but for others it would take the work out of having to decide if, e.g., an Addiction to an easy-to-obtain substance needs to be shoehorned in. (Of course by luck there's always a chance one comes up too often or infrequently for the price. I have no idea what to do about that.)

[ericthered]

I find that 60% or more of my players go for the disadvantage limit, back when I used one. by contrast, I often find myself looking at a template that asks for -35 or more in disads and thinking "nothing fits! I don't want to play that guy!"

I've started saying to players that my disadvantage limit is "They must be functional". I have a soft limit where I the GM will push back at around [-35], but that varies by character design, and the -35 is just a guess, and certain disadvantages get more slack than others.

[Kromm]

Has anyone ever tried using the Heroic Flaws approach in "Pointless Slaying and Looting" (Pyramid #3/72: Alternate Dungeons, pp. 4-13)?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Back in the day, I accepted a friend's offer to run a Champions campaign. He specified 100 point base and up to 150 points in disads. I built characters for myself and C, both of which were around 100 points in disads. He had a terrible time running games for us, and I think he was totally flummoxed that we hadn't gone all the way to the limit. But really, neither of us could think of disads past the first 100 points that fit our character concepts.

What I noticed back in that time period was that most disads made more work for the GM and that was almsot always me because people who were actually good at making vharacters in a mechanical sense were quite rare.

I seem to remember that the way i ended up doing things was to mandate characters built on 200 pts with a mavimum 50 pts in Disads just to cut down on the number of "limping wonders" ass I called them.

Limping wonders are still a potential problem in Gurps. When I can get people to listen to me I tell them to choose Disads first based on how they see their characters. That gets you an initial budget. Then you move on to major expenses which are usually major Attribute levels and/or Ads.

Then you finish up spending the remaning CP 1 or 2 pts at a time and don't hit those last minute brainstorms that make your players think they need to go back and amputate some part of their character's body to afford something else.

A lot of times people don't listen to me. They get dazzled by the huge lists of things to look at and believe that they have to look at everything on every list.

Soem GMs respond to this with Templates but Templates are themselves multiple lists of mandatory choices that have to be looked at.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Soem GMs respond to this with Templates but Templates are themselves multiple lists of mandatory choices that have to be looked at.

I've come to the conclusion that, at least for some of my players, the best character creation method is to write out the character in plain text and then convert that to GURPS abilities. Possibly with significant help from the GM or another player.

[YankeeGamer]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

I've come to the conclusion that, at least for some of my players, the best character creation method is to write out the character in plain text and then convert that to GURPS abilities. Possibly with significant help from the GM or another player.

I haven't played GURPS in some time, but this is, to me, the essence of generating a character in any game system, or when writing a story. Once you start to feel that you know her, you can start working on numbers.