Rules you ignore/alter.

[kirbwarrior]

There's a lot of optional rules that make things just more inconvenient for everyone. While I get some people like that, I'd rather find a way to simplify it and get back to roleplaying.

Similarly, I try to put all complicated processes in character creation to streamline the actual roleplaying part. I'd far rather spend an extra four hours before starting than gum the game up for an hour trying to figure something out.

I entirely ignore the creation pool of Create. It's permanent. If that's a problem, Wealth or Vow solves the problem neatly.

Duplication gets Signature Gear copied for free. The enhancement instead covers everything else. Kromm made a great point about Gadgets at one point and how you keep them when you duplicate.

Trained By A Master and Weapon Master are the same trait now. Taking WM for 45 means you have TBAM. Taking WM: Unarmed is basically the same thing as TBAM (and it honestly still feels a little overpriced at 15).

Very Attractive seems necessary? I don't know why it doesn't exist, and the way other traits interact with appearance (like Classical Features) seem oddly powerful when you have exactly Attractive.

Signature Gear is just a perk. Buy the item normally. Oh, and Wealth now can be split in two with limitations for if it applies to what you start with vs what you make. And in campaigns where the second doesn't matter, it basically just costs half as much.

SM doesn't affect ST prices. Having a positive SM is now a non-afflictable disadvantage (you still need Growth). For humans, Gigantism would give you that extra level. Oh, and ST costs are different, dropping as it goes up.

Contrary to the first points, Trading Points for Cash is more complicated in play, but is easy enough to figure out. If you are spending actual cp, you just increase Wealth with Starting Only, giving you money equal to the difference. The same for Impulse points (from Destiny, Bang!, etc) but your actual total doesn't go up so later points don't give you increasingly more money.

[AlexanderHowl]

One that I use is that beneficial cumulative Afflictions are limited to a number of instances at any given time by their 'resistance' trait. It tends to cut down on the people who want to buff themselves to near infinity (not a difficult thing to do if you design the ability correctly). It is especially important to have such limits in supers campaigns.

For example, a super with a beneficial cumulative Affliction with Melee, 1-4, Dual (-0%) can target friends up to four yards away twice per turn (and will allow their users to defend themselves twice per turn). A cumulative beneficial Affliction with Extended Duration (x100) that gave DR 1 (Absorption, +100%; Bane, Afflictions, -20%) could transform a fighter into a literal tank with just a couple of minutes of effort (a HT 12 super with Very Fit would receive an average of five hours of buffing). Without any limitations of instances, the user could give each of their allies (and themselves) one hundred successful cumulative buffs within one minute, given them DR 100 with Absorption (+100%). If it is limit to HT though, it would max out at a maximum of 20 instances and probably much lower than that.

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by Raekai

I like that thought about racial templates. I've never found a good way to handle it.

A 10% discount on positive-value racial templates might be about right, by analogy to the 90% pricing of a single alternate form. As long as the racial templates aren't super optimized, it shouldn't break anything.

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

A 10% discount on positive-value racial templates might be about right, by analogy to the 90% pricing of a single alternate form. As long as the racial templates aren't super optimized, it shouldn't break anything.

Ya know, I was thinking of a 10% discount myself, and I appreciate you providing solid justification for it! That's a great idea. Thanks!

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

A 10% discount on positive-value racial templates might be about right, by analogy to the 90% pricing of a single alternate form.

The 90% is because the alternate form shuts off if you lose consciousness; you have to pay full cost if it doesn't.

The main problem with racial templates is that they might include advantages you don't want, either because it isn't relevant to what you're trying to do, or because the advantage is just objectively bad. Not much to be done about the first, other than changing how races are designed, but the proper way to fix the second is to fix those objectively bad advantages.

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The 90% is because the alternate form shuts off if you lose consciousness; you have to pay full cost if it doesn't.

The main problem with racial templates is that they might include advantages you don't want, either because it isn't relevant to what you're trying to do, or because the advantage is just objectively bad. Not much to be done about the first, other than changing how races are designed, but the proper way to fix the second is to fix those objectively bad advantages.

The discount is there for a different reason, yes, but I think 'I lose a bunch of benefits if I'm knocked out' and 'The benefits I have are poorly optimized for me due to being from a standard template I can't change, and also any opponent that's dealt with my race knows to account for them' are at least comparable enough that it probably won't break the game, provided that 1) you're not letting the players specifically design the racial templates for their characters, and 2) the benefits you're including in the template are either somewhat redundant with equipment or abilities players will typically have, or are spread-out enough to not be optimized for a single specific archetype.

And this is specifically to address the 'not much can be done about the first' part you mention. It's not a perfect solution, but if you want to encourage use of racial templates it may be better than doing nothing, and is very unlikely to break the game. The failure state here is 'whoops, now I'm running a game with a party consisting of a minotaur, a winged elf, and a faun' which isn't terrible if your reason for implementing the discount was that people kept just going human for optimization reasons.

Probably if we want to debate this further, someone should open a thread about racial template costs or something, though.

[Alden Loveshade]

For Signature Gear and Trading Points for Money, I use a variation for characters who have a lot of wealth. The basic system I think works quite well for characters who don't have much money, but is not as useful for well-to-do PCs.

http://mygurps.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.GURPSMoney

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

[*]You can’t block bullets/beam weapons with a shield. (B327, 375) Enough examples exists in media of this being invalid. It’s as valid to block a bullet/beam with a shield as it is to dodge them—the same logic applies to both: If bullets/beams are too fast to block, they’re too fast to dodge with human reflexes. Instead of erring on the side of “you can’t do that,” we’re erring on the side of “this will be more fun.”
This really only tends to come up in Supers games, but even so, we’ve allowed the use in non-supers games.

Cole's "Dodge This Article" in the gunplay issue of pyramid (july 2013: 3/57) has a "parry and block" note on pg 22 which is useful for this I think.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

[*]Allowing Extended Duration on Create. (P92) It’s our opinion that the “creation pool” (P93) is an incredibly poor kludge that just doesn’t work. We allow the addition of the Extended Duration enhancement on Create. While it has potential for abuse, just getting a character with Create past the GM requires extensive work, and the GM has general oversite on the power. And, Extended Duration, Permanent is a pretty huge modifier that counter-balances the need for the creation pool.

You might have people not paying permanent points of the enhancement though, as they might just use Temporary Enhancements to use FP and roll Will to temporarily get the ability to make permanent items for a minute.

P93's point-per-10%-average-starting-wealth could perhaps be tweaked in a more generous direction though. If anyone can use B26 "Trading Points for Money" to get stuff they want then why have Create at all, basically?

B85 Signature Gear for example uses 50% of ASW per point, and unlike TPFM it's stuff you're guaranteed not to lose (or get replaced if you lose) unless voluntarily giving it away.

TPFM presumably has an inferior ratio because it is versatile (the money you get can be spent on anything later on, unlike Signature Gear which is fixed as one thing). Although presumably you could just use points to buy Signature Gear and then sell your SG for money, perhaps you're not necessrily going to get a fair value for it?

I think why he Creation Pool uses 10% instead of 50% is that it actually is versatile like money since you can reclaim spent points to create so long as whatever you made isn't eaten before you reclaim it. You can buy Ranged for Create but I don't know if you have to buy that separately for reclaiming or if it's included.

One precedent for allowing "Permanent" on Create might be that B86 allows it to be purchased for Snatcher, though it suggests GMs are free to forbid it due to "boundless wealth" problems.

One other idea would be to take a "must always stabilize" approach on Create, but to invert the rules for character-point-powered abilities to determine a substitute higher FP cost.

"Character Point-Powered Abilities" (PU5p13) are 1/5 normal cost, so you could just make "Stable Creation" an ability where base value of trait is 5x as much as categories normally dictate (200 large, 100 medium, 50 small, 25 specific) or perhaps charge 5x as much for Extended Duration enhancements?

Another approach could be to require the "Independent" enhancement (+70%) to represent "stabilizing" something. Since that stabilizes for the lesser of base duration (10 seconds) or MoS minutes (the IQ roll you make when creating) once you increased the base duration a certain amount, you'd need to start extending the MoS duration too, basically paying TWICE as much for Extended Duration in the long run.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

[*]Margin-Based is Awesome! (CotN1; 4) This enhancement is awesome and a blast. If you don’t use it, give it a try. Spoon it right in! How this didn’t make it into PU4 is beyond me.[/list]

At least it made it pg 13 of Psionic Powers. Pg 50 clarifies in Drain (Attribute) that it doesn't need to be a one-sided MoS, but that you can use two-sided MoV (MoS+MoF) to calculate it too :)

If another book were to revisit it, I'd be interested in widening the scope beyond Afflicting leveled traits/penalties (leveled enhancements) to using it on leveled traits outright somehow.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Supers (S78) also introduces "unbreakable shields." So, that is also something to consider.

I'm noticing about that... when they say only Can Be Stolen is usable... I understand why it's missing Breakable -0% and Reparability -15%, but why would it be missing Size -15%?

Even for an unbreakable shield, wouldn't Size matter when using Striking at Weapons for the purpose of disarming rather than damaging it?

Maybe Size should just be worth fewer points for unbreakable objects?

Originally Posted by Dustin

Attacks targeting the Torso that succeed by 3 or more hit the Vitals instead. (Speeds up combat a bit.)

MA137 has a random 1 in 6 chance. What I don't like about MoS3 is that you won't have people intentionally targetting vitals (unless discount via Targeted attack technique) since it would be safer to always target torso.

Originally Posted by Dustin

[*]Parrying Unarmed Attacks (B376) does half damage, not full damage.

Does this mean MA106 Obstructtion would do a quarter (half of half) of full damage, or would you keep it at half making them tied now?

Originally Posted by MIB.6361

Recover Energy: I think Recover Energy should be a Perk. It isn't a spell, it's a special attunement to ambient mana. Probably in two levels.

If you wanted to make it more like a spell, you could assign it a base cost (1 to cast 1 to maintain, both reduced to 0 by skill 15 unless you cast it ceremonially) and casting time (1, or 10 if cast ceremonially) and have it require concentration to maintain.

The recovery rates seem worth more than a perk...

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I don't use the Recover Energy spell, it being a 3e legacy code spell. Instead, I use Regeneration (Energy Reserve Only, +0%}.

B248 has the two tiers of jumping from 1/10m to 1/5m to 1/2m.

P70's "Fatigue Recovery" enhancement is only "for fast or better". Which B80 minimum is base 50 points for 1/minute.

Regular is 25 for 1/hour which obviously sounds overpriced for FP (you already regain 6 per hour) but maybe there could be some scaling "lower than 50" versions of Fatigue-Only regeneration?

Takes Extra Time maybe?
-10% 2m
-20% 4m
-30% 8m
-40% 16m

At that point (50 -40% = 30) you're spending 30 points just to less-than-double your FP recovery (inferior to first tier of Recover Energy at skill 15) and still costing way more than a perk.

You could bring it down further by using Mana-Sensitive and Requires Concentrate, that'd give you another 20% for -60%, but that's still 20 points to buy.

The only way I could think to bring the price down a huge amount would be not just trying to max out limitations at -80% but also doing 1/5 to overall price as some kind of Alternate Ability.

Like maybe you can't use Magery and Recover Energy at the same time? Focusing on absorbing mana as an alternative to using your perception? Dealing with a base cost of 10 points instead of 50 would make it a lot more affordable, and comparable to putting 1 or 2 points in a spell.

Alternative Abilities are kind of similar to TEmporary Disadvantage: Shutdown except you can work outside the -80% limitation limit by using AA to shoot for 1/25 costs.

[johndallman]

I'm happy to ignore the fatigue rules provided the characters behave sensibly, taking rests at plausible intervals and not routinely pushing the limits. Since they rarely have to carry much encumbrance, this mostly saves bookkeeping.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

• Increasing the versatility of Side Effect. (B109/P106) Basically, we just use this to turn an Innate Attack into a more-useful version of Affliction. It makes ability-creation much easier and most abilities then follow the same mechanics. Only some abilities require the use of Affliction.

I keep on wanting to use this, but I haven't gotten my mind around it mathematically yet.Its not that I can't, its that I keep forgetting about it and its not a trivial mental switch, at least for me.

[*]Allowing Extended Duration on Create. (P92) It’s our opinion that the “creation pool” (P93) is an incredibly poor kludge that just doesn’t work. We allow the addition of the Extended Duration enhancement on Create. While it has potential for abuse, just getting a character with Create past the GM requires extensive work, and the GM has general oversite on the power. And, Extended Duration, Permanent is a pretty huge modifier that counter-balances the need for the creation pool.

I use wealth for create. Its in the book, but no-one seems to notice. That's not a rule that I ignore/alter, but its an optional rule I strongly champion.

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

I pretty much always extend the ST damage linearly for high values instead of referring to the damage table--so +8 ST is pretty much always +1d thrust and +2d swing, basically, rather than the numbers slowing down and getting closer to each other as ST rises.

Oh, yeah, I use that one when it comes up. I just... forget that its a rule I'm ignoring, and it doesn't come up terribly often

I often keep skill points separate from other character points, like the buckets of points pyramid article suggests. It mitigates the 'just take a point in each skill you want, then focus on raising DX/IQ/HT/etc. instead' issue.

That's a valid rule, as you said, and I use it heavily for other things, but its rather transformative of games you use it in.

Originally Posted by Dustin

[LIST][*]Guns (Longarms) replaces all of Guns (Musket/Rifle/Shotgun) -- there's no need for those to be separate skills.

I mean, that's an option in a pyramid article, but yeah, that's a good one.

[*]Language Talent halves the cost of languages instead of bumping the effective skill level (because even talented people start at Broken facility).[*]Parrying Unarmed Attacks (B376) does half damage, not full damage.

Originally Posted by MIB.6361

Fast-Draw: I use Fast-Draw as a Perk. It doesn't get rolled, it just works.
In situations where it needs a roll, I use the weapon skill.

Recover Energy: I think Recover Energy should be a Perk. It isn't a spell, it's a special attunement to ambient mana. Probably in two levels.

Those just might be worth trying out...

Originally Posted by Plane

...

Thats more than even we're using in the PbP fight!

I think the biggest alteration we made to last gasp was the alternate movement rules from doug's blog. Those were a big help.