Power-Ups Series

[Gumby Bush]

After reading this, and combined with prior conversations on these fora, I was thinking about what is left for the Power-Ups series, it being probably my favorite of the ongoing series.

There are three big swaths left uncovered: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills. All three are too broad to be covered by single entries, however, so they would need to be broken down.

Advantages:

• Amalgam Abilities -- Covering TbaM, WM, Blessed, etc. This is mostly done in various Pyramids, in particular, between Blessed Be in 3/78 and rules elsewhere on pricing UBs, the work is mostly done.
• Afflictions -- I think there's a general unease with how this ability is priced, so an examination of alternatives in the vein of Alternate Attributes might be nice.
• Shapeshifting -- Looking at Alternate Form, Elastic Skin, Morph, and Hermaphromorph to provide a unified account of changing your form, along with dealing with the question of when to use Switchable or Mitigator and when to bundle such changes into an Alternate Form.
• Higher Purposes -- Maybe expand on the broad and narrow versions of this introduced for RPM, discuss the implicit Code of Honour/Vow component and what it would take to remove it, and elaborate on the contrasts with Wildcards and Talents.
• Changing the Price -- Discussion of frequent house rules on pricing schemes (Regrowth being the worst offender here), discussion of Aging advantages/disadvantages and Terminally Ill, the value of, say, DR in Ultra-Tech games, and so on.
• Accessories -- While we have Perks, the Accessory Perk might be able to sustain its own entry. What does it take for something to be an Accessory? Can I boost my Accessory (Computer) by buying multiple levels? What if I'm a character in a TL4 setting but want to buy Accessory (Computer) anyhow? Does it change price? Do I use a UB?

Disadvantages:

• Flexible Disadvantages -- As TBone notes, an examination of Code of Honour, as well as other very flexible disadvantages could be useful. Code of Honour strikes me as the most in need of this kind of supplement. Include the broadened version of Pyromania (Mania) from Supers.
• Vulnerabilities and Weaknesses -- Rules for altering the affects of these and similare Disadvantages to give afflictions in place of damage.
• Shut-Downs -- Expanding on Nocturnal, Electrical, and Cold-Blooded. Possibly folded into the work on expanding Vulnerabilities and Weaknesses.
• Fear -- Alternate rules for fear (and confusion and awe). This could take the form of alternate tables, modifiers for fear traits like Phobia to cap their effects, or a standing effect (e.g., "Fear always takes the form of mental stun"). There might be some overlap between this and Vulnerabilities and Weaknesses insofar as one might generalize Phobia into Vulnerability (Object; SC x; Roll on Fright Check Table +n%).

Skills:

• Expert Knowledge and Lore -- Again, as TBone recommends, this should cover not only Hobby/Expert/Professional skills, but also skills like Soldier, Housekeeping, and Occultism which cut across other skills and give basic knowledge of them.
• Very Easy Skills -- Introducing a new level of difficulty, and what sorts of skills these might be. Would special rules apply to them like with The Least of Spells?
• Specialties -- Covering alternate specialties such as the alternate Guns specialties in P3/65, de-specializing, as used by some as a house rule (don't take a required specialization and raise difficulty by a step), double optional specialties, and a discussion of how skills are presently individuated and how that might be modified for different settings/campaigns (e.g., the Pickpocket, Filch, Sleight of Hand distinction).
• Techniques -- Again courtesy TBone, but this might be worth its own line (Combat Techniques, Social Techniques, Infiltration Techniques...). In either this or the Specialties entry, I'd like to see the house rule of treating Combat/Art/Sport as required specializations of a single skill and being allowed to buy the others up as Techniques, possibly along with expanding this treatment to other closely linked skills (hm... Pickpocket, Filch, and Sleight of Hand maybe?).

So, that's an attempt at a comprehensive list. It probably is not comprehensive, and some of these could be covered in other lines instead (Afflictions and Shapeshifting could probably go in the Powers line, Techniques could go in other lines depending on field -- e.g., Martial Arts: Expanded Techniques, Social Engineering: Expanded Techniques, etc., -- Changing the Price could go in How to Be a GURPS GM, and Fear could go in the Horror line).

There's a way in which most of the line is just a combination of A) making common house rules official and then riffing off of them, and B) cataloguing existing rules, which makes a lot of it relatively low-priority. Then again, there's a sense in which most GURPS crunch at this point is riffing on existing rules and practices.

What have I missed? What would you most like to see in this line?