Do I actually need [POWERS]?

[Luke Bunyip]

I have been musing on working out mechanics for expending Fatigue for a short term advantage, say sprinting fast, or being able to dig through rock. This morn it occured to me that this could be one of the ways that Powers operate in GURPS. Is this so?

[LoneWolf23k]

Eeeeehh... No, you don't need it, in that it's not vital to the game. But it is very good, and very useful to have. It will show you ways to use existing advantages in ways you'd never have considered before, and has a lot of options for making power use more interesting.

[giganerds]

Not sure if I undestand what you want.

If you wanna a advantage to sprint faster, buy enhaced move. To dig throught rock you can buy tunnel.

What did you mean with POWERS? The book? All advantages above are in the Basic Set, Powers enhance the way you can set special abilities in your game with more traits, enhacements, limitations and game options.

[Kelly Pedersen]

In response to your original question, well, you don't need Powers for that - it's just a matter of tacking the Costs Fatigue limitation onto the advantages you want to, well, cost fatigue.

However, on your more general question, my opinion would be "Yes, yes you do". At least, if you're planning on building supernatural abilities for your campaign. Between Chapters 2 (Building Abilities) and 4 (Powers In Action), you'll have 95% of the tools you will need to model such abilities in your game. Frankly, I'd be happy to pay Powers' cover price for those two chapters alone. The fact that there are four other chapters, all extremely useful, is just gravy. Powers, as far as I'm concerned, is Basic Set Volume 3.

[rcarter]

i think that you'd be better off mugging a very old or very young person for a copy of the book instead of buying it yourself. IMHO

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by giganerds

Not sure if I undestand what you want.

If you wanna a advantage to sprint faster, buy enhaced move. To dig throught rock you can buy tunnel.

I want an advantage that I can turn on, for a cost, say fatigue, and then turn off when I don't need it. To me, that sounds like Powers. But I thought I should check before I went out and purchased it.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

I want an advantage that I can turn on, for a cost, say fatigue, and then turn off when I don't need it.

In general, a limitation that imposes a cost to using a normally always-on advantage automatically makes that advantage switchable - that is, you don't have to take a separate enhancement to make it something you can turn off. If you have Enhanced Move 1 with Costs Fatigue 1, it costs 1 FP to turn it on, and 1 FP to keep it on every two minutes after that, but you don't have to keep it on. It won't kill you from FP drain if you don't enhance it with Switchable or something. :-)

[QUOTE=Luke Bunyip
To me, that sounds like Powers. [/QUOTE]

This is, indeed, the sort of thing that Powers discusses in more depth than the Basic Set - while the Basic Set includes the Costs Fatigue limitation, Powers makes clear distinctions between always-on, switchable, and transient abilities, and defines which modifiers change their categories.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

I have been musing on working out mechanics for expending Fatigue for a short term advantage, say sprinting fast, or being able to dig through rock. This morn it occured to me that this could be one of the ways that Powers operate in GURPS. Is this so?

1) No. I'm reasonably sure all you need to do those sorts of things is in Basic. You'll need to assemble the parts (frex, extra Speed with Costs Fatigue or extra ST with Costs Fatigue and some heavy limitation indicating that it's for digging only) and possibly decide for yourself how much what the relevant limitations/enhancements are worth, but you don't really need Powers for that.

2) Dear gods, no. You most definitely do not need Powers. Powers is a good book if you really want to massively fine-tune a huge range of advantages and disads for your campaigns, but it is not I repeat not necessary, any more than the equally detailed Vehicles was necessary for 3rd edition games.

[whswhs]

I'd think you could do a lot of this just with the Extra Effort rules in the Campaigns books. Have you examined them closely to see if they address what you want?

Bill Stoddard

[Jürgen Hubert]

GURPS Powers is entirely optional, and not at all needed.

That being said, it's so utterly awesome that upon reading it you will realize that it fills a hole in your gaming which you never realized that it was there before.

It's that good.