Proof of Concept: Energy

(This is all rambly and hard to format. There was a lot here I needed to address, and I don't feel as though I've done the best job laying it out. I think I did manage to explain myself somewhere in here, though.)

 

ENERGY IS PRICED ALL WRONG

Let's look at two different powers.

Burning Attack 5d (Costs 1 Energy, -5%) [24]

Burning Attack 500d (Costs 1 Energy, -5%) [2375]

In both cases, a single point of energy is required to use the power. That single point of energy cost three character points to purchase. But in the first example, the character saves one total character point from the limitation, and then each use costs a three-point-cost energy. In the second example, the character saves 125 points. They can spend half of those points on twenty energy, and get at least twenty uses of their power per day from those--and they've still saved sixty points on the price of the ability. 20/day or 20/combat are not worth very many points at all. It should never cost more points to get and use your limitation than it would cost to just buy the ability without the limitation, as in the first example.

Something is clearly very wrong here.

That's because none of these is tied to the actual cost of the trait in the first place. It's always a three-point Energy per use, and you save a variable amount of points from the limitation.

To make this super obvious:

Burning Attack 5d (Costs 16 Energy, -80%) [5]

Burning Attack 500d (Costs 16 Energy, -80%) [500]

One of these is a good deal. The other is a giant ripoff. In the first example, you save twenty points, but require forty-eight points' worth of energy for a single use of the ability. In the second example, you save two thousand points... and still require that same forty-eight points' worth of energy per use.

Having the use cost be the same (1 energy) but the amount of points returned per each energy used (a variable 5% based on the trait's price) just doesn't work. It leads to nonsense like this. It's especially bad for cheaper abilities, where you'd be better off just not taking the limitation in the first place.

My solution is to base energy pricing on the actual trait cost of the ability, where a character point's worth of energy always get your the same amount of use of your abilities.

That is: to power a 10% return on an expensive power should cost proportionally more than powering a 10% return on a cheap power. That is the only way to prevent these weird point crocks, where you're basically given free points on expensive abilities, and CHARGED points for the price of admission to the limitation (which severely weakens your ability!) on cheap abilities.

This must be very unlike what we see in GURPS, where the 10% return always costs you 2 energy, regardless of how large that return is. It could be one point or it could be one thousand points. Either way, you have to pay the same amount of energy.

ENERGY IS SHARED LIMITED USE

The key insight I've had is that Energy is a version of Limited Use where you can spread your uses between abilities.

Imagine you have an ability that costs three Energy to use, and that you have three Energy (that only recovers once per day; we'll get to other types of Energy later). This is the same as Limited Use 3/day.

If, instead, you have two different abilities that each require one Energy, while still having only three Energy, now you can see my point: this is Limited Use, but where the uses are shared between abilities.

FIRST LET'S LOOK AT LIMITED USE

Now that we know this is a form of Limited Use, we need to look at Limited Use. Is its pricing good? Can it be better? I think it can.

I will point out here that I think GURPS generally underpays for limitations (because it's trying to be universal in their application--but I have my own solution to that problem, which we'll see). So I'm giving perhaps higher limitation values than we're used to seeing while playing GURPS. Also, this is all only for demonstration purposes, so I may have messed up on the rounding in parts for the sake of providing cleaner numbers.

My new pricing for Limited Use is: U/(1.5+U), where U is uses per day. The result is a multiplier which gives you the new final price (the price after the limitation is applied). So .9 means you still pay 90% of the price, so it's equivalent to -10%. That gives me:

Limited Use Pricing Table
1/day 1/(1.5+1) (.4)   -60%
2/day 2/(1.5+2) (.57)  -43%
3/day 3/(1.5+3) (.66)  -33%
4/day 4/(1.5+4) (.72)  -28%
5/day 5/(1.5+5) (.769) -23%
6/day 6/(1.5+6) (.8)   -20%
7/day 7/(1.5+7) (.82)  -18%
8/day 8/(1.5+8) (.84)  -16%
9/day 9/(1.5+9) (.85)  -15%

And, of course, some abilities aren't very impacted by a limited number of uses per day, so for those we'll give less points back for such a restriction. I call this Use Frequency. For abilities that are used more often, we give a larger limitation value, and for those used less often, we give lower values. Here the GM must be careful not to give points back for limiting abilities that don't need to be used very often.

Use Frequency
High Use (Combat abilities, common adventuring abilities, and so on). x1
Medium Use (Abilities that might be used in combat but not often; adventuring stuff that occasionally comes up multiple times in a day) x.5
Low Use (Things where it's rare to use the ability more than once in a day; the GM should be very careful with allowing this at all) x.1

Limited Use final value after Use Frequency adjustment
     High (x1)   Medium (x.5)  Low (x.1)
1/day -60%          -30%          -6%
2/day -43%          -21%          -4%
3/day -33%          -16%          -3%
4/day -28%          -14%          -3%
5/day -23%          -11%          -2%
6/day -20%          -10%          -2%
7/day -18%          -9%           -2%
8/day -16%          -8%           -2%
9/day -15%          -7%           -1%

But, wait, you might say, in GURPS an Energy Reserve recharges one point every ten minutes. How do we do something like that? Well, that's... weird. For simplicity's sake, I'll think of that as being equivalent to a limited number of uses per combat. Because the amount of time between uses is entirely arbitrary with the "one every ten minutes" of the RAW advantage. The GM can just decide how long it's been. But they can do the same thing when deciding the length of in-game time between combats. So I'm going to look at it that way.

Uses Per Combat

I start off by assuming that one use per combat has the same utility as two-and-a-half uses per day. That's just the number that makes sense to me. If it were two uses per day, I would much prefer once per combat. And if it were three per day, I would prefer that to once per combat. Having the ability to unload all in a single combat is very valuable. After all, with three uses per day, you can still just use it once per combat. The tradeoff between these two is being able to have multiple uses per combat if you need them; you give that up with a once per combat limitation.

Using the formula for Limited Use, we see that 2.5 uses per day are worth 2.5/(1.5+2.5), which is .625, which is -37.5%

So, let's try saying that for Uses Per Combat we'll use the same formula as before, but we'll first multiply U by 2.5, which will give us: (U*2.5)/(1.5+(U*2.5))

That gives us:

1/combat 2.5/(1.5+2.5)   (.625) -37.5%
2/combat 5/(1.5+5)       (.769) -33%
3/combat 7.5/(1.5+7.5)   (.83)  -17%
4/combat 10/(1.5+10)     (.869) -13%
5/combat 12.5/(1.5+12.5) (.89)  -11%
6/combat 15/(1.5+15)     (.9)   -10%
7/combat 17.5/(1.5+17.5) (.92)  -8%
8/combat 20/(1.5+20)     (.93)  -7%
9/combat 22.5/(1.5+22.5) (.937) -6%

(Which I will admit seems a little generous; maybe we should make it where 3/day is equal to 1/combat--though even that would still give -5% for 9/combat. But we'll just go with this for now, since we're talking about energy and not focusing on Limited Use.)

HOW THIS ALL RELATES TO ENERGY

So we now have a way to know the limitation value for a given value of Limited Use. We can get decimal numbers, half-uses, and so on. If we want to know what half a use per day would cost, we can do that. We can figure out what one-and-a-half uses per day cost, and so on. How does this all relate to energy? We need to know all this later on, so we can choose arbitrary energy costs for our abilities, since there won't be linear costs.

CONSIDERATIONS

When you can share your uses between abilities, that gives you added utility. It's more powerful to be able to share uses than to have each ability limited to a certain number of non-transferable uses per day. The way I account for that is by slightly adjusting the limitation value when we use it for abilities powered by energy. So rather than U/(1.5+U), I'm going with U/(1+U). Which reduces the limitation value. The actual numbers can be adjusted. What's important is that this all works as a proof of concept.

FINALLY THE ACTUAL ENERGY RULES

An energy costs a single character point. 1 energy = 1 character point

(U/1+U)/2 = limitation value

(((U/(1+U))/2)S)/U = Energy cost per use

S is starting points (the price of your trait before the limitation is applied)

U is uses per day


Let's go through what all this means and why it is how it is. What is the method to all this madness?


(U/(1+U))

This is our base limitation value. It's the modified version of the limitation we explored earlier for Limited Use. For the Uses Per Combat variant, just adjust U, as described above in that section.



Then we have /2. Due to the way this is spitting out limitation values (by giving us a multiplier applied to the base price), this division actually doubles the limitation value. We go from paying .8 the original price to .4 the original price, because .8/2 is .4

The reason we're doubling the limitation value here is to account for the fact that we have to actually buy the energy points themselves to power the ability. We get points back to represent the Limited Use portion. For instance, 1/day is (1/(1+1)), which is .5, or -50%. But then we still have to buy the energy to pay for the one use it costs each day. That has to be accounted for somewhere. So what we're doing is halving that .5 to .25, and from that additional twenty-five percent that we save we can purchase enough energy to use the ability once each day and still on top of that receive the -50% that we're owed because we now have to pay a lot of energy to use our ability (which is equivalent to one use per day).

The key thing here is that energy cost is determined by the price of the ability. The more expensive the ability, the more energy it costs to power it for the equivalent to a certain number of uses. 1/day on a 50-points advantage costs a lot less energy to use than 1/day on a 1000-point advantage (twenty times less).

That's why we next multiply by S, which is the starting point total of the advantage. For a 1/day advantage, we would now be at .25*100. That gives us 25 points. That gives us the total amount of energy the ability is going to cost for the total specified number of uses. We have to spread that across that many uses, though.

So then we just divide by U, to account for the number of uses this much energy will be spread between. For 1/day, this is simple.

Let's look at a more complex ability.

Let's say we want four uses per day on an ability that costs 250 points.

(4/1+4)/2 for our limitation value of .4

(((4/(1+4))/2)250)/4 = 25 energy per use


So we buy this ability for (250*.4) 100 points. Then we want enough energy to use it four times per day, so we pay the 25 points it costs for each use four times, which costs another 100 points. So we can see that we've saved a total of 50 points total. Which is equivalent to the .8 our formula gave us before we divided it in half to account for points we would have to spend on energy to actually have a functional 4/day for an effective -20% limitation value. And now that we have this energy we can use it to power any of our other abilities that require energy.

All of this effort so there isn't any point crock or pricing weirdness in how energy is used. But I think it's well worth the effort!

The key thing is that an energy is always worth an energy. It doesn't do more sometimes and less others. It always creates a pricing equivalent to Limited Use, because it follows an adjusted version of the Limited Use pricing formula.

Basically, to reiterate how this works, we have so many uses spread over so much limitatio value. If 3/day is -33%, then we can see that each use is worth -11% (whatever that number of actual points is when applied to a given trait; for a 100-point advantage it's 11 points; for a 50-point advantage it's 5.5 points, and so on). But since for each use you have to buy energy, we double the limitation value. So that when all is said and done, you get your points saved from your limitation, with an additional amount saved to account for the need to purchase energy.

IN CLOSING

So we can see what we're really doing is multiplying the Limitation Value (L) by the starting price of the trait, and then dividing by number of uses per day.

L is limitation value

S is starting price.

U is uses per day (or combat; see above)

E is energy cost per use. And 1 energy costs 1 character point.

L = U/(1+U)/2

Giving us a final formula of: LS/U = E

GURPS House Rule: New Limitation: Requires Component

 What?

A new limitation which expands the functionality of the Accessibility Trigger limitation. 

 

Why? 

A flat -5% for any kind of item you might need to use your power just falls, well, flat. I know Power-Ups 8: Limitations says you can increase this to -10% if you feel it appropriate, but I still find that unsatisfactory.

While working on this, I've learned that Trigger is the advantage intended to perform this function not Accessibility. Trigger uses up the item, and then it's gone. So these are expanded options for Trigger. I was being unfairly harsh to Accessibility.

I got started down this line of thinking by remembering the way the Resurrection line of spells in Dungeons & Dragons use those super expensive diamonds. In my many years of playing D&D, this has always been a big hassle. Many an adventure has been based around finding more of those special diamonds (which the DM always makes exceptionally rare), and many campaigns have been ended for want of those diamonds. If only we had those diamond! This seemed like it was worth much more than -5% or even -10% (which I now realize would be something like -30% with Trigger). So I set out to create a fix that would put this more in line with the expectations I came to the game with based on my D&D experience.

The Rules

This is a limitation for when your ability requires the of a specific type of object every time it's used. The component gets used up and next time you have to provide a new one.

There are a bunch of ways to modify this (think of it as being like Gadget). Add each one that applies:

Rarity (Difficulty to Acquire)

Very Common, -5%

(You can get this everywhere. This is worth points because you can happen to find yourself without access to it, such as when you're thrown in jail, or tied up by the villains, etc. Examples: Dirt, leaves, acorns, any random feather)

Common, -10%

(You can get this easily in civilization, but it requries going out of your way. If you run out of this component while in the wilderness, you're very unlikely to be able to replace it. Examples: Werther's Original, subway token, tube of toothpaste)

Uncommon, -20%

(Only certain places have this item. It might require a visit to a specialty shop, or you might have to place an online order and then wait for delivery. Even in a medium-sized city, you might have to call around to find it, and it might not be available. Examples: Specific Magic: The Gathering card, mashed potatoes from a specific diner, transmission for 1977 Ford Bronco, unusual chemical)

Rare, -30% 

These items are found only in very specific places. They might be sold only in one place in an entire country, or are only available as a special order from a specific craftsman. Perhaps they come up on eBay a few times a year, but you have to watch carefully. Examples: Portrait of Wilford Brimley painted by a specific artist, a diamond carved in a specific way, 1925 World Series ticket, PSA 10 Alpha Edition Black Lotus card)

Expense

"Free", -0%

(It's just sitting around. You don't need to worry about it. Examples: Water, dirt, old scraps, plastic cutlery)

Cheap, -5%

(Affordable to the average person. Examples: Olive oil, ounce of tin, a booster pack of Magic: The Gathering cards)

Pricey, -25%

(Doable, but expensive, to an average person. Example: Gold ring, new pair of designer shoes, cell phone)

Expensive, -40%

(Meaningful cost to someone who purchases the highest allowable level of Wealth. Examples: Cutting-edge graphics card, Magic: The Gathering deck, expensive ruby)

Transportability

Easily transported, -0%

(Fits in a pocket or small pouch. Examples: Jacks, dice, coins)

Bulky/Difficult, -5%

(Might be able to strap it to yourself to carry it, but it causes problems moving around. Examples: Microwave oven, desktop computer, cello)

Immobile, -10%

(It can't be moved. You have to go to it. When items like these are consumed, they need not crumble to dust; they are merely no longer suitable for use. These might not be literally immovable; doing so might take great effort, and require great expense. Examples: a park, a cathedral, the Liberty Bell) Note: this needs to be adjusted for different abilities; it is worth much more on a combat ability than on a divination type effect or a healing ability.

Legality

Legal, -0%

(Duh.)

Illegal,-10%

(They're illegal, but you won't get in that much trouble for them. Still a risk, though. Examples: Heroin, stolen goods, outlawed books and such in some countries)

Highly Illegal, -20%

(You don't want to get caught with these. Examples: Large amounts of illegal drugs, plutonium, highly-classified documents)

Danger

Safe, -0%

(Nothing to worry about here.)

Risky, -5%

(These pose some danger if handled improperly. You'll need to take special care while handling these. Examples: Bleach, many medications, dynamite)

Very Dangerous, -10%

(Things could go terribly wrong carrying this stuff around. Examples: Anthrax, a kg of antihydrogen, tetradotoxin)

Toward a Reconstruction of the Warp Advantage in GURPS

What?
I'm removing all the weird stuff that comes packaged with the Warp advantage.

Why?
To make it easier to build specific desired advantages. The base version of Warp is weird. It comes with a lot of built-in weirdness with penalties and preparation time and FP costs. I want to remove those to make it more generic. Don't worry! You can add those back in later.


The Advantage:

Warp
25/level

By using a Concentrate maneuver, you can teleport up to two yards. Each additional level increases the distance using the Size and Speed/Range Table.

The Size column measures your additional levels and the Linear Measurement column measures your new distance. So +1 level increases distance from 2 to 3 yards. +2 levels is 5 yards. And so on.

The default version allows you to carry an amount of stuff equal to your Basic Lift. Use the Extra Carrying Capacity enhancement from Warp to increase that amount. Use Affects Others to carry other people with you.

If you want this to take penalties like Warp does, then add the Requires (Attribute) Roll limitation, and couple that with this new limitation:

New Limitation: Distance Penalties
Apply this penalty to the roll required to use this advantage.
-1/yard like a Regular spell, -30%
Size and Speed/Range Table, -20%
Long Distance Modifiers, -10%

Enhancements                 
As normal:
Affects Others
Link
Reflexive

Limitations
As normal:
Accessibility
Costs Fatigue
Emergencies Only
Gadgets
Nuisance Effect
Pact
Requires (Attribute) Roll
Takes Extra Time

You get the idea from looking at these which ones you can use and which ones you can't. The idea is that this now functions like a normal advantage, taking the same limitations as enhancements without all the special unique stuff that the default version of Warp uses.

Classic-Style Sanity rules for GURPS, Part 1

These rules add Sanity rules similar to those found in Call of Cthulhu to GURPS.

To those not familiar with these rules, I will first give an explanation of the basic concept: When characters encounter horrible things in the world, their sanity is tested. Often, they will become less sane, which makes them less able to resist future tests of their sanity, creating a death spiral leading to inevitable insanity.

The way this is achieved in classic Call of Cthulhu is by having a Sanity score that one attempts to roll under with a d100. If you fail, you become less sane, your sanity score is lowered, and then you are more likely to fail further sanity checks. In addition, the loss of sanity is accompanied by a variety of sorts of madness in the form of phobias and manias. That's it.

In this post, I will attempt to recreate these rules as nearly as I can for use in GURPS. In a future post, I will attempt my own version which will improve on these rules in certain ways (using 3d6 rather than the d100, and adding difficulty modifiers to the roll, so that it is not the same difficulty to resist seeing a rat gnawing on a body as it is to resist staring into something which man cannot comprehend, and also by having lost sanity impose a penalty on the 3d6 roll rather than rolling directly against the sanity score itself).

Core Concepts

 

Madness Tables from GURPS Horror 

Rather than figure out how to represent the various effects of madness mechanically in the game, I will be using the madness tables found on pages 143 and 144 in the fourth edition of GURPS Horror.

d100
We're using these for now to exactly emulate the original rules.

New attribute: Sanity

Sanity begins at 50, goes from 1 to 99 (with the maximum possible score reduced by their Mythos Knowledge), and may be bought up or down as normal, at a cost of 2 character points for each 5 Sanity Points.

New skill: Hidden Lore (Mythos Knowledge)

This skill increases rapidly during play as the characters probe things man was not meant to know. A character's knowledge of the mythos reduces their maximum Sanity. Each character point a character has in Mythos Knowledge reduces their maximum Sanity by four points. For instance, Mythos Knowledge at a level of IQ+5 costs 20 character points, and thus reduces their maximum sanity by eighty points, from 99 to 19.

Sanity loss caused by mythos entities increases a character's Mythos Knowledge skill. If a character has no points in the skill, then their first encounter with a mythos entity gives them a point in the skill. Each encounter with a mythos entity beyond this gives a chance to increase skill. Make a sanity check. On a failed roll, the character gains one character point in Mythos Knowledge.

The primary source of Mythos Knowledge in the world are tomes such as the Necronomicon. Reading these gives points in the Mythos Knowledge skill. These range from 1 to 4 points. Reading such tomes risks sanity loss as normal, of course.

Sanity Check

A sanity check is a roll of 1d100 against the character's current Sanity score. If the character rolls under their Sanity score, they succeed.

Sanity Loss

Horrific situations, encountering entities from beyond this world, learning unsettling truths about the nature of reality, etc. can all cause a character to lose sanity. Potential sanity loss is indicated by two numbers. The first number is the amount of sanity lost if the character succeeds on their sanity check. The second number is the amount lost if the character fails their sanity check.

Mental Break Threshold

Characters have a mental break threshold equal to their current sanity divided by 10 (rounded down).

Effects of Sanity Loss

 

Mental Break

Whenever a character suffers sufficient sanity loss from a single source to reach their mental break threshold (Their current Sanity divided by 10), they risk suffering a mental break. The GM chooses an appropriate skill related to the source of the lost sanity, usually Hidden Lore (Mythos Knowledge) and the character must roll against that skill (If Hidden Lore is chosen, but not possessed by the character, it may be made at a default of IQ-5). This is to test the character's understanding of what they have witnessed.

If the character fails the skill roll, then their comprehension was not sufficient to send them into a bout of temporary insanity. They come up with some plausible explanation or comforting lie. Whatever the case, they are able to carry on.

If, however, they succeed on the skill roll, they have grasped some truth about the nature of reality which their mind cannot reconcile with their understanding of the world. Ghosts are real, aliens walk among us, Nickelback won a Grammy. Whatever they have learned shatters their mind temporarily. They suffer from a bout of temporary insanity, represented by a roll on the Short-Term Conditions table.

Temporary Insanity begins with a bout of madness. Get out your copy of the most excellent fourth edition of GURPS Horror by Kenneth Hite, and roll on the Madness Table of your choice for a short-term condition. These are found on pages 143 and 144.

Also roll a d6. On a roll of 6, the character gains a Long-Term Condition. The GM may either roll on the table or choose from the list of Conditions on page 144 of Horror.

After the short-term condition has ended, the character continues to suffer from their temporary insanity for the next 1d10 hours.

During this time, the character suffers from delusions and hallucinations. Is that the harmless wail of a banshee as it approaches, or have Nickelback begun to practice nearby? You can't be certain...

If a player wishes to question one of these delusions or hallucinations, they may do so by making a reality check.

A reality check is simply another sanity check. If the player succeeds, they have seen past their delusion or hallucination and returned to normal... whatever that is for them now that they have glimpsed some fragment of the truth.

If they fail, then the delusion or hallucination continues, and for their effort the character suffers an additional point of damage to their Sanity, and suffer another temporary bout of madness (back to the short-term conditions table), and the delusion or hallucination intensifies.

Continuing Insanity

If a character loses more than a fifth of their total Sanity in a single day, they become insane until they are able to rest in a safe place for an extended period. The GM represents this as they see fit, perhaps by rolling on the Medium-Term Conditions table. The character should certainly be "out of commission" as it were while in this state. The player should roleplay this appropriately.

Permanent Insanity

When a character's Sanity reaches zero, their mind, essentially, is no more. Some physical semblance of what they once were might remain, but this is no more than a vessel containing shattered remains. A merciful GM might allow a recovery of a sort, perhaps enough to leave a mental institution to wander aimlessly for the rest of their days, but such is not at all to be expected.

Repeat Exposure

Characters become numb to horrors after experiencing them multiple times. The first time a character reads the terrible truths contained within the Necronomicon, their mind might shatter. Yet it does not shatter further with each subsequent read.

Once a character has taken the maximum result in sanity loss for exposure to a particular horror, they no longer suffer sanity loss from that horror. For instance, if the maximum sanity loss from seeing a shoggoth is 20, a character cannot take more than 20 sanity loss from that source. Beyond that point, additional exposure causes no more sanity loss.

Restoring Sanity

 

Merciful GMs may allow characters to restore some of their missing Sanity at the end of each session, or each campaign. 1d6 points might be restored.

This is only for the merciful, however. The less forgiving GM might require the characters to undergo extensive psychological treatment to be so restored--or deny its possibility outright!

After all, that which has been seen cannot be unseen...

Examples of Sanity Loss

0/1d-2  Encounter a mutilated animal carcass
0/1d-1  Encounter a human corpse
0/1d-1  Encounter a stream which flows with blood
1/1d    Encounter mutilated human corpse
0/1d    Awake trapped inside a coffin
0/1d    Witness friend's murder
1/1d    Encounter someone you know to be dead
0/1d+2  Endure torture
1/1d+2  Watch a corpse crawl from its grave
2/2d+5  See a giant disembodied head fall from the heavens 

Sample Monsters 

Ghoul: 0/1d6
Shoggoth: 1d6/1d20
Great Cthulhu: 1d10/1d100

GURPS House Rule: New Advantage - Bestow

What?

I'm introducing a new advantage that replaces the klunky Affliction method of doing things.

Why?

If you're asking, you must not have tried to use Affliction to accomplish this task. Affliction has a base cost of ten points. That means any modifiers apply only to that ten-point base cost. Beneficial afflictions are, by their very nature, enhancements. This makes limitations on expensive beneficial afflictions very poorly priced. You can add +10,000% in enhancements, which results in an extremely costly Affliction. Yet a crippling limitation totaling -80% still only provides eight points in exchange.

Also ease of use is a factor as well. I feel this method is much easier to understand and use. This is how I intuitively expected the ability to cast buffs on people to work. The RAW method makes this much, much more complicated than it needs to be. I would hope that in a future version of the game some other method such as I have provided here would be considered.


The advantage:  


Bestow

Bestow is a new advantage. This replaces Affliction shenanigans. When buying this advantage, select another advantage. Bestow is always paired with another advantage or group of advantages. For instance, one might purchase Bestow (Flight) or Bestow (+5 ST and Claws). You can select modified advantages to Bestow. For instance, you could bestow DR with the Tough Skin limitation.

Bestow has a base cost equal to double the price of its associated advantage(s).

To bestow a trait requires a Concentrate maneuver. You must touch the target to receive the bestowed advantage(s).

When you bestow an advantage, the target gains the advantage if they want. It's just that simple. The default duration is that of the purchased trait. Modifiers that change this duration are applied to Bestow rather than to the advantage being bestowed. For instance, Limited Duration would be applied to Bestow, not to the advantage being bestowed.

The default version of Bestow ends when the bestower uses a Concentrate maneuver to remove the bestowed advantage (which they may do without touching the target), or when the bestower bestows the advantage on a new target.

A bestower can bestow themselves. This is part of why it costs twice as much as the default price. You gain a lot of utility.

Some potential modifiers:

Additional Targets
You can have multiple versions of the bestowed advantage going at once. With one additional target, you could give Flight both to yourself and to your friend.

Number of additional targets, and then price:

1   +50%
2   +100%
3   +150%
5   +200%
7   +250%
Unlimited +300%


Can't Bestow Self -25%
This one is obvious.

Conscious Buffs -10%
The buffs end if the bestower loses consciousness.

GURPS House Rule: Limited Use

What?

I’ve changed the price of the Limited Use limitation, and added a variable cost based on how big of a hindrance the limitation is.

Why?

Because sometimes Limited Use gives back more points than it should and other times it doesn’t give back enough. Using the same price when limiting all traits is the cause of this.

As we already see in the RAW, not all modifiers have the same value when applied to each trait. Switchable, for instance, is worth +100% on Mana Damper. This is because being able to switch that advantage on and off is worth more than the usual +10% price of the modifier.

It is generally understood that Limited Use provides too few points in the cases where players would most commonly want to apply it (such as combat abilities), and too many points in some other cases (such as on abilities that only need to be used infrequently to begin with).

The Rules

Limited Use

		Use Frequency
Uses/day	High	Medium	Low
1	-60%	-30%	-10%
2	-45%	-20%	-5%
4	-35%	-15%	n/a
6	-25%	-10%	n/a

Use Frequency is based on how often the ability is useful. An ability that is useful many times a day receives a higher discount than an ability that is useful few times per day (or that one receives little benefit from using repeatedly). For instance, an Innate Attack is useful many times per day, whereas a Detect Oil Reserves spell which informs the caster of the location of the planet's oil reserves provides nearly the same utility in one use as in many uses. So the former would be discounted as a high frequency use ability and receive -60% for 1/day, whereas the latter would be classed as low frequency and be discounted at -10% for 1/day.

It is up to the GM to determine which use frequency applies to which traits. In most cases this should be fairly obvious. Combat abilities are high frequency, abilities which are used somewhat often but perhaps not many times per day are medium, and abilities that provide nearly the same benefit from a single use per day as multiple uses are low.

GURPS House Rules: Attributes Without Skills

What?

Rules for how to price and purchase the attributes once they’ve been divorced from any relation to skills.

Why?

Because we like you. Wait, no. Because I removed the skills from the attributes and now need new prices for what’s left of the attributes.

The Rules

ST: Unchanged (If only they could all be this easy.)

HT: Unchanged (Covers a few skills that don’t matter—I suspect this is already underpriced as it is, even without the skills.)

Per: Its own thing. Costs 5/level as normal.

Will: Its own thing. Costs 5/level as normal.

IQ

Okay, so the obvious question here is: without skills, Per, or Will, what’s even left of IQ?

Here’s what I could find.

Rolls to remember things. This is the part of IQ that’s modified by Perfect Memory.

Rolls against surprise and mental stun. This is the part that’s modified by Combat Reflexes.

And general rolls for what I think of as reason. I don’t know how other GMs run things, but in my games, a player will often ask a question like, “Can I make a roll to help figure out what the original pattern in these scattered floor tiles was?” The response I give is, “Make an IQ roll.”

It’s obvious at this point that IQ is really nothing more than a Super Talent. It’s basically skills, Per, Will, and very little else. My inclination is to split what we have left into individual subattributes called Memory (used for remembering things; starts at 10 and costs 1/level) and Wittedness (what you roll against surprise and mental stun with ; starts at 10 and costs 1/level). Maybe have a third trait called Reason that is also 1/level and functions similarly to the Common Sense advantage, but that everyone would have. You could also use a separate trait for learning, since that’s something else you can rolI for, but most games don’t even use learning rolls. If you don’t want to separate IQ into those component parts, I recommend keeping it as a package that handles those few separate things and costs 2/level or 3/level. It’s really kind of useless, though, and not something anyone is going out of their way to buy.

DX

Like IQ, this is basically a Super Attribute mixed in with some sub attributes.

Very similar to IQ. We have the bonus to Basic Speed (which really should be its own separate trait in the first place in the way that Per and Will should be) and… not much else. There are rolls to balance. And there are rolls to fetch items from your bags or whatever when you have a chance of failure at what you’re doing, but you aren’t using a skill. You might be on the fifth floor of a burning building that’s collapsing around you while you’re fighting a werewolf. When you go to pull that speedloader with your silver bullets from your bag, you’ll need to make some roll to get it out of your shaking bag. That’s one of the few things that DX does that isn’t a skill.

Like with IQ, I suggest splitting these things up into their own attributes. One attribute for Balance and one for these other odds and ends. I would call this attribute Motor Control.

So this could be as simple as removing all the skills and dropping DX to 7 points per level (which would be 5 points worth of Basic Speed, and then 1 point for Balance and 1 point for the odds and ends).

Once we’ve reached this point, maybe we should go another step and remove the Basic Speed portion of DX and make that its own separate thing.

The easiest way to do this

That would give you the following attributes:

ST – 10/level

DX – 2/level

IQ – 2/level

HT – 10/level

Per – 5/level

Will – 5/level

Basic Speed – 20/level

And then you just go on as usual. This is fairly noninvasive. You aren’t changing around a ton of rules.

In my full house rules, I go even further, breaking down all of the attributes into their component parts. I’ll save that for another post.