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.