From: jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim)
Subject: Re: Advantages
Reply-To: jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 09:46:58 GMT

dzik@access.digex.com (Joseph Dzikiewicz) writes:
>Garion and Covenant both had serious magic items.  Garion also had a prophecy
>behind him, the GURPs Rome equivalent of a 15 point destiny.

(Yes I'm being picky, but for both of them their power had nothing to do 
with the items - although this only became clear in the 2nd trilogy for Tom). 

>
>Besides, if you want to allow great mages without high IQ, just lift the 
>maximum on levels of magery.  Nice and easy, no fuss, no muss.

(Again being picky, but this is also unbalanced as hell). 

>>
>> jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
>>	Yes, but the system discourages the taking of these 'sub-attributes' 
>>(like Will, Perception, etc.) because the basic attributes are so much more 
>>cost-effective (at least in the usual range of attributes: 7-15). Anyone 
>>who wants to be Strong-willed and Alert without being very smart will 
>>quickly discover that his character will probably cost *less* if he were 
>>smarter (assuming he has some reasonable number of mental skills) while 
>>keeping the same Will and Perception rolls. 
>
>True enough.  No system is perfect. 
>
>But, short of stat explosion on a scale that would put even Hero to shame,
>how would one have general abilities defaulting to attributes without
>grouping at least some abilities that do not, in some cases, coexist?

	Stat explosion is unneccessary in any case. GURPS only has a few 
of these unstated 'sub-stats': Fatigue, Will, Perception, Hit Points, and 
Dodge. (Discounting individual acute senses). These can easily be observed 
by looking at the stats which animals and other non-humans have. Even if 
you were to add these as actual stats, that would not affect complexity or 
ease of play significantly (IMO), and would save time in explaining how 
non-humans have different stats. 

	However, doing so is not neccessary to fixing the substat-to-stat 
cost imbalance I was talking about. That just requires adjusting the costs 
a little bit. Make sure that for an 'average Joe' set of skills, it is cheaper 
to buy up the skills and substats of IQ than it is to buy up IQ. 

	I would separate out Will as truly orthogonal and just call it an 
advantage/disadvantage from base 10. Perception is fine as a modifier, 
allowing for negative costs. To deal with the imbalance, I would increase 
the cost of DX and IQ rather than making Alertness cheaper. 
	I also am personally am in favor of generalized skill aptitudes as 
advantages/disads, but that's an old thread. Also, I like distinguishing Hit 
Points and Fatigue - as that clears up some inconsistancies in the rules, 
and makes HT and ST better defined entities. 

	None of these increase the complexity of the game - they might add 
a step to character creation, but I think we can agree that character 
creation is a long, involved process in GURPS anyhow. I think that is easily 
made up for in the organizational gain. 
	IMO, GURPS has far outgrown any pretensions it might have had at 
the start of being 'simple', and I think that they would do well to 
improve their organization in the next edition of their rules. (Much like 
Hero did). 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim                    | "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu | "The future's not the same anymore."
Columbia University         | "What the hell's wrong with my langauge."
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy