Alternate FP recovery & Alternate Fit/Unfit

So I was musing yesterday about getting rid of Fit. Maybe not for this game, but perhaps in the future.

To do that, though, I'd need to find another way to deal with FP recovery. Pulling in 1 FP every 5 minutes has been critical in my DF game. It's often one less wandering monster check, a few less minutes spent in the danger zone, and the ability to bounce back between fights where Great Haste is being used with wild abandon.

So here are a couple ways to basically replace Fit. None of these are tested, but they don't seem fundamentally unsound. They do use a mechanic that you don't see so much in 4th edition GURPS, though - the "X - Y = Z" approach where Z is the time.


HT-based FP recovery

Lost FP are recovered at the rate of 1 FP per (20-HT) minutes, minimum 1 minute per 1 FP. A normal human with HT 10 recovers 1 FP per 10 minutes. One with HT 12 recovers 1 FP per 8 minutes; a frail person with HT 8 recovers 1 per 12 minutes!

Note & Option: You can potentially scale this; say that FP recover scales just like HP recovery, so FP 20 means you recovery 2 for every 1. I kind of like that, for symmetry, and because it encourages casters to increase FP not immediately branch out into the "safer" independent pool of Energy Reserve. A FP 20 person with HT 10 would recovery 2 FP per 10 minutes, or 1 per 5 minutes. You'd max at 2 FP per 1 minute at HT 19+.


Choose one of the above. Then add one set of these.

Fit (Mark I)
2 or 10

You recover from exertion better than others.

This advantage comes in two levels:

Fit: You recover 2 FP per time increment (optionally, cut the time increment in half). For example, a HT 12 person normally recovers 1 FP per 8 minutes; the same person with Fit recovers 2 FP per 8 minutes, or 1 FP per 4 minutes. A HT 19 or 20 person with Fit recovers 1 FP per 30 seconds!

Very Fit: As above, but also FP costs for non-supernatural, non-extra effort FP expenditures are halved.

Unfit
-2 or -10

This disadvantage comes in two levels.

Unfit: You lose FP at twice the normal rate.

Very Unfit: As above, but you also recover FP at half of the normal rate.



Mark II is the above, but only Fit changes:

Fit (Mark II)
2 or 10

This advantage comes in two levels:

Fit: You have +5 HT for the purpose of calculating FP recovery. For example, if you have HT 10 and Fit, you recover 1 FP per 5 minutes (20-[10+5]).

Very Fit: As above, but also FP costs for non-supernatural, non-extra effort FP expenditures are halved.


Notes & Options: Right now Fit/Very Fit don't have a stat prerequisite; you can easily make one for Very Fit (say, HT 12 or 13) if you want people to have some basic disease resistance, poison resistance, shock resistance, etc. before they can have elite-level energy systems (that's trainer speak for your cardio-vascular system and your muscular recovery systems.)

Mark II means a HT 10 person with Fit is exactly in the same boat they are now, in terms of recovery. Mark I is just easier ("With Fit it's double, Very Fit halves cost too") but Mark II has the attraction of allowing for finer splits and pushes HT needs lower. That's useful because you don't need super-heroic point levels to have fit people and/or people who take a beating but bounce back quickly. Mark II doesn't scale so well, though, and is less and less useful after HT 15, but maybe that's okay.

I struggled to come up with a "calculation" based one, where "Fit" throws a "1 FP per HT/something" into a "2 FP per HT/something" approach that didn't toss up weird fractions. The minus approach seemed okay, and it gives baseline numbers identical to the RAW for HT 10.

The pricing of Fit and Very Fit is just eyeballing - I think Very Fit is a little underpriced, but without the +2 to HT rolls it can't be that expensive. It might do well as 2 and 5 or 2 and 8, even if the pricing is odd. You'd want to invert those for the disadvantages because they have symmetry now. If I'd tried these I'd be inclined to set them at 2 and 10 and just give the points back if it seemed to be overpriced. So that's where I went on this pass.

Then again, Recovery seems overpriced at 10 points, and it's amazing for guys who get knocked out a lot. So maybe 2 and 10 is fine!