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Thursday, September 2, 2021

Limiting sources of situational bonuses?

Just a brief GURPS thought today.

I tend to find lots of stacking situation modifiers tricky. Players constantly want to "just make sure" that they get all of their bonuses. They want to deal with a long-term problem now with a focused investment of points. They want to eke out every bit they can to survive.

But making sure you've counted them all can take time, and still result in errors and edge cases - does Hard to Kill protect against a spell that might kill me? Does Hard to Subdue help me roll to wake up? Does my +3 for Dirty Fighting apply to this one opponent, this time?

On top of that, it can be point inefficient as well as unwieldly. The guy with HT 13, Fit, Hard to Kill 2, Hard to Subdue 2, and FP 13 has spent 16 points to get most of the effects of HT 16, but not all of them, and lost out on 0.75 worth of Basic Speed (15 points on its own) and 2 FP (6 more points) by not spending 14 more points. And has a lot more questions about what applies, when.

So what if you could only every buy one ability that provide situational bonuses? So you could get Fit and Hard to Kill, or Fit and Hard to Subdue, but not all three (and Fit only because it's not a situational bonus, it always applies.) You basically have to make a hard decision and get the one you really want.

You'd still get situational bonuses, but you wouldn't have a lot of them, and have to have so may iterations of your base stat + bonuses to keep track of.

I'd need to do more numbers and look at more cases, but this is an idea that might suit a game with high power and steady growth . . . while very high stats and skills might be annoying, are they more so than moderate stats and skills with lots and lots and lots of bonuses to comb through and decide where they apply? My experience says no. And it's better, in general, for the players - less questions, generally more effectiveness, and less edge cases where they thought something would apply and it does not. Simplified chargen and progression, too, is a helpful bonus.

So I think I need to put some more thought into what this would look like.

6 comments:

  1. "The guy with HT 13, Fit, Hard to Kill 2, Hard to Subdue 2, and FP 13 has spent 16 points to get most of the effects of HT 16, but not all of them, and lost out on 0.75 worth of Basic Speed (15 points on its own) and 2 FP (6 more points) by not spending 14 more points."

    This is why, as a Player, I don't tend to chase situational stuff like Hard to Kill, Hard to Subdue, etc. Something like Resistant to Supernatural Evil is one thing (it's broadly situational and not single Attribute locked), same with Fit/Very Fit (worth it for their other benes alone), but Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue and such (situational stat bonuses) I have a harder time justifying...

    Unless the GM has put Attribute Caps in play. Then, once I hit cap, I chase every bonus I can if I think it's necessary. Like, HtK and HtS are 4 points. For 6 more points I get, as you said, a bonus to every HT roll, +1 FP, and +.25 Basic Speed and Move (which Basic Speed is 5 points by itself). So to me, +1 HT is far more valuable than the sum of buying it's constituent parts.


    "...while very high stats and skills might be annoying, are they more so than moderate stats and skills with lots and lots and lots of bonuses to comb through and decide where they apply?"

    And again I have a different take... depending on the genre. So when I'm running a non-DF game, I prefer Attribute Caps and situational bonus chasing behavior in my Players, but for DF, I can see why chasing situational bonuses would be annoying. I'm undecided, but then the few games I've played of it didn't have the problem you're encountering. I suspect because my Players didn't hit the same power levels and were still chasing pure stat increases.

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    1. A chunk of why it happens is incremental XP awards - and players who can't wait for 10 points for +1 HT or 8 points for +1 skill but who will spend 2 points each on HtK and HtS or 4 points (5 canonically, 4 in my games) on Enhanced Parry (one weapon). There is a fair amount of "but I need this now" that informs decisions. Sadly it complicates things.

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    2. "... players who can't wait ..."
      Yeah, I can understand that. I do that in games where awards are "few and far between" like play-by-posts.

      And I'd be tempted if I was getting 1-2 points a week in a weekly face-to-face as well.

      But if I'm getting like 4 a week, I can wait 5 weeks to upgrade DX instead of 5 skills at +1, at least if I've got my DX skills at the "costs more than 2 points level" and my "trained Att +2" skills are all at Att +2.

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    3. I think some people can't ever wait, and some people can, regardless of the pace . . . but a slow pace encourages doing something now, for sure.

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  2. Enhanced Parry (One weapon) at 4 sounds interesting and understandable

    There seems at times in GURPS a major desire to make cluttered character sheets with results of 'I roll vs 12, or 13 in darkness, or 14 on Tuesdays, or 27 in darkness, on Tuesday, under a full moon, in May, facing a pink Dragon'

    Not sure precisely how to deal with it, but all the random things do keep showing up

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    1. Oh, I think all of the individual selections make sense . . . it's the endless stacking of them driving questions ("Does this apply?") and special-situation maths ("Okay, so this is a stunning effect, so I should get my +2 from Hard to Subdue but not my +2 for (some other thing . . .)") that really seem unnecessary.

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