[gurps] Mitigators (was Cyberpunk & 4e)

[Michael R. Stork]

Matt Riggsby wrote:
> The CP system isn't broken.  It's just not relevant.  Or rather, it's
> just that awards from the GM shouldn't be taken as the sole source of
> increasing a character's point value.  Buying cybernetics with cash
> will change a character's point value for reasons which are entirely
> sensible in the game setting, and he shouldn't be saddled with the
> requirement of "buying it off."
>
> As I've said before, this is a setting in which it is realistic and
> believable for characters to suddenly acquire considerable abilities
> far in excess of the rate of CP awards the GM may hand out.  For a
> character with a stack of Euros and a desire to do violence, it would
> be *implausible* for him not to go down to the chop shop and get wired
> nerves or an implanted shotgun, thus suddenly increasing his point
> value considerably.  Forcing him to pay that off, in the form of not
> increasing his skills while his companions do or just as suddenly
> acquiring rafts of compensating disads, would be even more
> implausible.  Game balance is nice, but neither reality nor most
> fictional worlds are balanced.  Therefore, attempts by the GM to force
> a balance between PC point levels is likely to be a distracting
> intrusion into the game reality.  You can certainly keep track of
> point value changes ("My blind character just bought some eyes, so
> he's at 200 points now rather than 150.").  I would, if only so I had
> a general gague for how powerful existing characters were in case new
> players wanted to join.  But unless you play RPGs as a game where the
> primary point is acquiring abilities (that is, if you tend heavily
> towards G in the GNS triangle), there's no need to "regulate play
> balance" and compensate for changes in characters which make in-game
> sense.

That's the point I was trying to make. I was looking for the section in 
THS that summed it up nicely, but haven't found it yet. The only real 
problem I have with this is that it can lead to a fantastic amount of 
munchkinism. My starting character, the blind, legless, mute, now has a 
huge amount of CPs to spend at game start. If within the first few 
gaming sessions he then goes and gets this all repaired via cyber-ware, 
he's going to be a monster. Now the GM can certainly come in and stomp 
all over this, but I've known players who would bitch up a storm for 
having the character creation process restricted. The old, "I should be 
able to create my character how ever I want" argument. One solution 
though might just be Hal's original Mitigation idea. If a character buys 
Blind for the full amount of points, then you could justify that to mean 
that the eyes aren't just ruined but that the ability to see is 
uncorrectable. The area of the brain that controls sight has been 
damaged say. In a real hard-core cyber/bio-ware setting, I'd imagine 
that blindness would be as routinely correctable as poor eyesight is today.

-- 

*/Mike S./*

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