This month, we got Alternate Attributes, which proved a meatier tome than I expected. Without going into a full review (I just got it and I've only paged through it), the core of it is meditating on the costs of attributes, what they connect with, and how to re-arrange everything. And I do mean everything. They break the skills out by broad categories, they offer ideas on how to turn GURPS into a WoD knock-off with three sets of three traits (plus HP equivalents for each), they offer suggestions for raising, and lowering, the costs of all the attributes and various sub-elements.
What caught my eye is that this book finally acknowledges that ST isn't worth as much at higher TLs, which is a point I myself continue to struggle with as I do a lot of sci-fi gaming and often interact with high TLs. Given that we have full "canon" support to do this now, I pose a question to you, dear reader and fellow fan of Psi-Wars: should we lower the cost of ST in Psi-Wars?
The Attributes of Psi-Wars
Broadly speaking, I'm pretty okay with the other three Attributes for Psi-Wars. I see a lot of tension between more IQ and more DX as I build templates, about as much as you see in Action, so it doesn't seem that IQ is "too cheap." I could make a case for raising its price or, especially, separating Will off into its own 10-point attribute, because Will is a lot more useful in a game full of Psychic Powers and Godlike Extra-Effort, but I lend a lot of punch to psychic powers in Psi-Wars by trading on that cheap Will and the advantages of Godlike Extra-Effort to off-set the high price of a lot of advantages in comparison to just having gear, so I'm not sure it's necessary. I think, barring any playtest feedback that says otherwise, that these are fine. Psi-Wars rather mixes fantasy with action when it comes to how it handles these traits: sure, IQ is more useful in Psi-Wars than in Action, but no more so than it would be in a fantasy game, and the psychic powers fall pretty close in line with magical spells for point-and-fatigue-to-utility.
HT seems okay too, as does Fatigue. Psi-Wars puts a little more emphasis on disease and poison than Action does, about as much as Dungeon Fantasy does, and it's always useful to be able to survive a death check. The psychic powers of Psi-Wars turn on fatigue, so it remains quite useful.
Basic Speed, I think, remains useful at its cost (reaction times matter when you're gunslinging), but Move is perhaps less valuable than it used to be with so many vehicles around. On the other hand, the unstated assumption in Psi-Wars is that most fights happen in constrained spaces, which means you can't really leverage vehicles or jetpacks all that often except in scenes meant specifically for them, and when you've got a force sword in a blaster fight, it pays to be able to cross distances quickly, so it seems like a wash.
This just leaves ST, and ST is definitely overpriced. The ability to lift remains about as useful as before, though I find characters in an ultra-tech setting tend not to have nearly as much encumbrance as in Action or DF: characters don't need to carry nearly so much ammo as in Action, and armor tends to be lighter than in DF. HP also remains about as useful. Yes, weapons are a lot more dangerous in DF, but most of that danger stems from weapons with high armor divisors. A blaster rifle isn't actually any more lethal than a TL 8 assault rifle and actually slightly less since tight-beam burning does less damage to vitals than piercing attacks do. HP isn't more valuable in Psi-Wars than it is in Action, and I think Action can tolerate 2-point HP.
It's only really Striking ST that's useless. Battleweave is DR 20 for what amount to a T-shirt and Jeans made of the stuff, and that basically negates all punching damage. You need to be ST 55 (yes, fifty-five) before you get break-even against DR 20 with a punch. Things like Karate and Power-Blow help, but you're still looking at ST 30 characters using Power-Blow to bruise a guy with Battleweave, never mind someone with actual DR 80-100 armor.
I've added some cinematic rules that help you get around this, such as treating all armor as flexible for the purposes of blunt trauma and I've reduced the DR of armor against crushing to help compensate (DR 20 Battleweave is actually DR 7 vs crushing, which means you can get away with punching through it at ST 20, or 10 with Power-Blow, but that's still the minimal armor). I've also created a rule where you can sort of force damage on someone if you knock them back and into something. But again, you need to deal about 7 damage before you've knocked someone off their feet, which means we need to be ST 20+ to inflict one point of damage this way. Even with all this help, and a lot of it is there to fit the genre conventions rather than to strictly boost ST, and even with all of it, I'm not convinced that Striking ST is worth it.
ST and Genre Conventions
What rather makes the ST situation worse is that space opera brims with strong aliens. Chewbacca is fantastically strong, and that's basically his schtick. He swings those great paws and storm troopers go flying. He's easily ST 20+. Psi-Wars follows the Ultra-Tech model of Robots, and while C3P0 isn't a threat to anyone, a Psi-Wars Android could probably lift you off your feet while holding you by the shirt if it wanted. We have cyborgs, who tend to be strong, powerful aliens, who tend to be strong, and robots, who tend to be strong, and we follow comic-book conventions of powerful characters throwing characters through walls and such and using their mighty powers to really mess people up. But all of this is dead in the water if ST is basically a waste of time.
Reduced ST makes certain aliens who focus on ST, like the Mug and, to a lesser extent, the Asrathi, non-viable. I have some plans to help make them a little more viable, but cheaper ST would go a long way. I'm also in the midst of working on robots and the trait I have to hedge on the most, by far, is their ST, because realistically a 200 lb robot should strutting around with ST 20-25. There are reasons to reduce that, but ST 10-15 is a hard sell for such a heavy robot.
Are Standard GURPS Conventions Even a Thing Anymore?
All of this has always been true, so why even bring it up now? Well, I've wanted to be conservative with Psi-Wars. The point isn't actually to build a setting for people to play in, though I'm doing that and people are, but rather, to put GURPS through its paces while you watch, so you can get a better sense of how the game works. The more I deviate from GURPS-as-written, the less value it has.
Now that we have a solid book I can point to as a guide for this, it's less of a problem to make this adjustment, but it is an adjustment and it does change how Psi-Wars works compared to the average GURPS game. That might be useful if you want to see how GURPS handles with different point costs and, I must note, I've already made this true for Innate Attacks (1/3rd cost) and DR (1/5th cost), so perhaps ST should be reduced as well, to complete the set.
The second problem is this requires me to reprice a lot of things.
- Every character template needs a second look
- The robots need to be rebuilt
- Cybernetics needs another look
- Racial templates need adjustment
Of course, in a lot of ways, this will be a boon: I can make cyborgs stronger, I can make aliens stronger, and I can re-align robots back to more realistic ST levels. The downside is that this is a lot of work, but I will note that revisiting all of this is what we're doing at the moment, so it might not be such a bad idea.
The Proposed ST Ruling
Psi-Wars is technically an TL 11 game (though it fudges down to TL 10 in a lot of places, and pushes up to TL 12 in a few), which suggests a price of 3/level of ST per the book, but I favor 5/level because, first, it's pentaphilic and I like that and, second, I think it lines up well with secondary characteristics. HP remains about as valuable as before, and is thus worth 2/level. Lifting ST still has a lot of utility and could be repriced to 2/level. Striking ST is essentially cosmetic and falls the most to 1/level. If you disagree and think Lifting ST should never be worth more than Striking ST, then both become l/level and ST drops to 4, and if you think HP really is worth less, then we can go with the full 3/level price.
Proposed for your approval:
ST is 5/level. HP is 2/level. Lifting ST is 2/level. Striking ST is 1/level.Please discuss and tell me your thoughts. You can leave a comment, or chat at me on Discord. Thanks!
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