Design Diary: the Akashic Form and Cosmic Kung Fu

Cosmic Kung Fu

When I wrote the Akashic Form, it was quite some time ago, near the beginning of the design of the Labyrinth, and it became obvious to me as I wrote it that it might change as a result of the designs of the Labyrinth, so I parked it while I worked on labyrinthine monsters. As the posts turned from days to months of writing I naturally lost track of my original thought process when writing them. I have some notes, but it seems I am missing the specific designs of the Labyrinthine Revelations techniques. Some people have asked for them, or expressed skepticism or concerns, and that’s fine (the reason to post these to a blog is to elicit feedback), but given how interesting they were to design, I thought it might be useful to you, dear reader, to see how it worked so you could do the same yourself, if you wanted (say, for a Wuxia campaign).

This is all an exercise in Modifying Existing Damage, from GURPS Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, staring on page 9. I think most people are familiar with the idea of modifying unarmed damage, but you can modify armed damage too. The caveat here is that it only modifies the damage of one weapon, but it allows you to swap it out if you change primary weapon. I think the intention here isn’t to prevent people from using their modifiers with a variety of armed weapons, but to prevent the overhead of working out the specifics of a ton of weapons. That is, if you apply a modifier to a broadsword, you shouldn’t also apply it to a greatsword or a staff, because the point value would be different and, ugh, it’d be a whole thing. However, with force swords, we don’t have that problem. We know how much damage they do: 8d(5) burn. That’s it! We could make the argument, then, that characters who use these modifiers can’t deal more damage than 8d(5): no weapon master bonus, no extra effort, no power blow. But we can safely allow them to apply it across all such weapons, especially given how we’ll limit it.

So, now we need to calculate the damage: 8d (5) burn is 60 points, ignoring the melee modifiers, which Power-Ups tells us to do. All we’re worried about is the base damage. Now we can work with our modifiers.

Okay, so can we apply cosmic modifiers? Yes we can! We’re not allowed to apply “penetration modifiers” other than (among others) Cosmic. Thus, we’re allowed to buy Cosmic Modifiers. And this makes sense. In the previous section on Cosmic modifiers, they talk about indefensible attacks vs cosmic defenses! I can buy an indefensible, innate attack that ignores DR. Why could I not do the same with the weapon I wield?

So, given that, we can look at the modifiers. We apply our particular modifiers to the cost of the weapon and take the value that comes out and apply it as our advantage cost. We can also apply limitations, but if the intention is to only apply to the enhancement, then we apply it to the enhancement only. If we did something like “Cosmic +50%; Limited Uses Once per day -40%”, then you need to follow the rules on page 10 of GURPS Power-Ups 4: technically, the limitation should be divided by 5 and applies to all attacks. That is, if you take this, then you can only attack ever with a force sword once per session. What we want instead is this idea of a mode, attacking in a particular way. Thus, what we actually want is a limitation to an enhancement: Cosmic (Limited Uses Once per day -40%) +30%.”

Labyrinthine Revelation of Crowns

So, here we have a fairly straightforward version of the +300% version of cosmic, making an attack indefensible. It requires an All-Out Attack (-25%) and it has a limited impact against non-Maradonian styles (We’ll call this a nuisance effect at -10%; this is somewhat arbitrary but we could argue that this only works against maradonian styles and apply an Aspect at -20%, and in this case, we halve it because you can sort of use it against non-Maradonian styles). This gives us a -35% to the +300%, which gives us a total of (about) +200%. 200% of 60 is 180, but we ignore the original 60, and it drops to 120. We should further note that innate attacks in Psi-Wars are 1/3 the cost, so this drops to 40, and then we make it cost an impulse point, which drops it to 8.

We can make further arguments to lower it further. Technically the advantage we’re buying is a “permanent” one. It’s like buying flight or invisibility: “my attacks always enjoy this bonus,” is what we’re saying, which means we need to limit the maximum duration, which will be -75% to -80%, which drops us down to a minimum -80%, and means all additional modifiers are pointless, which is less fun and it’ll disrupt some mechanical parallels I’d like to draw. It also drops the advantage cost to 2.5 points. If you didn’t like 8 points, you really won’t like 2.5. If you go above and beyond the -80% to make sure they can “be different,” you’re looking at a perk.

So what value is fair? Should it be 1 point? 3 points? 8 points? These all feel low, especially given the cosmic defenses we’ll see in a bit. I think offense should cost more than defense. So I think I originally doubled it in price, but perhaps 10 points is fairer.

Labyrinthine Revelation of Swords

This is the same as the above, except we’re changing the 150% armor modifier to a 300% armor modifier for a net increase of +150%. We’ll add a +50% to allow it to bypass limitations like Unkillable, and we’re at +200%. That means it costs the same as Labyrinthine Revelation of Crowns, which makes it conveneint.

Labyrinthine Revelation of Staves

This one is different. Here’s we’re looking at Cosmic Active Defenses. This is intend for parrying with the force sword or blocking with the shield. This naturally varies based on the skill of the user, but we can pick a “sufficiently high” value, such as skill 20. This makes the base cost of block 25 points, and the base cost of parry 25 points. We’re adding a +50% modifier, so +50% to both comes out to 25 points; if we divide that by 5, we get 5 points.

Is that fair? It seems to be. Characters could go higher, but they’re not going to double that value. We’re quibbling over a value that will be between 4 and 8 (at the extreme high end of skill 30 in both). So I think 5 is probably a nice, pentaphilic value. We could go with 10, but that’s definitely overcharging.

Note that it talks about “enhancing Enhanced Defense advantages,” but this is only if you’re actually basing your numbers on your actual skill. If you pay close attention, the cost of the advantage is priced as though you bought it up from 3 using enhanced defense alone, so our values should be fine.
Given the lack of utility in 90% of cases with a cosmic parry, I’ve also tossed on a “halve defense penalties” benefit for free.

Labyrinthine Revelation of Hearts

This one is different. Here’s we’re looking at Cosmic Active Defenses. We’ll look at Dodge, and we need to determine the Dodge of the target, because that will determine the core cost. We don’t know what that is, of course, and we’re trying to create a static advantage, so it might be enough to take “a sufficiently high value.” If we want to price it like Staves above, for 5 points, we’re looking at a Basic Speed of ~6.5, which is a little on the high side for a starting character, but not much. If we went with a 10 point advantage, that would cover up to ~13.25, which is excessive. I can’t imagine someone going higher than a Basic Speed of 10, maybe 11. If we’re pentaphilic, 5 seems closer to right than 10, which is definitely overpriced. You’re getting a bit of a deal here at 5, but I think it’s fair and, more importantly, pentaphilic and similar in value to

Given the lack of utility in 90% of cases with a cosmic dodge, I’ve also tossed on a “halve defense penalties” benefit for free. Perhaps I should ditch that to bring its cost “more in line” but the utility of spending 5 character points for the privilege of spending 1 character point for the privilege of dodging the Revelation of Crowns seems excessive to me, so I’ll keep the bonus.

Disappeared Signature Moves

One question I got was "why did you remove the flavorful moves from the original?" One of the problems I face with these updates is that most of the signature moves from the previous iterations don't cost anything. They're just things people with the style often do.  I don't think that's a bad idea at all; it's a perfectly reasonable approach, but if you're shooting at players spending 5 points to get "a kung fu trick," you need to come up with something.

Accept Fate: This was functionally an "Evaluate while using Combat Sense," which we've folded into the new Accept Fate.  It didn't do anything except stand there and look at your foe before either.

Mirror Fate: This allowed you to turn the natural defensiveness of the technique into an attack. This is still a pretty valid approach, though this runs afoul of the fact that Ripostes don't cost anything.  We could create a new technique, of course, but then what are we buying off?  The point of this signature move was to collect a lot of defensive bonuses and then turn them into an offensive bonus.  However, the new version of Accept Fate does that anyway, making this redundant.

Challenge Fate: This was a Stop Hit, which is the signature trick of the Serene Form.  We could use it here too, but I see no reason to step on the toes of the Serene Form.

Open the Third Eye: So, in the original Akashic Form, I borrowed heavily from Third Eye Fighting, which introduced this variation of Combat-Sense-As-Enhanced-Time-Sense, and that's what this move handled.  However, once again, perfect reactions (which is what this gives) is the bailiwick of the Serene Form, and it already has a move that gives Enhanced Time Sense. It's also not really a "move" as you don't really do much.

So most of the Akashic Form moves either did nothing that players could spend their points on, or were already handled by the Serene Form.  We could ditch the Serene Form in favor of the Akashic Form, but I feel like the Serene Form fits the motiffs of the Templars better than the Akashics and the new model better suits the idea of the Akashic Knight as a super-Maradonian who listens closely to fate.