Side Effect vs Affliction Part II: Should Psi-Wars make Afflictions Cheaper?

 So, my previous article on Side Effect provoked some interesting discussion.  There's nuance that I missed, and people were kind enough not to call it out directly on the blog (though by all means!), but the broader point still stands: you can build Side-Effects into simple Innate Attacks for what often amounts to a cheaper and better Affliction than the Affliction advantage.  Malediction often does the same too: rather than take a bunch of levels of Affliction, you can take Malediction and take a bunch of levels of Talent or the controlling Attribute (Will, I believe) and get the equivalent to more Affliction.

So what? What am I going to do about it?  See, if we're talking the broader context of GURPS, I'm mostly just tossing it in the general direction of the complaints box for if Kromm ever gets around to a 5th edition.  But with Psi-Wars, I've already adjusted costs.  Sure, I mutter about it and complain mightily about the complexity costs of adjusting everything, but I've done it.  So why not do it again?

The arguments for tend to go along these lines: Ultra-Tech weapons deal pretty hefty damage for cheap, which reduces the utility of buying that damage as an advantage, thus the cost should be lowered.  By the same token, Ultra-Tech weapons inflict afflictions for cheap, which reduces the utility of Afflictions, thus their cost should also be lowered. If you can inflict Agony on someone with a cheap neurolash baton, why should Agony still be full price as an affliction?

The counter-arguments tend to go like this: changing afflictions means people have to know the specifics of your new rules (but that's already true for other elements); you'd have to reprice tons of traits in Psionic Powers (but we already to that!); and you lose compatibility with RAW (but at this point, Iteration 6+ Psi-Wars has the same relationship with GURPS that the DFRPG or other "powered by GURPS" works have, which is that they use those rules, but aren't afraid to adjust them).  However, the most compelling argument against that I can think of is that there are weird edge cases where afflictions can do things that ultra-tech cannot, like resurrect people, give them cool powers, take psychic powers away, etc.  What do you do with those weirdly specific edge cases?  For example, Neutralize seems priced around Affliction, as a broadly capable Affliction that removes whatever power the target has.  If I reprice Affliction, should I reprice Neutralize? Where does it end?

I don't really have a good answer there.  But I would like to explore what a fair price for Affliction would be if I followed the logic of repricing it.

Is Melee Viable in Psi-Wars (or any Ultra-Tech setting)?

As I continue my work on the Umbral Rim and the Heist, I find myself coming to an inevitable intersection where the Assassin is one of next templates I should do, and also, many of the aliens I'm working on, such as the dreaded Gerluthim, would probably focus a great deal on melee combat.  I expect to see spears, polearms and knives, but would any player actually choose them for any reason other than aesthetic.

Ultra-Tech settings pose a unique problem to melee weapons.  Even if we set aside the supremacy of ranged weapons in a UT setting, the ubiquity of sealed DR presents a real problem. In a fantasy setting, or a low tech setting, characters can and do completely cover up their bodies in armor, but they rarely have more than 4 to 6 DR, and most attacks will deal between 1d and 2 damage, which means there's always a chance you'll blast through the DR and, wizards aside, most ranged attacks don't do much more than 1d damage, which makes melee very important for cracking well armored targets.  Furthermore, realistic armor has gaps that a clever knife fighter can exploit to take down well-armored foes.  In a High Tech Setting, characters tend to wear armor heavy enough to defeat the best melee weapons, but it tends to be isolated to just their torso: this goes well beyond gaps as you can generally freely attack the neck or the arms or the legs, and you can still target gaps to hit the vitals.  Once we get to an Ultra-Tech setting, though, people will wear sealed armor to protect from space, and this automatically gives them defense against most gas attacks, acid splashes, and attacks against armor gaps that most other settings can use to exploit well armored targets.  A knife, even a vibro knife, is never going to get through a combat hardsuit.

The most realistic approach to take here is to accept that and to not bring a knife to a gun fight.  You don't see many characters in the Expanse attacking someone in a battlesuit with a knife for good reason!  But Psi-Wars isn't hard sci-fi, it's space opera.  We expect to see duels with foils, and alien natives with long spears and palace guards with imposing halberds. But why would they wield them if they do no good? It's fine for an NPC to stand around looking like a set-piece, but players will just reach for a blaster if this is the case.  So how do we fix it?

But Force Swords are Fine!

If you've followed Psi-Wars, you might be scratching your head a little.  After all, we've had space knights since Iteration 1, and they kick butt. The force sword is to the blaster rifle what the bastard sword is to the bow: a way of bringing about +50% damage and penetration to a target up close.  A blaster rifle will struggle to get through 100 DR, while a fore sword has no problem.  Moreover, the ability to parry blaster fire with a force sword, and the close quarters created by the tight confines of spaceships and planetary habitats tends to favor the skilled melee combatant.  So... we already have working melee in Psi-Wars.  What's the problem?

Well, the Force Sword papers over a lot of issues.  Yes, it's effective, but it's the only melee weapon that has this sort of damage output.  Furthermore, it destroys melee weapons, which means if you go into a melee fight with anything other than a force sword, you're a chump.  Your weapon won't penetrate your opponent's armor, and if they have a force sword, they'll parry once and it's game over.  There is only one effective melee option, and that's the force sword.  Anything we do to diminish that risks reducing the importance and power of the force sword, but if we leave it as the undisputed king, nobody will ever bother with any other weapon.  Axes, spears, vibro-blades, knives, staves and weaponized wrenches are a waste of time; just spring for a force sword.

This might just be what we have to accept, but I want to explore some options, so the game has room for more variety than blasters vs lightsabers.  

 

This post is mostly me going through my process of thinking aloud to my blog as I try to solve a problem, which is how I got my start on this blog, and people seem to appreciate this approach, so I'm going to go ahead and post it.  Feel free to read though it to see how I come to the conclusions I do, and why.

"Is Predictive Shooting a thing in Psi-Wars?"

I have a great community on my Discord (you can find the link in the Psi-Wars Index!) that often asks interesting questions, sometimes in itemized lists (which is very convenient).  These often lead to all sorts of interesting improvements in Psi-Wars, but one was posed to me recently that's both the sort of question I dread to answer, and one that I've been thinking on for awhile: "Is predictive shooting a thing in Psi-Wars?"

It's also a question I've been thinking on a lot.  Whenever I give my Backers the option to pick which template the focus on next, the Frontier Marshal usually does very well, and last time, it won! I keep pondering why my Backers like the Frontier Marshal so much: it's the "ranger" and "survivalist" of the setting, which doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that Psi-Wars fans would be crazy about, but "space sheriff" is something, like the Maradonian Space Knight, that Psi-Wars has and Star Wars doesn't. But I also think it's because they'd very much like to see "Gun Fu," so I've been working on that behind the scenes for a bit. And you can't really look at Gun Fu without thinking about "Predictive Shooting" and "Ranged Feints."

What is Predictive Shooting?

While I think Predictive Shooting comes up in a few places, my preferred reference for Psi-Wars is Gun Fu, because with a few exceptions, most Psi-Wars shootists aren't much bothered by realism.  Here, the rules can be found on page 11... and 12.

Essentially, Predictive Shooting is a Deceptive Attack with a gun, and it only reduces Dodge.

There's another interesting rule: Ranged Feint.  The idea here is that you "fake-out" your opponent and then make a Feint with a Gun roll; this penalizes all defenses, just like any feint.

Should I lower the cost of ST in Psi-Wars?

I don't check Warehouse 23 every week like I used to, but I really should.  The stated reason for killing my beloved Pyramid was that the SJGames team could focus more attention on creating supplements and this has proven true.  I think I'm seeing a supplement a month again, sometimes more.  And not just Dungeon Fantasy stuff as I feared (I don't mind Dungeon Fantasy, I just don't want GURPS to fall away and have DFRPG replace it), but instead, we get all sorts of fun things.

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?