-- UNDER CONSTRUCTION --
This is hasty, impromptu, and under refined, but I feel I need to get at least this much up today. I meant to have this thread done by Saturday, but Chargen. Man, I've forgotten how much time that can take. -- Assistant
IMPULSE BUYS
Generally every Player is issued 3 Impulse Points (henceforth refereed to as IP) at the start of each mission (mission length to be determined by the Overseer, but expect it be the standard rpg genre idea). While IP are kind of a "luck" system, I've always seen them as "Hmmm, we didn't take that into account" or "Sorry, I thought I described that better", and even "Player Narrative Input".
If you have GURPS 4e Power-Ups 5 Impulse Buys, please turn to page 342, section A, subheading 12, notation gamma to follow along.
(I kid,it's only a 25 page book.)
Advantages & Disadvantages
The following Advantages are change to affect the Impulse Points system:
Destiny [5/lvl]: Adds +1 IP to Mission IP per level.
Luck [5/lvl]: Adds 2 Luc" points to Mission IP per level. Luck points may be spent in all categories under Buying Rolls (Buying Success, Buying Failure, Buying Margins, and Buying Effect), they may be combined with IP for this purpose.
Serendipity [5/lvl]: Adds 2 Serendipity points to Mission IP per level. Serendipity points may be spent in all categories under Player Guidance (Editing Error, Buying Gear, Favors in Play).
Experience: At any point Players may spend unspent experience points as IP one a 1 for 1 basis.
In this game IP can be used to affect the following Impulse Categories:
BUYING ROLLS
Players may only alter rolls they make, and cannot buy criticals in any situation that would revoke defense, resistance, or choice from a another PC or NPC.
Buying Success
The most basic use of IP in play comes from p. B347: A player can spend points to alter the outcome of his immediately previous success roll. The cost schedule:
Critical failure to failure: 2 points
Failure to success: 1 point
Success to critical success: 2 points
Multiple shifts are possible. In that case, these costs are additive. Critical failure to success, or failure to critical success, costs 3 points; critical failure to critical success costs 5 points
Buying Failure
When a player is
required to attempt a success roll that he wants to fail or even critically fail, apply these point costs in the other direction; e.g., critical success to failure costs 3 points.
This has its uses! For instance, a deadly warrior, mind-controlled to attack a defenseless ally, might spend points to critically miss and drop his weapon, while an interrogation victim may prefer paying once to fail a HT roll that means he passes out from torture to purchasing a success each time he’s asked a question and blows his Will roll to resist Interrogation.
Buying Margin
Simple success or failure doesn’t always matter as much as the margin. When margin matters, use these values for outcomes bought with points:
Bought critical success: Margin of success is (effective skill)-3, but at least 1.
Bought success: Margin of success is (effective skill)-10, but at least 1.
Bought failure: Margin of failure is 10-(effective skill), but at least 1.
Bought critical failure (when using Buying Failure): Margin of failure is 18-(effective skill), but at least 1.
Remember that 0 or a negative number is less than 1. Thus, effective skill 4 gets 1, 1, 6, and 14 for these margins; effective skill 10 gets 7, 1, 1, and 8; and effective skill 16 gets 13, 6, 1, and 2. At effective skill 3-4, it’s unproductive to buy a critical success for margin alone.
Upgrading Margins: If the player rolls a natural success but with a margin so narrow that he may face miserable defeat – especially in a Quick Contest – his best bet is to buy a critical success for 2 points and take the margin noted above, which is like rolling a 3! However, if his margin is less than that of a bought success (effective skill-10), he may spend just 1 point to improve his margin to that level, converting his regular success into a superior but not critical one. For instance, if the player of a PC with effective skill 18 rolled a crummy 16, giving success by 2, he could pay 1 point for success by 8 instead.
Buying Effect
“Success” isn’t exclusively about success rolls. For many feats, effect rolls determine how well things went. This means damage rolls, primarily, but for someone with Terror (p. B93), it refers to his victim’s roll on the Fright Check Table (pp. B360-361), while a roll on the Critical Hit Table has many random effects. In this case, points are spent before the roll.
However the effect roll works, the player may spend 1 point to make up to two of the dice rolled come up at their maximum. This can affect some or all of the dice – the only limit is points. For instance, 1 point could buy 6 on 1d or 12 on 2d; 2 points, 18 on 3d or 24 on 4d; 3 points, 30 on 5d or 36 on 6d; and so on. If the roll uses a multiplier, then take the product, subtract the affected dice, and roll what’s left; e.g., 6dx2 is like 12d, so 2 points would buy 24 on 4d and the other 8d would be random (8d+24).
Rolls on tables add some wrinkles. A monstrous PC with Terror could spend 1 point to turn the 3d rolled for the Fright Check result into 2d+6 or 1d+12, or 2 points to guarantee an 18, although the final result would vary according to his victim’s margin of failure. However, for a table where a lower roll is desirable, 1 point per two dice can buy the minimum instead. And if the player desires a specific, intermediate result, then neither high nor low rolls will do, but the GM may permit the purchase of specific table outcomes at the cost of 1 point per die influenced: 2 points if the table uses 2d, 3 points if it involves 3d, and so on. The elevated cost is the price of fine control.
NOT DOOMING FOES
As mentioned above you may not buy critical rolls on Attacks, Contested, or Resisted rolls. These things tend to suck the fun out of games where risk and doubt matter, especially horror and mystery campaigns, and anything described as “gritty.”
NOT BUYING REACTIONS
As you cannot alter GM rolls, you cannot alter a Reaction Roll. However, Players make Influence Rolls, and on those you can
Buy Success.
PLAYER NARRATIVE INPUT
A second important use of IP in play also comes from p. B347: A player can spend points to add a plausible element to the scene or game world. He may only do so
immediately after making a success roll and obtaining a success or a critical success, or in a situation that didn’t call for a roll in the first place. He
cannot mitigate the effects of failure or critical failure this way – that’s what
Buying Success is for!
Editing Error
Sometimes it would really be helpful for the PCs if there was something else in the scene that the GM didn't declare existed... but also hasn't completely ruled out with their description.
In addition to being plausible, the suggestion must be acceptable to the GM
and the other players. The GM should go along with suggestions that are imaginative, move the plot forward, or save a PC’s life. The GM will not approve a suggestion that would short-circuit the plot, contradict a previously established fact, or harm or steal the scene from another PC. In borderline cases, the Player(s) and GM can negotiate.
After weighing the above considerations, the GM sets the price for the proposed addition to the scene or world:
Minor: An element that fits the scene perfectly, one the GM might have included if he had thought of it first. 1 IP.
Moderate: A believable coincidence or addition, similar to the effects of Serendipity (p. B83). 3 IP.
Major: Something that, while plausible, stretches disbelief, anyone watching would find the result quite unexpected! 5 IP.
If the Player proposes this addition after rolling a critical success, and wants the effect he’s proposing to replace the usual benefits of a critical success, reduce all of these costs by 1 point, to a minimum of 1 point.
Example: The group is exploring an abandoned industrial park and has crested a small hill set with ruins, an upthrust of an odd tree through the concrete and steel of a small set of mobile offices (two 'mobile homes' worth), rendering the offices to ruins of a few low walls and some debris. Suddenly, Raiders appear from the surrounding area with weapons drawn!
Walt declares he wants to kick some crates, throw some tables, maybe some chairs, 'substantial' debris, down the path up to the 'entrance' point they came through, rendering that path difficult and hazardous to cross. Overseer hadn't declared there were "crates, tables, chairs" and such, but he did say there was debris and this was a set of offices, it passes the plausible test. Overseer tells Walt to make a few ST rolls, each one increases the difficulty the Raiders will face and will take one Turn, every roll after the first will leave him in the open exposed to Raider weapon fire. And spend 1 IP. Walt can play it safe and just make one roll, or many, his choice.
Sarah decides that fate is smiling on the party and the 'low wall' facing the largest group of Raiders is actually maybe not quite so 'low', she wants it tall enough to stand against and use as cover, and will provide
complete cover to anyone on the inside not standing against it (oh and it's thick enough to stop the Raider's bullets). Sarah is asking for a bit more than a Moderate effect, but not much more and the Overseer was already envisioning it as being about waist high and that it could give
some bullet stopping power, so he agrees to 'up the protection' to be equal to her request,
if her roll succeeds. He asks her for an Observation roll to "spot the advantage in using the wall", and to spend 3 IP.
Meanwhile Marco was further into the rubble than anyone else and hasn't gotten a good description of what he's found yet, so he decides to be audacious in his request (it is a lot of Raiders out there they stumbled into). He asks if he could "find a powered-down Protectron that he can 'jump-start' and have already be pointed at the Raiders coming around the back way." Overseer didn't have any Protectrons in this scenario, but it is the Fallout wasteland... Overseer decides this will require two rolls, Scrounging and Electronic Repair (Robot) and use up a 1d of his spare power cells, and 5 IP. In exchange, if both rolls crit they both reduce the IP cost.
Note, of them the only one that another PC could directly assist with is Walt's request, it's open enough that another PC could step in and help throw debris down the hill. If Sarah fails her Observation roll, then no, the wall is now established as being shorter and not bullet
proof. If Marco succeeds at his Scrounging, but fails the Repair roll, then someone else could step in and resolve that (for an IP and a roll) as the Protectron is now established as
existing, but non-functional.
Points For Gear
Used in play, this option from p. B26 amounts to a special case of player guidance. Game mechanically, the player trades IP for Gear, each point giving back $50 wealth in Gear. The player must describe what happens in terms of events in the campaign, however. A PC might stumble across an abandoned camp, an old unlooted cache, find it while looting a dead enemy, or get it as a reward for saving some NPC's life. This is an example of guidance that requires no success roll, the player specifies events that benefit the PC financially, spends points, and lucks out. As with other forms of player guidance, the outcome becomes part of the game world; e.g., if a traveling merchant rewarded the PC for saving them from Raiders, then the merchant exists from that point on and might even act as a plot hook to draw the hero into later adventures.
Favors In Play
This has complicated math involved, I'll try to simplify it and post it in the future before it could be useful. Suffice to say it will cost between 5-20 IP to call in the cavalry this way.
SURVIVAL
The most basic ways to spend points to stay alive, intact, and sane are covered under
Buying Success. However danger doesn’t always come in the form of attacks that can be dodged, effects that can be resisted, and scares that can be shrugged off.
Flesh Wounds
Immediately after you suffer injury, you may declare that the attack that damaged you (which can include multiple hits, if your foe used rapid fire) was a glancing blow or “just a flesh wound.” This lets you reduce the final injury from that attack to 1 HP, FP, RP
or SP. . . at the cost of 1 IP. If the attack affects multiple pools, you may reduce the injury to
one of them
per IP you spend (for instance, a Glowing One's "Rad Blast" attack can cause injury to all four of those pools at once, while a feral ghouls contaminated claws would only do HP and RP, and a raider's knife would only do HP.)
Be aware that this rule affects
injury, not
damage. It restores lost HP/FP/RP/SP. If the attack inflicted knockback, knockdown, stunning, unconsciousness, crippling, derangement or the like, those effects persist. In true cinematic tradition, a graze from a giant’s club can hurl the hero across the room, a bullet in the shoulder can cripple his arm, and a head blow with a tire iron can “just” knock him out, even if he’s in no danger of dying.
Deflecting Disadvantage
Severe injuries and calamities, physical, mental, social, or supernatural, can saddle a hero with lasting, even permanent disadvantages, reducing his point value and possibly destroying his character concept. If such harm results from bad luck rather than Player idiocy (like having his character leap off a cliff, attack the king, or hurl his Signature Gear down a volcano), and if the player didn’t or couldn’t avoid it by spending points sooner, then the merciful GM might permit salvation
after the fact.
This requires 1 IP per 5 full points the Disadvantage
would cost, plus 1/2 the exp it would cost to buy it off
later, PCs are allowed to go into exp Debt this way.
However, the ill effects still apply until the end of the dramatic scene or fight that led to them or the exp Debt is paid off, whichever occurs last.
Miraculous Recoveries
Whatever options are in effect, it can happen that a PC dies. In some genres, though, it’s possible for a hero to recover even from this, the injury wasn’t as bad as it looked, mysterious monks nursed him back to health, The Power of Atom restored him to life to complete his worldly mission, whatever. In effect,
Deflecting Disadvantages (above) applies to the ultimate inconvenience: death.
If your Character dies you may spend 5 IP and 25 Unspent exp to somehow, miraculously, survive. However you have to have A) died in manner that would allow this, totally bodily destruction rules this right out, and B) have the points to spend.
You don't have 25
Unspent exp? Then it costs 10 IP and 25
future exp. No exceptions.
The same for Allies or Contacts. If an Ally or Contact dies, you can spend 1 IP per five full Character Points the Ally or Contact cost to mitigate losing them. (This is
Deflecting Disadvantages (above) applied to mitigating an Advantage loss.)
AMAZING FEATS
Beyond spending IP to succeed at deeds that anybody could attempt, as with
Buying Success and
Survival, is the possibility of points enabling feats that aren’t normally possible. This is a little like applying
Player Guidance to the PC’s capabilities rather than the game world: The player asks for an exception to the usual limits on what his PC can do and then spends points to make it happen.
Spontaneous Traits
Sometimes a Character just really needs to do that thing they were training to learn how to do
now, rather than later after they've had time to fully incorporate all their teacher's lessons.
By spending 1 IP per 5 points that a Trait costs (Attributes, Advantages, Disadvantage buy offs, Skills) you can spend the exp to have that Trait
now instead of waiting until you have Downtime to acquire it.
All Trait acquisitions still require GM permission.
Opt-In
There are a host of minor "Cinematic" Perks (mostly that allow for Optional Rules we've turned off globally) that are still somewhat appropriate on an individual, occasional use scale. I'm not listing all of them, instead I'll list a few that can give you an idea of what's allowed, these all cost 1 IP per use this way.
New York Reload: When you acquire an enemy weapon that hasn't been declared to be 'empty' or 'unloaded', it will have at least 1/2 of it's ammo left, even if it probably
shouldn't. If it hasn't yet been fired, it will be full. (This is effectively
Points For Gear as above.)
Off-Screen Reloading: If you had the time to have reloaded, but you forgot or were holding back for whatever reason, you can make a Fast-Draw (Ammo) roll, if successful you already reloaded. On a failure you can opt to have the ammo in hand, Ready. (This is effectively a portion of the
Perk SOP, which allows for retroactive declarations that are within the listed "Standard Operating Procedures", in this case "Always reloads after combat".)
Sartorial Protection: When that mutant exploded gore on everyone, you managed to not get splashed. Or your pack straps didn't actually rip when you were grabbed at by the ghoul, etc. (This is a one-use variant of the Cinematic
Perk Sartorial Protection.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:17, Sun 24 July 2022.
