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<   No. 148   2003-06-22   >

Comic #148

1 [caption]: New character generation...
1 Kyros: Terminally Ill! 100 extra character points! I'll take that!
1 Alvissa: Ooh! Me too!
1 Lambert: And me!
1 Draak: Draak like!
1 Mordekai: Yeah!
2 GM: {annoyed} You can't all take Terminally Ill!
3 Lambert: Why not?
4 GM: This is a one-shot adventure...

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2012-04-19 Rerun commentary: GURPS 3rd Edition (of which the shown rulebook is part of) included this disadvantage: Terminally Ill. It meant your character would die at some point in the near future, where "near" was anything up to 2 years away. If your death was that far off, it was worth -50 character points, death within a year was -75 points, and death within a month was worth a whopping -100 points. These amounts of disadvantage points meant you could build a much more powerful character, as "compensation" for having your days numbered.

The problem of course arose that many campaigns never last 2 years of in-game time, and one-off adventures rarely last as long as a month. So if you flexed the rules a bit (ignoring the overriding dictum that "if it doesn't come up in play and actually disadvantage you, it's not worth points") you could get an über-character and not pay any consequences.

GURPS 4th Edition very sensibly added an explicit note to Terminally Ill, stating very clearly that it should be outright disallowed in short campaigns.


Last Modified: Thursday, 19 April 2012; 14:12:53 PST.
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