Short Life Span

[Icel]

Quick question: if X2 life span (LS: Longevity) costs 1 pt, does 1/2 life span (a Disadvantage) would give 1 pt?

 

I'm asking this for a Racial Package Deal in my world. The race only live 60 years or so.

[MitchellS]

Re: Short Life Span

 

I believe the minimum physical disadvantage is 5 points. I don't know if I'd give a disadvantage for a race which lived 10-15 years less than humans though.

[Gary]

Re: Short Life Span

 

If you have casters or monsters who have Aging attacks that age the target a fixed number of years (rather than to senility for example), then this might be worth up to 5 pts as a physical limitation. Otherwise, it's just special effect and probably worth nothing in game terms.

[tesuji]

Re: Short Life Span

 

Quick question: if X2 life span (LS: Longevity) costs 1 pt, does 1/2 life span (a Disadvantage) would give 1 pt?

 

I'm asking this for a Racial Package Deal in my world. The race only live 60 years or so.

 

If the first part is true, then the second ought to be true, although 60 years is not half by normal standards.

 

However, perhaps the salient point should be "Should x2 lifespan cost 1 pt?"

 

Unless there were some in game issues, i would not make either x2 or x1/2 lifespan cost/payout anything.

[Guest Black Lotus]

Re: Short Life Span

 

I think x2 Life Span should cost 1 point in all cases. If it were free, everyone could, theoretically, have x2 Lifespan; point-buy wise, everyone's normal 100-year life span would instead be 200 years. That wouldn't be a problem in Supers, but it sure would be in certain other genres.

 

I can see reducing x2/ x1/2 Lifespan to 1/2 a point, but that won't work too well. I'd say 60 year lifespan IS worth 1/2 a point, and normally, this rounds to +0 since it's such a small disadvantage.... but is 50 years so different from 60? I mean, seriously.

 

I'd recommend giving it as a 1-point Disadvantage. Otherwise, your race loses something significant (40 whole years of life span) and doesn't get anything back.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Short Life Span

 

Quick question: if X2 life span (LS: Longevity) costs 1 pt, does 1/2 life span (a Disadvantage) would give 1 pt?

 

I'm asking this for a Racial Package Deal in my world. The race only live 60 years or so.

 

I'm in aggreement with the other posters on this one. Unless it will come up in game, it's not a disadvantage. The old Flare writeups gave her an "Accelerated Aging" disadvantage, with similar effect, however it was classified as a psychological limitation to reflect that she would take actions as a result of this (eg. pursue anti-aging technologies), and not as a physical limitation.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Short Life Span

 

for PCs dying of age rarely comes up, and for NPCs they can have as many points as they want, so this really isn't that important a point, i'd say 0 points

[Dust Raven]

Re: Short Life Span

 

Under the current rules, I'd definately say 1/2 Lifespan isn't worth any disadvantage. I'd still charge for x2 lifespan though.

 

An idea that crosses my brain might solve, or at least balance, that situation. Treat Lifespan as a Characteristic, rather than a Power or Disadvantage. The higher your score is, the longer your lifespan; the lower the score, the shorter. Regardless of where you start, you spend five points to be immortal. Or maybe just setting a total value at that.

 

The qustion is, what to base it off of? I'm currently thinking of making it a Figured Characteristic, possibly based off of CON and/or EGO. The trick is getting any value of those between 10-20 to still equal roughly the normal human lifespan. I probably gotta granulate it a bit more, so that it doesn't double with every point increase. Maybe something like STR, where it doubles with every 5 points (or halves with every reductions of 5)...and only costs 1 Character Point for 5 points. That could work. You'd still need to arbitrarily assign a value that doesn't divide by 5 if you wanted a lifespan other than 25, 50, 100, 200, etc years.

 

Any thoughts?

[prestidigitator]

Re: Short Life Span

 

for PCs dying of age rarely comes up' date=' and for NPCs they can have as many points as they want, so this really isn't that important a point, i'd say 0 points[/quote']

While death may come up very rarely, you might very well have other effects come into play as they age over a decently long-term campaign, if their lifespans aren't dramatically increased. If a character has half the lifespan, they might start suffering some effects of aging after only a couple of years.

[Icel]

Re: Short Life Span

 

prestidigitator, that a good point, especially if the campaign take several yeas game-time.

 

The Ultimate List of Limitations have Short Life Span, though I don't remember what value they gave it. I'll look up the link later.