Quasimoral or Semimoral Power Modifiers with GURPS Powers - Can Cost Be Customized With Starting Disadvantages?

Question

I looked at the core GURPS rules, plus Powers and Supers. I think the costs of the power types can be customized in terms of the starting disadvantages. The starting point is page 26 of Powers, where the Divine Modifier gets a minus 10% cost savings for a ten-point starting disadvantage of moral responsibility. Further, on page 27 of Powers, the Moral Modifier gets a minus 20% cost savings because 5% is the possibility of being counteracted by an opposing moral force and 15% is the 15-point disadvantage that is expected.

I want to run a whimsical, freewheeling urban fantasy campaign where the good guys are the forces of spiritual Progress (including wizards, good fairies, friendly ghosts, and people who collect Lisa Frank paintings) and the bad guys are armies of spiritual Regress (including vampires, most werewolves, supervillains, demons, and people who talk in movie theaters).

GURPS Powers tells me that I can make a “moral” campaign, where Progress and Regress struggle against each other. This would have a -20% modifier to costs, and would impose a lot of excessively serious disciplines of faith.

Instead of a moral campaign with a minus 20% cost savings, I would like a quasimoral campaign with a minus 10% cost savings, and I think an opposition of powers (Progress versus Regress) and a 5-point moral disadvantage for all power users would justify this. Alternatively, a semimoral campaign might have a 15% cost savings, because of the opposition of powers and a 10-point mandatory disadvantage.

For that matter, I suppose that all the power modifiers could be customized in a parallel fashion. Page 28 explains a minus 20% cost savings for Nature and a minus 20% cost savings for Fickle Spirit powers. Assuming a quasimoral modifier gives a minus 10% savings, I think a quasimoral power modifier that depends on Fickle spirits and is only accessible in natural surroundings would have a 50% cost savings.

Am I reading these rules correctly?

Answer 1

Under standard rules, cost modifiers add linearly (I suppose they're best described as percentage points rather than pure percents). So if you have a -10% Semi-Moral modifier and combine it with a different, non-overlapping -20% modifier, your total modifier is indeed -30%.

But make sure that there are no countermeasures or other downsides that overlap in a 'double-dipping' manner. If they do, they shouldn't provide as significant a discount as when they are completely distinct from each other.

Your example seems non-overlapping: Fickle -20%, Environmental (Nature) -20%, counterpower -5% and Required Disadvantage -5%, for a total of -50%.

Note that if you want, you may allow your players to decide whether they want to play PCs with -5%, -10% or even -15% worth of Required Disadvantages. If that makes sense in your setting, of course. The only downside is that power modifiers will not be the same across characters, which require the occasional double-check when making a new character (whether PC or NPC).