We’ve been there before – two skills both alike in utility…GM, do I really have to purchase both? Yes, that’s RAW of course…although… So that was my thought a couple of hours ago, well that in anthropomorphizing Shakespeare characters as GURPS traits. In this post I’m going to do something weird and radical and not something I’m known for: I’m going to use Powers as Skills (something I just do not like at all). More than that, I’mma mix it up a bit.

Where We Are

Okay, as it stands Meditation is a Will/Hard skill and defaults to Will-6 or Autohypnosis-4. Autohypnosis defaults to Meditation-4 and is also a Will/Hard skill. Both require 20 – skill seconds to do. Meditation lets you enter a trance state “that lasts for hours.” It doesn’t tell you what that means exactly and leaves it up to the GM after some mumble mumble spells, prayers, etc. Autohypnosis is a bit better: a roll lets you really concentrate, enhance your will, or ignore pain/fatigue.

Where We Are Going

Right, we gotta decide what the first principle is. Let’s say, “To merge Autohypnosis and Meditation into a single skill with defined effects based on the rules of GURPS either inferred or created.” Got it? Good. So I think first things first, let’s just call this “Meditation” and make it a Will/VH skill. We’ll make it worth the cost later on. Now, are we going to just do that? We could. But that doesn’t really solve the problem does it? Instead, let’s bring in some Pyramid (“From Skills to Advantages”) and good ol GURPS Powers. The building blocks are all there. Can you see them?

First, we use “From Skills to Advantages” (Pyramid #3/44: Alternate GURPS II) to turn the Meditation skill into an ability. So using that system Meditation Will/VH becomes a 9 point advantage, but the way that system works it’s for one aspect of the skill. In our version of Meditation we have all three uses from Autohypnosis as well the base ability for Meditation. We could use Cosmic as it suggests to increase broader applicability (that would end up as 23 points  = 9 x 2.5) or just buy it 4 times (36 points). Cosmic is probably what I’d use…but some GMs get really bent out of shape when they see that, so I’mma just buy all four uses as four separate skills and move on. (Remember, we aren’t using this cost for anything but the next step.) So we’ve done some fudgery – now it’s time to make the donuts. Our base “Meditation advantage” is worth “36 points” – let’s just round that down to 30 points. So what next? Well, now we use Abilities at Default (Powers, p. 173). We have everything we need to use those rules: a costed out advantage version of Meditation. There is a bit of a hiccup: Abilities at default cost 3 FP to even do and if the abilities aren’t similiar then it inflicts a further penalty. Honestly – we’re already paid a lot so we’ll just going to ignore those.

Now we just assign abilities for the things it can do:

• Improved Concentration: This just basically adds a nerf-ed version of Single-Minded. We’ll just add that. It’s worth 5 points. So as an ability at default this would inflict a -2 to rolls to use. Since Single-Minded already is for one-use we don’t need to futz with the time it’s “on.”
• Increase Will: This adds a bonus to your Will for one hour. Now a use of ability at default is one use. So we’re going to need to play with it a bit. Will (Extended Duration, 60x is somewhere between 30x and 100x, so we’ll call it a +70% modifier. thus a +2 to Will for one hour would be worth 17 points. As an ability at default for “Meditation” that would be a -6 to your roll to use.
• Ignore Pain/Fatigue: This one is easy because I already did the base advantage of “Injury Tolerance (Unstoppable)” since this covers FP and HP, the base ability is worth 20 points, making it last an hour is as for Increased Will which will bring the cost to 27 points (why 27 points? Because adding FP to the base ability of ignoring HP loss for shock/pain from Unstoppable is a +100% modifier). This means that as an ability at default it will be -8 to your roll to use.

Where We Ended Up

Now I know you are looking at this and going “Ugh. Those penalties suck” And compared to the Basic Set you are right…but you can do more with it. What if in your world Meditation allows you to project your spirit outward? What if you can use it to gain extra FP for a given spellcasting task? What about if you want to heal your own body like for Body Control using just your mind. You can do all of this now. All you need to do is cost out the thing you want to do at default and then use the rules in Powers to do it! Now you might think, “But yeah, if it’s over 30 points then I can’t.” True, but Psionic Powers already sets the precedence for us with Harden Bone. Every additional 25% of the points over the base power for Abilities at Default is worth another -2 with no end. So an ability at default for a 60 point power would be a -16 to rolls. There. Done. And now that we have penalties…we can have techniques. Techniques would be hard of course and need to be strictly GM-vetted.

Final Thoughts

There is a bit of wild-catting here when it comes to game design and a bit of stretch here and there, but honestly the tools are there. We just need to use them as God intended and hammer on the thing till it works. It’s a bit of an odd place to go to get there…but it still works and it leaves it open a LOT for what can be done.

I’ll say it again, I am not a fan of “Powers as Skills.” I’m just not. It’s right up there for me with “Points for Gear” – and I didn’t like that so much that I wrote several Pyramid articles and a book (GURPS Meta-Tech) about how to avoid it. I’ve toyed with a way to turn powers into skills, but it’s never cheap enough and when I artificially make it cheap enough it feels like pure crockery to me. So I just sort of ignore that part of my work and keep it deep underground where it belongs.