I’ve talked about the idea of Long-Term Fatigue before – it’s a damn interesting concept. It lets you do things with Fatigue Points that would otherwise be difficult to do (or at least hard to track) in other ways. So what else could you do with Long-Term Fatigue? An idea that struck me the other day was to use LFP and Extra Effort together somehow. Playing around with a few ideas I came up wit this:
LFP and Extra Effort
In game-mechanical terms, GURPS treats Extra Effort as a Will roll requiring the expenditure of FP. The character then gets access to an enhanced their of his capabilities for a short while. It’s like a mother having the strength to lift a car off her child or a boxer being able to go additional rounds on adrenaline alone. For anyone that has made use of that dose of adrenaline it’s strictly a short term thing – afterward you’re shaky, tired, and possibly mentally impaired judgement-wise. The more you draw on those reserves, the longer you’ll need to recover later on. The GM could represent this by ruling that every expenditure of FP for Extra Effort also results in -1 LFP. LFP gained this way can only be regained by being in a non-stressing environment while resting normally.
Thus, if a character spent 5 FP for Extra Effort of his total 12 FP he’d end up with -5 LFP and thus could at most regain 7 FP until he had a moment to decompress.
Picking Over the Bones
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I like LFP. It’s a simple and easy concept that lets you do so much. A concept I’ve been toying around with for my Aeon supers campaign is that FP used to Power Stunt abilities also inflicts a “Power Fatigue” penalty equal to the total spent. This penalty goes away at a rate of 1 PF per 10 minutes. You’re basically channeling the raw energy of your power through your body in such a way that it’s not supposed to do be done (or done often). You could do something like this for magic too. On the other hand, penalizing too much will cause a problem of its own.