So I’ve been using the GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) app to help my friends make characters for my Cyberpunk game, and I noticed something weird. One of the characters has the “Bionic Arms” body modification (Ultra-Tech p209), which includes the “No Fine Manipulators” disadvantage with the “Mitigator: Monthly treatment of Maintenance” modifier for -70% cost. What we didn’t notice was that “No Fine Manipulators” (Basic Set: Characters p145) has a note at the bottom which reduces the cost of upgrading ST and DX by 40%. GCS automatically applied this discount to ST and DX point costs, and now we’re unsure if that should be the case.
Is this a small oversight with GCS and the upgrade costs should be the normal 10 for ST, 20 for DX since the effect should be mitigated, or is GCS correct? We’re just trying to figure this out because if it is a mistake, my friend’s character is overspent by about 40 points.
GCS is correct. You still have the disadvantage, you just don’t get the full point cost because something lets you offset most of the downsides.
A good way to look at it is the most common mitagator in any setting: glasses. A character wearing glasses still has Nearsighted or Farsighted, the glasses don’t change that. But what they do do, is allow the person wearing them to avoid the downsides of that disadvantage.
The example with the glasses makes sense, but that’s a situation where the Nearsighted/Farsighted disadvantages don’t have any positive element to them. With No Fine Manipulators, it has all of the downsides for not having arms, but the positive upside is that both ST and DX upgrades cost 40% fewer points. It just seems weird that applying a mitigator to it would negate all of the downsides but keep all of the upsides.
For instance, the character that my friend made has 10 ST and 12 DX for a combined total of 40pt. If they get the One Bionic Arm modification from Ultra-Tech p209, it costs 5pt total. However, if they get Two Bionic Arms which cost 7pt, because No Fine Manipulators reduces the cost of improving ST and DX, they ended up gaining a net 9pt. The 40pt for 2 DX they had previously spent went down to only costing 24pt, so 16pt refunded and then -7pt for the Bionic Arms. It creates a weird situation where it’s gaming the system, but I don’t know if that’s intended or not.
It isn’t really an “upside”. ST, for example, has multiple components to it. It improves your lift, melee damage, ability to break out of binds, and hp. You can buy all of those individually. In this case, having bionic arms means you’re effectively able to lose levels of Arm ST, which is normally 5pt/level. You can also effectively lose any DX skills which use your arms, which is most of them.
Ultimately as gamemaster, it’s up to you to decide how likely this is through emp, rival hackers, corpo sabotage, ect. The discount remaining is to account for the possibility of it happening.