Costs Action Points is an aspect of The Last Gasp covered on the top of page 12 of Pyramid 3-44. It suggests Action Points an alternative to Costs Fatigue, either as a limitation or to replace FP for spells or skills or Extra Effort
Exchange rate[]
The initial example given is replacing 1 FP with 10 AP. The problem with that is while it works for a HT 10 human's default, other beings would need to buy Extra AP to reach 10 to be able to do that.
Cole mentions:
- If the GM wishes to increase the use of such abilities (or if the typical spell cast is 3 FP instead of 1 FP), altering the exchange rate of FP to AP would provide a method to balance the casting rate.
For a HT 10 human mage with AP 10 able to cast a 3 FP spell, this would require a 1 FP = 3 AP exchange rate instead of a 1 FP = 10 AP rate.
The most logical rate is probably 1 FP to 5 AP as this is the ratio the default 10 HT human burns FP to restore 50% of his AP. Costs 5 AP being worth -5% also has the benefit of making Costs 1 AP worth -1%
Variable rates[]
Given that it is possible for people to burn 1 FP to restore 50% of AP, one option might be to have a variable exchange rate where Costs FP drains 50% of your AP rather than a fixed amount.
This would be 5 AP for the HT 10 = 10 AP default but for someone with HT 2 and AP 2, something which normally burns 1 FP would only burn 1 AP, because that character would normally have to burn 1 AP just to restore 1 AP.
Someone with 1 HT = 1 AP would probably have to burn 2 FP just to restore 1 AP, so it gets broken at that point.
Of course you could just charge 100% of base AP (ie "Costs FP" costs "HT action points") which results in the 1 FP > 10 AP initial suggestion, but this would scale down for those with lower AP.
Below Zero[]
Another option is to allow an exception to the normal inability of AP to go negative. If using the initial 1FP>10AP suggestion, someone with 1 AP could spend 10 and reduce to -9, but then would need to go through the usual steps to restore their AP (a series of Do Nothing maneuvers, for example) before they could expend AP again.
If like FP it can go up to full negative this would effectively double the capacity. To differentiate this from simply doubling the base AP (which should probably halve the cost of Extra Action Points from 2/lvl to 1/lvl) there should be some kind of penalty for going below zero.
Like for example, rather than suffering 1 HP per FP below zero, you could apply a Shock penalty (-1 to DX/IQ, doesn't cause further AP loss like normal shock though) equal to how far negative the AP is. This would allow people to keep operating from 0 to negative HT but it would be very uncomfortable.
you'd still need negative HP as a hard cap though.
If this is too big a penalty, it could work in multiples like HP does. In this case, applying -1 shock penalty per multiple (or fraction, if less) of max AP you are below 0.
Like an "automatic death" cap of -5xHP, the hard cap would be -5xAP allowing someone with max AP to spend 6xAP without needing to burn FP. At a 1FP > 10 FP ratio this would allow for a 10 AP person the casting of a normally 6 FP spell, but then if they don't burn FP to restore their AP, it's going to take a good while to get it back.
It's not quite the "I can cast a 10 FP spell without hurting myself" of the basic system, but considering that penalties for low FP happen below 1/3 (at 3 FP for a HT 10 person) it's pretty close to the "7 FP without problems" default.
Since it is -10xHP for utter destruction, that's another option, but allowing -10xAP (110AP = 11 FP) might be too much... but maybe not, if you did the -1 shock per negative AP and were suffering a -11 to DX and -10 to IQ, you wouldn't really be able to do much of anything for a long while after throwing out your massive fireball or whatever.
Throwing a fireball would take an attack maneuver (1 AP) and a DX roll (suffering the -10) so you'd probably have someone huffing and puffing taking "Do Nothing" then "Evaluate" to restore AP and get to-hit bonuses before actually throwing the fireball, and there's got to be a time limit on how long you can hold onto it for...
Enlarge Over Time[]
B240 allows more FP to be put into a spell on subsequent actions. This would allow, for example, a made with 5 FP left to put 1 FP in, then cast Recover Energy, then put more in, etc. without going into 1/3 penalties.
Just do this for action points instead, on a micro skill. So if it takes 10 AP to get 1 FP worth of fireball, but you have a maximum of 1 AP because you are a HT 1 wuss, then you put in 1 AP, take a Do Nothing until you get it back, put AP number 2 in, etc. and keep using the Enlarge option until you've put 10 AP into the fireball.
Looking to Innate Attack for inspiration, a fireball is 1d6 per 1 FP, Burning Attack is 5 character points per die. Using Partial Dice rules, 1d-1 is worth 70% of 5, 1d-2 is worth 40%, 1d-3 is worth 10%...
So if you can't put in a full multiple of the AP cost for 1 FP worth, fractions of it could result in partial-dice fireballs. 1 AP fireballs could do 1d-3, 4 AP fireballs could do 1d-2, 7 AP fireballs could do 1d-1...
In that case it would probably be good to ignore the "minimum damage of 1" for non-crushing attacks though. A 1 dmg innate attack is worth 25% the cost of 1d6 so the minimum cost for something guaranteed to do 1 damage should be 3 AP (25% of 10 AP rounded up. The damage penalty should be applied AFTER minimum damage. Perhaps just apply critical hit multiplier to the 1 minimum before subtracting the penalty so that there is actually a difference between 1-1 and 1-2 and 1-3.
Stunts[]
Extra Effort[]
Alternatively, rather than going negative, allow people to "overstock" AP beyond their normal limit. If you treat AP as a leveled advantage which is a power, then using Extra Effort rules from GURPS Powers, they could attempt a HT roll to temporarily boost it by a % for a short period of time.
Given that EE costs 1 FP normally, the conversion scale would limit it unless you used a 1:1 scale for EE. EE costs 0 FP on a critical success though, which is a window toward success.
One way to get around that is to buy Reduced Fatigue Cost. This is a +20% enhancement, so you could buy that on 2 points of AP (which cost 4 points base) as a Perk. Since these do benefit Extra Effort, you can now do Extra Effort for free, and won't lose anything unless you critically fail (in which case instead of losing 1d (1-6) you lose 1d-1 (0-5) instead)
If you don't want to buy that as a perk, consider that by assuming a 0% power modifier on your AP (even if it is just 1) you can use the "Temporary Enhancements" rule for the chance of boosting it at no cost on a critical success (similar to EE except you're ignoring 2 FP instead of 1 FP) and you get those benefits for an entire minute. TE suggests forbidding "reduced fatigue cost" as a TE so that has to be ignored.
-1 per +10% is -2 per RFP so it is tricky to get it and even then it only lasts 1 minute.
The problem there is that this normally cannot do better than double something (max penalty is -20, at -1 per +5%) but if you allow Godlike Extra Effort you can progressively build up to a temporary very large AP maximum with proper preparation.
Godlike Extra Effort[]
Creature has 1 AP maximum. Instead of spending 1 FP to get +1 AP at a -20 penalty (+5% per -1) by spending 20FP you get +1 AP at a -1 penalty (+100% per -1). Of course, to mitigate that you'd either need to roll a critical success or else have "Reduced Fatigue 20 +400%" and attaining that is a -40 roll for Temporary Enhancements
The real trick to doing it, which does basically lengthen "casting time" (which is just fine, 1 spell per second is kinda fast, even for simple ones) is to keep spending FP to mitigate penalties on TE and use TE to reduce FP cost for GEE. You swap back and forth as they strengthen you. But there's a limit since benefits expire in 1 minute for either unless you buy Extended Duration in which case that incurs a penalty to try and accomplish.
Any rolling of Crippled Abilities ought to remove any Temporary Enhancements though, if allowing going beyond the 1 minute limit. Consider the maintaining of temporary enhancements as an active use of the power so that losing control of the power means needing to rebuild them from scratch. Given the rarity of crippling, this should probably happen even on a non-crippling critical failure which results in 1d6 seconds of scrambling.
Keep in mind per Crippled Powers that you would lose access to any AP defined as part of a power. So exercising this option comes with some risk.
This is easier for Will rolls (Concentrate costs 0 AP) than HT rolls (Ready costs 1 AP) and it's easier to buy up Will than HT.
Using Abilities at Default[]
Instead of treating AP as part of a power, treat something else as a base power (say for example, Magery) and then use the UAAD to buy additional levels of AP.
Energy Reserve[]
This alternate option to FP for mages should have an equivalent with AP to fuel, like Action Reserve or something, tied to a power source like magic or psi to reflect someone of doing constant easily-restored output but who can't use it for normal physical stuff.