Integrated Creation Income

Integrated Creation Income

Permanent creation in GURPS is something that is often difficult and/or unsatisfying. Normally, matter created via Create advantage stays around for 10 seconds, and then you have to spend character points to stabilize it. In the majority of cases, these 10 seconds really aren't worth the points you spent on Create, which isn't that cheap of an advantage. I've already written up two "abilities" that would help with that - Permanency Points (based on Impulse Points) and Creation Income (based on Independent Income). However, I woke up in the middle of the night with a thought - "What if Creation Income was integrated into the Create advantage?" After all, you've already spent the points on Create, why is it required of you to spend more points?

Let's say that you take the full cost of your unmodified Create (ignoring the reduction for alternative abilities), then divide it by 25, rounding up. For example, Wall of Iron costs 24 points, but the base value is 30 points (6 x 5). Thus, 30 / 25 = 1.2 = 2. Effectively, you have two levels of Independent Income that is constantly active, but only for the purpose of creation. Thus, you accumulate 2% of starting wealth for your TL (I deprecated the Wealth advantage in my games, so I will not adjust this for Wealth), i.e. $20 per month on TL3 or $40 per month on TL4. It's probably better to make it weekly, i.e. $5 per week on TL3, or $10 per week on TL4. So, on TL4, your metal mage would have to accumulate this potential creation energy for 62 months to create a permanent Wall of Iron. Well, that's rather underwhelming.

What if we do not divide the full cost of Create-based ability at all and take the full unmodified cost? Thus, Wall of Iron would give us Independent Income 30. This is $300/month or $75/week on TL3 or $600/month or $150/week on TL4. Now, the mage would have to accumulate this virtual money for 4.14 month on TL4. That still is underwhelming.

Now that I think about it, basing it on unmodified Create is suboptimal, because the ability writeups rarely mention the base cost (and by "rarely" I mean "never"), so it'd be more practically useful to base it on the final full cost. For example, for Wall or Iron, that would be 24, not 30.

But let's return to this virtual income being underwhelming. Let's double it. Thus, Wall of Iron would give us 48% of starting wealth per month. This is $480/month or $120/week on TL3, or $960/month or $240/week on TL4. Now, a TL4 caster has to wait for ~2.6 months.

But this is mostly due to iron being heavy. Let's see Wall of Stone. It costs 32 points, so it gives us virtual 64% of starting wealth per month. This is $640/month or $160/week on TL3, or $1,280/month or $320/week on TL4. A single casting costs $97.5, and I definitely do not see being able to cast almost two  permanent Walls of Stone per week on TL3 problematic for the economy.

What if you have multiple Create-based abilities? Are they tracked separately? I'd say that you have to combine the costs to determine this virtual income. But what if you do not have a Create-based ability but can improvise it? On one hand, you can say that you do not have this virtual income to incentivise acutally learning these spells, but on the other hand, why not be nice for a change? Let's say that your virtual income is the point cost of your most expensive magical ability that is used for improvisation (Sorcerous Empowerment, Wizardly Study, or most expensive spell), divided by 5. Thus, if you have Sorcerous Empowerment 2 [30], you gain 6% of your starting wealth per month into this virtual income pool. If you have a learned spell that would provide less income than that, use this improvisation value instead. If you have a learned spell that provides more income than that, use spell-based income.

I'm not sure if this works and needs adjustments, but on the first glance this seems inoffensive.