zornwil
Sep 23rd, '06, 10:45 AM
A bit of a long post - I broke it into sections so anyone who wants to get to the meat can go to the "New House Rules" part, if you already remember or don't care about the background (but if you don't care AND want to critique, you should really read the whole thing first, please).
**INTRODUCTION**
This is an old topic but I'm finalizing my rules regarding making "absolute" abilities more scalable on the higher end (technically, this could work on the lower end, too, I guess, but haven't given that much thought).
Bear in mind these are house rules pure and simple, I am not advocating as core rules.
**BACKGROUND**
Background first: there are a few abilities which are essentially absolute and have flat costs, with no scaling, once employed they also typically have no counter, aside from Suppression or Drain or the like. Damage Reduction is one; for example, if you purchase 75% DR, you have that pretty much no matter what, for a flat fee. As a campaign graduates to higher levels, it remains and is quite effective for the small (relatively) number of points paid.
There's also Invisibility and Darkness, both what I am calling "Sense Blocking" powers. Aside from a Detect - possibly, one could argue this - Invisibility or Darkness to a sense cannot be overcome, aside from Suppression/the like.
In my game, I also have Invulnerability, which is bought for a flat cost on an SFX basis.
Desolid is an absolute as well; it has "Affects Desolid" as a counter in the system - but once you have that Advantage, you absolutely cancel Desolid and there is no countering that for the Desolid character.
I have reviewed others but to me they aren't quite as scale-unfriendly. Clairsentience can be blocked via Sense Blocking powers and its own abilities depend on PER, so any consequences of "absolutism" rest back with Sensory issues. Also, the way Clairsentience works, it makes sense a field of Suppression would be the primary blockage aside from the Sense Blocking powers.
Things like Extra-Dimensional travel can be thwarted by blank spots and Force Fields and so on. Body-Affect "self-absolutes" (Growth, Shrinking, Shape Shift) need no real counter, in my opinion, and so the brute force Suppression and other methods seem okay. Summon much the same. And so on.
That being said, these are just my views and I'm not suggesting that these are real system problems. But I single out the ones that are not only flat costs but once purchased can be troublesome to get around as campaigns scale up.
In order to address this, I basically took the Armor Piercing/Hardened mechanic and applied it, as discussed prior, but now I'm codifying this and we'll give it a whirl in my game, as my campaign is going high-powered.
**NEW HOUSE RULES**
Most of that application is very simple. For Damage Reduction we now have +1/2 Affects Damage Reduction which can be applied to any attack, and DR gets +1/4 Hardened Against Affects Damage Reduction. Invulnerable follows exactly the same path. Desolid gets a new Advantage, +1/4 Hardened Against Affects Desolid.
The Senses get something as simple in terms of Advantages, +1/2 Affects Sense Blocking (which applies to BOTH Darkness and Invisibility) and +1/4 Hardened Sense Block. But what does that mean?
To start with, in order to understand this, we now view Invisibility and Darkness as in effect a reduction to PER 0 for all who might otherwise perceive the target or see through the perception suppression. In order to perceive the Invisible or through the Dark, a character must raise that PER roll above 0 (i.e., to make a PER roll possible at all). This is in accordance with the idea that if a PER roll/skill roll is reduced to 0 or less by range you cannot use it (page 349 5ER, suggested as a "guideline"). This PER is unaffected by INT (although one successful base visibility is established via a successful non-INT-based PER roll, the application of INT for attention to detail and so on may be used). All PER bought has normal range modifiers applied – thus to see an Invisible object at 5”, -2 is applied. Anytime a range penalty reduces PER to 0, no roll is possible. PER bought to see Invisible characters is bought as normal PER but with the +1/2 Affects Sense Block Advantage. As Invisibility or Darkness may be bought with +1/4 Hardened Sense Block Advantage, each level of Affects Invisible and Darkness negates one level of Hardened.
**EXAMPLE**
For an example:
Ultimate Seer wants to have a pretty good chance of seeing Invisible characters in an 8" radius around him with his Sight. He wants to have a 14/less at 8". 8" is -2, so he wants +16 PER. So that's 24 points (16 points for +16 PER with the +1/2 Affects Sense Block Advantage applied).
**CLOSING**
Yes, there are definitely mechanical weaknesses in this approach in terms of how it relates to how PER is normally used, but I think it will work. I blurred Invisibility and Darkness together by looking at cost utilities and alternate approaches with Detect, plus the relatively inexpensive nature of both Darkness and Invisibility. I think this will work okay. Could be wrong...
Anyway, just posting for interest's sake and to wrap up an old discussion (some year+ back).
**INTRODUCTION**
This is an old topic but I'm finalizing my rules regarding making "absolute" abilities more scalable on the higher end (technically, this could work on the lower end, too, I guess, but haven't given that much thought).
Bear in mind these are house rules pure and simple, I am not advocating as core rules.
**BACKGROUND**
Background first: there are a few abilities which are essentially absolute and have flat costs, with no scaling, once employed they also typically have no counter, aside from Suppression or Drain or the like. Damage Reduction is one; for example, if you purchase 75% DR, you have that pretty much no matter what, for a flat fee. As a campaign graduates to higher levels, it remains and is quite effective for the small (relatively) number of points paid.
There's also Invisibility and Darkness, both what I am calling "Sense Blocking" powers. Aside from a Detect - possibly, one could argue this - Invisibility or Darkness to a sense cannot be overcome, aside from Suppression/the like.
In my game, I also have Invulnerability, which is bought for a flat cost on an SFX basis.
Desolid is an absolute as well; it has "Affects Desolid" as a counter in the system - but once you have that Advantage, you absolutely cancel Desolid and there is no countering that for the Desolid character.
I have reviewed others but to me they aren't quite as scale-unfriendly. Clairsentience can be blocked via Sense Blocking powers and its own abilities depend on PER, so any consequences of "absolutism" rest back with Sensory issues. Also, the way Clairsentience works, it makes sense a field of Suppression would be the primary blockage aside from the Sense Blocking powers.
Things like Extra-Dimensional travel can be thwarted by blank spots and Force Fields and so on. Body-Affect "self-absolutes" (Growth, Shrinking, Shape Shift) need no real counter, in my opinion, and so the brute force Suppression and other methods seem okay. Summon much the same. And so on.
That being said, these are just my views and I'm not suggesting that these are real system problems. But I single out the ones that are not only flat costs but once purchased can be troublesome to get around as campaigns scale up.
In order to address this, I basically took the Armor Piercing/Hardened mechanic and applied it, as discussed prior, but now I'm codifying this and we'll give it a whirl in my game, as my campaign is going high-powered.
**NEW HOUSE RULES**
Most of that application is very simple. For Damage Reduction we now have +1/2 Affects Damage Reduction which can be applied to any attack, and DR gets +1/4 Hardened Against Affects Damage Reduction. Invulnerable follows exactly the same path. Desolid gets a new Advantage, +1/4 Hardened Against Affects Desolid.
The Senses get something as simple in terms of Advantages, +1/2 Affects Sense Blocking (which applies to BOTH Darkness and Invisibility) and +1/4 Hardened Sense Block. But what does that mean?
To start with, in order to understand this, we now view Invisibility and Darkness as in effect a reduction to PER 0 for all who might otherwise perceive the target or see through the perception suppression. In order to perceive the Invisible or through the Dark, a character must raise that PER roll above 0 (i.e., to make a PER roll possible at all). This is in accordance with the idea that if a PER roll/skill roll is reduced to 0 or less by range you cannot use it (page 349 5ER, suggested as a "guideline"). This PER is unaffected by INT (although one successful base visibility is established via a successful non-INT-based PER roll, the application of INT for attention to detail and so on may be used). All PER bought has normal range modifiers applied – thus to see an Invisible object at 5”, -2 is applied. Anytime a range penalty reduces PER to 0, no roll is possible. PER bought to see Invisible characters is bought as normal PER but with the +1/2 Affects Sense Block Advantage. As Invisibility or Darkness may be bought with +1/4 Hardened Sense Block Advantage, each level of Affects Invisible and Darkness negates one level of Hardened.
**EXAMPLE**
For an example:
Ultimate Seer wants to have a pretty good chance of seeing Invisible characters in an 8" radius around him with his Sight. He wants to have a 14/less at 8". 8" is -2, so he wants +16 PER. So that's 24 points (16 points for +16 PER with the +1/2 Affects Sense Block Advantage applied).
**CLOSING**
Yes, there are definitely mechanical weaknesses in this approach in terms of how it relates to how PER is normally used, but I think it will work. I blurred Invisibility and Darkness together by looking at cost utilities and alternate approaches with Detect, plus the relatively inexpensive nature of both Darkness and Invisibility. I think this will work okay. Could be wrong...
Anyway, just posting for interest's sake and to wrap up an old discussion (some year+ back).