Spell Pool

[tiger]

One of the players in my group came up with an idea. He has several spells that total upto about 30 points. He has asked the GM if he could do the following.

He'd like to do a version of a VPP. His idea he would have 30 ponts and a list of spells do draw from. He'd have to make the usually magic roll based on the active cost. However their would be no control cost and the active cost of the spells don't have to stay under 30. Just the final cost does.

So he could have 1 spell going that after limitation and advantages cost 30 or 2 that are 15 etc.

It seems to me that he is trying to gain the advantage of the VPP without the restrictions.

What do you think.

[GradonSilverton]

Originally posted by tiger
One of the players in my group came up with an idea. He has several spells that total upto about 30 points. He has asked the GM if he could do the following.

He'd like to do a version of a VPP. His idea he would have 30 ponts and a list of spells do draw from. He'd have to make the usually magic roll based on the active cost. However their would be no control cost and the active cost of the spells don't have to stay under 30. Just the final cost does.

So he could have 1 spell going that after limitation and advantages cost 30 or 2 that are 15 etc.

It seems to me that he is trying to gain the advantage of the VPP without the restrictions.

What do you think.

YES!... Tell him No Dice! He'd bieng bad.

[Old Man]

Sounds like a multipower to me...

[Lucius]

At the very least, this player needs to pay the control cost for a Variable Power Pool. If you like, maybe you can balance the ability to count real points rather than active points against the limit against restrictions like "all spells must be pre-written and pre-approved," requiring some sort of in-game research or adventuring, perhaps requiring each spell to have a SEPERATE skill roll....

Lucius Alexander

Opinions expressed by Lucius Alexander are not necessarily those of Palindromedary Enterprises, its management or employees, or the palindromedary.

[Nevenall]

I've always wanted to make a VPP based magic system, but the active point limit was always the thing that got in the way. Some of the example spells in 5th ed top a 100 active points.
What I have done, is to give the control cost a bunch of power modifiers to model the way magic works in my world, but these modifiers only apply to the control cost. Each spell has these control cost modifiers, but does not get the bonus points for them. So, to get a spell more powerful then your VPP you have to add yet more limitations to the spell. Then I don't feel so bad about ignoring the active point limit for some spells.

Anyway, I'm not sure if that helps, you, but I can say that your player it either trying to pull a fast one, or he doesn't understand the rules all that well.

PS: You can always let him do it if you want.

[Chris Goodwin]

An old house rule that was brought up on I think both of the previous incarnations of the boards was that the pool is the amount of Real Points you can have; your Control Cost is half the maximum Active Points of any one Power in the pool. So you could pay, say, 40 points for the pool but 50 for your Control Cost, allowing up to 40 Real Points worth of Powers of up to 100 Active Points each in the pool.

[DarkGreen]

Originally posted by archer
An old house rule that was brought up on I think both of the previous incarnations of the boards was that the pool is the amount of Real Points you can have; your Control Cost is half the maximum Active Points of any one Power in the pool. So you could pay, say, 40 points for the pool but 50 for your Control Cost, allowing up to 40 Real Points worth of Powers of up to 100 Active Points each in the pool.

An interesting idea. Do you recall what people thought of it? Did it work well when played for a while?

-DG

[Chris Goodwin]

I don't recall. I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea myself.