Can Apply Adders (+1) Advantage ... as a Naked Advantage

[Surrealone]

I need a little help wrapping my head around this one...

 

Scenario:

Imagine a mentalist with a 100AP MP of mentalist powers.  Some are true, blue mental powers (i.e. Mind Control) while others are normal powers advantaged to make them mental powers (i.e. bought VS, alternative combat value, using LOS, with IPE ... Mental Paralysis being one example). Your takeaway from this should be that you can't count on a flat 12d6 power when answering this question; in some cases the diceage may be as low as 1d6 (example: Entangle bought to be Mental Paralysis) with adders/advantages bringing the powers up to 100AP.

 

Issue:
​How to buy Can Apply Adders (+1) as a Naked Advantage that can be readily applied to all appropriate mental powers within the MP?  (Examples of adders that would make sense are Dismissable and Additional Class of Minds.)  Moreover, how to properly cost it so that it can be used on any mental power (including powers bought to be a mental power (like Entangle bought to be Mental Paralysis) given that I don't have uniform power costs?  Last, what Limitations, if any, make sense, if I wanted to restrict this to only one specific Adder?

 

Note:

In trying to understand how to build/buy this, I've read one thread, here:  http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/82367-costing-naked-adders/.  In this thread, Lucius proposes an actual power (Aid) rather than a Naked Advantage.  However, this write-up presumes an application for one power (Teleport) whereas I need a construct that works with all mental powers. I also prefer a Naked Advantage since Aid takes an action ... and the application of a Naked Advantage does not.  I'm not opposed to this route, by the way, but if I were to opt for it, I'm unsure how much Aid would be needed?

 

 

My Attempt:

[100 AP * (1 + 1 CanApplyAdders)] - 100 = 100CP cost for the Can Apply Adders Advantage

 

That seems wrong to me ... since it's 100AP to be able to add a 5pt adder?!  However, unless I'm mistaken, that's the math by the book (6e Vol1, pg 314) for a Naked Advantage?  Something seems off, as that seems WAY too expensive to add a 5pt Adder to a group of powers using a Naked Advantage.  (I'd be better off upping the MP and buying the adder on the powers that need it if this math is correct; however, my goal was to keep things simple and not muck around with the MP.)

 

Thoughts?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I think the +1 advantage is a bit steep, given the limited bonus of the adders.

[Surrealone]

I could kind of see it if the +1 Advantage were applied to the Adder cost, itself ... and without subtracting the base Adder price.  But that's a deviation from the previously cited 6e RAW.

 

Example:

5AP adder_cost * (1 + 1 CanApplyAdders) = 10 CP cost for the Can Apply Adders Advantage

 

That seems about right to be able to apply it to a group of powers (mental powers ... i.e. including LOS-powers bought to use alternate combat value).

 

Thoughts?

[Netzilla]

I was thinking along those same lines. Use the highest priced Adder among the powers in the list and use that as the base cost.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'd avoid that for the reasons that adders were created.  Adders are assumed a straight cost rather than being an advantage because their value does not increase based on the active cost of the power they are added to.  Being able to change position with flight doesn't become more powerful if you fly faster, for example.  So they are outside the advantage/limitation structure.  At the same time, since they are a very minor increase in power -- hence, their fixed cost -- they are in no conceivable way worth a +1 advantage.  Maybe +1/4 to choose or not use adders, but doubling the base cost?? That's outrageous.

[InfiniteKarma]

The Aid with "Can Apply Adders (+1)" is the RAW way of getting variable adders on the fly, so you should probably look to that for the cost, at least. 3d6 Aid as standard effect is enough for 10 points of adders, which with the +1 advantage is 60 AP. Some kind of variable adder advantage should probably cost about 30 AP per 5-pts of adder to be comparable. 

 

That is a steep cost, but Adders are usually things you buy on your powers, and only apply when necessary, so it seems against the spirit of the rules to only "use" the adder points during the phases when you need them. You're better off expanding the multipower by 20 points, and buying 20 points worth of adders on every multipower slot, as appropriate for the power. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah but you can buy variable advantage for +1 and get way more power out of it than adders can remotely provide.  Seriously the cost is absurd for what you get, it overvalues what adders provide by a significant amount.

[Surrealone]

The Aid with "Can Apply Adders (+1)" is the RAW way of getting variable adders on the fly, so you should probably look to that for the cost, at least. 3d6 Aid as standard effect is enough for 10 points of adders, which with the +1 advantage is 60 AP. Some kind of variable adder advantage should probably cost about 30 AP per 5-pts of adder to be comparable. 

 

That is a steep cost, but Adders are usually things you buy on your powers, and only apply when necessary, so it seems against the spirit of the rules to only "use" the adder points during the phases when you need them. You're better off expanding the multipower by 20 points, and buying 20 points worth of adders on every multipower slot, as appropriate for the power. 

An Aid to what, exactly?  Remember, the goal is to apply an Adder to mental powers ... some of which (like Mental Paralysis) are not actually mental powers (and are, instead, non-mental powers bought using the Alternate Combat Value and Line of Sight Advantages).  So we must consider what would be Aided in order to properly capture this...

 

Reminder (InfiniteKarma):

​In 6e, Aid is 6CP per 1d6.  Also, a number of Adder costs are lower in 6e than 5e.  I'm only interested in adding one 5pt Adder (Additional Class of Minds) of the two available (Additional Class of Minds and Dismissible) where needed -- meaning there'd be a (-1) Limitation since I'd only be able to use the Aid for one of the two available Adders, making it half as effective as it'd otherwise be.  I also only need this to be Self Only (-1/2).

 

Using 6e Aid for 6e Adders, this begins to look like:

Comprehend Mind (18 Active Points, 6 Real Points):

Aid 1 1/2d6, Can Apply (Remove) Adders (+1); Limited Power: Only to add Additional Class of Minds Adder (Power loses about half of its effectiveness) (-1), Only to Aid Self (-1)

 

​But wer're still missing the power to which the Aid should apply, since Aid assumes just one power and we need more than one.  Variable Effect should do the trick, yielding a build as follows:

Comprehend Mind (22 Active Points, 7 Real Points):

Aid 1 1/2d6, Variable Effect: Any One LOS-based Power at a Time (+1/2), Can Apply (Remove) Adders (+1); Limited Power: Only to add Additional Class of Minds Adder (Power loses about half of its effectiveness) (-1), Only to Aid Self (-1)

 

 

Yeah but you can buy variable advantage for +1 and get way more power out of it than adders can remotely provide.  Seriously the cost is absurd for what you get, it overvalues what adders provide by a significant amount.

Actually, it's not too bad for a single 5 CP adder.  In fact, it's 7 CP for a single 5 CP Adder ... or 11 CP for any 5 CP Adder.  We weren't too far off base with a shot in the dark.

 

The latter of the two builds, above, seems about right, to me -- and is far cheaper than expected ... but it comes with the price of blowing a Phase ... which I find acceptable. 

 

Thoughts?  Corrections on the above???

[Christopher R Taylor]

The point isn't the cost when you buy something cheap, but rather the cost as a multiplier.  If you buy a 5d6 Aid, its suddenly really expensive for what you get, because math!  Changing it to, say, +½ makes the low end cost change very little (6 and 9) but makes a difference at more powerful.

[Surrealone]

The point isn't the cost when you buy something cheap, but rather the cost as a multiplier.

 

Oh, I completely agree that +1 for the Can Apply/Remove Adders Advantage is outrageous.  Your comparison to the cost of Variable Advantage is solid evidence as to why.  That said, the cost is, in theory, RAW.

[InfiniteKarma]

Compare the Aid build to just buying "Additional class of mind-animal, additional class-machine, additional class-plant, etc..." adders on all of your relevant powers. Adders are designed as additional things to enable new uses of a power already, so adding them with a variable power seems like a rules exploit, like buying Cosmic Variable powers limited to "Any Skill at +3" (9 AP) for really cheap, and for any skill not being rolled as a reaction, saving hundreds of points.

[Surrealone]

If you run the math you'll see that it's more expensive to buy the Adder via an Aid (for a single power at a time, compared to buying on one power) ... because the Aid burns a Phase to use and, thus, you'd have to make each power do that, too, for an apples-to-apples comparison that includes time. This would give each power a Limitation it doesn't already have ... one that would reduce the real cost of each power...

 

Let's examine your assertion in detail:

If each power were built to entail the Additional Class of Mind Adder ... and also built to take the Extra Time (Full Phase, Only To Activate; -1/4) Limitation so that the comparison of the resulting power (when used) to the Aid+original_power (when used) happens across the same amount of time (2 Phases, total), you get:

 

Example 1 (Power before Additional Class of Minds Adder tacked onto it):

Domination (100 Active Points, 100 Active Points):

Mind Control 16d6, Invisible Power Effects (+1/4)

 

Example 2 (Power after Additional Class of Minds Adder tacked onto it):

Domination (106 Active Points, 106 Real Points):

Mind Control 16d6 (w/ 1 Additional Class of Minds), Invisible Power Effects (+1/4)

 

Example 3 (Power after Additional Class of Minds Adder tacked onto it, w/ Extra Time (Full Phase, Only To Activate; -1/4) Limitation added to simulate taking an extra Phase to activate the power, just as the character would have to when using the Aid write-up from above):

Domination (106 Active Points, 85 Real Points):

Mind Control 16d6 (w/ 1 Additional Class of Minds), Invisible Power Effects (+1/4), Extra Time (Full Phase, Only To Activate; -1/4)

 

 

As you can see from the example, when you factor in the blown Phase from using the Aid ... and adjust the powers in the Multipower accordingly to represent this .... their active costs will drop as much as 15 points (delta between real points in Example 3 and Example 1) from the original power cost.  In a multipower of nothing but fixed slots, that will translate to a savings of ~2 CP per fixed slot (since the round is in the character's favour in this case) ... meaning upping the MP and building the powers in ... with the extra time ... is actually the cheapest way to go.

 

However, I'm trying to simulate the ability of the character to size up an opponent's mind and then deal with it accordingly if it's anything other than standard human.  I don't need or want the ability to deal with non-human minds all the time on every power -- nor do I want to pay END for it unless it's needed ... nor do I want to blow extra time doing so unless required.  Tacking on what's needed, when it's needed ... and paying END and a Phase to do so for it only if it's needed, is more flexible ... and, as you just saw, also more (not less) expensive in a real apples-to-apples comparison of each power over time.  Last but not least, the character has senses (Discrminatory, Analyze Detect Psionics & Minds) that pull the concept together neatly into one gift-wrapped package of flexible, reactive goodness.

 

 

Surreal

 

P.S.  Even without a variable class of mind approach, ​I would never add 4 different adders to a mental power to represent 4 different classes of mind unless it were some kind of AoE mental power that needed to affect multiple classes of mind all at once.  Barring that sort of exceptional (and very rare) scenario, I think most people would be more prone to adding another slot with a power built to address a different class of mind -- where needed ... than they would be to add lots of classes of mind to a single non-AoE power.  That's certainly one approach, but this character has senses that lend themselves to and justify a far more surgical approach.

​P.S.S. And then there's the matter of how often non-human classes of mind show up in meaningful ways within a game.  In this one, it's not horribly common, so paying a pile of points to address different classes of mind forces the GM to throw a bunch of aliens, animals, AIs or somesuch at the characters ... since spending a lot of points on such things signals the GM you want to see such things.  I'm not looking to ask for the invasion of the AI's or the attack of The Birds from our GM.

[Lucius]

Streaking Viper: (Total: 157 Active Cost, 35 Real Cost) Aid Any Mental Power 7d6 (standard effect: 21 points), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset; +1/4), Mental Powers (not the "category" the special effect) (+1/2), Can Apply (Remove) Adders (+1), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Minute; +1) (157 Active Points); Limited Power ONLY to add Adders (-1 1/2), One Use At A Time (-1), Only to Aid Self (-1) (Real Cost: 35)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary explains that an Adder is a Viper and streaking means running naked, so....

[Surrealone]

Thanks Lucius but, umm, why so many dice of Aid?  (i.e. I'm not sure I follow why you need 7d6 ... to Aid the powers enough to provide a 5 CP Adder.)

[Lucius]

Thanks Lucius but, umm, why so many dice of Aid?  (i.e. I'm not sure I follow why you need 7d6 ... to Aid the powers enough to provide a 5 CP Adder.)

You don't.

 

Bare Snake: (Total: 45 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Aid Any Mental Power 2d6 (standard effect: 6 points), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset; +1/4), Mental Powers (not the "category" the special effect) (+1/2), Can Apply (Remove) Adders (+1), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Minute; +1) (45 Active Points); Limited Power ONLY to add Adders (-1 1/2), One Use At A Time (-1), Only to Aid Self (-1) (Real Cost: 10)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says the larger power is for a whole nest of Adders

[Surrealone]

Got it, thanks!