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Frameworks and the Magic Multiplier


Michael Hopcroft

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Would it be simply too much power for characters to take a Magic Mutliplier for their campaign and then be able to build power Frameworks such as a Multipower within that framework?

 

I'm trying to model the effect of a wizard who has a basic attack spell with many variations on it, such as fireballs that do different things depending on the user's intent.

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Originally posted by Nevenall

Have you considered Variable Advantage?

You could specify before hand which combinations of advantages are allowable.

It's kind of expensive, but it gives you several spells in one without using a multipower.

 

Just a thought.

 

That's a good thought. You could have "Magical Ranged Attack" as the base power with Variable Advantage that enables the user to simulate the effects of fire attacks, cold attacks, lightning, blasts of pure mana, blasts designed to affect astral or ethereial bodies, etc.

 

That still doesn;t answer the basic question of whether having Spells as a separate, cheaper (due to the multiplier) class of pwoers counts as a framework in itself. Especially if you allow a Limitation called "Spell" to reflect that the power is in effect a spell; it may be Instant (just say the word and the spell goes off) but it won;t work in any area where magic is nullified, is automatically affected by any Dispel Magic effects, etc.

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The magic multiplier is a pretty hideous kludge in itself - the thought of being able to combine it with a multipower or other framework is simply too awful to even contemplate.

 

EC would be particularly horrible - you could easily build "Uberman, Slayer of Gods" on 150 points!

 

 

Cheers, Mark

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Originally posted by Markdoc

The magic multiplier is a pretty hideous kludge in itself - the thought of being able to combine it with a multipower or other framework is simply too awful to even contemplate.

 

EC would be particularly horrible - you could easily build "Uberman, Slayer of Gods" on 150 points!

 

 

Obviously they don't build gods like they used to.:)

 

One of my principal rules when thinking about character creation is that if a player creates a character that's really bada**, there's awlays a BIGGEr bada** out there somewhere waiting for them. Someone the PC's most potent attacks would result in a shrug and a sly "Is THAt the BEST you can do?" Something that no matter how powerufl the PC becomes they will have to use inner resources they didn;t know they had to overcome.

 

One of my players in the Galvania campaign found me rather a pushover. She built a half-elf character (I've been trying to discourage non0-humans) who built a 50 AP mutlipower within her spell mutliplier and ended up paying only 33 points for all her powers. Then to top it all off she took an "Elven Longevity" perk and convinced me to give her a SKILL mutliplier to reflect the fact that a person who's been a,live for a hundred years will naturally have learned a lot.

 

I think I got snookered.:o

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The only problem with the bigger bada** scenario in any genre is what about the other characters who are built within the balance of the game. Your villian, unless you cheat blatantly, will snot everyone not built to the level of the uber char.

To give an example one of our players/GMs likes to use in champions: Its okay to run a team like the Avengers and have Thor, Ironman and Wonderman (or that power level) and have characters like the Wasp(note the person saying this would never be the one to run this char). The problem comes in, when building villians to fight this team, they have to be strong enough to match the hi-level chars, which unfortunately in champions means way to powerful for the low level chars. if they fight a team like themselves, ya know the high level chars are gonna go take out the wimpy guys on the other side (and by result vice versa).

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>>>The only problem with the bigger bada** scenario in any genre is what about the other characters who are built within the balance of the game. Your villian, unless you cheat blatantly, will snot everyone not built to the level of the uber char.<<<

 

Eggsactly! And I've played in games where the characters were grossly unbalanced. If everyone is mature, good roleplayers (and that happened to be the case in at least one of these instances) then it can work - for a little while. But eventually most people get tired of always playing second string - and then the campaign dies. If you have one or two players who don't fit that mature profile then be prepared for things to get ugly pretty damn fast.

 

You can see this effect at work even in the sample team presented in FH - one character's backstory has her coming to the rescue of the party's mage (who uses the spell multiplier system). It made me laugh when I read it: any foe she could tackle would be about as dangerous as box of fluffy kittens to that mage!

 

cheers, Mark

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