VPP and Continuing Charges

[Guest innominatus]

I originally posted this question in the "Hero Rules Discussion" forum, and thought I might run it through here to get an "official" opinion on this particular wrinkle in the rules...

 

I was experimenting with a "super-mage" character I was planning on using as an NPC in my campaign. The character has a 60 pt. Variable Power Pool, and I was thinking about supplementing her raw abilities with a few talismans and other magic items. Then I got to reading the "Continuing Charges" section of the rules -- specifically, how once you've activated a Charge for a power in a VPP or Multipower, you could then shift your points around and the power's Charge would continue to run its course. This makes sense -- the smoke grenade you just threw should suddenly fizzle out just because you pulled out your gun! But it occurred to me that you could build powers with a single, LONG-lasting Charge (a +2 Advantage will get you a charge with a life of 1 Century, or a single "Fuel" Charge good for up to 25 years of continuous use), activate the charge, and the magic dingus you made would effectively continue working for the life of the character, while said character then shifted the points to do whatever else he wanted. Granted, with a 60 pt. Pool and a +2 Advantage on the power, the base power would only be worth 20 pts or less. But by the letter of the rules, these powered Foci you created would be more-or-less permanent, and there's no upper limit to how many magic items you could grind out and use. I could think of a lot of different low-power effects it would be nice to have in focus form -- a ring of protection (Life Support, or maybe some extra defenses), a cloak of flying, a charm with an "escape clause" Triggered Teleport back to base, and so on. PLUS, you could give the stuff away and they would continue working almost like an Independent Focus, but without sacrificing any character points or tying up points in your VPP.

 

Should a character be able to use a VPP to create semi-permanent magic tiems in this way? If not, where should the line be drawn for Continuing Charge powers with a VPP? An hour? A day? ? What sort of ground rules would you set for such a character so as to limit the obvious potential for abuse? My knee jerk reaction would be to limit the number of "activated charge" magic items the character would have in possession at one time, sort of like the "Delayed Effect" Advantage -- "you can only have INT/5 magic items on your person at one time" or something like that. Either that, or say you could have a number of items whose Real Point total values do not exceed the number of points in the VPP's reserve. (Of course, the items could be made extremely cheap by slapping on a hefty "Set Up Time" Limitation to represent the time it takes to craft the item, just like it suggests in FREd.) Or a third way would be to limit it "D&D style", so the number of items would ultimately be limited by the number of spaces on your body to put them (one necklace or amulet, one ring on each hand, one cloak, one belt, etc.)

 

Your thoughts?

[Steve Long]

The abusiveness of what you're suggesting is apparent, as you point out, so I definitely don't think it's something that should be allowed, letter of the rules or no. But I think it's best to leave it up to each individual GM as to how long a Continuing Charge in a VPP should last. I expect most GMs would settle on 1 Turn or 1 Minute maximum, but it all depends on the nature of the campaign and such. The "limit on number of items you can carry/use at once" method you describe would probably work well for many games.

 

I'll try to mention something in Fantasy Hero about this. It's definitely worth alerting GMs to. Thanx!