Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

[Egyptoid]

How do you word "Side Effects of Powers that Alter Character Disadvantages"

 

for example:

 

Use of Certain Options increases Taint (Dark Side Jedi, L5R Sorcery)

 

Use of Mental Powers increases Insanity (Lawnmower Man, ST:OS Gary Mitchell)

 

Overuse of Powers Fatigues Body (W4OK Psykers lose fortitude)

 

Powers Change Self (X-person Rogue, Scanners, various Horror Genres)

 

 

How are these often described in hero ?

On the Power's side effects or other limitations ?

or In the wording of the person's Disads ?

Hand-waving ?

 

That's the overall topic, my specific thingie is Powers with an RSR,

or dice roll that can be botched, with serious personal side effects.

and the inevitable RSR gets worse over time, due to degradation of

the stat in question.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

a small Major Transform that automatically occurs when they Power in question is used.

 

The size of the Transform will determine how fast the transition is; or adjust how frequently Characters are willing to use the Power.

 

The Transform is complete per normal Transform Rules for adding a Disadvantage to a Character. And Heal Back over time normally or other factors of GM discretion.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Side effects is a pretty major limitation for the points: the minimum level of effect at -1/4 is 15 active points.

 

That means, say, 3d6 EB (3 Body and 11 stun or thereabouts as you can not apply defences), which is a really major problem for most characters: it takes even a superhero with 15 REC about 1 1/2 days to heal 3 Body so use it more frequently than that and you will kill yourself. Of course some people will take a 1d6+1 AVLD EB instead: same points, dramatically less effect - some guidelines as to what is acceptable would be nice.

 

That can make a transform side effect seem more attractive as you dont take any effect until the whole thing is done: say a superhero character has 14 Body (not high but not that low either), that means that they can use the power (on average) (14x2)/3.5 = 8 times before the transform affects them (depending on frequency of use, of course) and if they have 14 REC it will take 2 months to shake the effects.

 

All this for a -1/4 limitation.

 

Now obviously a transform is not going to be directly deadly, but you can do so much with transform - fom the relatively innocuous 'Psych Lim: Loses temper' to a pretty unfortunate 'turns to a pillar of salt'.

 

Personally I would say Side Effects needs looking at again. I'd be inclined to impose the following per -1/4 of limitation (as a minimum):

 

1 point of Major transform (2 of minor or 3 of cosmetic): the transform must be agreed with the GM and the effects, and accumulated points, fade after one week (if you don't keep using the power). The transform should be considered 'partial'.

 

1 point of kill damage

 

6 points of stun damage (OK not proportional but this is a balance issue - to me I'd almost always rather take Stun than Body)

 

1 point of drain (recovers at 5 per day)

 

5 points of drain (recovers at 5 per turn)

 

Side effects that do not cause injury (transform or otherwise) would work of 15 active points per -1/4 (or 1/4 active points whichever is worse).

 

That's not a scientific breakdown, just a ball park - that's about right feeling.

 

Complete aside - well, sort of - we played a fanstasy game some years back where all magic used life energy. There is not a handy equivalent in Hero so we decided that everyone had 10000 points of life energy and lost it normally through aging, disease and injury: humans lose 3d6 per month (plus other amounts for serious injury (1 per 2 full points of Body) and so on). That means an average human who lives a disease and injury free life will live on average to around 79 years. Elves lost their life energy more slowly (3d6 per year), and lived to about 950 years on average. You get the picture.

 

Anyway, the point was that all magic used life energy to fuel it: at the rate of 1 point per 10 active points. If you made your magic skill roll, it was halved for every 2 full points you made the roll by, and you could halve the loss again if you used an enchanted wand, or quarter it with an enchanted staff, so skillful and well prepared mages lost life ennergy comparatively slowly but still much faster than most others.

 

Mind you, you did not have to use your OWN life energy necessarily: you could perform a ritual to drain a victim's life energy into a vessel (usually a gem) that acted as a pool of life energy you could draw on to power your spells. That, of course, was a hideously evil thing to do. This means that evil magicians could use lots of spells because they sacrificed the life energy of others. Good magicians (the few there were) tended to use more potent spells (the minimum loss was one anyway), magical staves and had high skill rolls (all of which minimised life loss) and only used magic when nothing else would do. Even so, casting 10 spells was the equivalent of aging a month for a human or a year for an elf, at the very least (and failing a spell roll cost double, which was nasty).

 

There was more to it than that but that was the basic idea. I'm not suggesting Hero should adopt a Life Energy system but it makes an interesting addition to the right campaign. It really set the campaign feel for magic - good magicians were few and far between but tended heaviliy toward wisdom and restraint but utterly devastating spells if the need really did arise. Evil magicians, with a 'free' pass to use magic tended to use it a lot more, but at lower levels of power and skill (why bother with a 21- Magic roll if it is not you who is aging?).

 

Anyway, I thought I'd mention it.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Not everything requires it be deconstructed to it's component molecules.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Not everything requires it be deconstructed to it's component molecules.

 

No, everything doesn't need to because not everything is wide open to interpretation, but 'side effects' is IMO. A 1d6 KA and a 1 1/dd6 Drain against no defences have absolutely no basic for comparison in terms of actual inconvenience but yield the same limitation value. I'm all for flexibility, but you're better off being flexible on a firm foundation.

 

The second bit of post I could have explained better though - I'm suggesting that for some of the effects Egyptoid wants to emulate (things like taint and madness anyway) side effects is too blunt a tool: it all happens too quickly. It would be nice to have a more gradual effect which is not so all or nothing, and one way you could do that is to pick a scale: 10000 to zero or 1 to 100 or whatever and use that as the basis for side effects. A count mechanism - others have suggested something similar ebfore it is not a new idea, but it seems to fit well for certain situations.

 

As to W40K fatigue, an 1d6 END Drain (recovers 5/5minutes) costs 15 points and would seem to be the every thing.

 

Personality change is harder to do with any kind of consistency. I probably wouldn't use 'Side Effects' at all: it sounds right but doesn't really fit mechanically at all for many builds. You could do it as a partial mental transform, I suppose, but why bother? It is easier to just make up a Limited Power Limitation: You take on aspects of the target's personality when you drain their powers (-1/2).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Alright, I get what you were saying.

 

I think Transform is the right Mechanic - whether that gets there as Side Effect or not, it's got the components; Gradual Effect means that some effects start to come in before fully Transformed, and it can be undone (Healing Back Over Time & Reversed by another Transform).

 

Also, things like this involve both buy in and roleplaying from the Player involved and won't be resolved by Mechancis completely to begin with. At best the Mechanics can give the reason to play it out.

 

If this were a Curse inflicted by, say, a witch, you'd likely have the Witch use Transform on the Target right? Why wouldn't it be different here?

 

Personally I see Side Effect as "GM Insert out-of-the-box alternate effect here"

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Sean, I like the concept of your magic system; it makes a lot of logical sense, and from a storyline perspective could lend itself to some dramatic manuevers. However, I wonder how well it translated into game terms. That is to say, aging is generally such a vague concept in most games that it really doesn't impact play. Age is more of a distinctive feature than any kind of actual disadvantage generally. Logically your PC mages are going to use magic sparingly, being benevolent types of course, but when push comes to shove I have rarely seen players use restraint. I generally have to enforce some kind of immediate (and generally harsh) side effects to keep players from using their "only in case of emergency" type powers on a routine basis.

 

On another note, about Side Effects, I have never had a player take a regular EB as a Side Effect; it is almost always a NND or a Drain so that they don't have to worry about killing themselves accidentally. Although I understand the rationale for not allowing defenses to be used against Side Effects, basing the limitation solely on the active points in the side effect is obviously skewing the value of the limitation. I would suggest doubling the Side Effect limitation value, or at least adding and addtional -½ limitation, if the damage taken is long term.

[Egyptoid]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

right, I forgot that Side Effects can trigger other powers besides mere damage.

 

 

now for some carefully worded limitations....

[Sean Waters]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Sean' date=' I like the concept of your magic system; it makes a lot of logical sense, and from a storyline perspective could lend itself to some dramatic manuevers. However, I wonder how well it translated into game terms. That is to say, aging is generally such a vague concept in most games that it really doesn't impact play. Age is more of a distinctive feature than any kind of actual disadvantage generally. Logically your PC mages are going to use magic sparingly, being benevolent types of course, but when push comes to shove I have rarely seen players use restraint. I generally have to enforce some kind of immediate (and generally harsh) side effects to keep players from using their "only in case of emergency" type powers on a routine basis.[/quote']

 

Ageing is a sort of vague concept but you'd be amazed how worried people become about it. When you can age a year or two in the course of an adventure (if you chuck magic a bout a lot), even though it has no real game effect it really seemed to make players think about it - and it really felt like a sacrifice when they did use magic. It certainly wouldn't suit every campaign but it worked well for that one.

 

You could use a similar mechanism for something like Darkside taint or even creeping madness, perhaps with in-game effects defined for certain waypoints, and possibly a method of recovery if that suit sthe game, (albeit perhaps a difficult or dangerous one).

 

On another note' date=' about Side Effects, I have never had a player take a regular EB as a Side Effect; it is almost always a NND or a Drain so that they don't have to worry about killing themselves accidentally. Although I understand the rationale for not allowing defenses to be used against Side Effects, basing the limitation solely on the active points in the side effect is obviously skewing the value of the limitation. I would suggest doubling the Side Effect limitation value, or at least adding and addtional -½ limitation, if the damage taken is long term.[/quote']

 

I've also seen side effect NNDs - which is very close to cheating when defences are not going to apply anyway. I think an additional limitation value for more permanent damage, or some similar mechanism would be fair. Perhaps in 6th...

[Greywind]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Aging is a time limit. If the character keeps aging, exactly when will his batteries run out?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Personally, I have always ignored the "Active Point" aspect of Side Effect and gauged whether the Side Effect is a Major or Minor Detriment within the context of the campaign. . .

 

But I might be crazy.

[Greywind]

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages

 

Personally, I have always ignored the "Active Point" aspect of Side Effect and gauged whether the Side Effect is a Major or Minor Detriment within the context of the campaign. . .

 

But I might be crazy.

"Might"?

 

I thought we already had a poll on this.