Why are Limited Defenses so costly?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why are Limited Defenses so costly?

 

I find myself agreeing too - we must be careful or we might start a precedent - but i'd suggest that, whilst you may not be able to come up with a 'universally applicable' limitation for sfx limited defences, you would be a lot closer if you used -2 than if you used -1/2: it is still, for almost every game, still not really enough of a limitation - at least in terms of what percentage of attacks it is effective against - but I think it would cause a lot less fuss. Still a kludge, but a more socially acceptable one, I believe.

 

So, there's my suggestion: use -2 as a the 'base' limitation, which can be increased or decreased for any given campaign or genre.

[Fearghus]

Re: Why are Limited Defenses so costly?

 

I fail to see any problems.

 

A value had to be chosen for the books. Consider it mostly arbitrary.

 

Agreed. Limitations for this kind of thing need to be picked based on how common certain types of attacks are in that particular campaign. If I am running a fantasy game where magic is a rare and wondrous thing and energy attacks are not all that common "Only against Energy Beams" or some other similar limitation would be worth MUCH MORE than -1/2 because the type of attack it protects against is so rare, on the other hand in your typical 4 color comic campaign where everyone, their brother, sister, mother, and pet dog can shoot lasers from their eyes it might be worth LESS than -1/2. So set the value where you think it is right for your game.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why are Limited Defenses so costly?

 

Agreed. Limitations for this kind of thing need to be picked based on how common certain types of attacks are in that particular campaign. If I am running a fantasy game where magic is a rare and wondrous thing and energy attacks are not all that common "Only against Energy Beams" or some other similar limitation would be worth MUCH MORE than -1/2 because the type of attack it protects against is so rare' date=' on the other hand in your typical 4 color comic campaign where everyone, their brother, sister, mother, and pet dog can shoot lasers from their eyes it might be worth LESS than -1/2. So set the value where you think it is right for your game.[/quote']

 

If there are any genres - including 4 colour comics - where any given sfx is so ubiquitous as to account for 1/3 or more of all attacks then they can be counted on the fingers of a boxing glove, so -1/2 is a poor choice for the 'typical' value assigned as a limitation as examples in the rules.

 

In short: that's the problem.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why are Limited Defenses so costly?

 

If there are any genres - including 4 colour comics - where any given sfx is so ubiquitous as to account for 1/3 or more of all attacks then they can be counted on the fingers of a boxing glove, so -1/2 is a poor choice for the 'typical' value assigned as a limitation as examples in the rules.

 

In short: that's the problem.

 

I agree with this. If the intent were to say "set the value based on your genre/settuing", this would be easily done. However, the book simply provides standard limitations at an arbitrary and constant -1/2 value. Further, if the intent was "these are to be adjusted based on frequency in the campaign world", I would expect to see some variation in the values between various products and sample writeups, but I don't believe there are any.

 

"only vs one SFX" has instead been set at -1/2 in every writeup I've seen, regardless of genre or setting. And I can't think of any of them where 1/3 of attacks relevant to the unlimited ability will likely be of the SFX selected.