Proportianal to remaining power...

[ShadowEater]

I am building a character who has a (hard to recover) Endurance Reserve fueling a variety of attack powers. I am trying to also have a few other powers tied to that reserve... Flight, Resistant Defenses, etc.

 

None of these extra powers use END: rather, I want them to get weaker as the Endurance reserve empties. This means the character has to choose to start blasting, or if the mobility/defenses/etc are more important in the long run... incentive to conserve fire power (or finish the fight fast!)

 

At first I was just going to 'link' them to the END reserve... but that doesn't seem to fit mechanically. How do you connect a power to remaining reserves (theoretically could also work to model powers that scale with charges, natural END, remaining Stun.... whatever)

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

If his powers don't use END, then where does he loose END that makes a lower END worth a limitation?

[ShadowEater]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

He has a variety of 'attack' powers (blast, etc) that do use up the END... so it is a choice between blasting people, or holding back the reserve so his defenses/mobility keep functioning.

 

For example (these are not the real numbers):

 

I start fresh, my END reserves are topped off at 100, and my rDEFs are 20, I can fly at 20m.

During the round, I blast someone three times for 8 END each... 24 points are gone, my End Reserve is about 1/4 gone... and thus my shields and flight drop to 15 each. Next round, if I keep blasting, I keep losing defenses and speed... or I can spend the time (and concentration, gestures, and incantations to refill the magic battery) to 'top off' and get everything back to full power.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

He has a variety of 'attack' powers (blast, etc) that do use up the END... so it is a choice between blasting people, or holding back the reserve so his defenses/mobility keep functioning.

 

For example (these are not the real numbers):

 

I start fresh, my END reserves are topped off at 100, and my rDEFs are 20, I can fly at 20m.

During the round, I blast someone three times for 8 END each... 24 points are gone, my End Reserve is about 1/4 gone... and thus my shields and flight drop to 15 each. Next round, if I keep blasting, I keep losing defenses and speed... or I can spend the time (and concentration, gestures, and incantations to refill the magic battery) to 'top off' and get everything back to full power.

Ok, that sounds neat and interesting and I have no idea, but APG and some form of the Proportional Modifier?

[prestidigitator]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

I'd go with Linked. It may not be technically "correct" but it's a darn good place to start, and IMO it's close enough to the spirit of the Limitation. But maybe keep it at the lesser -1/4 value of the Limitation even if the End Reserve is the smaller power.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

I'd go with Linked. It may not be technically "correct" but it's a darn good place to start' date=' and IMO it's close enough to the spirit of the Limitation. But maybe keep it at the lesser -1/4 value of the Limitation even if the End Reserve is the smaller power.[/quote']

That makes sense. I'd think it would also be relative to REC and END - If they're large, it's not really a limitation. If they're small, it's more of one.

[ShadowEater]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

Internal Magical Energy: Endurance Reserve (200 END, 20 REC) Reserve: (64 Active Points); Unified Power (-1/4); REC: (14 Active Points); Concentration, Must Concentrate throughout use of Constant Power (0 DCV; Character is totally unaware of nearby events; -1 1/2), Gestures, Requires Gestures throughout (Requires both hands; -1), Perceivable (-1/2), Personal REC (-1/2), Incantations (Requires Incantations throughout; -1/2)

 

Speed 5, costs 8 per blast... totally drained in 5 offensive turns, with a 1/5 drop in power each round if I stay on the offensive. The limitation is more on the inability to fill it back up once the flight and defenses are down... -1/4? -1/2? While I will rarely hit rock bottom, I will almost never be at 'full power' for the auxiliary powers.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

If the limitations are on refill, then they should probably be on Recovery. Otherwise, you won't be able to use your END unless you're Gesturing, for example. (AFAIK, of course)

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

It seems to me that the END battery is heavily limited in its ability to recover. As already noted by Narf, if the limitations are on the END and the REC, you can't spend END without being 0 DCV, shut out from nearby events, gesturing, incanting and glowing in the dark (well, being perceivable - above and beyond making odd gestures, standing stock still and incanting weird phrases). Personally, I doubt I would allow all those limitations in tandem. In particular, "personal REC" - you can't meet the criteria of half the other limitations if you're unable to take a personal recovery anyway. Given recovery for an END battery requires a full turn, the character will pretty much never recover in combat.

 

However, the battery is also quite large, able to allow 5 turns of full attacking. I can't speak to your games, but 5 turn battles aren't very common in ours. Once the battle is over, full recovery takes a couple of minutes, so it's now trivially easy (if likely to get posted on YouTube given the things the character has to do to recover).

 

At the end of a full turn, the ancillary powers are down 20%, and they're down 40% at the end of two turns. By the end of three turns, most combats in my games are over, so being down 50%+ will be a rare occurence.

 

So, if 50% loss is rare at best, it's not a -1. Being down 25% or more will not be completely uncommon, but the character will virtually always start with full power, and can control how fast his power level declines. Given all that, I'd say -1/4 feels about right, -1/2 if your games tend to feature longer combats than mine on a regular basis.

[Talon]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

What Hugh said. Estimate the average loss of functionality, apply Limited Power based on that value. I have similar experience with combat durations for superheroic games, so -1/4 seems right assuming that genre.

[ShadowEater]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

Sounds reasonable to me. Incidentally, all those limitations (other than Unified) are on the REC of that END reserve only... not sure why HD displays it mashed up like it does, but it really is that way in the file -1/4 sounds about right, thanks for talking it through with me!

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

While I understand conceptually what you are doing with this, and it is a good idea, I would recommend handling it a little differently. First, most systems work at max power just fine until the battery starts to get low, then they begin to peter out. This is good, because it means your character can operate for the first Turn or so at full power which saves the headache of recalculating all his powers each PHA, at least for the first Turn. Also it means you don't have to start with an overpowered attack in the beginning just to keep it from being ineffectual a few PHA down the time chart.

 

What you can do is buy his powers in 3 steps. First the base power, say 6d6 Blast, +10PD/ED Resistant Protection costs END, and 10m Flight; the base level has no END limitation. The second step is +3d6 Blast, +5PD/ED etc. with the limitation "Only when END Reserve is over 50% (-1/2)". The third step is +3d6 Blast, etc. "Only when END Reserve is over 25% (-1/4)". This doesn't have quite the granularity you initially proposed, but it will be a lot easier to play.

 

Alternatively, you can buy all his powers with Side Effect: 3d6 Drain (standard effect 10 pts) every time END Reserve drops by 20% (-1/2). This may be closer to what you had in mind, but it assumes all his powers have the same Active point total so they drain at the same rate.

[ShadowEater]

Re: Proportianal to remaining power...

 

I agree that technological batteries tend to work that way. This character is actually magically based, which means all bets like that are off. The quick overview is that the character has a magical talisman (it can't be stolen, it isn't a 'focus' as per the rules) that is designed to grant flying and defenses continually, but the character found a way to 'break' it and let out the magic that runs the thing... violently!

 

A drain Side Effect (that drains the other powers) when I blast is an interesting approach though...