Diminishing Charges

[Sidume]

Greetings all,

 

I'd like to pick you brains on pricing a disad.

 

I'm looking for some input on a power disadvantage.  I have in mind a power that loses effectiveness the more it is used.  Not Burnout as long as you have charges it still works,  but charges that are less effective as they are used.  Each use drops the effectiveness of the power by 10 active points.

 

The idea is simple.  I can use a custom power disad.  I'm trying to figure out how to price it properly.  Should it be costed similarly to Burnout, or should the disad be worth more?  After 5 uses the player would be out of charges, but charges 4 and 5 are not going to be nearly as effective.  And a blanket disad worth -X/Y is a whole lot easier than tiering each individual charge.

 

Any input is welcome. ?

 

  

[eepjr24]

So I did some math (surprise, surprise) and would use the following chart:

 

If power will be reduced for every charge until there are none: -3/4                                       (AP drop * charges = ~Original AP)

If power will be reduced by about 1/2 of the original AP then charges run out: -1/2           (AP drop * charges = ~Original AP*.5)

If power will be reduced by about 1/4 of the original AP then charges run out: -1/4           (AP drop * charges = ~Original AP*.75)

Less than 1/2: -0

 

Examples:

Quote

Full AP	-AP/charge	Charges	Limit Calc	Lim Val
100	10	10	0.818181818	0.75
100	10	5	0.25	0.25
100	10	8	0.538461538	0.5

 

Example of the calculation I devised:

 

Line 1:  AP/((100+90+80+70+60+50+40+30+20+10)/# Of Charges)-1

Line 2:  AP/((100+90+80+70+60)/# Of Charges)-1

Line 3:  AP/((100+90+80+70+60+50+40+30)/# Of Charges)-1

 

That will probably take care of 90% of the cases and provide you a guide for any outliers. I would call the custom limitation something like "Tired Charges".

 

- E

Edited June 27, 2018 by eepjr24
Words are hard. Added more math words.

[unclevlad]

I'm inclined to go a completely different route.  The 4th shot is at -30 Active...which strongly suggests it's largely a waste of time.  It's gonna bounce off defenses.  If these are standard charges, I'd say 

 

1 charge:  -2

2 charges:  -1 1/2 or -1 3/4, depending on average Active Points involved.  If it's, say, 50?  The 2nd shot's at 80%.   At 65+, the second shot's still fairly effective.

3 charges:  similar, leaning to -1 1/2.

4+:  -1 1/4, or even - 1 1/2 if the initial Active Points are low-ish.

 

It may also depend on the Power.  AVAD and Flash might remain decently effective even at -30 points.  So I'm looking at it as, how fast does the effectiveness fall off?  And once it's Basically Useless, it's like you're out of charges anyway.

 

[eepjr24]

8 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

I'm inclined to go a completely different route.  The 4th shot is at -30 Active...which strongly suggests it's largely a waste of time.  It's gonna bounce off defenses.  If these are standard charges, I'd say 

 

1 charge:  -2

2 charges:  -1 1/2 or -1 3/4, depending on average Active Points involved.  If it's, say, 50?  The 2nd shot's at 80%.   At 65+, the second shot's still fairly effective.

3 charges:  similar, leaning to -1 1/2.

4+:  -1 1/4, or even - 1 1/2 if the initial Active Points are low-ish.

 

It may also depend on the Power.  AVAD and Flash might remain decently effective even at -30 points.  So I'm looking at it as, how fast does the effectiveness fall off?  And once it's Basically Useless, it's like you're out of charges anyway.

 

You are making a lot of assumptions about what kind of power it is, what defenses it affects, active power caps of the campaign and other things. That should not be factored in to a limitation, unless you want things to be very unbalanced (IMO).

 

Burnout on a 7- is only a (-1) limitation. That sets the high end of your limitation right there, this will very seldom perform worse than that. Reduced Penetration is (-1/4) and I would think this performs a bit better than that on average (using the 100 AP above for 5 charges it averages 80 AP,  have more effect against average defenses than 2 50 AP effects). Your numbers just don't work for me.

 

- E

[Funk Thompson]

I'd honestly just go with boostable charges; boost for the full-power blast, use just the one base charge for standard power.

[unclevlad]

Sorry, but I go the other way altogether.  This is NOT a limitation where one size fits all.  If this is being applied to a 50 point Blast, then it's far more serious than if it's being applied to a 120 point Entangle.  

 

I'm saying treat this as Charges, in terms of how many times it can be used with any purpose.  Some assumptions have to be made there.  Is this an instant power or a constant power?  Effectiveness rolloff might be no big deal for a Force Field that lasts 5 minutes per use because that's likely the full combat, but a big deal for an instant power like Blast.  Also, is this a "I only need to do this once" power, or something needed regularly?   100 Active is quite a bit...is this a bit overpowered for the campaign, where maybe the 3rd and 4th shots are more on par?  Well, then, the rolloff is at the 5th or 6th shot.  Same comment applies if the defense is uncommon, or the power has an ongoing effect like Entangle, so that it may not be needed more than a couple times.

 

Hm.  Another way to say this might just be Side Effect:  Power Fades with Use.  Automatic.  Side effect is 10 point Drain...well, that's a 3d6 Drain, and that's 30 points.  So that's a Major Side Effect.  Automatic raises that to a -1.  If you want a one size fits all, this seems pretty decent.  I'll certainly grant mine's more complex.

 

Oh, and a side note, interpreting this as a Side Effect (Drain) defines how fast the power 'recharges' back...takes 2 turns per use.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[eepjr24]

2 minutes ago, Funk Thompson said:

I'd honestly just go with boostable charges; boost for the full-power blast, use just the one base charge for standard power.

Math (assuming no other limitations, etc):

 

100 AP with 10 diminishing charges (-1) = 50 RP

80 AP with 16 Boostable Charges (+1/4) = 100 RP (Remember, when you buy boostable charges that make the power into an advantage you have to take that AP into account for increasing the DC / effect and you cannot use more than 4 charges to boost a given shot)

 

You could certainly do it, but for higher AP powers it is going to be more expensive.

 

- E

[ghost-angel]

eepjr24's first breakdown is a really good one...

 

It might be worth working out the idea of -10% of AP per Charge used... of course you never get more than 10 Charges, so perhaps a floor of 20% (-80%) for this. Each charge after the first loses a percentage of it's Active Points as you go, but you can theoretically have a large number of charges (if you buy a Power with 22 Charges you should still be able to use this idea).

 

I wonder if maybe this was made into it's own Limitation with a standardized Recovery rate (similar recovery to Chargers, let's say); so this could be used on any power... Cool idea.

[eepjr24]

28 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Hm.  Another way to say this might just be Side Effect:  Power Fades with Use.  Automatic.  Side effect is 10 point Drain...well, that's a 3d6 Drain, and that's 30 points.  So that's a Major Side Effect.  Automatic raises that to a -1.  If you want a one size fits all, this seems pretty decent.  I'll certainly grant mine's more complex.

 

Oh, and a side note, interpreting this as a Side Effect (Drain) defines how fast the power 'recharges' back...takes 2 turns per use.  

As already noted, we disagree on your first couple paragraphs. Aside from math issues, Side Effect would work for me.

 

Side Effect: 3d6 Drain, standard effect [minus 1/4 to lim] (30 AP) , returns 5 AP every 5 minutes , 60 RP of effect (-1/2) . Major Side Effect requires it be the greater of 30 points or half the AP.

 

PS: It also works out to the average of the values I set above, which tells me the math was in the right ballpark.

 

- E

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by eepjr24
Words again and Post Script and Math to boot. Lots of edits.

[Sidume]

Thanks for the input everyone!

 

For the record this will be on an RKA (with penetrating- so even the lowest level attacks won't be totally worthless), but the effectiveness will be significantly diminished.   Though I was figuring the base APs  (50) before factoring in the Penetrating advantage.

 

I already have a charge recovery mechanism set up, but it's not as simple as changing clips.

[eepjr24]

7 minutes ago, Sidume said:

Thanks for the input everyone!

 

For the record this will be on an RKA (with penetrating- so even the lowest level attacks won't be totally worthless), but the effectiveness will be significantly diminished.   Though I was figuring the base APs  (50) before factoring in the Pentrating advantage.

 

I already have a charge recovery mechanism set up, but it's not as simple as changing clips.

 

So roughly 3 1/2d6 RKA, Penetrating? So each shot drops by 1/2 d6? That works and is nice and neat.

 

- E

[unclevlad]

My bad.  The OP has that this power is already limited to a 5 shot clip.  Missed that, it's a tad buried.   And maybe I was being sloppy and jumping ahead.

 

Then the declining aspect is pretty minor.  75 + 65 + 55 + 45 + 35 = 275 active in all 5 shots.  Given the flat 5 charges, the total active points in the 5 shots (where the full power shot has N active) is 

 

5N - 100 

 

So if N is ~ 50, you're getting 3 shots' worth.  If N is  ~ 100, you're getting 4 shots.  75 means 3 2/3 shots, call it 4 shots worth.

[unclevlad]

The more general math is gonna be similar to eepjr's, I think, but lessee.

 

P = active points in the power at full strength.  Then, after N shots (where N cannot exceed P/10), the total power released is 

 

N * P - 10  * (N * (N-1))/2  or N * P - 5*N*(N-1)

 

So the charges "lost" becomes (5*N*(N-1)) / P

 

And the overall value of this custom Charges limitation is based on the total number of full strength charge-equivalent uses per clip.  This is easy to spreadsheet.

 

The Side Effect approach works when the power isn't on charges.

[unclevlad]

    Active Points                            
         50       60       70       80       90      100      110     120
3    2.40    2.50    2.57    2.63    2.67    2.70    2.73    2.75
4    2.80    3.00    3.14    3.25    3.33    3.40    3.45    3.50
5    3.00    3.33    3.57    3.75    3.89    4.00    4.09    4.17
6                3.50    3.86    4.13    4.33    4.50    4.64    4.75
7                           4.00    4.38    4.67    4.90    5.09    5.25
8                                       4.50    4.89    5.20    5.45    5.67

 

Hope that comes out.  Top row is active points at full strength;  left column is # of charges in the clip.  The intersection shows the total number of full charge equivalents you get from the clip.

[dsatow]

I'd just do one of two things.

 

1) A partially limited power.  If its a Pen RKA, then 

2 DC with 6 charges

2 DC with 5 charges

...

2 DC with 1 charge.

If you want to use it at full power, then each of the 6 powers are used together for 12 DC.  The next use will be at a max of 10 DC, etc.

 

2) A multipower with fixed slots.  Each slot with 1 charge.  A limitation on the multipower in that the strongest slot is always used (probably a -1/4 limitation similar to beam).  Each slot is slightly less damage than the one before it.