Multiple powers outside of a framework drawing on one set of charges?

[Tywyll]

27 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Variable Power Pool with charges. Get the list of powers that can be used through it and slap the charges on the pool itself.

 

That's waaaay more expensive then any other concept I can think of.

 

It also doesn't really help the problem that some powers need continuing charges and others do not. 

[Hugh Neilson]

3 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

Oh no, I remember. This sounds exactly the same to me though. In what way would it be different? I have a concept of a magic system that ought to work via charges, but now your suggestion is to pay more points to make it work, especially if the pool was really large and needed to fully recover every day. In what way is your suggestion NOT a concept tax?

 

IIRC, the discussion in question revolved around the requirement that all magic be cast via an END reserve while all other abilities cost 0 END.  Casters were therefore effectively forced to put "costs END" on all of their abilities (as every other ability in the game was "0 END" automatically) for no point savings.  However, if we want to revisit that discussion, I suggest reopening that thread.

[Tywyll]

33 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

IIRC, the discussion in question revolved around the requirement that all magic be cast via an END reserve while all other abilities cost 0 END.  Casters were therefore effectively forced to put "costs END" on all of their abilities (as every other ability in the game was "0 END" automatically) for no point savings.  However, if we want to revisit that discussion, I suggest reopening that thread.

 

And Gnome's suggestion was taking something that should be a limitation (saving points) and turning it into a far more expensive proposal (an END reserve) which would, in effect, be exactly the same beef (they have to pay for something that normally they wouldn't have to).

 

Anyway, I have no interest in returning to that discussion. I just found the disconnect 'amusing.' 

[Hugh Neilson]

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

 

That's waaaay more expensive then any other concept I can think of.

 

It also doesn't really help the problem that some powers need continuing charges and others do not. 

 

Continuing charges are more useful, so "6 charges" which can Continue for a turn or a minute is not the same as "6 charges" which each last one phase.  That is one of the issues making this a more complicated build.  Given that, I am not sure how you conclude a VPP would be more expensive than buying each spell individually, even if we allowed -2 for "common pool of charges".

 

This is a construct I find really difficult to evaluate in a vacuum.  You mentioned the potential for 6 powers, being two attacks, one rDEF and Flight.  So let's flesh that out.

 

My analysis below is pretty long, so I will pull the conclusion up here.

 

Comparative Cost Conclusion:  Based on all of the above, the VPP costing (44 points in my example belom, which assumes 12DC attacks, so pretty powerful) is in no way unfair or excessive. 

 

Define the Powers Let’s say that the powers in question all require a Magic Skill Roll (-1 per 10 AP), Gestures and Incantations.  That’s a total -1 limitation, before we consider the “charges” issue.  They have 6 charges in aggregate, so that is a further limitation of at least -3/4.

 

Let’s further assume that the attacks are 60 AP attack powers. 

 

The rDef is expected to last for a full minute (-3 levels on the Charges table, so this would normally equate to 13-16 charges, or -0).

 

The Flight is to last for a whole day (-8 levels on the Charges table, which would become a +1 advantage!  A ripoff all its own, since just making it 0 END would be +1/2, so I will cap it out at +1/2).

 

If we were to use a VPP, we would need a Control Cost of 30 to handle 60 AP.  We have -1 ¾ in limitations from the above.  Let’s tack on a further -1 ¼ in that there are only a very few, pre-defined powers available.  We can change between them any time we want, so it is Cosmic.  A skill roll to change them plus a skill roll to successfully cast is overkill.  Control Cost is 30 * 3 /4 = 22.

 

Now, what powers do we have?  2 60 AP Attacks have a Real Point costs of 22.

 

The Flight has 6 charges, but they are Continuing for a -+1/2 advantage.  30 meters of flight with a +1/2 advantage and -1 in limitations costs 22 real points.  There’s our Flight spell.  Converting 6 standard charges to 6 Continuing Charges that last for 1 day is effectively a +1 advantage, as it halved the AP we can direct at the actual Flight power.

 

The rDef has 6 charges that last a minute, which should be a -0 limitation.  We could have +15 rPD, +15 rED, with -1 limitations for 22 real points, so that can be our rDEF spell.  We may want to tone that down for campaign reasons - +15 is a lot of rDEF for a Heroic game -  but we’ll run with it for now.  That reduced us from 60 AP to 45 AP, and we don’t have +1/3 advantages, so I will call moving from single use charges to one minute charges +1/2 in this instance.  The rDEF could be reduced to +13/+13 to compensate.

 

So the VPP would cost 22 for the pool + 22 for the control cost.

 

It also gave us advantages to toss on those “Continuing powers”.

 

If we instead allowed a Multipower, we would need a 60 point pool, with -1 ¾ in limitations,  so 22 points.  We would have four Fixed slots, as set out above (rDEF being +13/+13 with a +1/2 Advantage to make the charges Continuing), so that’s 2 points per slot = 30 points in total.

 

Each power individually would have the limitations set out above, and “common pool of charges”.

 

So we have:

 

two attacks are 60 AP attack, Gest, Incant, RSR (-1), 6 charges (-3/4), shared charges (-x);

 

Flight is 30 meters flight, 6 Continuing Charges (1 day, +1/2), 45 AP, Gest, Incant, RSR (-1), 6 charges (-3/4), shared charges (-x);

 

+13 PD/+13 ED rDEF, 6 continuing charges (1 turn, -0), Gest, Incant, RSR (-1), 6 charges (-3/4), shared charges (-x).

 

If x=0, total cost is 74 points.  We know that is way too much (unless we decide the cost benefits of frameworks are not appropriate in this game).  It has to be -2 just to get us to 43 points (close to the VPP option), which leads me to believe the VPP approach is not overpriced, as I do not think 6 shared charges is more limiting than one charge for each power.  A -4 limitation would get total costs of 31, approaching the Multipower discount.

 

Comparative Cost Conclusion:  Based on all of the above, the VPP costing is in no way unfair or excessive.  If anything, the ability to vary the duration of the charges should reduce the limitation on the control cost, but I think I am OK with the cost allowing “6 shared charged” at -3/4.  Whether "only these four options" is -1 1/4 could be further considered as well, and this would decline if more powers became available.  However, this would be my build choice. 

[Tywyll]

14 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So the VPP would cost 22 for the pool + 22 for the control cost.

 

I appreciate your comparitive breakdown. The powers I envision would be a)much lower in AP and b) more heavily limited (my magic systems tend to have around -2 in limitations at least, before the whole charges question).  With a framework, there is that desire to max every possible power to scrape the top of the AP limit of the framework, while I see this as a few low cost spells (maybe a Detect X for example, or even Night Vision) mixed in with a few higher point value spells (maybe a 10d6 blast). In a framework there would be that desire to push everything up to 11 so it uses the full value of the framework...otherwise you are leave money on the table.

 

That said...

 

Does 6E allow you to apply limitations to the Pool cost of a VPP? That's never been the case AFAIK and I don't see it anywhere in 6E1, just applying limitations to the Control cost or the powers in the reserve so you can use more at a time. By my understanding that VPP should cost 82 points.

 

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

There is no limitation to the cost of the pool.  However, the control cost and the pool cost have been decoupled.

 

The maximum AP of any power in the pool is equal to twice the base cost of the reserve.  Since the highest AP spell considered in my example was 60 AP, the base control cost is 60 AP/2 = 30.

 

The pool itself is real points.  As only one spell will be in the pool at any one time, and the highest real point cost of any spell (in my example, the real point cost of each of the four spells) is 22 points, the pool costs 22 points.

 

The pool cost itself cannot be reduced by limitations, but the pool only needs to be big enough to cover the Real Point cost of the powers.

 

The decoupling of the size of the pool (governing real points available) and the maximum AP of any power in the pool (2x the control cost) was a significant change to the VPP in 6e.  In 5e, if I wanted a VPP of 60 AP attack powers, all of which were OAF, I had to buy a 60 point pool even though the powers only had a cost of 30 real points each.  Green Arrow should really be firing two arrows with every attack to fully use his pool.

 

In 6e, the pool cost of 30 would allow one 60 AP, 30 Real Points power at a time, so GA can only pull one arrow out of the quiver at a time.

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks for the clarification, OP. 

 

On a touch screen on break so I can't get much down:

 

All the thoughts and suggestions coming from everyone here are great.  Honestly, I think it's a matter of how much complexity you want to achieve / are willing to accept. 

 

If it was me, I would stick with the ratio idea.  I hadn't put a lot of thought in it when I tossed it out originally, but the more I think about it, the more I find it to be a fairly clean solution; knowing that you're powering magic with it makes it even more appealing to me. 

 

Gotta run;  good luck! 

[Greywind]

7 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

That's waaaay more expensive then any other concept I can think of.

 

It also doesn't really help the problem that some powers need continuing charges and others do not. 

 

If you want the freedom and versatility, somewhere along the line you do have to pay for it.

[Tywyll]

17 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

There is no limitation to the cost of the pool.  However, the control cost and the pool cost have been decoupled.

 

The maximum AP of any power in the pool is equal to twice the base cost of the reserve.  Since the highest AP spell considered in my example was 60 AP, the base control cost is 60 AP/2 = 30.

 

The pool itself is real points.  As only one spell will be in the pool at any one time, and the highest real point cost of any spell (in my example, the real point cost of each of the four spells) is 22 points, the pool costs 22 points.

 

Huh...wow, I totally missed that. This is one place were I wish they had more examples!

 

And I guess with Continuing Charges, you could activate a power and then switch to another without losing the first one. 

 

Still, as this is a build for a brand new Hero player, I don't want to get into VPP wierdness and overhead, but I'll definitely remember this for other builds. 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

Practically, all that the new player needs to know is that he can cast one spell in any phase, 6 in total over the course of the day.

 

The overhead is looked after, if I am reading you correctly, at your end as you are doing most of the design work.

 

The bigger question is, for his somewhat unique magic system, how does he add spells?  Can he just let you know what he wants to add (no point cost until/unless you judge that the "only these spells to choose from" limitation should be reduced), or does he need to learn new spells in-game?

 

Practically, the concept itself is complex, so the build is not going to be easy and straightforward.

 

In any case, I and others have suggested some options.  I'd say:

 

(a)  the Multipower is the cheapest, perhaps a bit easier mechanically than the VPP, but requires a handwave for converting standard charges to continuing charges in some slots;

(b)  the VPP is RAW, but there is judgement required for valuing limitations - I think the pricing is reasonable;

(c)  buying each spell individually will be priciest, unless you are prepared to allow a huge limitation for sharing a pool of charges - and I would suggest it is NOT more limiting than giving each of the four spells a single charge (being able to cast each one once a day is much more limiting than being able to choose six castings a day, so the cost should be higher than the same four spells, each one per day).

 

[Shoug]

Consider that the difference between 6 charges normally and 6 shared charges is that something can be used 6 times a day with regular charges, and something could be used up to 6 times a day with shared charges. That means either zero or 6, meaning the average amount of charges you actually get is 3, generously yet strictly assuming that you use only 2 powers that draw on the shared charges equally often. So here's how I'd cost it at first glance. I'd figure out how many shared charges I want total, and then divide them into all the powers I want to power with them based on how often I think I will be using these powers (but still keeping the distribution roughly even, this choice could be easily abused). Then I would just buy the amount of charges for each power that I assigned charges from the greater pool to earlier. Then you just use the old whole total as a pool of charges usable with any of the abilities you granted access.

 

So let's say you want to have an energy rifle that has 3 abilities sharing 12 charges representing nuclear battery-capsules that are basically nukes as sudden hi voltage batteries, one time use. Buy each of your three powers with 4 charges. Now just start sharing 12 charges.

 

Might make everything using a shared charge pool cost one notch up on the Charges table or something to represent the advantage of being flexible. I think this is the most accurate and logical way you could design this ability in homebrew.