BNakagawa

Before you can come up with a satisfactory answer to this question you must first answer another question. Who's paying for this? What powers magic in your world determines society's response to it. If you have to rip still-beating hearts out of sacrificial victims to power your magic, then there's a limitation on how industrialized your magic can be. (it's called a birthrate) If your magic depends on nothing more than the right phonemes uttered at the proper cadence, then you are a good candidate for mass-produced magic. I can easily see a edison style cylindrical recording of the chant powering a gatling style device spewing out magic missiles. If your magic costs you slivers of your sanity, then you probably aren't going to be able to mass produce things as you might be limited on the production side, the consumer side or both. I've always preferred magic to adhere to an oft uttered admonition: Nothing's free...

I'm inordinately fond of magic that is subject to laws no man has yet fathomed. I mean, it's ok for there to be working theories and general guidelines about what is 'safe' and 'reliable' but for there to be grey areas that have never been nailed down that keep academics tearing at eachother like weasels in heat. This sort of environment fosters a healthy fear of magic, because you never know what it's truly capable of, and you can never quite rely on it to do what you need it to, when you need it to. This more than offsets the simple ability to blow down a castle with a spell. Knowing in the back of your mind that some day, your magic might just turn off and leave you high and dry for an undetermined period of time, and every foe you've ever left burned, bloodied (not to mention homeless) might come out of the woodworks looking for a piece of your non-spellcasting behind. This works for me.

Would you allow a PC to purchase: Detect: answer to any question scenario poses, sense, discriminatory, analyze. No? Why not? How is that any different than allowing someone to put Knowledge Skills in a VPP? or simply some 20 point skill-to-end-all-skills. There's a STOP sign on Universal Translator for a reason. $0.02

cheese cheese and more cheese. When i play a character who spent points on a specific science, knowledge or skill cluster, assuming no one else bought those specific things, I want to be the one to be solving the problem or coming up with the critical information, not some point-monger who finagled some way of being able to have any skill, knowledge or science whenever they need or want it. If I was running a game, I would definitely veto any of these things. If I was playing in a game, I would ask the GM to veto these things. Allowing these things instantly devalues all non-combat skills, science, languages, area knowledges, etc. on all other characters. $0.02

Gestures and Incantations aren't typically allowed for supers. If your GM lets you have it, more power to you.

Do the math. If you're attacking someone with 6 points of rPD, then your 3d6 RKA with reduced penetration will do diddly squat on the average. Even if you pump the attack to 4d6 RKA with reduced penetration, then your attack will yield 2 body on an average roll. Hardly life threatening. Meanwhile, if you take a 1d6+1 Ap RKA with the 2d6 stack, then your base attack will get damage through more than half the time, and the follow on, even with the additional defense added (because it's not AP), your average yield is more like 5.5 body on the average roll. More than twice as good. Obviously, you could simply buy a 4d6 RKA and blow the fool away, averaging 8 body, but that doesn't act like the desired result.

Built something like this before. The notion is that the weapon is absolutely lethal to somewhat lightly armored targets and pretty much ineffective vs tanks, bricks, bunkers and other seriously tough things. Took a basic 1d6+1 with points of piercing (this was a long time ago) and stacked it with 2d6 KA that only kicked in if the base attack did body damage to the target. Obviously, piercing no longer exists, and if you make the base attack AP, and the follow on is not, then there is some inconsistency, but it should do what it's designed to. (massacre lightly armored targets while leaving heavy units pretty much unscathed)