massey

It can't be untold havoc if we, the readers, were told about it.

We have buried Liefield....YAH 2020 ends on a good note...

I'm trying to look at the difference in Cap but my eyes keep Wandaring.  

I'll take characters with ECs and Multipowers any day of the week over letting an inexperienced player try his hand at a VPP.  Talk about slowing a game down to a crawl.

I have to wonder if 2e hadn't changed things if we'd even be having this discussion.  😕
 
The original 1e Elemental Control:
 
Create a Reserve (the listed example was 60 pts; we'll run with that for now).
 
Pick _three_ powers (mandatory) that operate at at 1/2 the reserve level (30 pts).  Note that since the text states that the AP doesn't have to be the same for the three powers, we are safe to assume that the whole thing is working with Real Cost (RP).  Powers can be modified individually; only Endurance modifiers can be applied to the Reserve (and they will affect all powers in the EC)
 
So you've got kind of a "buy two, get one free" sort of thing going on right off the bat.  I've got 90 pts of unmodified powers for 60 pts.  That's equivalent to a .... what?  -1/2 Limitation?
 
Let's do it with a Multipower:
 
Control Cost: 30
Power 1:  5 pts
Power 2: 5 pts
Power 3: 5 pts
 
For a total of 55 pts.
 
The difference?  If my END allows it, I can use all three EC powers at full STR; my MP is on a sliding scale (related digression:  suggesting that Multiform is more suitable for most of the late-model Adjustment Powers problems that were assigned to EC than EC actually is: MP appears to be based on the idea of one source of power that gets shifted and re-allocated than EC does.  However, that's one lunatic's opinion, and not a popular one).
 
I intentionally did not go with Ultras (which would re-value the MP at 33 pts vs the EC's 60) because you can't use "all the power" in all the powers....
 
_unless_ you've capped these powers lower than the Control allows, of course.  I think we can all agree that it's a bit foolish, at least early-on, because you end up with things like:
 
Control: 90
Ultra Power 1 capped at 30: 3
Ultra Power 2 capped at 30: 3
Ultra Power 2 capped at 30: 3
 
Obviously, it's just cheaper to buy the 90 points of Powers for 90 pts instead of 99.
 
But you can cap them at 40.  That still let's you use the MP, all three powers at once, even, and two at max; one at at 10 pts.  That costs you 102 points, but you're still only getting, at best, 90 pts worth of Powers in play.
 
 
It's when you start adding the other stuff into an MP-- remember the old "Movement Multipower?"
 
Control: 40
Flight Ultra: 4
Running Ultra: 4
Swimming Ultra: 4
 
You truly have no Limitation here (unless a player manages to sneak "lock out" past you, of course), since you're not going to fly and swim at the same time.  (Take a look at "useable as another form of movement" if you're one of the "I shout down Movement Multipowers every time I see them!" crowd.  They are alive and well, and are now an officially-endorsed Power Advantage.  Not a whole lot more expensive, either.)
 
Anyway, you have 120 pts of movement powers for 54 pts.  That's just the tiniest hair under a -1.5 Limitation.  Versus doing it with an EC, with its massive giveaway of the -1/2 Limitation value.
 
You might have seen Movement Multipowers back in the day, but you never saw a Movement Elemental Control from anyone who could do math.  Why is that?  Obviously, because Elemental Controls were the bomb for freebies.  Or, in this case, totally bombed at Movement.
 
There were two places where ECs _rocked_:  You had three really, really big powers (and lots of END)-- possibly even four, if you didn't want and skills, levels, or too many boosted Characteristics, _or_ you wanted a pile of little tiny parlor tricks.
 
Why?
 
Because the big "bonus" came after the third purchase.  Sure, the -1/2 for deciding to play a "theme" character was nice (and hey-- other than Superman fans, who doesn't like a Theme Character?.  You know what?  I liked the Sony Spiderman better than all other versions of Spiderman for one simple reason:  the webs were his own power.  It kept to the "Spider Powers" theme better than the mechanical web makers.  Yeah; they were on-theme, but it just felt more right.  Again: single lone lunatic.  Sue me for an opinion).
 
Anyway, after you bought the first three powers with the equivalent of a -1/2 Limitation for 2/3 their normal price, then you got into the good stuff:
 
Your fourth and subsequent powers were at 1/5 the cost!  _Massive_ discount, since today you'd either have to load up on Limitations (to the tune of -4, if you were wondering) _or_ do a book-legal Multiform.  You know:  Don't worry!  Captain Statsoveight will save you!   Using his power-- Instant Change, purchased with the rebate he got lowering his Characteristics by two points each (he spent the balance on a professional skill or two)-- Captain Statsoveight becomes the super-mighty Element Man, into which all his free points and his Disadplication profits were poured, and rushes off to save the day! 
 
This is even easier, now that the most expensive character doesn't have to be the full-price character.
 
Take that Element Man form, load it up with a Mutlipower or two, and you can really see why Elemental Control was so horrible.  It just reeks of points shaving and cost-cutting and powergaming and whatever else is so clearly unbalancing about it.
 
 
But to get back on track, you really didn't get a huge bonus for having an EC until your forth power (originally; remember that 2e simplified it a bit:  First Power was full price; all others were half-price.  It kept the stipulation that you had to pay the same points for each power, so even if you found a way to shave the cost further, you were obligated to buy more.  The end result is, particularly with the 1e version, you _either_ had a small selection of decent powers (smaller than you could fit in a Multipower, in most cases I remember) _or_ you had that terrifying container load of really useless special-circumstance power ("Boy, just _wait_ until that 2d6 Energy Blast is the perfect thing to save the day!").
 
What killed EC wasn't EC: it was the way the game has changed, particularly the "free" points going through the roof and the required Disadplications threshold getting lower and lower.  The fact that to build a seriously powerful one required a buttload of Disadvantages to buy is no longer an issue: _No one_ has to buy a buttload of Disadvantages any more.  No one has to _grow_ a character; they can buy it fully-formed and toss on three Disads to buy some skills and a car.
 
 
And one final thought, going to the "it was so unfair because they got that -1/2 on three whole powers just because they were playing a theme character; what a rip!" mindset:
 
The single, most wonderful thing about EC was _not_ that.  It was that they could use those three powers (or four, possibly five if they were homeless and unemployable) at full value, all the time (assuming END is covered).  _That_ was the wonderful thing.
 
The other "points saving for no real reason" option was Multipower.
 
Multipower and its endless sliding of weights and counterweights to keep a scale balanced.  Every other Phase, six people barking "I make adjustment x to my multipower!" and the GM keeping track of all of it, segment by segment, checking and rechecking to make sure no one screwed up or, if you had your own Davien, that no one was blatantly cheating....
 
You could turn a thirty-minute combat into an entire game session, easily.
 
I'd give Superman an EC bonus for his Super-ventriloquism if it made that crap stop.
 
Anyway, I'm not here to change anyone's mind (which is _good_!  We all know that only works on non-Americans anyway     ).  I've just kept schtum  during all the complaints for decades, and I had to get that off my chest.
 
Just remember that any "horror" you can do with Elemental Control can be done at least two other ways: you _cannot_ accept that "there is more than one way to do anything with HERO!" without accepting that, too.
 
 
Peace, my friends!
 

 
 
 
 
 

Nah;
 
from what I understand, that's pretty typical, and has been since at least 4e.  I'm not sure why, given the generally-accepted "Elemental Control is such a massive give-away" line of thought.  Add in the "You should do everything you can to optimize your build" line of thought, and you'd think there'd be nothing but characters with most massive give-aways they can find.  And movements with odd-numbered inches.
 
 

I think there's a certain playstyle that old school Champions assumed you would use, and ECs fit pretty well into that.  The Human Torch would often have his fire extinguished during a battle, and when that happened he was basically out of the fight.  He probably had an Elemental Control with a "not in vacuum/water" limitation on it, and a Vulnerability to wind/vacuum/water" attacks.  So Dr Doom can whip up a 6D6 Ranged Drain with his gadget pool, defined as a "wind cannon" and knock out most of Johnny's powers with one shot.  But Doom would then write Johnny off as inconsequential and turn his attention to other characters.  He wouldn't fire up his RKA and blow a hole in Johnny's torso.
 
The game kind of assumed that players and GMs both understood this.  In old school comics, characters might have their powers deactivated fairly frequently, but they didn't get murdered when it happened.  In game, it's a good excuse to take a character off the board when a player has to leave early, or you need to move on to the next plot point.  Something happens and Batman wakes up without his utility belt, Superman finds he's in a room with red sun radiation emitters, the Human Torch got hit with a vacuum blaster and he's still recovering.  But then the characters escape and their powers come back.  It's not a "game over" scenario.
 
In my experience, there's another factor as well when it comes to ECs.  Unlike normal limitations, Elemental Controls push characters to have similarly priced powers, which alters the optimum build (sometimes in positive ways).  For instance, an energy projector character might normally want 13" of Flight, an 18/18 Force Field, and a 12D6 Energy Blast.  For the sake of argument, let's just pretend that those are the most efficient purchases for the character.  That's a 26 point power, a 36 point power, and a 60 point power.  Now he can save points by purchasing a 13 point EC (saving a total of 26 points on the 3 powers).  But the structure of ECs means it may be in his best interest to bump up his Flight to 18", so he can have an 18 point EC (in fact if those are the only 3 powers, it's definitely in his best interest, because the cost remains the exact same).  If you really look at trying to maximize your points, you're going to wind up with a different construct than you would otherwise.  An EC character is not going to look like a brick, and is not going to look like a multipower character.

Technically that is a true statement...

There are enough Harry Potter fans around why has the name Dolores Umbridge not come up ?
 
But looking up annoying characters I think I may have a winner.
Ladies, Gentlemen,Others
 
Scrappy Doo

Sisko got in a couple of good shots in the episode Duet where he and Dukat were marooned on an asteroid and Dukat was talking to the voices in his head.  As well as their fight at the end of the final episode What You Leave Behind.  But I agree he never got the full on ass kicking he deserved.   
   It was a good character arc overall.  Well written and wonderfully acted by Marc Alaimo.  Dukat swung back and forth from irredeemable villain to flawed hero and back again over the course of the series.

Suggestion from a friend - Gendo Ikari, father of Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 

It's not exactly the same, and it's a bit more work, but if you just liked the ebb and flow of EC, take a look at the Limitation: Unified Power.
 
Or do what I did and use EC anyway.
 
 

A law would be a good and righteous thing, but back in the Middle Ages it really only took the King or local lord saying “Do it.” and it got done.
  I’m just saying that we’re talking about three different things here.   First a set of laws that make sense to 20-21  century people.  Second, a discussion of the history of law during the Middle Ages. And third, an imagining of what legalities might exist in a Fantasy environment.
 This conversation keeps moving the goalposts.  Asking what the law would be if there were no PC’s there to enforce it is like asking who stopped the bandits from robbing the bank before John Wayne showed up.  The answer is...nobody. 
And if there are no PC’s to hear a tree fall in the forest does it really matter if it makes a sound?

This may sound like just a joke but seriously...
 Option 1)  The mage summons a creature from beyond and it obeys him.  Anybody trying to give him a ticket or take any other kind of legal action gets mind controlled, eaten or worse.  Any heroes defeating the creature are probably going to have to kill the mage as well.
Option 2)  The mage summons said creature and can’t control it.  What are you gonna do, arrest that greasy burnt up pile of half chewed on bones next to the pentagram?

I'm not a lawyer as such but I'll give a shot at it.
 
1) I think first you need to consider how harsh the proposed punishment is when compared to the punishment for breaking other laws.
 
Like in the real world, hunting large game like deer (as opposed to rabbit and squirrel) would give you a death sentence in most organized kingdoms. Out in the wilds in unclaimed land, sure hunt what you can get. But if there's a king and a lord, you'd be executed if you had deer meat in your larder or cookpot, a deer hide, or they found deer bones buried anywhere close enough to your home where they could possibly pin the crime on you.
 
And they generally weren't very picky about who they pinned poaching crimes to. It was more important to preserve the good hunting on the lord's land by intimidating the peasants into not poaching than it was to find exactly the right person to execute for poaching.
 
If you compared a year in prison for summoning a potentially deadly demon right into the middle of town vs dead for poaching a deer, a year in prison doesn't sound too intimidating (even if the prison conditions are dreadful and the scarce amount of food given to prisoners is almost inedible).
 
So is that the impression you're wanting to give to the summoners who might want to try their hand at demon-summoning? Or are you wanting the punishment to be really, really intimidating?
 
2) How much control do the magic-users have over themselves? In some fantasy literature magic systems, doing magic is like taking a drug. It's addictive and the more you do, the more you want to do.
 
If that's the case, then even a reasonable level of punishment might not be sufficient to deter people from attempting to summon demons.
 
3) How much benefit does the magic-user get from summoning a demon? If the demon can grant wishes, people would be more tempted than if a demon could just answer questions (my first wish is that I don't get prosecuted for summoning a demon). A demon who could go out and do something rather mundane like "slay your enemy" would fall somewhere between the extremes.
 
4) How much gold in your economic system is 100 gold pieces? I've seen campaign worlds where 100 gp could buy you half of a small village. And I've seen campaign worlds where 100 gp would pay your entry fee into the city, your first night of drinking, and your first night at the um...inn...but nothing else.
 
====
 
To sum it up, most feudal legal systems are very oppressive compared to what we're used to. My gut feeling is that a year isn't enough if you're accurately characterizing the magic as being demonstrably real and potent. Any half-way competent magician could set up some fall guy in advance so any investigations of catastrophic failures would find some patsy with a shed full of casting supplies and a mystic circle, inexpertly erased, sitting in the middle of his back yard.
 
And any half-way competent magician could probably elude the city guard long enough to make his escape even if the crime was traced back to him. And particularly if there's some demon rampaging through the city to distract local law enforcement.
 
So I'd guess that if you're wanting the limiting factor on magicians to be only the fact that they're intimidated by the laws of the local lord, you're going to have to have laws which are more intimidating.
 
If the city has other things going for it, maybe not. The city rests on ley lines which gives a magician who lives there extra power, that's enough for them to not want to leave town and to abide by the rules. The city has a brisk trade in magical artifacts from far and wide which aren't easily available elsewhere: avoiding risky summons in order to get access to that is entirely reasonable. The city's mage guild doesn't want the local lord upset so anyone who flees town a step ahead of the law is going to find himself hunted down by more competent mages than himself, sure.

The book offers them as options but does not require you to buy a separate transform for all three to do a total transform of someone.
 
Clearly, transforming someone's mind instead of all of their being with a "total" transform ought to be a limitation, not a required extra cost.

I don't believe in Spiritual Transform.  That's just special effects.  There are no game rules for spirits (except for 4th edition in Hero Almanac 2, I believe), so there's nothing to Transform.

Is it just me, that since Spiritual Transform was added, Transform got more confusing?

In honor of the day, it is also time to remember that every year Santa penetrates the defenses of Apokolips to deliver Darkseid a lump of coal.

Every year.  Darkseid has rivals, and has betters.
 
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FVXCQBs2iUU/TNpu07Bj9zI/AAAAAAAAE_g/a8ePJt-LKXk/s1600/darkseid.jpg

Thanks for that, Scott.
 
The rep cannon has run out, but I'll get back to tag you for that.
 
As I have been periodically accused of Steve-bashing (fortunately, not by anyone who is still regular on this board), I _always_ feel obligated to preface this sentiment with "I am not Steve-Bashing."---
 
I have no way to prove this unless someone wants to track down my players, but as a direct sign of appreciation for his efforts to keep things alive, every other throw-away character (you know: that guy who yells "they went that-a-way!" or the like) is, if asked, named some variation of Steve.  Drove a few players batty until they just kind of fell into the groove).  Anyway---
 
This is not Steve-Bashing.
 
I agree with you regarding 'the skills problem.'  I say "problem" because, as you note, it's not particularly true to the comic book material, and given the fact that a in a supers game, characters pay points for _everything_, and tend to have many more "things" and at higher levels, it makes it extremely expensive to build that super-skilled person, be it super-scientist like Reed Richards or that multi-talented Batman homage  (I know this isn't popular, but "skills pools" make me break out in nervous tics and are generally disallowed in my games.  They give me the same sort of ire as the story Chris Goodwin told of the guy who turned in a character sheet with "Standard Disadvantages" written on it.)
 
Yes; there's a book about Skills.  Yes; there's lots of ways to do it.  When we are playing Supers, I still do the old school "Science 14-" and trust the players to determine if the needs of the moment match their characters' backgrounds- i.e., "Is this the sort of science my character might know?"  For Heroic stuff, we get more and more specific, depending on the flavor of the game.  Frankly, I wish there had been some discussion (and examples) of doing this in the core rules-- not add-on books, but the core rules.  Even just two paragraphs would open a world of possibilities for players so that they can have that "okay; this system doesn't _have_ to be this complex if I don't want it to be" moment before they start adding up points.
 
 

I built an Invisible Woman character once, and played her in a short-lived campaign (lasted maybe 5 or 6 sessions).  I decided to try something along these lines.  In a 350 point campaign where most people were throwing 13 or 14D6 attacks, with 30+ Defense, I had something like an 8D6 Invisible to Sight Energy Blast (force ball) and 9 PD and ED with 2 levels of Combat Luck (15/15 total).  But she could turn invisible, she could turn other people invisible, she could suppress the invisibility of others (this never came up), and she could turn normal objects invisible (like walls).  She also had an 18/18 Force Wall that was invisible to sight.
 
The problem with the character is that it was a huge pain in the ass for everybody.  If an enemy had the right powers, they could spot me easily.  I could still put up a Force Wall, but I was way weaker than the rest of the group and the enemies we fought.  I couldn't really hurt anyone tougher than an agent with my force blast, unless I caught them by surprise (as in out of combat) to get x2 Stun.  I wasn't a combat monster by any means.  But if nobody in the other group had enhanced senses, I could do whatever I wanted.  Nobody would target me.  People would run face first into invisible walls.  I could disarm somebody and turn their focus invisible so they couldn't find it.  
 
It was really frustrating for the GM, and the other players, because I couldn't contribute to the fight in normal ways, so the traditional ways of balancing combat didn't work.  I was either mostly useless (if people had other senses), or could be overwhelmingly powerful (if I decided to make our whole team invisible).  Mostly I just chose to harass the villains and tried to think of new and creative ways to use my very non-offensive powers.  The problem with making a character who can only beat up agents is that the rest of the characters in the game aren't set up for that.  If your GM doesn't feed you a steady supply of agents, you don't have anything to do.  Characters that break too heavily from the traditional mold end up being a big pain in the butt to the GM, because he has to go out of his way to make the game fit your character.

I built an Invisible Woman character once, and played her in a short-lived campaign (lasted maybe 5 or 6 sessions).  I decided to try something along these lines.  In a 350 point campaign where most people were throwing 13 or 14D6 attacks, with 30+ Defense, I had something like an 8D6 Invisible to Sight Energy Blast (force ball) and 9 PD and ED with 2 levels of Combat Luck (15/15 total).  But she could turn invisible, she could turn other people invisible, she could suppress the invisibility of others (this never came up), and she could turn normal objects invisible (like walls).  She also had an 18/18 Force Wall that was invisible to sight.
 
The problem with the character is that it was a huge pain in the ass for everybody.  If an enemy had the right powers, they could spot me easily.  I could still put up a Force Wall, but I was way weaker than the rest of the group and the enemies we fought.  I couldn't really hurt anyone tougher than an agent with my force blast, unless I caught them by surprise (as in out of combat) to get x2 Stun.  I wasn't a combat monster by any means.  But if nobody in the other group had enhanced senses, I could do whatever I wanted.  Nobody would target me.  People would run face first into invisible walls.  I could disarm somebody and turn their focus invisible so they couldn't find it.  
 
It was really frustrating for the GM, and the other players, because I couldn't contribute to the fight in normal ways, so the traditional ways of balancing combat didn't work.  I was either mostly useless (if people had other senses), or could be overwhelmingly powerful (if I decided to make our whole team invisible).  Mostly I just chose to harass the villains and tried to think of new and creative ways to use my very non-offensive powers.  The problem with making a character who can only beat up agents is that the rest of the characters in the game aren't set up for that.  If your GM doesn't feed you a steady supply of agents, you don't have anything to do.  Characters that break too heavily from the traditional mold end up being a big pain in the butt to the GM, because he has to go out of his way to make the game fit your character.

Every. Single. Time.
 
And you're right, it is a personality problem.  My point is, some people will complain about everything.  You can't make them happy.  At the beginning of this thread, there were comments about buying an 18 Dex instead of a 17.  If that's someone's measure for powergaming, then there's no solution.

The only reason to have points in the game is because they are supposed to help balance characters.  Two different 250 point characters should be roughly equivalent to one another.  My 60 points of Energy Blast should be about as powerful/useful as your 60 points of Transform.  That's what points are for.
 
Now, when it comes to building characters, obviously there are more efficient ways to spend points than others.  A guy who buys a 12D6 Energy Blast is going to be more efficient than a guy who buys 4 separate 15 point ranged attacks (1D6 RKA, 3D6 EB, 1D6 ranged Drain, 3D6 Suppress).  That's just how the game works.  The only way the game will be balanced is if players make an attempt to build efficiently.  You can always build less efficiently, but aiming for characteristic break points and things like that will tend to top you out.  Players need to aim for the most efficient paths for their characters, otherwise what's the point of points?

No
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary concurs