tesuji

Re: Perks and negative cost

Re: Perks and negative cost

Re: Perks and negative cost since some people have issues with subtraction. then no. Lets rephrase it as "base points are permitted to be negative or zero". I have NOT read over the vehicle rules or the follower rules in as much detail, but i do not have an inherent problem with saying "and this applies to computers as well I reckon, as a general rule "if the cost is calculated by a subsystem (like the base and vehicle etc) and the result could be a negative number, then you do not throw the system out and just assign a default value. You can keep the negative value with gm's permission. This would allow a follower to potentially be a "negative pt character" just like "gimpy leg" can be either a phys lim for disad pts, a sellback on running/dex or even all three. I do not see NECESSARILY and AUTOMATICALLY true that "i have 2 cp more to spend because my "follower" is hunted by the law and as a problem drinker doesn't stay hidden" is more abusive than "i have 2 cp to spend because i have 5" of running instead of 6" running" so that we cannot allow the former "with gm permission". Do you?

Re: Perks and negative cost simply put - i want the rules changed so that "with gm's permission" expressly stated a gm can allow a base with "more or equal disads points" than "points use to build the base" to have a base cost of "zero or a negative number" and if negative it is scored as a negative cost, like a sellback. So if my character with 200 pts plus 150 disads also had a base with 16 cp of goodness but 25 cp of disads then that base would be scored as a -2 cp item and he would now have 352 cp of stuff to spend. Now, others have mentioned - possibly as a general rules base and vehicle disads should count against the "total disads" for the character? Sure no problem, but for "positive bases" and "negative bases". my underlying point is "the construction rules dont break down and need to be be thrown away solely because the final value isn't >0" and while they have problems the notion that "not all bases aren't +1 or more" isn't a significant one.

Re: Perks and negative cost and the part of that I am questioning is the bolded portion. No, i am not saying that the rule isn't such and such in the raw now, but that that rule (the not below 0 part) is not needed as a hard and fast rule and should be "with gm permission". Again GA i ask "how do you build bases? How do you cost out bases? When a player says "my base had 75 pts of goodies and 25 pts of disads" how do you figure out what he should pay? Now my guess is you take the goodies minus the dsiads to arriveat 50/5. Am i wrong? How do you stat out a base? Do you decide "it should have these things and they cost abc." then you decide "it has these bad things"(the disads) and get their cost XYZ. then to choose what you pay you take abc and subtract xyz to get the base pts then divy by 6? am i right? Maybe i am wrong? maybe you pick BASE PTS FIRST then let that drive "what it has" and "what problems it has" so everything balances out, which is letting COST drive CONCEPT but to me thats putting cart before horse. Most hero proponents tend to put forth the notion that you use hero to build from concept, letting the system determine cost after you have determined the content of the elemtn, not the other way around. But maybe thats not the way you do it. But the point is either way, i dont have an issue with "do you add disads " vs "do you subtract disads" but with whether or not the BASE POINTS part of that equation can be 0 or negative. I dont see a fundamental flaw in saying: If "the base points are 3 and the disad points are 25 your base can have 28 cp of base stuff" is true then "the base points are -9 and the disad points are 25 then your base can have 16 cp of stuff" is also true. Its not addition vs subtraction, which you seem really hung up on, its the "but not below 0". As for the hero impact between the two, it really comes down to how important to balance or what have you you feel "total cp the character is built on" is to the game. For me, i feel "total cp the character is built on" when we are talking values of less than around 5-10% is practically meaningless. heck, look i am talking about 1-2 cp in my examples... a "352 cp" character vs a "350 cp" character, and thats a difference which IMX games using anything but a rigid fixed xp system run into almost immediately. In past games i have for instance given xp awards for "good roleplaying" and that amounted to even as much as a 10 pt skew between pcs in a 350 pt game over the first year yet the games played out fine over a thre year run. having one player with 150 cp of playable enforceable disads and 350 cp total and another player with 352 cp of goodies and 150 cp of disads has not proven to be noticeable at all, so i cannot imagine that having another character with 352 cp of goodies and 175 cp of disads is somehow going to be "abusive" in his favor. To be very very clear- I do not see "i have 2 more cp to spend because i have additional disads of "my base is watched by gummint" and "dnpc brother at base" causing me problems" (CURRENTLY ILLEGAL) is "getting away with anything" compared to "i have 2 more cp to spend because I have 5" of running, not 6" running" (CURRENTLY LEGAL.) if you do see the former as more abusive than the latter, that it will provide more benefits than the latter, then we just have very different games. I know as gm I would get a lot more play and more problems for the player from those two disads than i would from the 1" less running on character's who likely fly or teleport. I also know that SHOULD the dnpc or the watched start getting to be NOT A PROBLEM, especially if by character choice, then I am justified in telling the player "those disads aren't being played so buy them off" whereas i have never said "well you fly all the time so buy your running back." given the latter is "perfectly fine" as in not requiring GM permission expressly (beyond the basic overarching "gm must approve everything") I dont see the ruckus over adding "with gm permission" to the former. ymmv

Re: Perks and negative cost thanks for the frield ypost. I especially liked the "babble" jest. It was a hoot. just covering the basics here tho... I KNOW the rule expresly forbids getting any points back from a base. Its that very rule, no negative costing bases, that i am questioning. So repeating that the rule says no negatives not ever doesn't really, IMO, say much of anything. As for disads and bad times, you should be aware that while a lot of the detractors to my suggestion (which is to make negative bases and 0 pt bases legal "with gm permission") have thrown example after example of non-useful disads or non-problem disads or "hundreds of points of disads" I have been steadfast from day one in sticking to the position that i am expressly talking about useful, meaningful, enforceable gm approved disads which do have an impact. So, for both of these "points", I got them from the beginning and have expressed them repeatedly so i am curious as to how there is any questions about whether or not i get them, which is of course way different from agreeing with them (in the case of the no neg rule.) So we agree perhaps more than you suspected.

Re: Perks and negative cost i type fast and very sloppily and i was "taught" that e-mail and such are "informal" communication and not required to be as properly formatted as a standard letter - so - it boils down to -i really dont give a hoot.

Re: Perks and negative cost I am not sure based on what my feeble brain is recollecting of his posts over on rpg net where i think he said takinh base as a disad is ok in his book. my brain is recalling him citing a "pos car" as one of his previous dnpcs but, so many quotes from so many neg-base adversaries... cannot be sure. me too. which is why i am baffled taking a crappier home cannot be a sellback, just like having only 5" running is handled as a sellback. but for you - how would you handle it if i wanted a regular home with a computer lab in the spare office? Nothing earth shattering but a comp 12- lab over in the spare room, maybe a electronics lab in the basement. thats hardly worthy of being called a "base" more like a house with spare rooms and some gadgets. given you require really special stuff to be a base, what do you require then? to me, base has no meaning within game. a base requires little more than you having access to and some degree of control over the area. So your regular house can be a base. so could a large tractor trailer that doesn't work parked in a lot. "base" simplymeans you detail its size, specifics and contents using the base rules. its a game element, like a multipower or an elemental control used to detail non-moving "enclosed spaces - and even that is suspect as a hard limit. So when i see "crappy house" i think "cheap base" if it has anything worth detailing at all. moving it to disads moves it into "no more detailed than frequency and severity" and thats little fun when talking about "my stuff". saying "its always worth at least 1 cp" is gipping the guy with the crappy base.

Re: Perks and negative cost if you prefer the term "reduce the cost of a base" to "sybtract from the cost of the base" then by all means use that. What i am asking for, in effect, is the ability to choose a NEGATIVE COST or ZERO cost for my base and then add disadvanateg points to it, as opposed to chosing only a positive cost for my base and then adding disadvantages to it. is that a happier statement? or right now you could buy it to a cost os 1 single point and do all the same things. Assuming the gm approves the disads of course. After you build this armor with tons of stuff and tons of disads for the lousy 1 cp, with all those disads... down to 1 cp legal easy peasy... and thats all fine and good... why does it suddenly become abusive and silly and stupid gamesmanship munchkinny to take that same suit of armor, remove 10 CP OF USEFUL STUFF and lower its cost to -1 cp? it would seem to me the abusive part, if there was one, was taking all those disads more and over what everone else took. i really find it amazing how many people apparently play in gmless games where anything not expressly forbidden is permitted. which matters in what concievable way? as a gm you can just give villains whatever you want, limited only by your goals as gm. but lets say it does matter in some whacky world... how much better is it to give as gm the same thing but have it cost the character 1 cp because you only gave the villain 495 pts of disads? Really - serious question? If the villain with a 500 pt base and 495 disads is fine and dandy, what 5 cp disad did you take away that took him from 500 to 795 that was so game saving? Look, the beef you should have in your examples is "the base has 500 cp of stuff and 495 pts of disads only cost 1 cp" and not "the base has 500 cp of stuff and 500 cp of disads and costs nothing." Allow twenty of these battlesuits with variety of disads and such at 1 cp each is NOT GOING TO TURN OUT ANY BETTER than allowing twenty of them at 0 cp or -1 cp. To solve that dilemma, one needs to focus on "is this disad a problem?" and deal with it that way, not by getting all worked up over whether its 1 cp or -1 cp. Thats what boggles me as to where people's ire is focused.

Re: Perks and negative cost So from this i suppose you would object to the notion that a base can be taken as a disadvantage along the lines of "dnpc with useful skills"? That you would object to having that played in your games? would object to the "pos car" i think ga suggested as a dnpc? Other than SFX what is the practical difference between "i have to go fix my base again" and "i have to go help my unemployeed brother again"? this remains baffling to me. Why it is fine and dandy for me to take 50 cp of disads on my base which costs 51 cp is a fine and dandy application of disads but having the same disads on a slightly cheaper base is a problem? I tend to find "getting more for no extra" as a problem, as opposed to "getting less and paying less" being a probl;em. all disadvantages taken are from the perspective of "problems for the character." The BASE doesn't have problems, but the base can be problematic for the character. and again the very disads i used like unemployeed brother are taken directly from the raw now. Its the initial disad iirc listed for bases, taken as written, so i dont think my choice was a bad one. the dnpc brother at the base is a problem for the character, not for the base, because the base is not playing. it buys 50 cp of stuff, minus the actual base walls and such. the fact that that 50 cp of stuff then gets its cost divy by 5 is not going to affect that. dnpc with useful skills ~ crappy base with some traits other than one breathes and one poops and the other doesn't, whats the diff? why can people be positive cost, zero cost, or even a disad but a base cannot? what about androids? they are not alive so can they not be dnpcs? what about a dnpc android who happens to be shaped like a base? can he be a dnpc? "bases must have positive value and cannot be disads" but "people can be either" sounds an awful lot like "coding sfx into rules" to me. :-) well do understand that what i am proposing is to add "except with gms permission" to the rule saying "every base must have a positive cost, to enable gms to make that call in their games just as readily as they can make the call WITHIN THE RAW NOW to allow a multiform of 400 cp in a 350 cp game.

Re: Perks and negative cost no and i dont think they compare. if you want a comparison - Using total real cost for s slot for what can go into a multipower makes as little sense as... letting total real cp cost for a character be a hard limit on what you can bring into the game. because in both cases total real cp is a poor judge of "appropriate" and "balanced" however it seems round here that having total cp for "what character i can bring in" as a hard cap, minimum requirement you cannot exceed that by 1 and be allowed, is very fondly recieved. .

Re: Perks and negative cost . unless its a net negarive influence in which case you might take it as a dnpc with useful skills. you just have to pay points for it if you want to detail it out and price it using the base rules. of course, the rule that a base cannot be worth negatice points is the very rule i am questioning. so say the raw. yes but the notion of "he spent 200 points of disads while everyone else spent 150" and this is a problem" doesn't appear only when the base has five labs and a net negative cost estimate as oppposed to when it has eight labs and a slight positive cost. in my favorite champions campaign the sorcerer asked about creating an exdim base for the team and i allowed it. when asked "how much" i said you can get it for free if you want." they took the bait. problem with extra dimensional bases is when the neighbors drop by unexpectedly. those homeownder coalition meetings are tough too. then they started asking about "wards" so the base wasnt as easy to find by whatever extradim baddie swept by... "that will cost cp - how big is your base again?" such fun - those were the days - the obviously game breaking criminal and just plain foolish days (or so some seem to think) but they were so much fun. :-)

Re: Perks and negative cost I agree completely... I just fail to see the difference in "extra disads over the rest of the players" as a problem if the base is negative as opposed to the same thing happening if the base is a positive score. if people were sayng "hey in a related issue, people should not get points for base disads abov the max disads when tallied with the pc disads whether positive or negative" i could buy it.

Re: Perks and negative cost . We disagree here. Which is fine of course. If a player bought a basically empty shed and tried to take "vulnerable to fire" as a disad I would disallow the disad because NO DISADVANTAGE is suffered by the loss of the base, so the vulnerability is worth 0 pts. In order for a disadvantage to be worth points it has to have a meaningful negative impact in play and the empty base you describe does not. On the other hand, if that disad was applied to a base with lotsa useful stuff in it, so that the base being attacked caused loss of stuff, then that would be a valid disad. Finally, even if the gm feels constrained to allow a base to get points, even an empty one, Once the base is destroyed then the vulnerability obviously isn't an issue anymore and like all disads that become no longer valid, he has to buy off the disad. I wouldn't wait that long however. Well DNPC brother is the disad listed under bases as an example. So i didn't think it was controversial. If the DNPC isn't an issue because the character chooses not to use him, then what does a Gm do? tough question? Haven't a clue? This has probably never come up before this rule. maybe I would, i dont know... maybe perhaps... make him buy off the disad if he chooses to ignore it. maybe we should add that to the rulebook somewhere. Why does it seem like everyone is assuming all the normal guidelines for handling disads and what happens if the disad isn't relevent vanish and no longer apply when we talk about negative bases? yes absolutely - thats what I thought immobile was for -1 more off because you have to go to it. the oaf ring of stones is not as useful as the oaf healing belt which is why its 50 cp vs 75 cp. but i dont get the 50 cp vs 10 cp point difference for "i have to go to the park" vs "i have to go to my base". thats not a minor pt total. OK here is what gets me. No one seems to be griping about the following. I have a 350 game. I spent 200 base pts and took 15 in disads for 350 i have 349 cp of good stuff spent plus 2 cp on a base. On the bae i have an additional 50 cp of disads allowng 60 cp my base has size 5 for 10 cp my base has the 50 cp autodoc my base has 1 lab for 3 cp in the above book legal example i have taken an "additional 50 cp of disads over the normal limit and no one gripes. Now buy the same base for 0 cp without the lab or for -1 cp by buying it size 8 without the lab and what happens? suddenly 'you are getting more disads than others are and are effectively getting more cp from them... thats a no no" is an issue. I could understand it if everyone thought "base disads should be counted against the total disads" WHETHER THE BASE WAS POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE but they aren't. its a problem because "negative bases are bad" it seems woefully inconsistent to worry over "extra disads" on bases IF they have anegative score but to be fine with them as long as the base has a positiv4 score. It would be a much different discussion if, before people throw a what if at "bases with negative score" the first asked "is this any different from bases with a positive score?"

Re: Assorted Characters from Susano a critique... 13 Body Of Solid Gold: Physical Damage Reduction, 50%; STUN Only (-1/2) 30 Gold Reflects Electromagnetic Radiation: Energy Damage Reduction, Resistant, 50% 7 Gold Is An Excellent Conductor: Energy Damage Reduction, Resistant, +25% (total of 75%); Only Works Against Electrical Attacks (-1) normally going from 50% energy dam red to 755 dam red is 30 cp right? so the value of the "gold is excellent conductor should be 15 cp, 30 ap with -1 for electric only.

Re: Help Make Energy Projectors Interesting my latest tendency for chargen is to do the following... build the pc on 50 pts less... say 350 cp i build him on 300. thats the meaty stuff, the basic skills and the big three offense defense and movement. then i sit back for a bit and think "whats a unique trait he can have that hardly anyone else has?" this might be offensive but it may not but it should be something that makes him special. they also dont have to tie in directly with his other powers. a brick might be a gadgeteer and thus have some bonus int and skills and a vpp for gadgets. a brick might have a magical amulet with some precongitive abilities - bought as luck and danger sense and even some very limited precog an ep might be able to turn into puure energy, with effort,gaining a desolid form and some really swift travel options an ep might wear a mental protection helment providing mental defense out the wazoo as well as possibly a mental damage shield as it feeds back on the mentalists attacking a battlesuit guy might be a mentalist underneath with either weak psychic powers or very taxing psychic powers. an ep might have "healing", really good healing, that he can use to do things like cure diseases and the like, which while not necessarily useful in terms of combat (make it gradual effect) should have a really big impact in terms of character stuff. "can you heal my sick mom" if i spend all my points on "basic character stuff" i find too much is bland in terms of uniqueness. so i set aside some points for a potent impacting but restrictive use power set to help make me unique. think of it this way "is this a power some master villain would go to the trouble to kidnap your mother to get you to use it for him?" if the answer is "nah he can just get it elsewhere?" then try again.

Re: Perks and negative cost . if the disadvantage isnt going to matter in play... i think there is a rule for that. something about "if a disadvantage doesnt limit the character then..." the gm is supposed to do something then... what? oh yeah, dont allow it or have it be worth no points. nowhere in my rule am i changing that. for example, in a non-magic world a gm would not allow "doesn't work vs magic" to be worth points. Similarly, a gm should NOT allow, its pretty obvious, points back for a base that losing has no effect on. this isnt' rocket science. IF THE DISAD WONT BE A FACTOR IN PLAY DONT GIVE THEM POINTS FOR IT! if circumstance lead to the disad no longer being valid in play, the pc must buy off the disad. all normal hero think. see above. if the disad is not having an effect in play due to player choices, he must buy it off. or are you suggesting - we should ban DNPCs because a player could decide to ignore it and leave it alone and thus get those points for free? How is this different from doing the same thing with a positive score base? take character 1 - he buys a crappy little base with three labs and dnpc and watched for net value of -2 cp (after divy by 5) he spends "in a 350 game" 352 points to buy good stuff. take character 2 he buys the same crappy base but puts a 10d6 healing autodoc in it for 10 cp costing him a total of 8 cp. he spends 340 pts on "other good stuff" character 1 is evil personified because he has a negative pt base and 2 cp more than everyone else. character 2 is fine and hunky dorey because his base is a positive value and he has the same points, plus of course the 10d6 healing trough in his basement. seems to me that player 2 got a lot more "more than everyone else" because of his base. its fine and dandy in the rules to be built on more disads than everyone else... as long as the base is positive in value... by the raw. imx such as it is, its more important to decide where it wtops becoming useful to the game. Can i enforce this disad so that ts worth its points is to me a much more important question than "is this total positive or negative". To be specific... i dont find "a base with three labs with watched and dnpc brother" to be BAD IF I find "this base has three labs, a healing trough, a dnpc and watched" GOOD. matter of fact, i find the latter by the raw much more of a problem.

Re: Aid as a weapon yup if the idea is "they cannot use their powers" then a drain suppress or mind control is also needed. if its just "your flight goes awry" but still "you can use your flight during your phase" thats one thing.

Re: Perks and negative cost yes i know those were two examples to setup the question of "how important is what you call the character. arguable - everyone starts in most games with default wealth levels which may or may not include a dwelling. your dwelling can be a base. it might be a relatively worthless one, hence the lack of a point cost. NO!!! Would that GM allow the character to start with such an obviously abusive set of things in a normal game if he had written all those disads in the disad side? no? then why do you assume the gm is unable to recognize the imbalance now? is the gm permitted to exclude and refuse any disad as inappropriate on any character? yes? then why not here? nothing in the rule i propose says "unlike every other disad the gm cannot refuse this for any character or any game" nothing in the rule says "the gm must turn off his brain for this item" practically everyone here has said "man i dont like negatives and they shout "abusive" to me on sight. so i do not understand where the presumption that gms will let these slip thru is coming from. "leery of" usually results in "subject to more scrutiny" not "less scrutiny" so i dont see this as more abusive. i mean, do you think gms see stop signs and caution signs on powers and then think "i should let this thru without checking"? amazingly, having gmed since 1981, i actually found out what house rules mean some time ago. yes that is the raw. hence my asking about "what if a gm said..." again, hard as this may be to get, nothing in this rule says the gm cannot examine the character and refuse anything he doesn't like or finds abusive. what it does say is "we dont declare this abusive and illegal because the point total is less than 1. Even if it is negative, we leave it to the gm to determine whether or not it is appropriate." i dont see if the game allows a gm to decide "a 400 pt multiform is ok for my 350 cp game" why it should be illegal for the gm to decide "this base values at -2 cp and thats an appropriate value". the player submits the character to the gm for approval. the gm approves the character or not. its up to the GM to decide, possibly along with the players, whether or not the spirit of his conditions are being broken, not the rules. IMO. FRED will find me saying no to what you describe, if its abusive. he may not like that. Or if i dont find it abusive, he may well find those disads play a role and he has suitable problems for them. I hope he likes that just fine. but if i do my job just like every other time i gm, fred will be happy with the points he gains, unsatisfied with the disads that keep hindering him, and having fun all at the same time, justl like everyone else is with their disads. i dont see this making my life harder in that regard. But you know what really gets me lately - people are now harping on "but he gets more points from disads than the others do." well, by the rules as written thats already true. my character can have 150 pts of disads now with an addition 50 cp from disads for my base and another 50 cp of disad from my vehicle and another 50 cp of disads for my boat... each of which has equipment bought at 1/5th normal cost. as long as i make sure the total for each vehicle is at least 51 cp internally, 1 cp each, people seem fine with it. when i say "well if he removes stuff it should cost less" then its abusive? See they think a crappy base with "three 3 pt labs" and a dnpc brother and watched by the gummint at -2 cp is bad, or just draw any of the negatives mentioned already. but add a healing chamber to the base at 1/5th normal cost so it reaches a positive score (2d6 healing bought to per turn and 0 end oaf immobile for like 23 cp ) nets you that new base for 2 cp total and everyone is fine with it. buy more stuff at 1/5 cost until you get to positive 1 and suddenly everyone is fine with "but he has extra disads scored at 1/5 cost." while i argue that whether "he has more disads than 150" ought to not be dependent on "how many labs did he get with them"! I could see someone arguing that "disads for bases/vehicles should be taken within the limits of total character disads otherwise they allow the character to have more stuff than others" but arguing "the raw are ok and its wrong to allow more cp in disads than other people have IF the total is negative for the base/vehicle/follower."

Re: Perks and negative cost thank you for the "not a munchkin" btw. but this point here about the "unless you spend a point" is as far as i can tell, and even from ga and ln perspective i think just plain wrong. haven't we all agreed that you CAN have a crappy base as a disad. this works along the same lines as a DNPC with useful traits. Like the crappy pos car? So i can get a base as a disad never spending a point but like the dnpc with some useful skills. I just cannot write it up and have it valued at 1/5 its actual score. i have to instead move it over and reference it as a disad liklely at a higher net gain in cp with less detailed accounting. this bugs me like WEALTH does. Whats my beef with wealth? every character starts at an assumed WEALTH score for free of IIRC whatever the gm defines as normal for the campaign, a productive job with some form of home and transport etc. from there if you wanna be rich you buy up wealth using cp. but if you wanna be poor, you cannot sell back the wealth, instead you take a disad. like you point out, everyone starts with 12 cp of running and can sell it back, not as a disad but for negative cp. this is in addition to possibly taking a disad for limp or what have you if thats appropriate. and yeah, I know negative points raise gm hackles a lot, as others have said, but to me, call me crazy, its not the obvious "these things deserve looking at" things that cause trouble... because people do look them over carefully. there are a lot more potent discrepancies where people can milk for points than "my base got me three more cp with a big red flag saying look at me on it" does - like "my circle of stones in the park costs me 50 cp but if i have it in my BASEment or GAZEBO BASE its only 10 cp."

Re: Aid as a weapon well color me traditional but... if i want to cause a lamppost to start shooting out its electricity into the surrounding area i dont build a transform lamppost to shocking lamppost or a multiform lampost into hostile being power. i buy the EFFECT. so i would buy an rka electric aoe with a limitation for "must be centered around lamppost or other electrical source. So if i want to be able to have "fireguy's fire powers start erupting, i should buy a fire rka aoe with the lim "must hbe centered on a fireguy" buying "i change the mutant" is sidestepping the effect you wish to cause and buying the sfx. So i would suggest instead - you need a VPP for "mutant powers" you need a lim on the concost for "only for sfx of their powers run amok" and/or "requires a mutant source" you would need it to have "no control over what the powers change to" unless you can control the nature of the powers. This way when you fire it off on a target the exact power is up for grabs. you would likely need a "requires to hit roll vs initial source" but maybe not since most of the effects might already require it. likely need to choose the "change without phase or skill roll" as i dont think "no control over what" eliminates those requirements" then what happens is the powers in the pool would be whatever effect is needed - area attacks, movement uaa, force walls (as force fields expand), density uaa, etc all with uncontrolled usually possibbly with no end cost persistent and continuous. so the effect you buy is what happens. the "mutants powers run amok" is just the sfx getting you the rka or eb or "uaa flight out of control" etc.

Re: Perks and negative cost well, once again, i state for therecord i am talking about gm aapproved disads that are enforced in play. there is nothing in this change requiring the gm to remove himself from the "all disads have to be approved by the gm" process. he doesn't have to turn his brain off. really, he can still be a gm and still say no. no becaseu i am assuming the same competency in gming that exists with every other disadvantage. i understand the rationale. i disagree with it as a necessary limit. the reason to change it is for consistency so that "a base with ten labs at 3 cp each" costs 5 cp more than "a base with five 3 cp labs" every time, not just at certain combos of other stuff. the reason is to trust the math just as much when it comes out to be a net negative as when it becomes a positive. the reason is that its worthwhile for those who like me have players who understand algebra, which i assume most do, to be able to answer "if a+b - 3 is not to be trusted to equal c-3 then how can we trust it to say a+b=c" without having to invent "potential points" to support the raw.

Re: Perks and negative cost simple enough... one character has 350 pts of good stuff he bought with 150 cp of disadvantages. his buddy sitting beside him has 355 points of cool stuff with 150 pts of disadvantages and -5 points of base with its associated 25 cp of disadvantages, in other words he has 5 more cp to spend but suffers 25 cp more disads. i dont see that as an unfair disadvantage. would you consider mr 350 described above to have an unfair advantage over third guy who spent 325 pts having 200 base and 125 disads? he has a different total cp but because he has fewer disads. 25 cp more problems for 5 cp more goodies does not seem to be getting an unfair edge to me. as always, assumes the gm enforces the disads reasonably well and makes the player buy them off if they become negligable. would you consider a game where "you can have disads up to 100 at normal cost but you can have more disads up to 150 at 20% of value" to be tragcally broken? is hero so delicate that we absolutely need a hard fast rigid to the cp limit on pcs?

Re: Perks and negative cost

Re: Perks and negative cost again... pointing out "because the rules say so" is a rather unconvincing argument when its te rule that is being questioned. at least, to me. maybe not to some.