tesuji

Re: Same magic system, different problem topic. sorry, i saw you asking about costs and since cp and costs only really serve to compare between powers, i thought cost and such was part of the and again you are right, i misunderstood. i did not automatically assume every pc had the choice over what he did and how much, in downtime, made for them. i assumed their "what we work on during my summer vacation" would not be limited to "everyone works on spells." So i wondered about how you would account for the differing choices. but with no such differing choices, no problem. everyone will have more or less the same number of spells regardless and it all balances out. pk, have fun.

Re: Same magic system, different problem

Re: Same magic system, different problem RAW 60 ap and 60 rp vpp costs 60 (1x ap) + 30 (1/2x ap) both based on AP. the other rule runs the exact same cost but the formula becomes 1x RP for pool cost and 1/2x AP for control so a 75ap and 50 rp pool would have pool cost of 50 + 37 control (plus associated modifiers for instant change and such.) however, i think the rule was developed to do the reverse - allow larger real pt pools, like a 60 pt rp pool but limit the size of any given piece to only 15 ap.

Re: Same magic system, different problem i dont disagree and think it sounds like a good fit too. I was just throwing it in as an answer to why have lower pt spells, an easier skill roll to succeed. Which, to my way of thinking, makes "spells known" an even more important issue... one worthy of being "on the books" as opposed to being a role-playing handled function. the "cost" for a mage with "a selection of sp0ell including an offense or two, a defense and several movement power" which he can run all at once using "contining charges" ought to be much more than a similar mage who just has "an offense and a couple movement spells". The lack of defense will severly hinder the latter guy but he has no compensatingly lower cost. EXAMPLE: Two mage start out relatively equal. over 6 months of play, they gain 50 xp. mage 1 uses a lot of his time doing the rping stuff to gain new spells, at no xp cost, and during this time spends his xp on a variety of things like higher int and higher occult lore and maybe a magical item or two. mage 2 doesn't go in for much spell stuff but does spend his time doing socializing and making friends and such, improves his social skills with xp, buys new contacts, acquires wealth all of which cost xp. so now mage 1 has +50 xp of goodies AND new spells which were free, while mage 2 has +50 xp of goodies and, well, nothing else. playing in the same game, with similar performance, they now arrive at differeing levels of effectiveness in a complex point buy cost = effectiveness system. thats seems very counter productive. Which is why i dislike removing the cost for known spells. Ok so will rp focus in other areas also "earn you" bonuses in effectiveness that are accounted for "off the books". Take a mage a thief and a fighter who adventure together for six month. All gain some amount of xp and the mage spends his on stuff (new spells are free so stuff other than that.) The fighterspends his 50 xp on stuff. the thief spends his 50 xp on stuff. They all acquired some goodies in terms of items and friends etc... and on top of that the mage has, let speculate, taken his known spells from 10 to 30. What did the fighter do "off the books" that adds as much to him for free as this does to the mage? maybe its not 30 spells but maybe he went from a few fire spells to a force field and a flight spell and so now often, even usually, he enters combat with aerial capability and plate mail level defenses. What could ()and will) the fighter be doing while the mage "earns his new spells" so that his character remains comparable in effectiveness? Do you run adventures for the fighter and thief leaving the mage out "while he learns new spells" or are you giving the mage "downtime benefits" that accrue while the rest remain static? now one possibilty might well be to invent "downtime xp" where the fighter can "while the mage learns spells" rent himself out as a bodyguard and gets paid or the thief breaks into shops and steals stuff so that when the mage benefits from his "off the books" power up the others dont just have to be in stasis. the mage "earning" his off the books gains is fine as long as everyone else has a similar amount of "off the books learning opportunity but if it is one sided, it really kicks the balls out from under the whole cost = effectiveness reason behind doing the math entirely.

Re: Same magic system, different problem As a GM i would be very hesitant about that approach because it means that I have to be very careful along the way about making sure any new spell doesn't invalidate an old lim. For example - week one i put in spells with an olnly in graveyard requ based on the logic of "they cannot dial away the graveyard lim for "only in river" at a whim, but that means (since knowing more spells isn't a cost issue) i cannot a year later add in an equivalent spell which allows "only in river" or another which says "when not in graveyard") as in the apocraphal "only in darkness and only in day pairing. See it boils down to if i have a powe that cannot be used in X circumstanc but have for no extra cost equivalent powers (perhaps equivalent in effectiveness if not effect) that can be substituted instead, and easy change between, then the limitation is no longer limiting (or at least significantly less limiting.) since vpps allow change on circumstances and have not inherent cost for "how many effects you can choose between, thats the very reason why vpps have that extra issues with conditional lims. now this would change a lot IF the vpp were restricted in change such as "only change in lab" or takes a long time to change but even then things like "only works on tuesdays" can be problematic. agai8n tho, this is why i normally dont use vpps for fantasy spells. vpps have no built in automatic cost for "knows 10 spells" vs "knows 100 spells" and IMX in fantasy games "how many spell you know" is very important as a metric for effectiveness. of course, others prefer using vpps and inventing a new system to charge for "spells known".

Re: Extra Time or Gradual Effect for Growth? RAW i think Fitz is correct... however when i look at the values, i would side with the following - Gradual effect 1 turn is -1/4 extra time 1 turn is -3/4 after halving 1.25 and rounding in favor. thinking superheroes - in cases where there is little surprise, you will be able to change readily, no lim. In other situations with some surprise, a turn is usually a significant amount of time. If i went with say a semi brick with 30 str and 30 growth then his usefulness for the first turn is drastically lowered - 8d6 and 9d6 often do little in a 12d6 game - and combats lasting for more than 2 turns are imx rare making "losing a turn" or 3 of 4 phases is a very significant impact. When i compare this to say 14- act at -1/2 or 12- act at -3/4 i come down on the side of -3/4 (the extra time) being more in line with cost vs impact. As a rough analysis a character with -3/4 12- act will find in a two turn speed 4 combat he gets full power in six phases and (lets stick with the 6 and 6 d6 grow) nothing in 2 phases on average (technically he gets 6d6 on those two phases but thats not gonna matter much in a 12d6 game.) The same guy slowly growing has basically one 7d6 phase, one 9d6 phase, one 10d6 phase and one 11d6 phase then four 12d6 phases. Thats clearly worse than the act roll bu8t then its offset to a degree by the "if we have plenty of time i start at full strength" (though stunned/dispel can shut him down and start it all over.) So i still come down on actual impact is closer to -3/4 and at very least -1/2 instead of -1/4 as gradual effect. I think -1/4 is more RAW but i really think the difference in play between "takes 1 turn to grow" and "grow immediately" for a "typical supers combat game" (most fights 2 turns or less, frequent need to enlarge during combat rather than grown well before hand) makes it such that you wont see this taken ever at -1/4 by anyone having to pay cp - its just not effective or balanced. would you take "takes a turn to grow" at -1/4 for a character built on a budget? It would have to be a fairly odd game, featuring mostcombats as pre-planned or somehow extended long combats being very typical, for me to buy into that value being close.

Re: Magic System well for me i typically found the multipower pool to handle "learning spells" quite well for my purposes. The pool resevre represents a "how much magic can you maintain at once" and serves as the large initial investment cost. Limitations applied to this cost form the basis for the magic "style" since they apply everywhere. then there is a small cost for learning each spell due to slot costs - easy to add new spells since at 1/5 to 1/10 the xp price is there. no skill rolls or actions to change spells, just cast the new ones. I dont like going to vpp and then needing to add/invent a new mechanic for tracking "how many spells does he know". By using mp the slot costs automatically handle the notion that "a mage with 100 spells is better than one with 5" for me. I used the above system in several fh games and it seemed to do the trick. the downside is - with each spell only costing slot cost, the "pressure" to add spell restrictions beyond the "style" lims applied to the base pool is almost nil. So if the Gm doesn't require a suitable "flavor" level of lims on the style, people will devise "spells" which tend o have few of the "feels like fantasy spells" lims. I did not mind this because in my game i devised multiple magic styles all at -1 total lims and you had to choose from them AND because it actually irks me to see the written up spells with -4 to -5 in lims, many of which boil down to "this will never come up but i need to save points because i am paying full cost for spells" variety like "have to know 3 other spells" (which is an utter crock as "before i had this power i could not use it" is not a limitation on a power) so... i am fairly happy with little more than the obligatory style lims.

Re: Same magic system, different problem well first if changing a vpp in combat you must make a skill roll at -1/10 ap, so unless he has bought tons of skill roll, not having spell be 200 pts is a good idea. second, in many situations you want several things going at once - a flight a offense a defense, so if all your spells were 200 ap, its unlikely you can get three different effects up at once without serious lims. however, there is one problem to consider - for vpps if a lim isn't limiting you cannot apply it, so trying to take "only in graveyard" on a spell to be cast while STANDING IN A GRAVEYARD WONT EARN YOU MUCH. but as a general rule, i find few lims on vpp powers other than those applied to the control costs, for the reason you describe.

Re: Flaming Swords However, one thing to keep in mind is that points do not lead to balance - actual utility does. looking back to Star Wars, that the light saber was clearly superior to the blaster is obvious, in the hands of a well trained jedi of course. But not having a light saber did not make OPrincess Aradalla or whatever her name was less significant a character. Its the challenges and the story situations that tell you "how good is a light saber" not its base specs. A plain old crossbow might be far more pivotal to the story if a ranged attack was really important, something beyond hurled lightsabe r range. perhaps the base mechanics make longswords more appealing than spears, but the plotlines lead you to very good spears - magical artifacts of the nine dead spear kings - for instance. They key to this is - the Gm with the challenges and benefits he scripts into the games and his scenarios determines the actual in play effectiveness and importance of traits. Balance depends more on how his plots make the PCs equally useful and effective. So in one campaign, being skilled with and having a light saber might well be "balanced" by giving the other pcs 117 more points (charging the light saber player the cost.) But if the other pc has a starship and starship stuff is frequent and useful (say 20 pts for ship and another 15 for starship skills), or another pc has great diplomacy (say +10 pre and several 5 pt skills) then as a Gm i can easily have the "jedi lightsaber" play off equally well against the "starship stuff" and the "diplomacy stuff" even though the "costs in points" vary greatly. Consider this - for 5 pts i can get computer skill at 12- or so, depends on int, or i can get +1 OCV with HTH combat or i can get breathes water. Depending on the challenges and direction of the campaign, any one of those can become "absolutely vital" or can become "nearly worthless". When i GM, its only after i see the PC traits that i decide about most of my campaign decisions. I look at each pc noting strengths and weaknesses and especially with an eye towards "which of these can be spotlighted and how" especially towards "differentiating the PCs. The costs to me are fairly unimportant as objective figures. They key is getting characters who are different enough to play up the differences and create the balance. This is IMO why hero works with carefully calculated "pay for everything" or hardly calculated "equipment is free" and why so many games run just fine without the complex build everything system. the effects are balanced (or imbalanced) between PCs by the GM choices far more than they are by pre-game number crunching. but thats just me.

Re: "Outsider" perspective on Hero System

Re: "Outsider" perspective on Hero System must activate life support: breath hubris... HERO is good at providing you with numbers, thats for sure, but its not necessarily good at providing you with good number, so when it comes to creating your own numbers, it really becomes a case of are you doing the things hero does well or the things it does bad? For example: i can easily build a character as capable as the xman colossus, say early days, on 250 cp. I cannot really come close to building the xman rogue (pre-ms marvel days) on the same points because the costs are so high for either the gazillion form multiform (req handwaving) or the super-huge vpp that she cannot effectively be built on the same budget. however, in say 90% of the encounters, typical hero type supers, colossus will fare better than rogue. the hero points would seem to have you believing differently, that the far more expensive character is more useful. So while the hero numbers may seem consistent, they are not necessarily accurate. then again, i dont think we have to look far before we have hero experts trying to explain to me that total cp aren't a measure of "effectiveness" and how i just dont get it. :-)

Re: Instant powers you could just do this with a limited power - As in... +3 Cv with HtH Combat (15 ap) -X must fight enemy for "a while" these levels to kick in. Now obviously, what you define as "a while" and whether the setting holds over (does "i fought him yesterday for three turns" enable you to use the Cvs against him right off the bat tomorrow?) will determine the value for -x. I would start with the value for "takes extra time to start but can do other things" as a baseline value. Now you can also do the same thing with, for instance, a naked Ap advantage. Say your biggest martial attack is 10d6 you could buy +1/2 AP naked advantage on my martial attacks (25 ap for up to a 10d6 attack) with say -1.25 (takes extra turn to activate) and say -.5 for "must activate again for each new opponent it applies to" making this naked advantage cost only 9 cp (25 ap.) So, for 9 cp, after 1 turn in hth combat with a target, you would gain AP on your martial attacks with no roll and no special atction required. .

Re: Invisibility Sounds good, i typically use that as a guidelines in fact - how detectable is it compared to a gun... if it is as troublesome as the perception of a gun is, then its sufficient. We differ there but thats fine of course. i think the specifics matter a great deal when i adjudicate sfx and percievability requirements. My answer would be ABSOLUTELY!!! I say this because i would not give the fiery guy or greem lantern glowy force field guy limitations for their flights, which are going to find, say, being stealthy while flying very difficult due to the three sense rules. (and before anyone says it - no - the occasional benefits of "i can glow and so we dont need torches" is NOT going to in most of my games equate or counterbalance the impacts of "cannot sneak while on fire" or "hmmm... guard smells smoke and so..." etc.) Superman can when he wants to drift in slowly and quietly and hover right outside someone's window without giving himself away... whereas fiery guy really cannot do that. there is a significant difference in the impact of visibility between "fiery trail, smoke, whooshing noise" guy's flight and superman's silent hovering and the former is more on par with "like a gunshot" than the latter, so i would charge supes IPE for his flight. Then again, a much stickier question is IMO "would you charge superman IPE for his strength?" vs "would you give obviously super strong guys a visible limitation on their strength?" since, for instance, if a blue tighted flier came zipping in one might be inclined to grab him or to entangle him (both rather bad tactical choices when you find out about the kryptonian super-strength whereas if the musclebound obviously super-strong guy comes at you you are likely to not try such maneuvers and opt for other things.) :-)

Re: Invisibility FWIW in case i haven't been clear, I also agree that making invis buy IPE to not give itself away with the invis power itself having three senses of visibe sfx is absurd. I think one thing KS, SW and i all agree on is that. For me the easiest rule-based solution, unless you want to add exceptions for the invis power, is to make invis like AID - not cost endurance. That removes the three vis requirement altogether. On another note- would i allow invis - silent feet glowing to get a lim for visible? Well not just for glowing feet, but if you include "magical aura" and say "smeel of burnt rose petals" so you cover three senses then sure. Those lims would come into play and affect you - like say when sneaking around a house at night, the glow serves as trouble or when the guards start to follow the strange smell, or when a detect magic ward goees off due to your spell.

Re: Invisibility Shrike what both sean and i are diagreeing with you on is the above statement which seems to state "invisibility is... not detectable in and of itself" The rule for invisibility doesn't say that at all. It simply states that senses covered by the invisibility form an exception. So for example, if i buy an invisibility field - mutant produced - that covers "all sight" then by my reading of the rules it STILL needs, it being the invisibility power itself, to have defined for it three sense groups: say a low humming buzz, an ozoney smell, and a distinctive vibration, to fulfill its "three sense group" rule. Or alternatively, as sean started off saying, you could buy IPE for it and remove those groups. do you agree or disagree?

Re: Invisibility Actually you seem to have it wrong... 5er page 192 right before the little chart "invisibility is a partial exception to the general rules that powers that cost end must be percievable by three sense groups. by, definition, invisibility cannot be percieved by any sense(s) it affects and thus doesn't have to meet the "percievable by three sense groups" rule if it affects so many senses there aren't a total of three left - it only has to be percieved by sense groups it doesn't affect." that doesn't say the "character" but repeatedly refers to the subject being the invisibility power, at least by every grammar rule i know. heck it doesn't even support the contention that if you have invis to sight you only have to cover two groups, as there are more than two left so you still need three. then again the raw and what people actually play are not always similar. I never made invisibility buy ipe for example to be effective.

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it Well, first off, as someone asked above: is it a reaction to ressurection or to the perception that player has an "excessive" or "too favorable" build or "gets away with murder"? But here is my thought - make dieing fun! Put the shoe on the other foot and make them see dieing as a fun thing that he, by "cheatingthe system", has denied himself. OPTION 1: In an old fantasy game i ran, i gave every pc who died an "after-death scene, which involved meeting people in the after life, some good, some bad, always interesting and often seeded with plot elements. These also usually tended to involve a decision of direction for the pc, and an option on how to proceed when they were raised. They all turned out to be great "what do i do from here out" soul searching kinds of moments. OPTION 2: In the same campaign I developed a couple offshoots of "death cults. One thought those who died and came back were "blessed by the goddess of death" and thought them gifted with abilities such as special knowledge, speaking with dead, etc. and they were right! if the pc so desired and could find this cult for training, easy since the cult sought them too, they could develop these special tricks which had as their requirements "been dead, got better". Option 3: In the same campaign, i had another death cult who thought those brought back were affronts to the death goddess (same death goddess as above) and tried to slay them personally, after sufficient torture to show them the error of their ways. Well for your game the bad cult could think things that "cannot die" are an affront to the death goddess and go after this guy - trying to find ways to kill him or at least make his life miserable enough to be punishment. Maybe they think the only real justification for imortals is as punishment and so they wanna keep him miserable. Anyhow, by making dieing INTERESTING and just a stepping stone to a more interesting part of life, and by adding the various cults etc you might well be able to take the sting out of "we can die and he cannot" enough to keep everyone happy and get them thinking about how fun it is to be able to die while he is just hosed himself.

Re: Smarter than your average Brick Smart brick #1 uses gadgets. a easily built brick can have either a plethora of small little things to help out or a right fine gadget pool. One particular fave of mine is the grenadier. he carries a variety of OAF 4c grenade packs with a variety of options. Smoke grenades (darkness or CE both favor punchers over ranged guys. turn 4c into 2 ch continuous) Flash-bang grenades (great for lowering enemy dcvs) concussion grenades (AOE EB) great for dispensing agents so you can get to work those are the normal tech everyday kind. now add in some entangle grenades or sonic grenades (nnd aoe) etc if you have reasonable access to super tech. Brick trick #2 the taunt you can usually afford a limited mind control for enraging the enemy and usually you dont have to have all that much, like ego+10 for this to succeed. its basically a version of "make them hit me" written up as mind control with SFX taunting. the more attacks you bring down on you as opposed to the other guy, the better. heck if you can taunt the enemy into trying a haymaker, let the team blast him. Brick trick #3 mirror image for a moderate price, usually under 30 cp, you can have yourself, if you have advamced tech available, a hologram belt that creates 1-2 exact copies of you within your hex all doing the same and shifting about. this way, anyone shooting at you only has a 505-33% chance of hitting the right target unless they make a heck of a per roll. Ranged combatants also sugger their range penalties so its even harder for them to spot the fakes. cutting your hits taken by 505 will let your massive recovery seem even more important. techincally, images are not foci providing defenses so you dont have the foci auto-die thing in play. As for general tactics, a lot depends on your non-brick capabilities and mission. if the bad guy is after you, getting inside so that ranged guys have to come close is usualy quite good. ducking into the sewers for instance can really spoil the energy guy day. also breaks LOS for mentalists. always maneuver near to larger throwable objects, to use as AOE attacks when needed against speedster types.

Re: New Advantage: Stunning

Re: Physcial menifestations of mental attacks - did I build this right? Assuming a high ocv Moderate ecv PC Taking a normal eb and... using your ecv vs the targets ecv to hit and applying mental defense to the damage is... +1 BOECV using your ocv vs their dcv and having mental defense apply to the damage is ... +1.5 AVLD having your ocv attack their ECV and having mental defense apply vs the damage is... not in the book iirc but its clearly better than the AVLD so i would place it around +2 for the hero you describe.

Re: New Advantage: Stunning Actually, i think allowing in a game a power that reliably stuns enemies will last right up until the bad guys start using it too, and suddenly the players figure out just how much unfun one-hit-stuns are. then the cries for stun defense or limited "only for con stun" con start coming up and then... players despise losing actions, being forced to sit and watch other people play the game, and in a game where (for some people) combats take so long, that whole reliably stunning one-hit powers will lose their sweet attractiveness soon enough. I dont know for sure, rampant speculation, but i think a lot of this may derive from MMORPG which feature "stunning" as a big part of their games, but the difference there is in real time the stunning lasts for second in an mmorpg while being stunned and losing a phase in a team vs team supers game might well have you sitting on your hands for 30 minutes, only to get stun whacked again as the next phase is about to begin. all of course IMO. Hmmm... how about this as a meta-rule - PROBATIONARY POWERS - For any special request for NEW POWER or NEW ADVANTAGES from a player, such as "wanna do better stun etc, the GM may allow it in as a probationary power. A probationary power is allowed for a six month trial but in that time can ONLY be used by NPCs. At the end of six months of play if the players (having been HIT BY the power for six months) all agree it seems balanced and fun addition to the game, then the players can start buying said NEW POWER or NEW ADVANTAGES.

Re: New Advantage: Stunning My objection would be from a game balance perspective... if you can reliably stun an enemy with your shots, then your shots only need to do over a turn more than he can recover and you win the fight hands down. sure it takes a while but you have plenty of time since the enemy is just staying stunned and then losing a few stun here and there. Would you set your campaign defense levels SO LOW that normally when you get hit you get stunned? No? Why not? Wont all your players just love losing acyion after action every time they get hit? If the answer was no, you wont say allow 12dc attacks commonly in a game with 15 pt defenses and 25ish cons because nobody likes being con-stunned on nearly every hit? no you say? not fun? well then why add a new way of buying the necessary damage dice so you can slip an attack that "reliably con-stuns with each hit"? IMo the best way to purchase this kind of attack would be to allow some dice to be bought limited - does no body or KB and stun only counts for stunning - and go from there (understanding defenses aply first to the normal dice.) That way you avoid accidentally allowing a better attack thing thru, since you keep this attack within whatever damage caps you allow.

Re: Power Manipulation Skill Hmm,,, i was under the impression that power skill was a "determine attribute based on power" where for instance it would be ego based if it were a mentalist and maybe dexterity based for speedster tricks and so forth. Might just be a house rule i used for long enough that it seems like a raw rule. As for the vpp, i would agree with the "of given sfx" with whatever appropriate value for that applies (it varies i think by sfx quite a bit) but the NCC would be a no-go for me since i am not wanting it limited to "infrequent uses" or "dramatic moment" but to be a standard part of the mechanics and design, so that puts the value for a 60 pp power at around 20 pts, 30 control at -1.2 = 20. since my 3/2 with -1 per costs 17 cp, thats close and in the neighborhood compared to 20. basically for a 80 pt option, you can buy the vpp option (60 pt vpp 20 pt sfx control change in non-combat situations) or the power plus skill option (17 pts for skill and 60 pts for a power.) I thought about having it apply to only one power instead of all powers of a given sfx but i rapidly hit one "why bother?" since each power is limited to changes within his sfx, why get worked up over which power he "dials in" to get the new power? if a force field and his eb are of the same sfx, the anything he could do with the force field swapping he could also do with his eb? the key imo is not allowing him to change multiple powers with a single die roll. Now arguably, you might want this skill to allow altering a power as a full phase, moving it more in line with vpp.

Re: Power Manipulation Skill Note that to me whether or not this hits the TSR issue is a matter of the players and GM. For example, the "one time only" can be viewed as a GENRE-ism, as it happens all the time that superheroes come up with a one time clever fluke power thingy that is never used again. Clark kent did indeed make hisself a diamond out of coal but only to propose to lana and he hasn't done it for real money even when the farm has money woes and mom's campaign needs money etc. so, the notion of one time tricks, that part i can explain as "rules nod to genre" and as such could even see applying a totally non-sensical penalty for repeated use to reflect that genre-ism. but if i was less concerned with genre, then i would share your sense of it and consider the "one time diamond" to be hitting TSR. I tend to agree with you on the notion that a significantly useful power skill would be good, for reasons i have already stated. for my mind on cost, i consider the ability to as an action (half phase) alter a power significantly on the fly wityh a chance of failure, to be roughly equivalent to say having three or so multipower slots. with three to four multipower slots, i can take a typical power and have enough bases covered in terms of "tricks" to have something i can use almost always. the net gain from "but i can have any slot thru the power skill" is to me already into diminished returns especially considering half phase to switch. for a 60 pt power - buying one main slot and three 12- act slots winds up being 78 pts. for a 3 /2 skill and having -1 per 10ap, you wind up paying 60 for whatever power, 3 for the skill at 12- (assumes 13 stat) and 14 for +7 which results in a 12- roll to swap powers around. so you wind up with 78 pts vs 77 pts and that seems darn spot on for me. summary: 60 pt multipower with one slot with a 60 pt power and THREE more slots with 60 pt powers with 12- act compares nicely to one 60 pt power with a 19- skill for changing it with a -1 per 10 ap at 3/2 cost. so i think the following... NEW POWER SKILL this allows you to spend a half phase action to alter and existing power into a power of the same Ap or less of the same sfx. The points may be effectively rebid at the point in question to any power within the sfx permitted by the Gm using reason and common sense. This requires a NEW POWER skill roll at -1 per 10 ap of power affected. While the power may apply to all of a character's powers of a given sfx, each roll can only alter one single power, or a single set of linked powers and so changing several powers will require more actions. This can be used on strength and when doing so figured characteristics are not affected. For some genres, a penalty of an additional -1 each time a given change is made may be appropriate. the skil costs 3/2 simple and direct. EDIT: Note that this skill being sfx based in scope will tend to reward in a sense those characters with one unifying sfx for their power suite. this might be preferable to say EC frameworks for gms who want to remove those frameworks.

Re: Power Manipulation Skill