I think you will find that it really is not saving much work at all. I take a character, give him a bunch of powers that share a theme in common, give the bunch of them a disadvantage which I will call "Linked special effects with these other powers" so that they are all vulnerable to Suppress, Drain, or whatever. Voila, there's your EC. Like I said last night, I do not have much of a problem with EC myself. I have found multipowers to be more prone to abuse.