austenandrews

I want to buy Suppress as a Damage Shield. I want the Suppress to have Continuing Charges (that is, when a target gets affected, the Suppress lasts for X amount of time). I also want the Damage Shield to have a Continuing Charge (that is, when the Damage Shield is turned on, it remains in effect for Y amount of time). How do I buy this? Do I take the Continuing Charge Limitation/Advantage twice? Thanks, -AA

This also ties back to the debate about how much damage is delivered by dropping an object on somebody. For instance, I roll a car off the roof of a parking garage and drop it onto the bad guy. How much damage does the bad guy take? It's not determined by STR, obviously. I know that discussion has run long before, but I don't recall what if any conclusions ever came from it. -AA

I wouldn't play with that guy anymore. -AA

True, it does depend on what the actual effect is. When he said "clones" I made the assumption that the shadows could do everything that the original character can do, including powers and skills. If all they're doing are basic punches/grabs/what-have-you, a large AE TK would do it. Slap on a Limitation that "destroying a duplicate" grants the target a reprieve for that Phase. You'd have to figure out how to make them act independently of the character, probably add Uncontrolled, season to taste. -AA

What the heck was all that from? -AA

And I would argue the opposite - if you're conjuring a bunch of "clones of yourself" you shouldn't make it with Summoning, because there's already a power called Duplication. Not that you -can't- make it with Summon, but to me Duplication is clearly the more appropriate path. It actually -creates- the clones, as desired. It requires a simple tweak to have the desired operational characteristics. With Summon you have to -invent the existence of the clones- whole cloth, a GM-permission business at best. Of course you can use Summon or Transform to simulate nearly any special effect you can think of, but I don't care for that approach. I mean, there are people who genuinely think a missile should be built with Summon instead of RKA. I've even seen "resurrect self" built as a Summon. Such constructs are not against the letter of the rules, but I don't like them because I think they violate the spirit of the rules. More on topic, it occurs to me that if "dispelling" a Duplicate is a special effect of forced recombination, the primary character is going to suffer the effects of recombining. Again I don't have my rules in front of me, but Kdansky, you'll want to account for that fact in your design. -AA

Duplication, no question. At a first pass I'd say the vanishing thing might qualify as a Disadvantage, though a Limitation on Duplication (or STUN - triggers Recombine when lost ) might be better. I'd have to read through Duplication to work out the details. For the limitless shadows thing, you only need to worry about how many he conjures simultaneously. The duplicates aren't "dying," just getting "dispelled" by a hit. Of course if a duplicate really does get killed in one shot, you're out of luck; spend some XPs to get your total back up. If there's a danger this might happen frequently, maybe you can buy some extra BODY "only to keep from dying" (I'm sure the value of that Limitation has been calculated somewhere). (As an aside, I've never liked the generic solution of "invent something out of thin air and Summon it." It seems very contrived to me. I interpret Summon as applying to things that already exist in the world, not things that are custom-made specifically for this instance of Summon.) -AA

Q: What's the second-most endangered species on Earth, besides Honest Politicians? A: 140 Calories, 50 mg of Sodium, 0 g of Fat and 7.5 on the Richter scale. -AA

First, go forward in time and catch some movies I'm anxious to see. Then go back in time and make some investments to get rich. Go forward in time and use the money to buy health, immortality and immunity from diseases. Return to the present and put together a staff of explorers. As a career, make excursions to the past to record major historical events. Pick up more staff members from various time periods, to use as "moles." For vacation, dally in the future to partake of advanced technologies. -AA

I once built "woad glyphs" pretty much exactly like RadeFox's version. Mine was a 45-point MP that was plenty potent for a low-level game. The key characteristics are Trigger and Continuing Charges. (My only quibble for RadeFox's implementation is that I don't believe UBO is necessary for Aid; Trigger should do the job well enough.) For real tattoos that permanently grant powers, I'd look under Transform at the rules for adding powers. -AA

Q: What happened to the witch who overcooked the bishop's tenderloin? A: Three with each hand and one between your feet. -AA

I'm with Herolover on this one. Just make it something the wizard can do but doesn't have to pay points for. In effect, the points are paid by the person who sees the sigil, not by the person who makes it. If you want to make the sigil permanent and/or involuntary, make it a skill instead. It'd be similar to buying a skill to make tattoos. It's still entirely magical, and it's still a game mechanic, but by using a Skill instead of a Power you don't twist yourself into knots trying to figure out why a large man is more difficult to mark than a baby (as you would with Cosmetic Transform) or contriving Advantages and Limitations to avoid that problem. If you're hung up on buying it as a Power, I'd suggest Images UAA, 0 END, Uncontrolled. It's silly, but it's the only one that makes sense according to the strict semantics of the various Powers. Or if you're just interested in mechanics, buy it as an Entangle, Non-Restricting, 0 BODY, Invisible Power Effects, with Magic Sense being the only thing that detects it. Or use any other power that leaves some effect on the target. It doesn't matter. The intended viewer is really seeing the Special Effect, not the effect of the power itself. Which is my argument for bypassing Powers and just using a Skill that creates the Special Effect. -AA

Re: Bouyancy I don't see great potential for abuse here, except in a largely-underwater scenario. If everyone's at the bottom of the ocean and you can send an enemy to the surface (that is, off the battlefield) with ease, it's a bit overpowered. But I expect that's a rare circumstance. There's an interesting mechanics effect here. Since it's bought as Flight, if someone else wants to keep the person from floating up, they have to overcome the person's STR (as normal for a Grab) perhaps modified by the power of the Flight. Should STR even matter? If the person doesn't resist, does that mean it's trivial to keep them down? Or since it's Usable As Attack, is it only the power of the Flight itself that matters? Since the Flight is pretty weak, it seems like it would still be easy to hold the person down. I don't have the book in front of me, and I'm not fluent in the 5E movement rules. However, while that's an odd effect of the mechanic, I think it's a reasonable tradeoff for what is otherwise a fairly useful-and-cheap spell. Presumably it's for saving injured people and keeping objects from sinking. If the person doesn't want to be "saved," it should be easy to overcome. Btw, what's the rule for adding Flight UAA? I assume successive applications of this spell wouldn't increase velocity, right? Just checking. -AA

The spell is used to make magic items. Casting it requires hours or days, so it's not a combat effect. It begins as a Transform, which is essentially "Transform Object to Animated Object." The animation can be anything, such as "open door to closed door" or "a sword that turns into a crossbow and back." A Trigger enchantment is then used to allow the object to animate on command. The idea is that once the magic item is made, theoretically anyone can use it; the item exists all on its own, independent of the caster. The reasoning behind TK is this: Normal objects don't exert any force, but animated objects can (closing a door, clicking a lock, etc.). I decided that this constitutes "adding a Power" to the object, and the best power is TK. (I suppose I could have used STR instead, but that seemed odd.) When the Trigger activates the animation, the TK occurs and the Special Effect is that the object changes shape. (No Range simply means that the Triggered TK operates on and around the magic object itself; the TK doesn't extend out from the object.) Example: A wizard wants to create a magic lock that opens at a spoken command. He uses Animate to Transform "a lump of magic metal" into "a lock that unlocks itself." The game mechanic is a 10 STR TK w/Fine Manipulation to push the lock mechanism open in the same way as a key. He then adds a Trigger enchantment, "open lock when code word is spoken." Example: A wizard wants to make a magic gear that turns by itself. He uses Animate to Transform "a lump of magic metal" into "a gear that turns by itself." The game mechanic is a 40 STR TK to rotate the gear. Now he has a useful component for many types of machines. Example: A wizard wants to make a sword that turns into a crossbow on command. He uses Animate to Transform "a lump of magic metal" into "a sword that turns into a crossbow and back again" (plus a Trigger for the command word). The only game effect is a 2 STR TK that pushes objects out of the way when the sword changes. (This is something of a technicality, though important in some cases. If the sword is sheathed, for instance, the 2 STR TK wouldn't be enough to break the scabbard to allow the change to happen. A 40 STR TK would break the scabbard.) I wrote Animate this way because I want to give players the opportunity to be very creative. This spell could be used for countless applications. As a GM I want to be surprised and delighted. My concern is that it might be -too- versatile. For instance, it could be used to create "a pill that transforms into a dagger" and you could knife someone from inside their stomach. Obviously I wouldn't allow effects like that, but to control such abuse I need to see it coming. So hopefully you guys can concoct some abuses for me, to get me prepared. -AA P.S. Important limitation: Mass and physical substance are conserved. When the sword transforms into a crossbow, it must be a crossbow constructed of the same mass of the same material. P.P.S. Another important limitation: The spellcaster must actually craft each shape that the object assumes. So in the original example he'd have to be able to make both a sword and a crossbow (using Weaponsmith) before he could fashion the transforming weapon. He'd need to have the Mechanics skill to fashion a gear that turns by itself, and so forth. That way the TK is simply moving/manipulating the object in some way; the Animate spell doesn't have to accomplish anything else. (For example, the Transform doesn't have to add the HKA Power for a sword, because the Weaponsmith skill already does that).

Interesting idea - take Linked as a "naked Limitation?" -AA

Hmmm, I guess that would work with these newfangled "multiple power attacks." Don't use'em myself, nossir, sure don't. I think they're bogus. But if I did use them then I agree, my first inclination would be to make a custom "combinable" version of Gestures & Incantations. However, every time I propose that kind of custom modifier on these boards, I get hit with calls that they're not "by the book" or "convention-safe." So I've become skittish. -AA

I would investigate Trigger or Delayed Effect. I've never used DE, so I don't know what the limits are, but I know Trigger can be used the way you describe. It's potentially abusable, but if you control its use as a GM I don't think you'll have a problem. -AA

Q: You blew up the zoo for scientific research?! What did you hope to learn? A: A quart is my limit, Mr. Baryshnikov. -AA

Okay, here's one more in the spirit of the thread. I wrote this up awhile back but haven't run it in my game yet. I know it's a potentially risky construct. Maybe you Herophiles can help me avoid any obvious pitfalls. My fantasy campaign includes a class of magicians named Eldwrights who work with magic ores. A big part of their orecraft is called Enchant. As the name suggests, this ability imparts magic properties to an object. The mechanic for this is Transform. It uses the rules for granting new Powers (5E p.153). In brief, Enchant is a 2d6 Major Transform, All-or-Nothing. As per the rules, Enchanting requires +1 Transform effect for every 5 points of the Power added. (I bend the definition of Transform to have more arbitrary control over the numbers; instead of BODY I use a custom stat called Essence. Ores also have intrinsic Power Defense, which I call Complexity.) Anyway, that's the setup. Already you'll notice that since Enchant is based on Transform, Eldwrights have the ability to create a theoretically infinite quantity of magic items. I control this by (a) setting large time requirements for Enchanting and ( only allowing enchanted ores ("elderliths") to be enchanted, and then controlling the supply of elderliths. Please tell me how the players will blindside me with this risky construct! Also, since I'm not insane, I only allow Enchantments which I have written up for game balance (the players can't make up their own as they go). You can guess the usual gamut of effects - extra Damage Classes, Armor, light, flaming Damage Shield, etc. There's one Enchantment, though, that has great potential for creativity, but may also have great potential for abuse. Please tell me how it can be munchkin-ed, so I'll be more prepared when I unleash it on my campaign. The effect is called Animate. It changes the shape of the magic object. For instance, a magic hinge might change shape to open and close a door. A magic shackle might change between locked and unlocked. A magic cord might coil and uncoil. A magic weapon might change from a sword to a dagger. There's another Enchantment called Trigger (the naked Advantage) that would usually be cast with Animate (for instance, opening the door when someone walks in front of it, or changing the type of weapon with a code word). Animate is bought as TK, Fine Manipulation, 0 END, No Range, Movement must be defined when Enchantment is cast. It comes in three levels, 2 STR, 10 STR and 40 STR. The STR defines how much force the animation can impart (and if necessary, how much damage it can do). The spellcaster can define whatever movement he wants at the time he casts Animate. I see Animate as a great opportunity for players to be creative. I'm looking forward to being surprised by its many applications. However, I'm well aware that the potential for abuse is high. So, let's say you're in my game and I give you this spell. How would you abuse it? -AA

I've begun to use an Average Roll rule across the board. The rule is, instead of rolling dice the player can take an average roll, which is defined as (a) an 11 on 3d6 for "to-hit" type rolls, and ( 3.5 per die, round down, for "damage" type rolls. This saves A LOT of time in combat, especially where a group is fighting a group. -AA

Q: What's the first famous person who comes to mind when I say these words: casket, basket, mascot? A: You spin me right round, baby, right round! -AA

I've achieved some ridiculous effects with Suppress and Continuing Charges. Unlike Drain, with Suppress there's no limit to how many points can be taken away. When you add in Continuing Charges with a duration longer than the average battle (5 minutes works well enough) you wind up with something like an unlimited Drain effect. On 45AP I built an attack that reduces an opponent's SPD by 1 every time they get hit. It was more of an exercise than a serious spell, and of course the GM rejected it, but it points up how abusable Suppress can be. -AA

Q: Madam Heidi will come over as soon as she can. Did you want her to bring some girls along? A: I'd punch him out myself, but I've got a hangnail. -AA

COM Attack? That's brilliant! That explains Austin Powers and the Fembots. (Can you buy COM with Does BODY Damage?) Actually I kinda like the mechanic, though. I'll have to consider working that into certain genres. As a GM, I use COM as a general indicator for getting favorable attention. I like the idea of a COM roll complementing a PRE skill under the right circumstances. I've never used it that rule, but I'll have to start. Otherwise it's just a color thing. Vanity for the players, etc. The PCs in my games usually all look like supermodels. -AA

There's a pretty standard game-balance guideline that the more damage a character dishes, the lower his OCV should be. But this suggestion lets high DEX characters have it both ways. While that could work in certain situations, such as low-powered games where the distribution of DEX and STR is not that wide, for my taste it upsets that basic game balance a little too much. Like others, I use Hit Locations for this purpose. -AA