Fortunatus

Quicksilver, an alien robot modeled after the T2000, is highly vulnerable to electricity. He also suffers from memory loss when he's shocked. The worse the shock, the worse the memory loss. He's also got a 25 INT, unlike his player. After the team's first major fight, in which Quicksilver is nailed a few times by the bad guys' lightning-firing Storm clone, the team leader decides that they ought to stick around to talk to the press. She figures it will allow them to do some damage control with regard to their public image, since they just got trounced. Quicksilver obliges her by boldly striding up to the most popular TV reporter in the city and telling her that he has no idea what just happened because he reboots every time he's hit by electricity. He then goes on to detail every last power and disadvantage he has, heavily emphasizing his deep-seated fear of electricity. Later, after the team got wind that every thug in town was buying stun-guns like they were going out of style, and after every villainous organization in the state started equipping their agents with electricity guns and hiring supervillains with names like Shocker and Thunderbolt, the player complained bitterly to me that his vulnerability was coming up far too often in play. Apparently, I was being unfair.

I read the rules as follows. Accurate Sprayfire reduces Autofire penalties to a flat -1 OCV. Skipover Sprayfire incurs the normal Autofire penalties plus an additional -1 OCV. Therefore, someone using both skills at once would incur a -2 OCV penalty. A pair of PSLs would fix that rather cheaply. -Conrad

"So my question is why would any character want to buy a background skill not based of their characteristic?" As a player, I often do it with starting characters, mainly because I like to play people who either know a lot (KS) or have a lot of life experience (PS). If I can get 5 skills for roughly the price of 3, I'll do it (the ratio becomes a very happy 2 for 1 with Skill Enhancers). After the game starts, I'll bump the skills that get used often to being based on CHA. I also like to buy new KSs and PSs at the background level with XP in play, as the slower progression seems more "realistic" to me. "Since this is the case why not just have background skills based on relative characteristics?" Got me. Ask Steve and all the folks who designed the game before him. I expect that the answer is that they wanted to have a relatively cheap way for characters to be well-rounded. And, it gives even relatively incompetent normals a way to be reasonably skilled. Anyone with a CHA less than 18 is just as well (or possibly better) off buying the Background Skill not based off of that CHA. "Under what circumstances would you, as the GM, not allow a player to buy a background skill based on a characteristic?" I don't think I'd ever outright bar someone from buying a Background Skill based on CHA. However, I do tend to ask people to write short backgrounds for their characters. If the background says that the character has been to Boston once, and five years ago at that, I'll probably ask a few pointed questions if the player's got a 14- AK: Boston--even if he does have a 23 INT. -Conrad