The Big Question: Is it rules-legal to intentionally price out an item or power with insufficient points to function?
The Goal: A character who changes high quality but otherwise normal items into items with special properties related to their intrinsic characteristics or magical correspondence ('sharpness' for a dagger, or 'fire' for a fire emerald).
Background:
Campaign is largely magic-focused in a high-magic urban fantasy setting.
Powers intrinsic to the characters are considered 'innate'.
'Innate' powers require a point value of campaign-specific disads equal in value to the real point cost of the powers.
VPPs are only allowed for spells ('magic' SFX powers).
Spells do not count as 'innate' powers.
Spells must follow campaign-specific rules for highly structured schools of magic.
My character is the human form of a celestial/angelic being.
It's essential that he be able to 'pass' as human when in that form.
The char is supposed to use magic differently than anyone else, though in a way that can pass as 'magical prodigy' rather than 'non-human'.
Challenges:
If I put a lot of points in 'innate' powers, the required disads will make the char recognizably non-human (a low value, say 10-20 points, could be hidden).
If I put most of the points into spells, he ends up being just another spellcaster following the set rules of the magic schools.
Solution? My proposed solution has two parts: Putting most of the points in items (so that they are extrinsic to the character), & having a small innate ability to 'improve' certain items (so that these items will function differently for him than they would for anyone else). I'm proposing to do this by building a small number of foci, each with a small suite of powers in a multipower. Each will be costed out with just under the required point cost for the powers it contains. The char will then use a small, cheap Major Transform to change these 'inactive' versions of the items into 'activated' versions, using the rules for adding powers through transform (1 point of transform for 1 AP added).
Multipower does not face the same campaign restrictions as VPP
Because the power is in the items, the char won't have to take the 'innate powers' disads which would make him recognizably non-human.
The cost of the transform is cheap enough that the associated disads could be hidden.
The ability to 'draw forth' the special propreties of an item in this way (the transform) will be unique, but similar enough to one of the schools of magic to pass as a 'magical prodigy' thing.
The Concern: Although my GM likes the character concept, & the concept of his powers, he seems uncertain about the idea of paying points for items so that they will intentionally have just under the amount needed to actually function - thus the Big Question at the beginning.
