Fireg0lem

First, I don't buy that a cybernetic implant should really be OIF. I think it should at most be -1/4 restrainable, or possibly -0. YGMMV. Activation Roll is how you make it roll to activate. The negating attacks part - my suggestion would be to build it as: 75% Damage Reduction, Physical and Energy, Only Applies 5% Reduction Per Damage Class of Incoming Attack (I do strongly suggest linking it to DCs, not AP. DCs are generally a much better measure of how "strong" an attack is). This does assume you can do math in your head relatively well or don't mind using a calculator. You may want to go with something a little simpler otherwise, if you think you will have trouble taking off 35% of an attack's damage or such. Where this gets set would depend on your campaign. In a typical campaign where an on-par adversary would have 12 DC attacks, I would call it -1/2. The reason I suggest this setup is that DR naturally scales with the power of the incoming attack, since it is proportionate reduction. If you build it as scaling static defenses, there will be an odd curve where attacks get less effective as they get stronger until there's a sudden cliff where it stops scaling. The way I built it, it still blocks "most" of the damage from very powerful attacks. It's also expensive but this sounds like it is meant to be a very strong primary defense. The teleporting when hit I think is best done as Knockback Resistance (possibly linked to the same Activation Roll as the defense), plus Teleportation XXm, Trigger with Trigger Automatically Resets Character Does Not Control Activation of Personal Trigger (whenever hit), Activation Roll, Teleports Xm per Y DC of attack (can be whatever), NCC (no control over direction; -1). Possibly it should get Safe Blind Teleport depending on the answer to Lucius's question. Also, the whole thing may need a limitation that it won't reduce the damage of AE's that would hit at both the character's original location and the location they teleport to. I'd probably call that -1/4.

This is quite similar to what our group does, although not exactly the same. We broke Complications into two types: 1) Complications that are "really" Negative Powers, like Vulnerability to Fire (limit on defenses) or the part of Size where you get CV penalties (just take the CV penalties), and you just buy those as negative powers.The general rule here is that these DO need to be "worth" their cost and that they should be things that the GM doesn't need to "work" to make come up. Things that regularly impact your ability to fight or use your skills or powers are supposed to go here. If you can't build it as a negative power for whatever reason, it is a Custom Power with a negative cost equal to it's value as a Complication. 2) Complications that are "plot" complications, like Vulnerability to Kryptonite, Code of Conduct, or the part of size where you have trouble fitting into normal-sized doorways. These follow the convention that everyone should "max out" these complications, and are Complications like in the standard rules. We all know that they are "overpriced" relative to Type 1 Complications or Powers but that's OK because everyone has the same amount. The idea is that Type 2 complications are your bucket of plot hooks which can be whatever you want, and it's the GM's job to use them in interesting ways (as compared to using them to punish your character). Type 1 complications really are "anti-powers" that actively make your character weaker. Obviously there's a bit of fuzziness - in some campaigns Vulnerable to Silver is a Type 1 complication (like in a fantasy game where everyone knows werewolves are hurt by silver and silver weapons are pretty common - meaning that a good portion of antagonists will be able to use this against you), and others where it's a Type 2 complication (like a superhero campaign where people don't typically carry silver bullets around - but an antagonist who figures out that you're a werewolf and not a shapeshifting mutant or whatever might be able to take advantage of it).

If the goal is for him to be using these weapons/armor, then the power to make them is just however you would build the weapons/armor themselves with Focus, and if the focus breaks he needs to make a new one.

I'd completely forgotten about the "Only for triggers" under Trigger - good to remember that one.

I actually think this should be two powers: Some kind of attack - Triggered, LOS, Indirect Detect People Opening This Email - Sense, Targeting, MegaRange, Character Has No Conscious Awareness of Sense (I'd peg this at -1). The limitation on the Detect means that you only "detect" the email being opened for the purpose of the trigger - the character doesn't know that it happened or where they are, but for the purposes of the Triggered power they do know. I think any attempt to get around targeting requirements without using some kind of Detect is going to involve some extreme kludging.

Re: Club Weapon at range? I think your problem is coming from "DC is limited to the DC of the focus" being worth way more than you put it down as; if an ability seems way too expensive, it probably means you built it too expensively. I actually think that limitation should be -2. Also, you need Lockout (Focus's normal powers) so you can't Combined Attack that with a regular attack. You may want Real Weapon and Beam as well.

Re: Converting: "Winged Him" Why not just make it a smallish AoE one hex attack (as suggested), but Link it to the main attack, and give it the limitations "Does 0 Damage Unless Main Attack Misses" and "Only Works Up To X/day" (which I would value at half the limitation of charges).

Re: Changing the roll low to hit and skill check to a roll high to hit and skill chec Honestly, the "made roll by half" thing is not a huge, critically important mechanic; you could just go with "made by 6 or more" and be fine.

Re: Sound of one hand clapping I think it's best done by buying Gestures (both hands) down to Gestures (one hand) on the inherent Clapping ability that people have.

Re: Denying a character his OIF

Re: Campaign Damage Caps, Code vs. Killing & Pulling a Punch If you do decide to try this, a few things to keep in mind: 1) It can be a problem if some people have to hold back most of the time, and others don't; for example, if Superman normally has to use only 10d6... maybe the Flash just has a maximum of 10d6 he uses all the time, and spent his points on stuff like SPD or CVs that he can use all the time. This isn't an insurmountable problem - I would suggest simply not accounting for "extra" power when evaluating characters, so that the points someone who's not powerful enough to need to hold back save go into noncombat abilities or resources or flexibility. 2) Be careful not to have a mechanical disconnect. If the mechanics don't reflect the fluff, the fluff will eventually reflect the mechanics - and that means that if you build typical supervillains to have 20 PD, Superman will quickly figure out he doesn't have to worry about killing them with normal damage attacks. If you want Superman to hold back, you need to make sure typical villains are actually built in such a way that Superman needs to be careful not to kill them when fighting. I would suggest doing this by having typical characters use Damage Reduction (maybe Stun Only) and/or Damage Negation and/or high STUN scores rather than straight-up defenses.

Re: Denying a character his OIF How much of his SPD is through the focus? It's generally a problem when a character builds Sucks Without Focus Man, and if it's something like 2 SPD without and 6 SPD with, fights without the focus are going to be a lot of watching other people do stuff. You might want to talk to the player about changing things to be more fun - having, say, some (but not all) attack powers through a focus, or some CVs, or some (but not all) defenses through a focus all tend, in my experience, to work better, because they tend to lead to "less effective without focus" rather than "nothing to do without focus."

Re: Draining/Aiding SPD and play balance Yep, we did exactly that - SPD is treated as a defensive power for adjustments. We found it completely overpowering otherwise. Also, the speed change rules are a touch wonky. For example, if Target has SPD4, and on phase 2, is drained by 1 pt down to SPD 3, he'll not act again until phase 12 - so he lost 3 actions! I suggest replacing them with the following: If your speed changes, and the next action your new speed would give you is on the same phase as your old speed would let you act, you act then and afterwards use your new speed. If the next action your new speed would give you is after you would already have gotten an action from your old speed, you start using your new speed immediately. If the next action your new speed would give you is before you would already have gotten an action from your old speed, you act on the next phase your old speed would have given you an action and thereafter act with your new speed. If your speed changes again before you get to the point where you would start using your new speed, you drop the "intermediate" speed and treat it as if you had gone directly from your previous speed to your newer new speed.

Re: Bows OK, that sounds pretty reasonable. So the idea would be that the bow you are using sets your DC, and the arrow determines what type of attack you make. Thanks for the input, everyone!

Re: Bows Thanks for all the information, Andy. In particular I'd not considered what type of arrows were fired. It might be a good idea to include some hunting bows that trade out damage for range and accuracy. This also suggests that heavier bows should have pretty high STR minima, which is good - I want to make sure options at that end exist. Also, that you need to be stronger to "ready" a bow than to fire it. I might go with something like "you need +3 over the STR minima to Set, Brace, Ready, or Cover someone with a bow."

Re: Bows That was my thinking as well - historically, decurved/deflexed bows were really only used by people who didn't have the technology level to make anything else, but I can see an adventurer deciding that the ability to walk around with their bow strung all the time was worth having a less powerful bow (or even carrying a second bow for), but I can also see someone deciding that if they're caught without time to string a bow, they can probably get into melee range quickly. Straight bows would be a compromise option. So I can see all 3 types being used by adventurers - even though armies will probably never bother with anything other than straight longbows and reflex shortbows unless they can't make better. What constitutes a "Long period of time" is a very good question. I know that modern composite bows, ones made of fiberglass and whatnot, can be left strung indefinitely with no harm. I think that this isn't true of composite bows made of traditional materials, or at least not as true, but if anyone has more information on this I'd be interested to hear. My feeling is that it makes sense for composite and self bows of a type to "work" the same, but for the composite bow to be better - sort of like a bronze longsword versus a steel longsword type deal. I'm thinking about this: Decurved/Deflexed or Straight bows are an Extra Phase to string, or a Full Phase with a Fast Draw check. Recurved/Reflexed bows are a Full Turn to string, or an Extra Phase with a Fast Draw check. Deflex/Decurve bows can be left strung indefinitely with no penalty. Self bows that are either Straight or Recurved/Reflexed, if left strung more than an hour at a time without being left unstrung for a similar amount of time, have to make a 14- check or be damaged; the bow takes -2 OCV, -5 STR Minimum, -2 DC. This check is repeated at -1 for every hour up the time chart. Composite bows have +2 on this check. The 1 hour is something of a guess; it's really more "it's a nice round number" and it's in the range where you can string your bow before a fight, but not wander around the wilderness with a strung bow 24/7.

I'm tinkering with weapon designs and I wanted to hear some opinions about this - especially from anyone who actually knows a lot about historical archery, which I do not; I'm basing this on the information I could dig up online. My idea was to divide bows into "long" and "short," where "long" is defined as "too large to use on horseback" and "short" is "short enough to use on horseback," and then into decurved/deflexed bows, straight bows, and recurved/reflexed bows (for bows that bend the same direction strung as unstrung, bows that don't significantly bend while unstrung, and bows that bend opposite directions strung and unstrung). Longbows have higher damage and STR requirements than shortbows, and are more accurate, but can't be shot from horseback. Decurved/deflexed bows have the lowest damage and strength requirements, and they can be left strung for long periods without damaging them. Straight bows have average damage and strength requirements, and they take a Full Phase Action to string but cannot be left strung over a long period of time without damaging the bow. Recurved/reflexed bows have the highest damage and strength requirements, take a Full Turn to string, and cannot be left strung over a long period of time without damaging the bow. I should also add that, to the best of my knowledge, decurved/deflexed shortbows never saw much if any use because they had such low draw weight, and reflex longbows weren't used much because they had such high draw weight. I want them to have stats regardless, since there would have been nothing stopping a bowyer from making one. I plan to handle differences in construction (such as self bows vs. composite bows and whatnot) just by adjusting damage/str minima, without changing the basic properties. My goals are to preserve a reasonable level of realism and historical accuracy while having more than one "useful" type of bow (I don't want D&D style "if you don't use a composite longbow you're doing it wrong"). Does any of this sound wildly inaccurate?

Re: Ability Guidelines for Cosmically Powerful Characters (6e) No, only DC-increasing advantages. Autofire is DC-increasing; Reduced Endurance is not. DN is better against NNDs and worse against BODY damage, Autofire, and Area of Effect.

Re: The Rule of F(X)

Re: The Rule of F(X) I agree with your analysis here; I think it's just a difference of semantics in what each of us means by "abusing." Maybe I should say "highlights the following problems with this system." FREd brain fart I think. I tend to view a character whose normal defenses are much more impressive than exotic defenses or vice versa the same way one might view a character with, say, 35 PD and 15 ED. Sure, it averages to the same as 25/25, but being invulnerable half the time and made of paper half the time isn't very fun. The separation for pick purposes is more "make the math simpler, and you can't have less than 0 XDEF." It might have the presentation changed, since this seems to be confusing. So getting +4 DCV costs me what, -4 Exotic Defense and -20 DEF (1 Exotic = 2 Regular). I now have no mental defenses or power defenses, and 5 PD and ED. And what did I get? +4 DCV that standard characters in your game crush because they have 6 CSL's that they shift to OCV to hit me. With a 12d6 attack, they can spread 4 dice for another 4 OCV - 8s6 stilll averages 23 past my defenses. Selling back DEF to enhance DCV isn't a great move on my part. Here we get into campaign rules, as I don't associate hit locations with Supers. How much offense do 8 PSL's for called shots cost me? VorpalMan could be a very effective build. Enhanced senses trump flash, and there are lots of ways to address entangle (especially if you have a base of 25 DC's...). NND's bypass defenses, but I may have the defense, and 6d6 NND averages 21 STUN - I expect to have a high STUN, CON and REC, and I doubt most NND users last long against 18-20 DC hits. And nothing stops me having NND"s in my multipower. I think we're going to take a careful look at DEF vs. DCV. I am starting to suspect that DCV is overvalued relative to static defenses in this system, but I want to think it over and get some more opinions. It is possible that 2 is too few, and it should be more than that. It's really hard to theorize the exact right value, though. I'm going to file that under "keep a close eye on it." Worst case, we could just set absolute maxima/minima, that would be simple if nothing else. But I don't like ruling out character concepts except as a last resort. It's also true that called shots existing (even if regular hit locations don't) makes low vs. terrible DCV matter. And DCV is really the only thing with a "once it's low, might as well bomb it into the ground" issue - do that to your DEF and you risk dying, low SPD always hurts, low DCs and you can't hurt anyone. OCV below a certain point and you can't even hit with AEs. I think the major things that need looking at are offense/defense tradeoffs other than CSLs being underpriced relative to CSLs, and DCV is I think overpriced relative to everything else.

Re: The Rule of F(X) Fair enough. I'll try to write up a "Here's the basic idea" fairly short summary, and maybe a few examples, before the details.

Re: The Rule of F(X) That is true. My goal is always "if you're trying to abuse it, it should be blatantly obvious" rather than "you can't abuse it," but without making it impossible to make some types of characters. The problem is if the CV is uneven - if you wind up ramping villains up to 11 OCV to challenge the 11 DCV PC, then the 6-8 DCV PC's are going to be getting hit every time.

Re: The Rule of F(X) Actually, I think you do have a good point. I think your character is largely based around abusing two things: CSLs are overvalued relative to other ways of exchanging offense and defense, and selling back DCV for DEF. 1) The "CSLs cost 1.25 picks" thing has the issue that you can get around it by using other means to trade offense for defense. Technically speaking, you can't put +DCV in a Multipower I think, but that's not really a flaw in your point. The value of abort to huge DCV is not that much bigger than the value of abort to huge Barrier or whatever. I think it is the case that the ability to make trades between OCV and damage is fairly inherent to the system, but I think this system has a major inconsistency where some methods of trading offense for defense (ie, CSLs) cost more than other methods (a multipower with attacks and defenses, or even just "rebuilding" CSLs with OCV and DCV that have lockout or something like that. In summary I think you are right that this is a problem and it needs fixing. 2) Seperate from this, I think, is the issue of DEF versus DCV. Assuming that I hit the "CSLs are magically fixed and that whole side of it works fine" button, is this still a problem? The math works out to taking -1 to DCV and MDCV gets you +3.5 DEF and +1.75 XDEF. Or if we want to make it round numbers, -4 (M)DCV = +14 DEF, +7 XDEF. NNDs can bypass DEF, but AEs can bypass DCV. Dropping down to 0 (M)DCV would get you +21 DEF, +10.5 XDEF. 46 DEF is enough to just not care about 12 DC attacks pretty much. Now, there still are drawbacks - KA's to the head (even with a -8, not that hard to hit), Flashes, Entangles, etc will all hit you all the time... but you can probably afford to defend yourself against the few reasonably common tactics that cause you problems (AP teleport, extra sense, and No Hit Locations would cover most of it). Meanwhile, the opposite trade - dropping yourself to 11 DEF for +4 (M)DCV - is kind of asking to get gooshed by a one hex AE. A 9.5d6 One Hex AE attack will average 22.5 damage, which is more than a 12d6 blast against 25 DEF. That's probably a bad sign. We've kind of been debating this one for awhile. Part of it is that pscyhologically, most players would rather take some damage each time (low DCV/high DEF) than no damage, but occasionally go splat (high DCV/low DEF) which doesn't necessarily translate into game balance. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it - possibly there needs to be some tweaking of the DCV vs. DEF ratio. The VPP thing - the idea is that you can, at worst, easily enough set your VPP to "NND: Something That Guy Doesn't Have," and so it's always going to better than a static set of attacks. We definitely found that without that, VPPs really do dominate. With that, VPPs are still totally good.

Re: The Rule of F(X) This is a perfectly legitimate tactic - note that the threshold for the 12d6 AE being better than spreading the 18d6 down to 12d6 is DCV 9. I think paying a slot to have an attack that's better against people with DCV 10+ is fair. This is true - the "best" tradeoffs are Spreading, Rapid Attack, and Called Shot. My standard of judgement is "is the guy with 12d6 EB +6d6 0 End EB balanced with the guy who has a multipower of 2-3 different 60 AP attacks and +6 OCV?" Both have their advantages and both represent having options in combat. It will depend on who you're fighting. A master villain might just have a flat 13 OCV, and so the difference between being able to abort to an 11 and abort to a 15 matters a lot when you're trying to dodge his attacks. The problem with dropping your DCV to 0 is not just that you'll get hit, but that you'll get hit with everything - if you run around with 0 DCV all the time, you can expect to get Rapid Attacked, Headshotted, etc because people can take -4 to -8 and still reliably hit you. It also means that groups of relatively low-OCV mooks can hit you every time, which can be a problem. 1 SPD is worth 2 DCs. Yes, we consider this a legitimate tactic; a fair number of characters have a multipower of attacks with a Barrier or the like in it. I'm pretty sure this is actually fairly common - I've seen a lot of generic energy blasters with EB, Barrier, and a few other things in an MP. This is partly a misunderstanding and partly something that didn't translate because of a different houserule. The misunderstanding: Defense and Exotic Defense (MD/PowD) are seperate. +1 SPD would cost -7 PD, -7 ED, -3.5 PowD, -3.5 Mental Defense (or since you can't have half a MD, you would probably take -4 to one and -3 to the other), and having different levels of picks in Defense and Exotic Defense is a yield sign (I'd evaluate this like a character with something like +10 PD/ED, Not Versus Magic). The missing explanation: we combined PD and ED into Defense. If you're not doing that, you would average PD and ED to check against the defense cap. I did, at one point, consider trying to work something for Rec/STUN into the formula. I eventually decided that I didn't think it was worth the extra complication. I have considered something like a STUN cap, with 1 pick = 10 stun, which does have the nice advantage of letting people do something with 1/5 of a pick or whatever. Ironically, that 6 OCV is a nerf. We originally had it count as your real OCV, then someone tried to make a dedicated summoner (as in, a guy whose main contribution to combat was Summoning), and we realized it was a problem because he could just have 1 OCV, no CSLs, and ridiculously large summons. We also (separately from this) have Aid houseruled to 8/die. I can see the problem with someone always making their characters have the same schtick, and honestly a lot of uses of that rule are going to wind up being unfun in the same way that Only At Night Man is unfun, but not really unbalanced. I'd be more likely to veto something like that as "sucking all night and then being awesome for 6 seconds isn't very fun, are you sure you want to do that?" rather than being too powerful. I've always seen Regeneration as much more utility than power, since it only heals BODY, slowly, which isn't typically a limiting factor for superheroes. That is totally true. I think that it's possible to make Sucks Terribly Man in a couple of ways (selling back more than about 1 point of speed, and having very low DCs and only direct damage attacks are the two I know of), but it's pretty hard to make a character who outshines someone who just took, say, +2 DC and no negative picks without either abusing something independent of this system (eg, having only 12 DCs but relying using ridiculous levels of advantage stacking) or the aforementioned "sell back OCV and DCs, use AE NNDs" trick. That said, if you can come up with one, I'd like to see it. That was my reasoning as well.

Re: The Rule of F(X) You bring up two points, I think - one of them is about AE attacks, one of them is more about options and combat flow. You can get screwy issues with low OCV characters who rely on one-hex AEs, although it's not quite as bad as you think - instead of making 12d6 AE one hex accurate attacks at OCV 2, you could be making 12d6 attacks at OCV 8 and hit most people more than half the time - but the tradeoff is that against people like Concentration Man, you're still only hitting half the time. This isn't actually an example of the problem - the problem is that AE charges you a percentage of your DC, but gives you a bonus to hit that is effectively linear. You definitely can make whacky characters who have an OCV of 6, no CSLs, low DC, and high everything else (especially SPD) and then rely on small NND AE attacks or other defense-bypassing AEs, but that falls under the "lots of negative picks is a red flag" region. More interestingly: "So I could set up an attack that is 23 DC + 0 OCV + .75 [6 DCV] +.25 [6 MDCV] + 2 Type 2 CSL's." I think you're sort of mixing two things here - one of them can be summarized as "so characters can have less OCV and more DCs, and then 'trade back' by spreading any time they want." The other is "you can have less CSLs and instead get more total OCV and DCV," and those kind of have two different answers. For the first: you are absolutely correct; also note spreading isn't the only way to do this. You could also buy a smaller attack that has 2-point CSLs with it, or Inaccurate on a larger attack, etc. Remember that a single character can have multiple different attacks that meet the ACV differently, if they so desire. My answer to this is that it's a question of flexibility - for which the cost is more character points - rather than raw power. If you compare 18 DC, 0 OCV, 6 DCV, 6 CSLs to 12 DC, 6 CV, 6 CSLs, then the first guy absolutely does have more options - he's like the second guy, but can trade out OCV for DCs on a 1-1 basis. However, he's either got only 1 attack, or he's paying more points (since +1 DC ~ 5 AP for each attack power, +1 OCV is just 5 points), and if he's spreading regularly he's paying more END. Ideally, the second guy has spent those points on other options that give him more flexibility - the big advantage to Guy 1 is not that he can spread to work the same as Guy 2, but that when he runs into something with really terrible DCV, like Concentration Power Man, he can drop a larger attack. For the second - this one is a bit trickier. We definitely observed that having type 2 CSLs is better than having CV, but not by too much. 4 OCV, 4 (M)DCV, and 4 type 2 CSLs is better than 6 OCV and 6 M(DCV) with 0 CSLs. This one merits some discussion. What we found is that the big advantage of type 2 CSLs can be seen when people are careful about things like holding actions, wolfpack tactics, and aborting. Using 4/4 and 6/0 characters above, the 4/4 character can abort up to DCV 11, and be almost unhittable by the 6/0 character. By contrast, if the 6/0 character is caught at a disadvantage, the 4/4 character can attack at OCV 8, and either hit on a 13- or on an abort still hit on a 10- (making aborting usually a bad move). Based on what we saw in gameplay, counting an OCV= a CSL leads to huge power discrepancies and we started to see big problems with people selling their CVs down to almost nothing and buying all CSLs when we just checked the best possible OCV+DCV they could get. It's also pretty clear that 1 CSL is less good than 1 OCV and 1 DCV, and through experimentation we came up with 1 CSL = 1.25 OCV as a good balancing point. To take extreme examples here, this suggests that given 2 characters with the same DC, SPD, and Defenses (say 12, 4, and 25), one of them having 1 OCV, 1 (M)DCV, and 14 type 2 CSLs should be on par with 10 OCV, 9.5 (M)DCV, and 0 CSLs (9.5 CV means a 50/50 shot on each attack of having 10 or 9 CV, which is obviously not something I'd bring to the table, but for analysis purposes, it just means halfway between the hit chance of 10 or 11 CV). I am OK with saying they are equally balanced - if they're trying to fight, say, a group of mooks with flat 7 CVs, the second guy is better off. If they're trying to fight a master villain with relatively few actions (compared to the party) but flat 13 CVs, the first guy is better off. In a one-on-one fight between them, the first character gets the choice of whether they alternate whiffing attacks on each other, or trade blows that always hit. The Concentration power has similar drawbacks - it will definitely blow people out of the water, but like you say - dropping your DCV to 0 has serious consequences, and can get you hammered in return. You can't abort until the next phase after attacking. That said it is most definitely a useful power - if you wait until everyone else has acted, or use wolf-pack tactics against a single villain, having the ability to drop your defenses for an all-out attack will be helpful. If you use it at the wrong time - for example, against an opponent who can abort and when there's enemies who can still act this phase - it will get you in trouble. I'd be fine with allowing a character who had this power, although I might warn them of possible unfun consequences if that was their only attack. "With DCV counted as offense, not defense, I can't have a higher DCV at the cost of lower defenses. And I can't have a higher SPD (your SPD caps are less than generous) to make some phases available to abort either." You can have more DCV for lower defenses. Take a negative Defense pick, and a +ACV pick, then use your ACV pick to have more DCV all the time. The reason ACV lumps together a bunch of things is to simplify the math for stuff like martial arts and CSLs; the idea is that many characters will have a variety of attacks with OCV/DCV/DC tradeoffs. You could break the ACV cap into an OCV cap, a DCV cap, an MDCV cap, a CSL cap, and a DC cap, but then the math makes even me cry if you have a martial artist or a character with Summon, Blast, and Mind Control or pretty much anything even mildly complex. SPD-wise, only relative SPD really matters. Not much changes if you set the base SPD to 6 and it's really more a matter of taste than anything else. Or do you mean that the relative cost of SPD to, say, defense or OCV is too high?