Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

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squirrelly-sama
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Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by squirrelly-sama »

A discussion thread on Effects and powers. Mostly I'll post my thoughts on how certain effects work along with my reasoning and logic behind how I came to these opinions and you can feel free to respond. I've been working with the system for years, building a lot of characters and focusing on a few things; efficiency, effectiveness, and creativity. These, to me, are the core pillars a good build is based on. Efficiency, how the points are spent. This can be on useful abilities or fluff, but the point to efficiency is that your spending your limited power points on what you want to spend it on for the character. Effectiveness, how well the character actually plays and their likelihood of succeeding at their chosen goals and if they will last and be useful in a campaign. Lastly creativity, a measure of both the quirkiness of the character's concept and how you use the game's system to achieve it.

So, lets get started.

Index:
Affliction
Burrowing
Communication
Comprehend
Concealment
CREATE
DAMAGE
DEFLECT
ELONGATION
ENHANCED TRAIT
ENVIRONMENT
EXTRA LIMBS
FEATURE
FLIGHT
GROWTH
HEALING
ILLUSION
IMMORTALITY
IMMUNITY
INSUBSTANTIAL
LEAPING
LUCK CONTROL
MIND READING
MORPH
MOVE OBJECT
MOVEMENT
NULLIFY
PROTECTION
QUICKNESS
REGENERATION
REMOTE SENSING
SENSES
SHRINKING
SPEED
SUMMON
SWIMMING
TELEPORT
TRANSFORM
VARIABLE
WEAKEN
Last edited by squirrelly-sama on Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:06 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Power Talk: Afflictions

Post by squirrelly-sama »

AFFLICTION
Action: Standard • Range: Close • Duration: Instant • Cost: 1 point per rank
You can impose some debilitating condition or conditions on a target by making a close attack. You set the conditions your Affliction causes at each degree when you acquire it and they may not be changed. Higher degree conditions replace lower degree conditions and do not stack with them. See the possible conditions for each degree under the Affliction Resistance Check table. The target resists with Fortitude or Will defense (chosen when you take the effect):

RESISTANCE CHECK:
Fortitude or Will vs. DC [Affliction rank + 10]
  • Success: No effect.
  • Failure (one degree): The target is dazed, entranced, fatigued, hindered, impaired, or vulnerable (choose one). Potential descriptors include coughing or sneezing, creeping mental influence, drowsiness, euphoria, fear, itchiness, lethargy, nausea, pain, or tipsiness.
  • Failure (two degrees): The target is compelled, defenseless, disabled, exhausted, immobile, prone, or stunned (choose one). Potential descriptors include agonizing pain, confusion, ecstasy, momentary emotional or mental influence, paralysis, seizure, terror, or vomiting.
  • Failure (three degrees): The target is asleep, controlled, incapacitated, paralyzed, transformed or unaware (choose one).
The target of an Affliction makes a resistance check at the end of each of his turns to remove first and second degree conditions. Third degree conditions require a minute of recovery time or outside aid, such as the Treatment skill or Healing effect (DC 10 + rank).
The exact nature and descriptors of the Affliction are up to you, chosen when you acquire the effect, with the GM’s approval; some examples are provided, but feel free to make up your own.

EXTRAS
  • Alternate Resistance: Some Afflictions may be initially resisted by Dodge, representing the need for quick reaction time or reflexes to avoid the effect. In this case, the later resistance checks to remove the Affliction’s conditions are typically still based on Fortitude or Will. For example, a target might make a Dodge check to avoid a blinding light or spray of liquid, but a Fortitude check to eliminate the effect if the initial Dodge fails. +0 cost per rank.
  • Concentration: Once you have hit with a Concentration Affliction, so long as you continue to take a standard action each turn to maintain the effect, the target must make a new resistance check against it, with no attack check required. +1 cost per rank.
  • Cumulative: Normally, an Affliction does not have a cumulative effect on the same target, so getting two results of one degree, one after the other, has no more or less effect than a single one degree result; you have to get a higher degree with a later attack, which replaces the initial result. A Cumulative Affliction adds any further degrees to the existing degrees on the target. For example, if you hit a target and impose a vulnerable condition (one degree), then attack again and get one degree on the effect, you impose the Affliction’s second degree condition. +1 cost per rank.
  • Extra Condition: Your Affliction imposes an additional condition per degree of success. So with one application of this extra, your Affliction imposes two conditions—such as dazed and hindered, or impaired and vulnerable—rather than just one. With two applications, it imposes three conditions, and so forth. Since mutually incompatible conditions are largely wasted, Afflictions with this extra often have the Limited Degree flaw as well. +1 cost per rank.
  • Progressive: This modifier causes an Affliction to increase incrementally without any effort from you. If the target fails a resistance check to end the Affliction, it not only persists, but increases in effect by one degree! So a target affected by the first degree of a Progressive Affliction who fails to resist progresses to the second degree of the effect at the start of his next round. A successful resistance check still ends the Affliction, as usual. +2 cost per rank.
FLAWS
  • Instant Recovery: Similar to the Reversible extra, the target of an Affliction effect with this modifier recovers automatically, no check required, at the end of the round in which the duration ends. So, for example, an instant duration Affliction only lasts one round, while a sustained duration Affliction lasts until no longer sustained. –1 cost per rank.
  • Limited Degree: Your Affliction is limited to no more than two degrees of effect. With two applications of this modifier, it is limited to no more than one degree of effect. –1 cost per rank.
_______________________________

So, Affliction is an effect that Afflicts the target with a negative status effect, the severity of which depends on how much the target failed their resistance roll vs a set DC. This is probably the second most used offensive effect used after Damage and is probably the most versatile attacking effect one can use, able to simulate just about any weird sort of power with just a little creativity. It's great for esoteric abilities that don't slot in precisely for other effects, things like turning someone to stone (impaired, disabled, Transformed) or as weird and niche as say causing someone to do a polka folk dance that makes them easier to hit(Vulnerable/Dazed, Defenseless/Stunned). It's basically the go to effect for any attack that isn't Damaging and is one of the core powers that holds MnM 3e together.

And it's terrible.

Overly balanced for, Affliction is a very hard Effect to actually use effectively and requires a large investment just to be considered worth it. Where 1 pp per rank Damage is always useful you almost always have to pair Affliction with Cumulative for it to be a viable alternative, while Extra Effect is also useful in an array it would have no stopping power due to how the DC works. This basically means either doubling the cost of the effect to be about as effective as vanilla damage or nerfing it's actual maximum output to match the cost. This is just were the issues start.

THE RESISTANCE CHECK
The check to overcome an Affliction is 10+"Affliction Ranks" vs the target's Fortitude, Will, and occasionally Dodge. With each degree of failure they suffer a degree of Affliction. What this means is that on average, for a PL10 game (the most common kind), the target is likely to have just as many ranks of Fortitude as the attacker has of Affliction due to how PL works, and so it often comes out a 45% chance of successfully afflicting the target as they only need to roll 10 or higher (Usually guaranteeing a success on HP reroll). Compounding this is how unlikely it is to subsequently get a higher degree of affliction as to get 2 degrees the target would need to roll 4 or lower, a 20% chance. 3 Degrees of failure is only possible with either a critical hit paired with the target's own bad luck or a radical PL shift in the users favor (such as the target having a very low resistance save or the user having a very high effect rank).

Now, normally getting off a very high level affliction is a game ender, so of course one would want to make it fairly hard to do on a single attack. However Affliction has no inborn ability to lower the resistance check of target, meaning that every attack is always done with these odds. Where Damage can slowly whittle down the defenses of the target until you can strike them down with a finishing blow Affliction has no such luxury, which necessitates the use of Cumulative as a must buy extra on Affliction simply so that the user is not just uselessly flailing around waiting to hit that magical jackpot where their roll, shift, and the target's own bad luck line up just right to give them a chance at using their powers full potential.

PROGRESSION
So the next thing to talk about when it comes to Afflictions is how the effect progresses, or rather how it doesn't. The vanilla affliction doesn't grow stronger on it's own. If you hit them 1, 2, or even 100 times and they always only fail the check by one degree it will always just cause the first tier of status. The only way to progress the status is to either score a higher degree of success, something that is very unlikely and unreliable, or purchasing the Cumulative or Progressive extras. Cumulative allows the user to increase the degree of the status afflicted by landing more successful hits with the same affliction, Progressive (which casts 2x as much) causes the affliction to automatically increase in degree with every failed resistance save. Both of these make Afflictions more viable but sadly they still end up being somewhat diminished in utility due to how Resistance checks for afflictions work.

The issue with Affliction Resistance checks in this case is how easy it is for the victim to just remove the affliction in subsequent turns. The status effects have no staying power, every turn after failing the initial affliction check the user gets an additional attempt to remove the affliction with no action cost, meaning it can even be done while stunned or otherwise incapacitated. Third degree afflictions thankfully have some small amount of staying power, lasting 10 rounds before they can start resisting it but has no protection from others attempting to remove the status. Worse still once the resistance check to shake off the lingering affliction is passed, regardless of what degree it was at, the target fully recovers. So every turn after you succeed there's more than a 50/50 shot that the target will simply completely undo all the attacker's progress on the affliction, Cumulative and Progressive modifiers be damned.

So with Cumulative you could basically waste a couple turns getting the user to the second degree of the affliction only to have it undone in an instant, Progressive doesn't require extra actions but relies on a statistically diminishing chance to reach it's full power. You basically have about a 1 in 10 shot of that progressive affliction making it all the way.

In short it's an uphill battle just getting a good status to afflict, but it's also very easy for that same status to simply vanish on... not even a good roll but an average, be it a first degree affliction or a second degree affliction, both can and likely will vanish the very next turn. Mathematically you could simplify your chance for an affliction working and then staying around for subsequent turns by halving the odds of the previous turn. So you start out with just a 50% shot of getting the initial status to proc (ignoring the chances of landing the hit in the first place), there's about a 25% chance that this will last 1 more turn. 12.5% for two turns, ~6% chance for it to last 3 turns. Any more than that and you have better odds of landing a nat 20. And at any given interval if they succeed the check the affliction is entirely removed, be it 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. The 1 minute grace period for 3rd degree afflictions is nice, but not really useful both due to how hard it is to get that level of effect out of Affliction but how easy it can be to overcome thanks to healing and treatment.

STATUSES
Now what can Affliction actually do? Let's take a look at the status effects that that Affliction can apply to the target, their effectiveness and utility.
  • Failure (one degree): The target is dazed, entranced, fatigued, hindered, impaired, or vulnerable
  • Failure (two degrees): The target is compelled, defenseless, disabled, exhausted, immobile, prone, or stunned
  • Failure (three degrees): The target is asleep, controlled, incapacitated, paralyzed, transformed or unaware
So the initial options are: Remove a Move Action, a passive and slightly fragile way to completely stop the target from acting, -1 movement speed, also -1 movement speed but with a different name, -2 to all checks and halving the targets defense saves. And right off the bat we can start seeing issues. Half the status that can be afflicted are honestly tash, one is ludicrously more powerful than the others (honestly most GMs house rule it as applying to a somewhat broad field but that's still leagues above even the next most useful status), and the rest are middling at best. Fatigued is just Hindered, and hindered is just an infinitely more useless version of Dazed which is already a down grade in action economy as you're sacrificing a standard action to stop a move action. Vulnerable is okay but unreliable, the favoritism of Toughness mechanically and Bricks naratively just makes it much less useful than it should be as you get diminishing returns on more Toughness shifted characters. Entranced is also a somewhat useful effect, effectively removing at least 1 opponent from a fight so long as the effect is maintained and allows for some great set ups but is easily disrupted.

Unfortunately for Vulnerable, Dazed, and Entranced, they are rather more easily accomplished for even cheaper through skills and advantages. Using them through skills also comes with added benefits including the ability to get higher ranks than PL limits would normally allow and the ability to use them on multiple targets without the need for an area modifier, this usage is selective as well as it does not affect allies.

Second Degree statuses are: Turning an enemy into a dazed ally, Reducing the target's defenses to 0 and probably scoring an auto crit, a -5 penalty to all checks, a -2 penalty to checks and -1 movement speed ranks, Character has no movement but still has full actions, Less accurate and easier to hit in melee but also harder to hit from range also hindered, and lastly the opponent takes no actions, including free actions.

Once again we run into some major issues when it comes to relative effectiveness of these options. Compelled stands out like the winner of a game of "Spot the Main Character", you basically remove an enemy entirely while also gaining a likely powerful ally for a turn or two, it basically invalidates all the status' on the same level and even a lot that are higher up. I mean, you can easily just have the target stay still and intentionally fails all their checks while the party just stomps on them, even if the GM doesn't allow the resistance saves to be auto failed they will effectively make themselves defenseless, as they can't take actions of their own their as good as stunned, and they won't move unless you decide they should. Like, jesus christ this would have been powerful as a 3rd degree affliction, I could imagine it as resistance attempts use a move action to keep control of the character so after the 1 minute mark the status stops acting like Controlled and starts acting like Compelled.

Anyway, on the other effects, ignoring how weak they seem in comparison to Compelled there are a few good ones in the bunch, and not as many are complete trash as the first tier, most are genuinely useful. Defenseless is a great status to inflict, unlike Vulnerable it doesn't suffer so much from diminishing returns on toughness shifted characters as you can still score free crits to improve your attack's effect ranks to help beat over them. Disabled is amazing as well, as basically drops the target about 5 PL as they would likely suffer penalties to both sides of the PL shift's checks, even if not dropping 2.5 PL is still a massive advantage in the attacker's favor. Exhausted is like a worse Disabled, basically just being Impaired and Hindered with a small added benefit that they can't freely spam Extra Effort, while Impaired is something that may be a status that can qualify for a second tier affliction it's literally just a worse version of Disabled and Hindered doesn't pretty much nothing, the Extra Effort part may not even come into play as true PVP is rare and GM's are unlikely to spam extra effort due to the issue of handing out a bunch of HPs to the players.

Immobile is very Niche, only useful if you absolutely have to stop the target from going from one location to another. It doesn't make them easier to hit, it doesn't actually stop the Move Action from being used, and doesn't actually stop maneuverability based actions like Agile Feint or such. It's still better than Hindered at least, but then again everything is better than hindered. Immobile really should have been a Tier 1 status, an alternative to Dazed where it specifically blocked moving as opposed to just the move action.

Prone is the Trash option of the tier, it's a status that also gives beneficial effects. With Prone Fighting or Slither movement it only gives the beneficial effects. It can be recovered from with just a move action, or even a free action with high Acrobatics or Instant Up. Even worse you can just trip someone prone with an acrobatic or athletic skill check where knocking the target prone only requires 1 degree of success. It's kind of amazing just how terrible an option this status is. It'd be found wanting as a 1st tier status, but as 2nd tier status it's laughable.

Lastly Stunned: a great status, and were it not for compelled it may have been the best. Simply it stops the target from taking any actions while they are afflicted. sustained effects are dropped, they can't move (meaning it invalidates immobile), they can't perform free actions, they can't attack. All they can really do is make resistance checks and strangely Defense checks. It's somewhat odd that defense doesn't also drop when stunned but that'd invalidate Defenseless and honestly the deck is stacked against Defense shifts enough as it is.

So now we get to the strongest statuses, the third Tier.
What we have is: Incapacitated - but super easy to get rid of, Compelled - But somehow even more OP, "Omae wa mou shindeiru", Incapacitated - but you can still watch stuff i guess, "polymorph!", and the one status that actually comes pre-packaged in two other options from this list.

Asleep is literally just a worse version of Incapacitated. It gives the same combination of statuses; Defenseless, Unaware, and stunned. The only difference is that Asleep can be broken by loud noises, being moved, or just failing another resistance check. Asleep is to Incapacitated what Entranced is to Stunned. There is no reason to pick this over Incapacitated, even an effect described as something like Magical Sleep would be better played by Incapacitated since at least then the character doesn't have the curse broken by your average everyday alarm clock.

Controlled is just a supped up version of Compelled, not even by that much since it really only gives the victim an extra move action for the user to make use of. I suppose it also benefits from the 3rd tier grace period allowing it to last longer if it procs but that's not really caused by the status itself. A great effect, sure, but it's really just a slightly better version of it's 2nd tier sibling. Still, in effectiveness it's probably the strongest as it effectively removes an enemy target for 10 rounds and gives you a completely unhindered ally, basically it's everything I said about Compelled but you don't have to worry about the effect instantly dropping the next round.

Incapacitated, the good old favorite. A powerful status that completely removes the target from the fight and can set you up for finishing them off if the game is more dark and bitter than my early morning cup of milk. Not as broken controlled but you don't have to worry about finishing off the target when it wears off. It's a solid pick and a well worth the tier it's in.

Paralyzed, like Asleep it's also just a worse version of Incapacitated, making the target Defenseless, physically stunned, and immobile (which is redundant when stunned), so basically the target is incapacitated but can still see and hear what's going on and can still attack with mental powers because of course they can, they just had to add that little caveat in there. And like asleep there's no real reason to ever choose this option over Incapacitated, and fun fact you can actually make an even better affliction by having limited degree and extra condition to combine Stunned and defenseless. You could even throw a quirk or something on there to make it cheaper. But yeah, Paralyzed really shouldn't exist.

Transformed, somehow this condition actually rivals Controlled in just how over powered it is. You basically turn the target into anything with equal or lesser PP cost to it's original state. This could be turning an alley into a more effective hero but equally powerful hero, turning an enemy into a weakling, or just doing some funny shit like turning a target into tea pot you then shatter. On it's own that's powerful but not quite as powerful as Controlled, but what really pushes it into that territory is that because you dictate the target's build you can basically keep the effect up indefinitely by dropping the save they need to make to beat it to nothing.

And finally Unaware. I wasn't kidding before, this status is actually included in several other options on this list. It's hit and miss on asleep which one is better but there is no reason to pick this over Incapacitated. Mechanically being Unaware doesn't actually make you vulnerable or defenseless, you just get -2 and -5 penalties to defense checks so it doesn't even have that going for it.

COMPARISONS TO OTHER EFFECTS
The best way to figure out the balance of an effect is to compare it to similar effects. In this case Damage.

Damage is basically just a supped up pre-built Affliction. Because damage's DC is 15+Ranks as opposed to Afflictions 10+Ranks it is much easier to stick it and things only get worse for affliction from there. Every damage check lowers the resistance check to oppose it, meaning that outside of very specific circumstances just punching the villain in the face will always be better than nothing and only become more attractive and effective the longer you keep punching. Where affliction just stays stagnant unless they roll low enough Damage actively lowers their roll over time making it easier to get higher degrees of success by repeatedly using the effect. Damage's real similarities to Affliction only show up at 2 degrees of success, the equivalent in terms of DC and effect as Afflictions first degree. 2 degrees of damage renders the target dazed and applies a further -1 to future toughness saves making it more effective than Affliction as it both applies a first degree status and makes it harder to resist future checks. At three degrees of damage (effectively 2 degrees of Affliction) you give the target another bruise and the status "Staggered" which is just dazed and hindered, a weak status but unlike Affliction damage automatically becomes somewhat cumulative at this point as getting hit with another 3rd degree of damage just bumps it up to 4th degree. On the 4th degree of damage (3rd degree of affliction) the target is incapacitated.

If that weren't enough, just to rub salt in the wound I guess, Damage's conditions actually stick around. Unlike Affliction you don't get subsequent checks to stop being Dazed, staggered, or incapacitated. Nope, that stuff sticks with you unless you use a heal power or the 1 per fight for one use full turn Recover action. You could use a hero point to remove them, but the same could be done with affliction (worse yet just using it to reroll and likely succeed in undoing the affliction entirely.) Oh, and guess what? When recovering from a damage condition you recover in stages, no of that instant reset BS like with affliction, if you want to get rid of damage's conditions you have to work for it!

IN SUMMATION
Affliction is a very versatile effect, allowing the user to do many different types of attacks allowing a variety of powers to be formed from a single effect without them all having the exact same outcome. Because of how different these statuses are they offer a lot of different strategic options and can be used to make very creative and quirky powers. However they are so heavily nerfed compared to damage that they hardly seem worth it. They are more generally more expensive due to the required Modifiers to make the even slightly usable, are harder to actually get to work due to their DCs, easier to remove due to their recovery mechanics, and often either don't actually accomplish much when they do work or all end up doing the exact same thing due to many of the lack luster options and bad tier arrangement. Overall this effect had a lot of potential that it sadly didn't reach.

It's rather sad, I feel that if Afflictions were even slightly better the game would be very different, and so would builds. As it is, without unlimited PP builds are forced to be efficient and it's hard to get an Affliction outside of an array and those that are in an array have to contend with other likely more useful effects at a given time. Generally the average MnM build tends to have some good Damage or Move Object power as their main attack with maybe one niche affliction as an AE that they rarely use. It makes many builds basically unplayable due to how useless the character would be, not just because their afflictions don't accomplish much but because how often they'd simply not do anything at all. It becomes hard to have fun RPing a character who constantly fails the one thing their supposed to actually be good at.

PROPOSED FIXES
The way I see it there's not a need to completely overhaul the way affliction works, I feel a few tweaks here and there can turn it from weak to a contender.

Mostly it needs to stick, that's really the core of how status effects work, they're usually hard to get rid of without some sort of outside aid or a deliberate action on the victims part. Either getting rid of the recovery resistance check for a few rounds or just making it recover in backwards order rather than all at once would be a godsend. I'd heard propositions on making higher tiers of affliction require higher degrees of success to get rid of as well. Anything to make it harder to just wipe the slate clean after successfully Afflicting the target would be welcome and make the effect much more viable. There may also need to be a few caveats to how non-resistance based recovery from conditions would work so making a target prone or asleep wouldn't be easily overcome without first negating or overcoming the affliction.

Rearrange the statuses that are available, I already discussed it above but some of the statuses are just too powerful for their tier while many are just too weak to bother with at their tier or are completely overshadowed and invalidated by conditions on the same tier. A few more statuses would also be welcome, offering more variety in how to apply the effect. A "Morph" style 2nd tier condition would be a good option, only altering physical appearance and not stats making it easier to achieve weak polymorph style attacks that aren't so powerful as to require 3 degrees of success to work. Awareness debuffs like blinded, deafened, numbed and such could be 1st and 2nd tier conditions rather than having it just be unaware at 3 degrees which would make the weak dazzle effects much cheaper and more reliable.

As a note, these proposed solutions listed here are mostly suggestions for house rules that wouldn't be too obtrusive or require large redesigns of existing characters. So I avoided things like giving the default version certain existing modifiers.
Last edited by squirrelly-sama on Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ares
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by Ares »

That's a very impressive and comprehensive analysis. I'm curious what others will have to say, as I'm going to need to re-read this a couple of times to fully digest it. But if you're planning to examine other Powers in a similar manner, then this is going to be quite the interesting thread.

Though as an off the cuff comment, I will say an issue I had with Affliction was that there was just too many damn conditions you could be afflicted with. Whenever I tried to build anything with it I kept having to flip back and forth between the Affliction section and the Status Effect section, and it felt like it was too much work to build something as simple as Spider-Man's webbing. It's certainly a versatile power, but I'd trim the status effects down to the absolute minimum and relegate more complex Afflictions to a linked Transform effect.
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squirrelly-sama
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by squirrelly-sama »

Ares wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2019 2:28 am That's a very impressive and comprehensive analysis. I'm curious what others will have to say, as I'm going to need to re-read this a couple of times to fully digest it. But if you're planning to examine other Powers in a similar manner, then this is going to be quite the interesting thread.

Though as an off the cuff comment, I will say an issue I had with Affliction was that there was just too many damn conditions you could be afflicted with. Whenever I tried to build anything with it I kept having to flip back and forth between the Affliction section and the Status Effect section, and it felt like it was too much work to build something as simple as Spider-Man's webbing. It's certainly a versatile power, but I'd trim the status effects down to the absolute minimum and relegate more complex Afflictions to a linked Transform effect.
I understand that issue somewhat but I feel that drastically reducing the options from Affliction would probably be worse overall for the system, Affliction as it is with all it's status to choose from forms a core part of how the game works and how character powers can be made. It basically is the only way to make creative or quirky attacks in most circumstances. I feel the issue you're facing could be better solved by just streamlining the statuses themselves to make them easier to understand or to cut off some needless redundancies.

Spiderman's webbing is honestly often built incorrectly and inefficiently in my opinion. For one, I feel it's better built as a continuous Move Object, you grab the character with the webbing and can move them around while they are still suffering from the grab. Even a snare could be built as a limited to holding in place continuous Move Object. As an Affliction, in a more streamlined system it could be built as something like Dazed/Vulnerable (hard to act and easier to hit) and Stunned/Defenseless (too tied up to do anything and unable to dodge) with extra condition, limited degree, and maybe cumulative (it's much less useful on just 2 degrees of affliction so it often makes little difference to just leave it off).

A lot of time it just takes a bit of lateral thinking to solve common issues with the system, even within it's own rules and still inline with flavor and fluff.
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by FuzzyBoots »

List of Afflictions

I have my own table... somewhere. I forget where.

A very minor tweak for Affliction is to cap the Fort/Will save to PL-2, kind of in-line with what 2E generally wound up doing in their builds (although technically, the limit was PL+5. I feel like another might be retaining a similar set-up to damage where the DC starts at 15+ and the first rank of failure is a penalty. Heck, if you let that stack with damage, it even makes it possible to soften up an opponent by punching them a bit, and then hitting them with the whammy.
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Power Talk: Burrowing

Post by squirrelly-sama »

BURROWING (MOVEMENT)________________________________
Action: Free • Range: Personal • Duration: Sustained • Cost: 1 point per rank
You can burrow through the ground, leaving a tunnel behind if you choose. You move through soil and sand at a speed rank equal to your Burrowing rank, minus 5. So Burrowing 8, for example, lets you move through the ground at speed rank 3 (around 16 MPH). Burrowing through hard clay and packed earth reduces speed one additional rank. Burrowing through solid rock reduces it by two additional ranks. The tunnel you leave behind is either permanent or collapses behind you immediately (your choice when you begin burrowing each new tunnel).
Note that Burrowing differs from the Permeate effect of Movement, which allows you to pass through an obstacle like the ground at your normal speed without disturbing it at all (see Movement).

EXTRAS
  • Penetrating: Normally, the hardness of the ground affects only the speed at which you burrow. At the GM’s discretion, some super-hard materials may be considered Impervious to Burrowing, in which case this extra allows you to dig through them. • 1 point per rank.
  • Ranged: This extra either allows you to create tunnels at a greater distance (without having to be at the end-point of the tunnel as it forms) or, in conjunction with Affects others, allows you to grant the Burrowing effect to someone else at a distance. Doing both requires two applications of the extra. +1 or 2 cost per rank.
FLAWS
  • Limited: Burrowing may be limited to certain circumstances or materials, such as only loose sand and soil (leaving the character unable to burrow through dense clay or solid rock), or only snow and ice (being unable to burrow through earth and soil at all). –1 cost per rank.
______________________________________________

So, Burrowing is an effect that allows the user to burrow through many materials as a form of movement. This allows the user to travel through the ground, walls, and in some cases the ceiling giving many dimensions of movement and is fairly reliable. After all, it's rather rare that a PC finds themselves without ground under their feet. The speed at which you move is painfully slow (one of a few effects that start out in the negative on the Ranks and Measurements Chart), requiring between 1-3 ranks to reliably move through even a single foot of earth a round and 4-6 to submerge yourself entirely. When it comes to actually movement, traveling to a distant target, this effect is a rather poor choice and the benefit of moving through objects it provides is not even entirely unique.

And yet Burrowing is probably one of the better, if least used, movement effects.

What really makes Burrowing stand out is that it provides a non-standard type and movement. Where the player by default has speed, can leap, and can swim they cannot really dig and so taking even 1 rank gives the user a unique way of moving about. While it's similar to the Permeate ability it has it's differences with strengths and weaknesses making the two different enough that while they over lap there reasons to pick one over the other. But probably the most important thing about burrowing is exactly what it means in terms of mechanics and narrative.

BURROWING OP?
What do I mean by this? Well, Burrowing can probably match Flight in how easy it can be used to cheese for an even better defensive benefit. Where flight would place one in the air, out of range of anyone without flight, leaping, or ranged attacks, Burrowing places the user under ground and thus behind full cover and thus untargetable and unreachable without also having Burrowing or Permeate. It takes a few ranks to do this, about 5 or so for it to be reliable but that's about the same cost as a couple ranks of flight, and because of how distance increases exponentially with additional ranks it only becomes more reliable.

The second main exploitable property of Burrowing is how it basically renders physical obstructions impotent. Walls, doors, barriers, and pretty much any other method of blocking a path that isn't made of steel or energy can be almost entirely ignored with just a couple ranks of burrowing. This is very clearly a hassle for a GM to deal with as it becomes hard to gate off areas or create road blocks when a character can quite literally just walk through it.

The third useful property of Burrowing is that it comes with a built it pseudo Portal/Affects Others Modifier effect. When digging you can choose to leave a hole others can follow you through, potentially allowing the user to extend the earlier benefits to allies as well. Meaning that a single use could use the power to spirit away party members from danger or allow the entire party to do a dungeon bypass.

So the question becomes; Is Burrowing too powerful?

THE BAD
Burrowing comes with it's own fair share of weaknesses and downsides. Traveling speed is probably the most obvious. Burrowing is probably the slowest method of going from point A to Point B starting at -4 ranks of distance moved (as you need a minimum of 1 rank of Burrowing) which is one foot per round. Moving at even just base ground speed through soft soil is a 5 rank investment. What compounds this is just how Movement is handled in MnM as opposed to other systems. With the exponential growth of other movement powers allowing the user to run over every square of a battle map with a handful of ranks the system, and most GMs, don't bother with keeping track of fidelity of movement a a degree less than about 10-15 feet. Worse still, as ranks of different movement don't stack you run into issues of having 5 ranks of Speed and 10 ranks of burrowing resulting in a movement speed equivalent of just 6 ranks of speed. It can be mitigated a bit by using arrays to lower the price but due to cost/rank differences between them it becomes an issue.

Another problem that can crop up, if the GM either bothers to notice it and not handwave it, is that the user doesn't have any innate ability to perceive the world above the ground to target others and placing themselves bellow ground while defending them likewise makes it impossible for them to attack a target without moving back into melee. With how badly the movement speed of Burrowing it makes hit and run tactics only possible with much higher ranks of the effect than with other movement powers. A clever GM who notices the benefits of Burrowing beforehand can easily act to counteract them with this limit, building traps on the opposite side of walls that would likely be bypassed or even trapping the walls themselves so the burrower blindly bumbles into them.

The last issue with Burrowing, and likely the most limiting, is just how niche a power it is. It doesn't matter how amazing or game breaking a power is if you can't actually obtain it. Being able to dig a tunnel is hardly an effect that most builds and concepts could or would have. It's an effect that's pretty much the exclusive to Earth Power users and certain types of animal based characters such as Moles, Rabbits, Dogs, and Rodents. With how rarely the power can crop up in a build, and how simple an effect it really is (basically speed but underground) it hardly warrants it's own individual Effect.

But in the end this all sort of becomes moot when you compare Burrowing with some of the other Movement effects in the system.

HOW IT STACKS UP
While I said Burrowing is one of the better movement effects, it is probably has more to do with how terrible most other movement effects are than how amazing Burrowing is.

The other niche movement power, Swimming, is a good example. Swimming is a movement option a character has be default, is based on ground speed normally, and ranks of swimming doesn't even make you any faster in the water than just having an equal ranks of ground speed. Even worse the effect only works in water or liquids, a logical limit, and so is much harder to actually use than either just base Speed or Burrowing. Where Burrowing probably shouldn't require it's own effect rather than being a feat or option under Movement it's questionable if Swimming should even exist at all.

When it comes to the Movement power type Permeate there's a lot of similarities but some key differences. Permeate uses base ground speed, letting it stack with existing Speed ranks and even starts out with a much smaller distance penalty with just -2 instead of -5. Unlike burrowing Permeate also isn't made slower or stopped depending on the material moved through. In many ways it could be seen as superior to Burrowing, however there are some key differences. Permeate does not allow the target to breath while inside the object, a minor issue, but more importantly the user cannot create tunnels to allow others to follow them.

There are other, much worse, Movement powers types but none of those can be used to make a direct comparison to Burrowing and sadly the rest of the movement effect quite clearly outshine Burrowing.

Speed, the most vanilla movement power and the base that other movements are either based on or even use in the case of the Movement Effect. Given speed is the most basic form of movement, on which the rest of the movement system handled, it's probably the best effect used to compare other movement powers. It's much faster, more reliable, easier to make use of for the same cost. While Burrowers can retreat underground speedster blitz krieg attacks are nearly just as good, rushing in to hit then just rushing back out beyond the opponents ability to reach. Because it has such maneuverability right from the start it can be a lot more useful in more situations, allowing the user to leverage it it more creative ways even with low ranks. Additionally Speed is a very common type of effect, something that can slot into just about any character without question making it a lot more popular. In the end, compared to the standard form of movement Burrowing comes up a little wanting.

Leaping, the other somewhat standard movement effect. Unlike with Speed the PC doesn't technically start with 0 ranks of it nor can they gain ranks of it with an athletics check. There's a check you can do to jump but it's a bit finicky and a topic best reserved for Leaping's own discussion. Like leaping it offers a somewhat unique form of movement and like burrowing it starts out with a speed penalty if a lesser one. Leaping ends up having most of the same benefits of speed with an additional benefit of being able to easily ascend if needed which is a coveted and useful trait as flight and hight advantages can be a pain to deal with. While burrowing can allow the user to go up some obstacles it's not a reliable form of elevation.

Flight, the golden boy of movement effects. While a little more limited in the number of builds that can utilize it than speed it is still a very popularly used power that can fit on many powers. So much so in fact it's often a tacked on secondary power regardless of how much it matches the primary power and it's unlikely anyone would question it. Redundant biology power? How about a little flight! Power theft? Whelp now you got permanent Flying Brick powers too! Flight offers comparable safety to burrowing while also retaining all the benefits of speed, being just as fast for each rank purchased and useful in even more situations given it gives the user full 3D maneuverability. While Burrowing makes the user harder to attack and chase down it similarly limits the user from doing the same where as Flight offers slightly less protection, as flying and staying high above your opponent is a rather safe if not completely unassailable position, for much more utility. Similar to Burrowing, Flight can be used to bypass many obstacles and make for good escapes. In terms of price at low to moderate ranks Flight is actually the cheaper option to spec into, as it takes 5 ranks of flight, 10 ranks of Burrowing, before flight becomes more expensive per distance rank moved than burrowing.

Teleport, probably the most powerful movement effect. While it doesn't have the as much inborn defensive use as Flight or Burrowing it more than makes up for it in other utilities. Like Speed, Teleport starts out without a distance penalty making it a useful travel option right off the bat and thus can also be used for hit and run tactics as a defensive option. Teleport similarly offers the user the ability to bypass many obstacles as well as remain relatively hidden by avoiding traveling in sight of hostiles. While it's default option does not give safety to blindly bypassing a wall or door it's a mere +1 modifier to do so, and as it starts out with a 5 rank distance lead the added cost on just one rank of Teleport is still cheaper than buying up Burrowing ranks to the equivalent distance. As Teleport has the same cost as Flight it likewise is cheaper than Burrowing for the first 5 ranks.

SPECULATIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
I'm somewhat baffled by how the power was designed and wonder if it may have been something that was just made early in development and never updated because no one thought it'd be worth the effort since it'd see so little use. It's the only power with such a massive penalty to it's travel distance, and if it were simply just for the effect maybe being easily abused it's not handled the same way flight and teleport were where the power was just given a higher cost per rank. Perhaps the makers decided that digging through something would logically take time so added the penalty, it seems believable and seems in line with the logic gathered from how a few other effects were designed. Sadly whenever this happens it always just makes the power kinda terrible, or not worth it compared to similar options or creative use of other related effects. The only thing stopping people is that actually doing this is considered "Power Gaming" and so players are forced to just pick the much worse option. Leaping could realistically be made as just a limited type of flight for the same price without the draw backs. Swimming is just Water limited speed. Communication can be replaced with just the Comm link sense. If the game wanted you to use the actual powers they should have been better designed or given a more fitting price tag.

Burrowing is just hit rather hard by the design choices that went into it. It was made it's own power instead of being part of the Movement Powers effect which would let it be based on already purchased ranks of ground speed. That's an issue with a lot of movement effects, they don't stack with ground movement usually requiring a doubling up on the purchase or else placing them all in an array.

As the effect uses a Penalty instead of just increasing the base cost it runs into one of the innate issues in MnM's point buy system where seemingly expensive low rank but high reward style powers are much easier to customize than low cost low reward powers. Because it takes less ranks to achieve an effect, then even if the base cost is the same or higher the ability to add modifiers to it reduces in cost dramatically. So in addition to the above mentioned issues where teleport and flight are cheaper at moderate ranks than Burrowing if modifiers were added to both, such as Affects Others or Increased Duration the cost of Burrowing increases by a far greater amount than the others due to it's higher ranks.

It feels like power kind shot itself in the foot. Burrowing is a movement power that isn't really usable for travel due to it's starting penalty and can only really be used for it's more abusible gimmicks which don't require as much investment and don't really get easier to abuse with high ranks. It the thought was just to gatekeep a potentially powerful movement option with a high initial cost it'd be easier to just make it a flat cost, like a Movement Power option, that improves already established ground speed.

IN SUMMARY
Burrowing, while more useful than some would think at first glance is ultimately still rather lack luster as an effect and held back by the somewhat odd way it was designed compared to other powers that offer similar benefits to what likely caused it to get nerfed. It's basically middle of the road, being better than the majority of movement powers by fact that most movement powers kinda suck but still not to the level of the actually kinda good and somewhat broken movement powers. It's a bit niche, a likely reason more care wasn't placed into designing it and issues weren't seen earlier, and while there aren't too many complaints about it's odd quirks or somewhat powerful gimmick uses.

Honestly this is probably one of the effects that is likely going to get ignored in discussions, in balancing talks, and probably remain unchanged in future versions because no one uses it simply because it's both somewhat lack luster and because there aren't a lot of characters who would have it as an option. In all likelihood this post may be the longest and most in depth discussion on the effect it has had or will ever have, because I have too much time on my hands and thought way too hard on what was supposed to be a pretty simple straight forward power "Speed, but underground!".

PROPOSED FIXES
Probably the biggest thing making Burrowing look bad is how it compares to other movement effects. It's... meh, when standing on it's own merit with some somewhat easily fixed issues. It doesn't need to be made into something rivaling the cheese potential of Teleport or the viability of Flight, really all it needs is just a couple tweaks to let it's own unique effect shine. Sadly the way to do so does effect costs and ranks, so house rules would require rebalancing costs and ranks and it wouldn't really be a sheet that could be used universally.

Really there's two options to fix Burrowing. The first, and probably simplest is to remove the -5 penalty and just make the cost 2 per rank, making it more in line with potentially abuseable movement powers. The other, and probably more balanced, is to make the effect a Movement Power effect similar to permeate where 2 or three ranks allows the user to have all the benefits of Burrowing at normal ground speed.
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by squirrelly-sama »

FuzzyBoots wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:37 pm List of Afflictions

I have my own table... somewhere. I forget where.

A very minor tweak for Affliction is to cap the Fort/Will save to PL-2, kind of in-line with what 2E generally wound up doing in their builds (although technically, the limit was PL+5. I feel like another might be retaining a similar set-up to damage where the DC starts at 15+ and the first rank of failure is a penalty. Heck, if you let that stack with damage, it even makes it possible to soften up an opponent by punching them a bit, and then hitting them with the whammy.
I'd disagree with the first proposed fix of altering the Fort/Will save limits. For one it just seems a bit clunky to basically have them at a -2 penalty, but also because it would affect the balance of other things such as Fort/Will based damage. For another reason, a -2 penalty to those particular saves doesn't really solve the problem, just makes it slightly less apparent. Like plugging a leak by putting your hand over it, sure it's better than nothing but it's still leaking and and dripping all over the floor if slightly less than before.

The issue that crops up with the second solution, treating it's DC like damage is that it goes a bit too far. See, yeah it makes it easy to get high degrees of affliction but some of those 3rd status effects are kinda seriously good and not something you want happening 25% of the time you shoot off your attack, it becomes a bit too strong. The main things holding Affliction back aren't how hard it is to land a KO from nothing, but that it both treats every attack like it's starting from nothing without extra modifiers and that it's easy to get rid of.

Letting it benefit from damage penalties is an idea I like. It runs into the issue of the character still needing damage and kinda having to double up on actions to repeatedly punch the target in the face to make it easier to poison them but it's a step in the right direction. I had a thought about having affliction function like Damage but then in that case it's basically still just a slightly worse version of damage that's more versatile to make up for it, so I guess it evens out.
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by Jabroniville »

Holy crap- this is a LOT of material to digest! I'll be reading when I can; this seems to be great stuff.

Burrowing:
* An interesting place to start. I almost never use it, as there's only a tiny handful of guys who get anything out of the ability in comics. I like that it's a tad more expensive to buy, as a lot of players auto-buy 1-2 ranks in a Movement Power at character creation in order to quickly get from Point A to Point B, and this prevents that, which is important for a power that can be used to be VERY sneaky if you know what you're doing.

The stuff about getting past doors is a good note, and one smart RPers would utilize immediately. For only a few ranks, too- most guys would have to use high Strength or a 2pp/rank Blast power at higher ranks in order to just bust down walls.

You're probably correct that it was written out first and then likely ignored- its low stats seem to hail from 2nd Edition, which gives it a paltry "1 mile per hour" starting at rank 1, which would only increase to the baseline of most other movement-related powers a few ranks later.

Myself, I consider it so rarely used I don't even have it listed in my "easy-check" set-up of powers, speeds, and ranks! If I ever use it for a character, I just throw down whatever looks right and go "yeah, that'll do" because really, who in comics uses much Burrowing?
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by squirrelly-sama »

Jabroniville wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:25 pmbecause really, who in comics uses much Burrowing?
Well, there's Bugs Bunny. It's occasionally a power stint to crash into an under ground base. I think it's also one of Superman's 20 quadrillion powers.
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by FuzzyBoots »

It's also an extremely common vehicle power in fiction with "mole machines" typically being used to penetrate facilities such as banks from the direction least expected. And, of course, if you ever want to model the Lemmings... :-P
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by Spectrum »

I've seen burrowing like effects used else-system as a way to handle Kool-Aid man style breaking through a wall.

Image

Or maybe other forms of massive urban destruction.

On teleportation, I've been considering how its priced. While it makes sense to have combat applications cost more due to its versatility, I've been thinking about the longer length applications. If we picture space and time travel as the ability to shift between dramatic scenes rather than to be used within a scene, couldn't long range teleportation fit in there as well, moving a character/party from Plot Place A to Plot Place B?
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by FuzzyBoots »

Spectrum wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2019 4:45 pmOn teleportation, I've been considering how its priced. While it makes sense to have combat applications cost more due to its versatility, I've been thinking about the longer length applications. If we picture space and time travel as the ability to shift between dramatic scenes rather than to be used within a scene, couldn't long range teleportation fit in there as well, moving a character/party from Plot Place A to Plot Place B?
I think it does basically fit under 3E Movement, as seen in Space Travel:
You can travel faster than the speed of light through the vacuum of space (but not in a planetary atmosphere). At rank 1 you can travel to other planets in a solar system. At rank 2, you can travel to other star systems, while at rank 3, you can visit distant star systems, perhaps even other galaxies! This effect does not provide protection from the rigors of outer space (for that, see Immunity effect).
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Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by Spectrum »

I think I might have spoken poorly. Is going from Dallas to Paris narratively that much different than going from Earth to Mars? Both cases are moving between separate narrative scenes.
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Power Talk: COMMUNICATION

Post by squirrelly-sama »

COMMUNICATION (SENSORY)
Action: Free • Range: Rank • Duration: Sustained • Cost: 4 points per rank
You can communicate over a distance using a medium other than your normal voice. Choose a sense type as your Communication medium (see the list of examples). You may also use a special sense type (like neutrinos, gravitons, magical sendings, and so forth) noticeable only to an appropriate form of the Detect effect (see Senses), at the GM’s discretion.
  • Visual: laser or fiber optic link
  • Auditory: ultrasonic or infrasonic beam, “ventriloquism”
  • Olfactory: pheromones or chemical markers
  • Tactile: vibratory carrier wave
  • Radio: AM, FM, and short-wave radio bands, micro-waves
  • Mental: telepathic transmission, psychic link, mystical sending
Your rank determines you maximum Communication range:

RANGE:
Rank | Range
1 | Close range (within 100 feet)
2 | Short range (within 1 mile)
3 | Long range (statewide or across a small nation)
4 | Worldwide (anywhere on Earth (or a similar-sized planet))
5 | Unlimited (effectively anywhere)

Communication is instantaneous with any subject within your range.

The recipient of your communication must be within range and have a means of receiving your transmission (super-sense, or a receiver of some sort; conscious awareness is all that’s needed to “receive” Mental Communication). You can receive Communication of the same medium as your own. Receivers can choose to ignore your Communication, if they wish. Communication is language-dependent; you and the subject must share a common language (see Comprehend to communicate across language barriers). Your Communication is point-to-point (sent to a single receiver within your range).

Activating your Communication effect is a free action. Communicating, however, takes the normal amount of time. You can apply the Rapid modifier to speed things up, provided your recipient is capable of receiving communication at that speed.

Others with an acute sense able to detect your Communication medium can “tap into” your transmissions with a Perception check (DC 10 + your Communication rank). The eavesdropper must be within normal sensory range of you or the receiver. With two degrees of success on the check, the eavesdropped can also understand your transmissions. Effects like Concealment and Dazzle that target your Communication medium can “jam” or block your transmissions.

Communication is instantaneous with any subject within your range.

The recipient of your communication must be within range and have a means of receiving your transmission (super-sense, or a receiver of some sort; conscious awareness is all that’s needed to “receive” Mental Communication). You can receive Communication of the same medium as your own. Receivers can choose to ignore your Communication, if they wish. Communication is language-dependent; you and the subject must share a common language (see Comprehend to communicate across language barriers). Your Communication is point-to-point (sent to a single receiver within your range).

Activating your Communication effect is a free action. Communicating, however, takes the normal amount of time. You can apply the Rapid modifier to speed things up, provided your recipient is capable of receiving communication at that speed.

Others with an acute sense able to detect your Communication medium can “tap into” your transmissions with a Perception check (DC 10 + your Communication rank). The eavesdropper must be within normal sensory range of you or the receiver. With two degrees of success on the check, the eavesdropped can also understand your transmissions. Effects like Concealment and Dazzle that target your Communication medium can “jam” or block your transmissions.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Communicate, the power to communicate. Or rather the power to send communication over a distance based on ranks of this effect. There's a lot to unpack with this power and a lot of things people have already covered about it in various posts about builds that have this effect, should have it, or choose not to take it over other options. There's a lot of obvious things to talk about, it's price, it's scaling, how it over laps with other powers, all will be touched upon. First however let's do a quick look at what exactly Communication does and how it works before being distracted by dissecting it further.

COMMUNICATION, WHAT IS IT?
Communication is an effect that sends a message to a target, through a predetermined medium, at a range determined by the ranks in the effect. It uses several unique mechanics and how it functions is actually rather complicated for such a simple sounding power. The recipient must be within the effect's range to be targetable and the message cannot reach it's target if they are outside of the effect range regardless of their ability to perceive the area of the effect from outside of that range. Having the communication effect allows the user to receive messages of communications through the same medium even if perceiving that medium normally requires an exotic sense. This means that radio Communication allows the user to be able to receive the message when targeted by someone else using radio Communication. However it does not give the user the other benefits of the exotic sense, they cannot detect when radio communication is happening it only lets them be able to perceive the effect if they are targeted by the same type of Communication. You need either a matching communication type or the ability to normally perceive the medium of the Communication effect to be able to receive a message sent through the effect, as such radio Communication sent to someone without a radio or the radio Sense type would simply not be received. Communication only goes from point to point, so you can only send a message to a single person (in "real time") at a time by default and require the Area modifier to send a message out over the full range of your communication with selective to not broadcast every message across every receiver.

Those are the stated effects and limitations of the effect however we can go a bit further by looking into both what's implied and what isn't specified about how it works.

Communication doesn't specify whether or not the message can penetrate concealment that is would block normal attempts to perceive the medium. Logic would dictate, yes, it should be blocked but it's not explicitly stated nor do the modifiers imply that it isn't included as one would assume that if it didn't that Penetrate would be a modifier for particularly powerful or exotic types of the effect. Communication also does not appear to require the target actually be accurately sensed, or even detectable to the user of the effect. There isn't any real limitation on who you can send the effect to, simply that they be within range and able to perceive the medium of the communication in order to receive it. So it is possible to blindly send out a message and have someone else receive it. Granted this probably isn't much of a revelation, as it seems logical to do so but it is something to make note of anyway. Communication can be "Overheard" by anyone with the ability to perceive the medium or receive the communication even if they are not the target simply by passing a rather low perception check, as such it could be possible for teammates to simply just tap into the line to overhear everything instead of waiting for their turn in the talk cue.

Probably the biggest blank spot left open for interpretation is there isn't any explicit limit on what you can send via communication. While the general assumption is that the message is basically an auditory transmission much like a Walkie Talkie there's nothing saying it has to be that, or has to be only that. All that is really stated is that you send the message in a sort of "real-time" transmission to the target, but what that message consists of is left up in the air. You could send just a your voice saying what you see, or you could just send them a video feed. You could tell them that something stinks or you could send the sensation of the stench directly to their noses. Granted it would be hard to justify how a radio message received through an earpiece would let someone see through your eyes and smell through your nose along with hear your message but with the right descriptors or the right receiver you can easily get away with basically sending any and all sensory data to someone else. One could become a sort of inverse Remote Sensing effect, broadcasting their perception to someone else. If one were to go further down this line of logic you could ask if you are also distracted by these trasmissions and either answer would have interesting implications. If yes, you are distracted by them then you could use the effect as an attack to distract the target. If no then the user of the effect can act as a distraction-free version of the Remote Sensing power.

This sort of snow balls in how this affects not just the target but in how this effect could synergize with other powers or be used as niche tech options for certain effects. The Sense Dependent Flaw section gives a neat little things to abuse. The way it's worded is that, despite saying perception range it's talking about perception area, and so it appears that Perception area effects can be used in conjunction with Communication, even making them limited to communication. Likewise, if it is Perception Range the Communication effect could allow the user to target those they can't actually perceive simply due to how Communication's targetting works. Similarly because of the before mentioned lack of definition on what can be sent through communication, with a bit of creative interpretation and maybe a feature or two a user of the effect may be able to broadcast perception area effects used against them by simply broadcasting the effect to another target.

Now, all of this is speculation and very creative and loose interpretations of the RAW. Any GM worth their salt would likely put their foot down if someone tried some of this rules lawyery bullshit but it's good to know what exactly could likely come from the effect if "Jail-broken" and not just the immediately obvious. It's good to know how certain rulings could later create certain bad precedents later. Likewise it's good to know what extra you could give to Communication to try and justify it's costs, similarly what could be allowed to be "Limited" to cut down it's cost. It's also good to know how to break the power just to really understand how it works both to better understand the system and to maybe get a better grasp of the RAW as a whole. But what I feel is most important is knowing just how far the players can push the power, not to stop them, but to allow them in certain circumstances, because while it's easy and safe to say "No" it's always important to remember you can also say "Yes". Allowing certain broken combinations or interpretations as a Power Stunt can be fun, especially when it makes certain initially unattractive powers and concepts a lot more effective or at least entertaining gimmicks to play.

And honestly Communication can really use all the help it can get.

COMMUNICATION, WHAT WENT WRONG?
Oh so very much. Getting to the meat of this discussion, everyone knows that Communication is a terrible effect only ever grudgingly taken because a certain concept absolutely needs it. If there was a list of top effects you should probably never buy in MnM Communication would be in the top 5, along with other notoriously bad powers such as Morph, Shrinking, Swimming, and most of the Movement effect options. What immediately jumps to mind when someone brings up the effect is it's hilariously high price and strange ranking system. It's a very expensive and frustratingly implemented effect to give something most players generally assume is a given, and who's use is generally of limited use due to the medium of being a table top game.

Lets start with the obvious, the Price and Range. It costs 4pp per rank for Communication, a rather hefty price. While the effect's range increase much faster than normal, due to it's unique range ranks, it starts at 100ft, which is effectively worthless as a means of sending messages over a distance as it's close enough that even a normal one of the mill human could just shout thier messages to each other rather clearly. What this means that Communication, as a useful effect to actually communicate over a distance as it's intended only starts at rank 2 which means an 8 point investment to have a hands free headset, the price only becoming more egregious as you learn just how truly limited the effect is.

In order to send the communication the target must actually have the ability to perceive the Communication medium. This means that unless you pick something like just normal auditory or visual mediums (which would allow it to be tapped into by anyone in the area) you are unlikely to actually be able to use the effect unless your teammates also invest points into either the Communication effect or a sense type to be able to perceive your communication. This makes Communication very unreliable or renders what may be it's only intended saving grace, it's subtlety, pointless. And yes, according to RAW your telepath can't send a telepathic message unless their target either also has the same power or an acute mental sense capable of picking up psychic messages. Or at least it should if it wasn't for the added addendum that Mental Communication is always received, but that's more an issue with particularly OP descriptors and how Mental Senses are kinda BS. Seriously, is there a reason not to use mental senses other than descriptors?

Being able to send communications doesn't mean that others can send communication back. This is probably the most aggravating and crippling inborn limitation of the effect. You can only send messages, and while you can receive messages your connection is only one way. Unless you buy an added modifier or your target also wasted points on this useless effect you can only send them a message without being able to get any responses back. So Communication isn't really communication so much as broadcasting, the power that is meant to allow information sharing and act as a relay for communication completely fails at this unless you decide to spend even more on an already overpriced effect.

You can only talk to one person at a time unless you get the Area Modifier, but as if to add insult to injury Area just gives off an omni-directional broadcast and so needs to be paired with Selective to just have it so you can do team chat. Again, neutering the intended use of the power to let the group communicate freely. What makes it worse is that the designers seemed to have realised this was a terrible idea, but rather than fix it, just added a note under the Area modifier recommending GMs just ignore this entirely and let the group communicate with each other all at once without restriction. This always confused me, it shows they realized their mistake but rather than fix it they just left it in and left a note under a random section saying they made it wrong so just ignore it.

Then there's all the little things that come from the fact the effect is limited by the target's ability to understand the message. Rapid Communication is worthless unless the target also has rapid senses or quickness. It's limited by Language. Something rather logical but still another little drawback that makes an already bad power more unusable. Given the implied intention of the effect was for it to just cover auditory messages like a glorified walkie-talkie only makes it worse. Even worse is that technically, according to the wording, you have to share a language for the communication to he successful. According to RAW the effect just fails if you don't.

Communication is also not actually as secure as one would think, it's biggest security only coming from how no one actually uses it and so wouldn't have the ability to perceive it. Which is sort of like thinking you've secured your house against theft by throwing away everything robbers would want to steal. Anyone with the ability to acutely sense the Communication medium can just eavesdrop in willy nilly. It's a DC10+ranks check to wiretap a use of the effect, that is to say it's basically guaranteed since no one ever buys a lot of ranks of Communication (if they buy it at all) and even if they did the ranks and as such the DC's cap only goes up to a whopping 5 ranks. To put that into perspective, since most people buy up 5 ranks of Perception as a minimum the vast majority of characters can pass that as a passive perception check. IE if someone has the senses needed to overhear the communication and is in range of the communication they are all but guaranteed to accidentally overhear you. Hilariously you can actually nullify your own power by being using the Concealment effect at the same time, as the RAW states that being having a Concealment effect that hides the medium used also stops Communication from working.

The modifiers are also a special kind of terrible. Area is something that really should have been included in the power by default, at worst it should never have been a +1 modifier. Selective is almost needed with Area to make it any kind of useful outside of niche situations. It takes two +1 modifiers to just send a message to your teammates at once. Dimensional is kind of useful if very niche. Rapid is worthless as it requires the target also have the same to even use it. There's also "Perception", a modifier that exists in the HeroLab version that I think is also in the GM guide rather than the SRD, a modifier to actually allow the target to communicate back which really really should have just been the default. It's +1 for audio feedback, +2 for visual, +5 plus goddamned five for full sensory feedback.

The power is very similar to the MUCH cheaper Comm Link sensory power. A 1pp power that allows the user to send out and receive messages for others with the Comm Link sensory power with no explicit limitations on distance or other details. It's not only cheaper but it does the exact same thing and more. Even worse is that it's also equipment, so at a cost of 1ep, which is 1/5th the price of a normal pp, you can get a 2-way radio headset. It's really astounding just how little they cared about Communication that they didn't think to go back and rebalance the effect after coming up with that. They made the effect, then they made it again except better and cheaper and then they made it even cheaper as equipment and gave it to everyone. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

Lastly there's the Meta reasons why Communication just kinda sucks. Talking is not just a Free Action, it's also seems to completely ignore distance, circumstances, and physical barriers to allow the PCs to hold detailed discussions of their plans, despite being in situations where coherent speech, or speech of any sort, should be impossible. It's not even just a Tabletop thing, but in comics, gaming, and animation. Where the heroes can hold a discussion on how to defeat the villain right in front of him in the middle of a fight without him seeming to notice it. The ability to communicate with each other, even if logically the characters shouldn't is just an unspoken allowance, with messages sending abilities really only needing to serve as a excuse to use meta knowledge of the player that they will use to one degree or another anyway. Essentially you are paying to not have to think up excuses for why your teammates turned left instead of right to avoid the guards you spotted around the corner they couldn't see.

Communication is another effect that was overly limited to the point where it fails it's intended purpose and thus is only used for possible cheesy applications because it's to useless or expensive to buy to do what it's supposed to do. It's not actually a secure line, it has terrible range on the first rank while also too expensive to want to buy up a second, you can't use it for a back and forth to actually share information, you can't use it to set up a group chat as it only works 1 on 1, and it's hardly able to reach anyone since the target actually needs to either also have the same effect or a specific exotic sense.

COMMUNICATION, WHAT ELSE IS THERE?
Communication is a weird power design, it seems both over and under designed. There's a lot of complicated things thrown in but they are all so terrible it doesn't seem like they were thought out at all. I think it may have been made as expensive as it is due to the designers being worried about some sort of meta-gaming tactics but honestly it just sort of seems absurd. Sure information is valuable but Communication isn't Remote Sensing, your character is already there witnessing things they're just spreading information to the group. Said group which in already knows what's going on and just needs an excuse to act on said information.

The designers just seemed to either not care when it came to this power, not even in just the "meh, good enough" sort of way Burrowing was but it just sort of feels like when designing this effect they didn't give a shit, like a someone randomly check marking a fill in the bubble test sheet.

The whole "Choose a Medium" thing is completely unneeded and pretty redundant with the existence of descriptors. It only seems to exist to limit the power by saying that the target needs a sense capable of perceiving that medium to get the message.

The ranks are un-intuitive, they start way way too small to be useful at a meager 100 feet. The ranks go from 100ft, to 1 Mile, to Across the state which seems like they just skipped over a level in scale. Say City Sized. It's rather annoying that it doesn't use the existing ranking scale as everything else but it sort of makes sense due to the scale communicating should work at not really meshing well with the normal distance chart. However if that was the case it only begs the question again of why the hell they started at 100 feet, I not letting that go, that was probably the dumbest goddamned thing about this power and likely the sole reason the effect is regarded as trash tier instead of just weak and niche.

I have to wonder what they were thinking giving it so many limitations, they didn't even give it the ability to receive feedback in the vanilla SRD, you don't get team chat, you can be overheard, etc. The worst part is that for some reason despite them seeing that they made mistakes in the design process, they didn't fix them. In the Area Modifier text they just advise the GM to give the users team chat instead of forcing them to buy 2 expensive modifiers to do so, which is another instantaneous of the sloppy editing of the SRD where little addendum and ruling about effects are just hidden away in random places.

In short it's too expensive, it's too limiting, and it doesn't even accomplish what the concept exists to accomplish.

COMMUNICATION, HOW DO WE FIX IT?
Basically just ripping it out and replacing it almost entirely. The only thing that sort of works is the existence of a different distance scale from normal but that isn't even really needed or could be done better. The main things are fixing the price, making it more reliable, allowing 2 way communication, allowing group chat, and getting the scaling right. Really everything about the Communication effect and concept as a power. As the whole thing should be redesigned there's really too many options to list to fix it, it'd just be making an entirely new effect by that point and honestly it'd be hard to screw it up worse than it was here without intentionally setting out to.

If I had to remake it myself though I'd probably change the scale to be based on the core Rank and Measure chart, where each rank of Communication jumped it up 5 ranks on RnM scale. The cost per rank would be dependent on how many different type of sensory information could be sent. These same senses could also be received. The cost would be 1+the number of senses if affects so hearing and visual would be 4pp per rank as an example. It comes with a sort of selective area by default giving the options of 1to1, group frequency, and just full broadcast. Rapid wouldn't require the user have it on a sense as well.

Really though you can go wild with what you want to do, either remake it, loosen some restrictions, lower the price. Just about anything you do would make the effect leagues better than it is now.
Jabroniville
Posts: 24695
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:05 pm

Re: Power Talk: Discussing the Effectiveness of Effects

Post by Jabroniville »

A big issue with Communication, to me, is how expensive all the non-psychic variants are. I would argue that Telepathic Communication IS priced fairly, as that's a huge benefit to any group for 10-12 points. But Radio and the other things? That's pretty weird. A single radio costs 1/5 PP- a single Equipment Point (and Equipment is 1pp/rank). This is absurdly out of whack compared to almost everything else in the system.

The stuff about senses being showcased through the Link is interesting, and I hadn't really thought of that. It is, however, a feature of Telepaths in comics at times- sort of Affects Others Remote Sensing in a way. I also hadn't noticed that RAW says you can't communicate freely but they hand-waved it and said you could... that's kind of hilarious, lol. Like they couldn't just add another Extra to it? Did they feel it was pricey enough already?

The thing that annoys me most about it (since I don't pay much attention to the final points-cost of a character, as I'm more trying for "comics accuracy" than anything else) is all the stuff you have to add to it, THEN link to "Mind-Reading", in Telepath builds. EVERY TIME I have to either type all that out... or just cut & paste from Professor X or Saturn Girl. It ends up being a fairly pricey, word-heavy "Main Event" in an array for Telepath characters. It clogs up the builds a lot.

Annoyingly, the power can't really activate the "Pheromone Trail" ants leave, so I was left using a Feature for that trick, lol. I guess you can throw in "Communication 1 (Scent) (Triggered- Walking By) (Flaws: Limited to Ants, Touch Range)" or something.

Ideally, were I to create my own Communication Power:

COMMUNICATION (base: 1pp/rank, range: 1 mile, Area as default, can go back & forth)
Ranks: 1-5 (1 mile, several miles, nation-wide, planet-wide, universal?)
Extras: Selective, Mental +3

That way, an internal Radio that reached several miles would be 2 points, 4 if you wanted it to be Selective and nobody else with a radio could just overhear you. Someone with Telepathy would use cost 4 pp at one mile, 8 pp at several miles, etc. A solid charge, but not overwhelming and "never take this, ever".
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