Alright, we're back after a brief hiatus. Hey, it didn't last seventeen months, so that's good. Anyway, we're finishing up the powers section of the book today and beginning on the Power Advantages. There are two powers left, so let's do those first, then I'll talk more about Advantages.
First up is Teleportation. This is the Nightcrawler power. You disappear from one spot and appear in another spot anywhere up to your maximum Teleport range. The minimum cost for this power is 30 points, which gives you 15" of Teleportation. Every 2 points above that gives you an additional +1" of distance. You can also spend points to increase how much mass you can teleport; for an additional 5 points, you can teleport twice your body weight (effectively, one additional person). Every additional 5 points doubles the mass available, so if you spent 40 points on Teleport, you would have 15" of range (30 pts.) and be able to teleport yourself and three additional people (+10 points) that far.
But wait...there's more! For an additional 5 points, you can also double the range you can teleport by taking an additional Phase to do so. You can also memorize a particular location for one additional point, and if that location is within your range limit, you can teleport there even if you can't see it (inside a room, for example). Of course, you can't change that memorized location, so unless you have a stupidly high Teleportation range, it's not going to come into play very often. Finally, you can Teleport half your maximum distance and attack in the same Phase if you pay an additional 10 points.
How's that for a complicated power? The restrictions are that you can't teleport to a place you can't see (unless it's a memorized location as above), and you can't teleport into a solid object. That's more of a perk than a restriction, though, since every D&D player knows that teleporting into a solid object is very high on the Bad Thing list. Teleport costs END to use.
Finally, our last power is Tunneling. I'm trying to think of a character who uses this power; I think the Juggernaut did it a few times while walking underground and just shoving earth and everything else out of his way. That would qualify as Tunneling. It costs 5 points to Tunnel 1" per phase, with a minimum cost of 10 points. So 2" per phase doesn't sound like a lot, but that's four meters at a time, and with a SPD of 4 that means in 12 seconds you just tunneled 16 meters, or 50 feet. So yeah, that's fast. Not as fast as running, but still. Air resistance is a lot less than earth resistance, right? You have the option to leave the tunnel open behind you or fill it in as you go at no cost. The power does cost END to use.
So, that's our powers list. It started on page 12, and ended on page 21. That's 10 pages to describe all the powers. Anyone who's played 5th edition Champions, can you even imagine that? There are single powers in that edition that seem to take ten pages to fully describe. And we just did 42 powers and two power frameworks in ten pages. Wow.
Okay, so now we move on to Power Advantages. These are ways to modify your power to give it different effects. Advantages cost points, based on a multiplier. The formula is the base cost of the power times 1 + the total of all Advantages. For example, a modifier with a cost of +1 would mean you multiply the cost of the power by 2, so a 30-point power with a +1 Advantage would cost 60 points. Needless to say, Power Advantages can make things quite expensive.
The first Power Advantage is Area Effect (Hexes). This allows a power that normally affects only one target to affect a wider area. The total number of hexes effected by the power is the total points of the power divided by 5. The description doesn't indicate if the cost of the Area Effect advantage itself is included in those points. I can't remember if that is clarified in later editions or not; I'll have to look it up later. The effected hexes must be adjacent, but can be in a line, circle, triangle, square, or other shape. The player chooses a target hex and makes an attack roll against DCV 0, modified by -1 per 3" of distance as per usual for ranged attacks. If the attack fails, the power is centered on an adjacent hex, but still goes off as normal. Any character within the area of effect is affected by the power as normal, with no additional attack roll needed. This Advantage has a multiplier of +1.
Next is Area Effect (radius). Like the previous Advantage, Area Effect (Radius) makes the power affect all targets within a radius centered on the target hex. Again, the player rolls an attack against DCV 0 modified by range, and the radius is 1" for every 10 Active Points in the power. The multiplier is +1.
The Armor Piercing Advantage means that the target's defenses against the attack are halved. So an Energy Blast with this advantage against a target with a 20 ED would mean that the target's defense against the EB is only 10 points against both the STUN and BODY. This Advantage has a multiplier of +1/2.
Attack with No Normal Defense is even better than Armor Piercing, because the target has no defense points to subtract against the attack. So a Force Field, Armor, high PD, etc. are useless against it. There are a couple of caveats. First, the attack does STUN only; no BODY damage. Second, when buying the power you must define a reasonably common way to defend against the power that completely nullifies it. For example, a 4D6 Energy Blast defined as a gas attack might be stopped by having 10 points in Life Support (which means you don't have to breathe). Against anyone without those 10 points, the gas has full effect (roll 4 dice, add them up and subtract that from the target's STUN), but anyone who does have it is fully immune. Other examples are a poison dart attack (stopped by any sort of Resistant defense), a solidification attack (such as someone who is Desolid solidifying their fist inside the target's body) is stopped by Force Fields, and a Hypnotic Attack is stopped by any amount of Ego Defense. The multiplier is +1.
Based on Ego Combat Value means that the power is effectively a mental power rather than a physical one. For example, a Characteristic Drain that affects DEX that is defined as super-hypnosis putting them to sleep would be Based on ECV. Like other mental attacks, this can be defended against only by Ego Defense; normal defenses are useless. Like NND attacks, these should be STUN only unless the GM allows otherwise. The multiplier is +1.
The last Advantage on this page is Explosion. It's like an Area Effect (radius) attack (roll to hit the target hex), but unlike that Advantage, the power weakens as it gets further from the target hex. The multiplier is +1/2. I'll just quote the text of the book here to save time:
The full effect of the base power occurs in the target hex. The damage done by the attack is -1D6 for every l "·distance from the target hex. The largest D6 is always subtracted from the total first. Example: A 5D6 Energy Blast Explosion goes off. The character rolls 1,3,3,5,6 for his damage. The target hex takes 1+3+3+5+6 = 18 STUN and 0+1+1+2 = 5 BODY. Someone 2" away from the target hex would take 1+3+3 = 7 STUN and 0+1+1 = 2 BODY.
So, to show how Advantages work, let's do a quick example. Let's say Dr. Infinity has a spell called 'Mind Flames' that is a 4D6 Energy Blast with the Explosion and Based on ECV advantages. The base cost of the power is 20 points for the 4D6 EB. The Explosion multiplier is +1/2, and the Based on ECV multiplier is +1. Add them together and you get +1 1/2. The formula is Base Cost (20 points) x 1 + total multipliers (+1 1/2), which is 20 x 2.5, or 50 points.
All clear? Good; we'll do more Power Advantages next time. Until then, have a great day, and keep your costumes clean.
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