Aberrant RPG - Limitation for Mega-Attributes: Enhancement Only

[johntfs]

While the Player's Guide offered numerous ways to enhance powers, it left something to be desired regarding Mega Attributes Specifically, limitations. What happens if a person wants to create a Nova who only has an aspect of a Mega Attribute. Say, for example, a character who has Mega-Intelligence and the Taint Resistance enhancement. This Nova isn't a supergenius at all, but is only capable of resisting Taint (from an enlarged Node) with his super-efficient brain.

Thus, I've come up with the idea of a Limitation (as opposed to an Enhancement) for Mega-attributes.

ENHANCEMENT ONLY

With this limitation a Nova can only use his Mega-attributes as they apply to his Enhancements. He does not get the difficulty modifier and extra successes to rolls made with his attribute. In fact, he doesn't even get to apply Megadice to any attribute rolls outside of those governing any Enhancement to his Mega Attribute.

Example:

Crossroads (and the stolen data disk he's carrying) are supposed to meet with a buyer in the back room of a bar. Before entering, he uses his High-End Electromagnetic Scan (X-ray vision) to check out the "lay of the land." Fortunately, he sees the four heavily armed thugs on the other side of the office. Unfortunately (as his straight Awareness + Perception roll wasn't good enough, since he couldn't apply Mega-perception to any rolls outside of the X-ray vision), he fails to notice the two other thugs coming into the bar behind him. Let's hope he has a good Initiative...

As compensation for this Limitation, a Nova may buy his Mega Attributes at the reduced cost of 1 Nova point per dot of Mega Attribute at character creation. After character creation, a player can increase Mega Attributes as though they were Level 1 powers.

Should a player change his mind about a Mega-Attribute and wish remove the "Enhancement only" limit, he may do so (with the GM's permission) by spending sufficient experience point to cover the difference in cost.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

The nova cost for Enhancements by themselves is 3 nova points. This drops that cost to one.

It might work if you increased the cost to two.

[Blue Thunder]

What about having a character with a Mega-Attribute, but no enhancement?

I know it sounds wierd, but sometimes when I look over the enhancements for a certain Mega-Attribute, I can't find anything that matches the character idea I have. Maybe I just want him to have Mega-Appearance, without an enhancement. or Mega-Charisma without an enhancement.

Maybe for 2 NP instead of 3, the first dot doesn't give a free enhancement?

[Courier]

If applied after the first dot, you'd have 10 nova points buying Mega-Strength 5. But it does seem resonable for the first dot.

[johntfs]

Originally Posted By: David 'Dr. Troll' Smith

The nova cost for Enhancements by themselves is 3 nova points. This drops that cost to one.

It might work if you increased the cost to two.

As per the rules, only the first Enhancement would be "free." Any further Enhancements would be normal costs.

So, if a person wanted to have Mega-Perception at 5 Mega-dice with Enhancement only, he could have for 5 Nova points. However, if he also wanted 4 more Enhancements, he'd still need to shell out 12 more Nova points.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

5 nova points buys 5 dots of Mega-Perception: Blood Hound which would only function for bloodhound but would be always on.

4 nova points buys 4 dots of Mega-Strength: Shockwave... which could be upgraded to Mega-Strength 4 for 15 exp

3 nova points buys 3 dots of Mega-Int: Taint Resist, which upgrades to Mega-Int 3 for 9 exp.

And 9 nova points buys Q-Leap, Regen, and 7 other kick but powers with the added bonus that for 3 exp you then get the Mega stat normally.

Sounds pretty point efficient to me, enough such I'd expect pretty much everyone to take advantage of it.

5 dots of a level 1 power is one of the most efficient buys in the game from an exp stand point. 3 nova points for a mega-stat is equiv to 6 exp, or 1 nova point is 2 exp. 5 nova points for 5 dots of a level one power is equiv to 33 exp, or 1 nova point is 6.6 exp.

I suspect it balances somewhat better if you charge 2 nova points per dot, i.e. 3.3 exp per nova point.

Yet another way to deal with this is to get rid of the enhancement altogether. For 5 nova points you buy "Easy Potential to Learn Mega-Stat X" (or EPtLMSX). WW is big on that sort of thing. EPtLMSX cuts the exp cost for a Mega down to slightly less than half. Normally it would cost 56 exp to fully buy a mega, with this it would cost 23 (3+2+4+6+8).

No, the more I think about this, the more broken 5 nova for mega-5 for only one enhancement is messed up. Crush at mega-5, Regen for 1, Enhanced Movement, Quick or Lie Detector, etc, etc.