Aberrant RPG - What Powers/Combos Have You Banned?

[metaphysician]

In the course of the games you have run or played in, what power tricks or combos have you/your GM banned or restricted, due to game balance reasons?

In my campaign, there's three the GM zatzed:

-Aggravated attacks ( they aren't totally gone, but they've been redefined so basically only Q6+ types will ever have them. . . as opposed to the player who had an Agg Immolate before )

-Armor Piercing ( in his experience, it produces a arms race wherein everyone has to have Impervious defense. Inspired by the same player, who built a char with an AP Qbolt and Mega Dex 5 )

-'Disrupt Chains' ( Disrupt with Reflexive, where the trigger condition is "When I attack a target with ____". No warning, no chance to do anything about it, just the sound of a destructive power landing at the same time the Armor or Force Field disappears. Different player, this time )

[Alex Green]

Reflexive is something that requires heavy evaluation because a great many reflexes are either broken in practice or not workable.

Forcefield + Reflexive (if it overcomes my other defenses) is already pretty Twinkish because

A) If you want a Forcefield that is always up you can buy armor.

This seriously plays havoc with the order of operations.

Meaning you get hit with an attack, you take damage, and then your reflexive is supposed to turn on... and effect the damage you just took.

Another issue with Reflexive is you can, in theory, use it to generate information that you can't otherwise generate. Example: Biolum+Reflexive: Any Dormed Nova I haven't met before gets Biolum'ed. Or even, any hostile invisible nova get's Biolum'ed. How do you know "hostile"? How do you know "Dormed?" How do you know "Invisible"? How do you even target the invisible nova?

The problem with a "Disrupt Chain" is I think Disrupt is supposed to target a specific power. So... what power are you trying to disrupt? Armor? Forcefield? Bodymorph? Can you reflexively just pick a defensive power?

Powers I have seen Banned:

1) Precognition (the level 3 one).

2) Teleport/Warp.

3) Offensive power linkages (which would include your Disrupt Chain). Poison+Ranged + Q-Bolt + Strobe, all go off at once. ::rolleyes

[metaphysician]

Re: reflexive force field, I think that problem is avoided if you word it as "when someone attacks me with physical or energy methods." The attack is made, before the attack is landed. ;-)

Re: disrupt chain, I'm not sure about the exact formulation. The thing is, my reading of the Disrupt powers leaves it unclear how reflexive would work with it, as reflexive puts a limit on when it is triggered, not how it is used when triggered. The two ways I can read it are "reflexive determines activation only, character determines usage" and "reflexive must be configured to preset the usage." If the former, no obstacle, if the latter, don't see why it couldn't be set to "disrupt, on the largest ____ defense power, when I attack a target with ____." After all, Reflexive doesn't include any particular limitation on how complex the trigger condition is.