Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 25 Location: Lexington, KY
Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:36 am Post subject: NE: Device Power Cost Discounts
You can get a pretty high discount by taking device trappings on powers. How does this work with play balance? What are the drawbacks that balance out all the free points? It seems fairly easy for a starting character to get a 10 point discount from devices. That is a full 50% more then a character who doesn't take devices.
Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:09 pm Post subject: Re: NE: Device Power Cost Discounts
favwiz wrote:
You can get a pretty high discount by taking device trappings on powers. How does this work with play balance? What are the drawbacks that balance out all the free points? It seems fairly easy for a starting character to get a 10 point discount from devices. That is a full 50% more then a character who doesn't take devices.
For a starting character to have a 10 point discount from devices, they would need 10 separate powers averaging about 3 PPs per power. That's a lot of diversity without a lot of depth the character may be wanting.
As to the drawbacks of the device, that depends a lot of the trappings of the device itself (although susceptibility to Malfunction is a general drawback). I recommend balancing somewhere between breakable and removable. If a character wants an unbreakable magic device, then it should be fairly easy to take away from them (Disarm maneuver). And if they want a device that's hard to take away like a suit of armor, then it's going to suffer the same damage the character does from most every attack. Between those two options are a lot of variations. For instance, an item that is breakable and could be taken away might be small and given a penalty to hit (like -4), so it's not hit by general attacks and is a bit tougher to take away.
Ultimately, the power is in an item and not the character, and that should lead to drawbacks for the GM to exploit. If it doesn't, then the "device" may be nothing more than a trapping and not worth the modifier. _________________ Clint Black
Savage Worlds Core Rules Brand Manager
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