[PK]

Originally Posted by Molokh

This has come up at least once before, but I'll rephrase it into something more generic: If I have several abilities and several opportunities (e.g. to drop a weapon in hand) to perform a Free Action, how many of those can I perform in a turn?

As many times as you have weapons in hand, which is unlikely to be more than twice. :)

Seriously, it depends on the free action. Speaking is free, but there aren't any rules for how many words or to how many people you can speak -- and yet, most GMs will cut you off if you start rambling on for half a minute or more. Dropping weapons is unrestricted, because there's nothing stopping you from just opening up all your hands at once. Going into or leaving a crouch is a once-per-turn thing, though -- so you could crouch at the beginning of one turn (for free) and get up next turn (for free), but couldn't crouch-and-get-up all in one turn, unless you wanted to use a Change Posture for the "get up" part.

How many times may I activate and de-activate each ability? And, quite importantly, when can I do it: start of turn, any point during my turn's resolution, on a Wait, at any point at all?

Free actions, unless stated otherwise, can only take place on your turn. And making an ability instantaneous through heavy use of Reduced Time doesn't explicitly give you the ability to activate or de-activate it more than once per turn. Supers has a workaround for this, designed for Warp but workable with almost any "instant" ability, using a variant on Rapid Fire which is... interestingly gameable.

How does the situation change if the abilities are Reflexive? How fast can a Reflexive ability (de-)activate? E.g., if the opponent declares an Attack manoeuvre, can I interrupt her with a Reflex to activate my Aura? DR? Alternate Form? Insubstantiality? If not, what exactly does Reflexive change in Free Actions (assuming the ability doesn't require a roll in the first place)?

As I understand it, Reflexive lets you activate or deactivate on your opponent's turn as well as your own. So yes, you could Reflexively bring up an Aura as she goes to strike you, or Reflexively raise your DR if you see the sniper taking a shot at you.

When does a Free-Action-like ability activation require a Power Dodge roll? Does being Reflexive matter in this case (assuming it already takes 0 seconds)?

Again, as I understand it, a Power Dodge is a lot like temporarily adding Reflexive, in that it lets you use your ability defensively, when it's not your turn. So an ability which is Reflexive really has no need to Power Dodge.