[Plane]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Seeing it that way is not what the rules contemplate.

what difference do you think there would be, if you earned a bonus CP to:

a) spent that bonus CP to buy a favor from a detective
b) spend that bonus CP to buy 10% starting wealth and put a detective on retainer

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Which is absurd. Zombies are disposable mooks. This is just another case of "Oh no! It's a terrible deal to buy things with points when they are things that you can buy with money or time."

That could depend on how plentiful your money or time is, of course.

If wanting to quantify a much as possible, it seems like wealth/savings is either an advantage, or a 0pt feature (meta-trait) sum of advantage/disadvantage. Perhaps when you buy stuff you're trading one advantage for another (limited modular abilities for specific thing) and one disadvantage for another (people who want to steal money becomes people who want to steal trucks)

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Zombies are not fundamentally different from any other enchanted item whether it's a wand of fireballs or a flying carpet.

Which could have point value as Signature Gear (I think fantasy equates 25 energy to create being equal to 50% starting wealth or something along those lines) but not as non-SG lacking plot protection...

Yet there's clearly still value in having something in your possession/control even if it lacks plot protection, even if it's offset to 0 by some implied drawback/disadvantage built into an equipment/mook metatrait (Enemy: Watcher being easiest to throw in)

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Or for that matter a gun. Don't build a gun with points when you can buy or steal one right off the shelf. It makes no sense. This isn't Hero System and nobody needs you to design a character sheet for a spoon.

The cheapest gun (B278 derringer $100) is nearly 50% of the $250 average Starting Wealth at TL0, but looking at B27 there's this rule I only just noticed now about doubling price for each TL of separation, so since that's TL5 it would be >200>400>800>1600>3200 value.

3200/250 = 12.8 which would round up to 13 points to buy it as Signature Gear

Large Piercing 1d (Increased Range, Can Be Stolen, Can Be Destroyed) sounds like it could be pretty competitive.

If we just used a fixed value for equipment based on TL0 it sounds like the issue would be solved, the problem is basically how much equipment drops at higher TL/wealth while the price of advantages (even gadgets meant to emulate equipment) doesn't.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you are going to buy zombie allies in a setting where where a relatively simple spell can produce zombies then the only choice that makes sense is to have your zombie allies be somehow special zombies that normal magic just can't make. Then you aren't just throwing character points away.

Or, maybe by buying an ally of positive value you're getting to ignore whatever built-in compromise normally makes it a 0pt package?

Like maybe GMs should always assume you either take the zombie as a dependent, his family finds out and becomes your Enemy, the zombie's spirit becomes your Watcher, etc.

You might even take an "up to X zombies" advantage ahead of time without actually filling it out: the benefit is you don't need to worry about protecting your allies until you get them, but you've paid in advance for them when you do engineer their arrival. Sort of like if you act like you used to have an ally but they were killed off: you already lost your bonus CP whenever it was that happeend but are immune to bonus CP loss until the GM replaces that ally with a new benefit/risk.