Quote:
Originally Posted by philosophyguy
3) I was thrown for a loop by Lights! Camera! Magic!'s idea that both Magical Hero and Mundane Hero are zero point traits. Mundane Hero makes sense, but Magical Hero seems like a straightforward violation of the "no modifiers can reduce an advantage below -80% cost" rule, and it's not clear why that's worth violating. Essentially, Magical Hero is buying impulse buys with a limitation that they can't be used directly against mundane heroes (an accessibility limitation, which I would put in the -50% range depending on how frequent Magical Heroes are and how generous the GM is in interpreting indirect effects), and an additional magical power modifier of -10% or whatever. Why did it become a 0 point trait?
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"The ability to use Impulse Buys" is in itself a 0-point trait in this case, as a campaign switch (in the same way it would be in a campaign that just used those options as a baseline). Because L!C!M! assumes you're structuring the campaign this way, nobody is using 'Rules Exemption: Can spend CP on Impulse Buys [1]' -
every hero either can or can't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by philosophyguy
4) In terms of lore, the mechanics for Lights! Camera! Magic! seem backwards. The suggestion that the climatic fight is a consequence of heroes normally being able to get the effect they want and now having to grit it out without their magical aid makes sense if the archenemy in the climax cannot be affected by impulse buys (and vice versa: the archenemy can't affect the heroes). But, the archenemy is usually a Magical Hero: it would be bizarre for there to be Magical Heroes and then suddenly the final antagonist is a Mundane Hero. So that implies that the impulse buys should work against Mundane Heroes/Villains (everyone in the runup to the final conflict) but they shouldn't work in the final battle (against another Magical Hero/Villain). That's the exact opposite of the mechanics described in the article. Am I missing something?
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The idea is that the climactic fight occurs in a no-mana zone. Since nobody is (usually) a
spellcaster in an action film, the lack of mana isn't noticeable... except to those people (including the Big Bad) who are used to spending their CP to make combat easier. Those guys are suddenly having a hard time, thus getting the gritty 'suddenly the fight against the Big Bad is hard!' feeling.
I'm honestly not sure how this would play out in a long-term campaign or if I can envision shoehorning it into an existing game, but it's an interesting idea.