View Single Post
Old 03-27-2017, 10:55 PM   #15
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Ideas for Anti Robot Technology

Yeah, those have some definite potential for Gadgeteer-enhancements. For some, simply augmentations - making Chameleon work on the character's gear, enhancing the range of psionic abilities, etc. For others, all new powers - the leader might be able to leverage his psionic abilities to monitor (or even interfere with) the robot's communications, the lightning ability could power an EMP gun, etc. Everyone would benefit from overclocking their regen.

How to do this? Simple - Metatronic Generators (Pyramid #3/46; if you lack this, you might be able to make something similar using Psychotronic Generators, upon which the article was based, which are apparently in Psi-Tech) will give you the monetary cost. Well, sorta simple, anyway. Instead of pricing the abilities as what they would normally cost, you price them based on what they would cost to add to the actual character. For augmentations, this means working out the cost of the "new" ability, subtracting whatever the character has already paid, and actually pricing the generator based on that final number. If you end up with a negative value, I'd just price the augmentation at [1]. For brand new abilities, use Alternate Abilities pricing.

For example, let's say everyone has Regeneration (Fast), and you want to build a device that will overclock this to Regeneration (Very Fast). The first costs [50]. "Overclocking" implies some drawbacks - on the latter, we'll make it cause Cardiac Stress (HT roll or lose 1d FP; critical failure means a heart attack), for one roll every 10 seconds (-40%), and we'll also make it "burn out" your normal regeneration for time equal to however long the Very Fast Regeneration was in effect*. That latter is Aftermath: Negated Advantage (Regeneration, Fast), for -25%. We apply both Limitations to the [50] that is the difference between what the character has already (Fast Regen) and what he'd be gaining without the Limitations (Very Fast Regen), for an end cost of [17.5] (you can round this up to [18] first, or just multiply by the relevant monetary cost).

*Technically, with the way Regeneration works, this isn't much of a Limitation - you'll almost never need it for more than a minute (which is enough to regen 6xHP), which knocks out your regen long enough to prevent you from regaining a whole 1 HP. For cases like that, to make it an actual Limitation, I'd say it should knock out your regen long enough to prevent you from regaining twice the HP it gave you - so if you had it on for 10 seconds (for 10 HP), it knocks out your regen for 20 minutes (enough to regen 20 HP).
Varyon is online now   Reply With Quote