"Instantaneous" use of continuous advantages?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

See Powers p. 153-154+. Basically, Costs Fatigue turns an always on ability into a switchable one. In order to make a switchable ability turn on instantly requires Reduced Time (in this case, one level will do), or Reflexive. And, yeah, this is one of those bogus areas where limiting an ability to get the effect you desire can wind up costing more points than the vanilla always-on ability.

A rules point that has been a thorn in my side for a while :< A required disadvantageous form of Switchable [as a prereq to such mods as CF] might help, neh?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

A rules point that has been a thorn in my side for a while :< A required disadvantageous form of Switchable [as a prereq to such mods as CF] might help, neh?

That's the conclusion I'm coming to. Or alternately if it wasn't switchable, it's automatically instant-on and needs Takes Extra Time to take 1 second to activate.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

Why degenerate ? You will only buy it if you believe that it will sometimes be useful if it is off.

For that, you buy Switchable, +10%, for the same price, and you don't have to spend FP to use it, so you can have it on (or off) as long as you want.

[Ejidoth]

Part of it is just that Costs Fatigue is a little weird at low fatigue costs.
Consider this:

Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5%. That's the same level as a Nuisance Effect or other minor problem. Yet it drops an advantage all the way down from 'usable whenever you want' to 'usable about ten times / about ten minutes, and then you need to sit around doing nothing for an hour and a half to recover.'

It's true for both types of advantages, really:

1) 'Always on' advantages with Costs Fatigue suddenly lose a lot of utility when you make them cost fatigue, because now they're 'only on for a few minutes every day'.
2) 'Transient' advantages (attacks and such) with Costs Fatigue 'run out of ammo' and cripple you in combat very quickly, especially if they cost 2 or more fatigue.

It's clear that Costs 2 Fatigue is not twice as disadvantageous as Costs 1 Fatigue; the main disad is still 'can't use it all the time', with the 'and of the limited time you can use it, you can use it half as much' being relatively a smaller effect. So it seems probably that 'Costs Fatigue' itself is fine at 5% per level or whatever, but there should also be some basic limitation (I dunno, 10% or 20% or something) that gets tacked on to any advantage that's limited such that you can't use it very much.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Part of it is just that Costs Fatigue is a little weird at low fatigue costs.
Consider this:

Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5%. That's the same level as a Nuisance Effect or other minor problem.

Actually DR that costs you fatigue when struck might be better defined as a Nuisance Effect, since Nuisance Effects could be anything.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Part of it is just that Costs Fatigue is a little weird at low fatigue costs.
Consider this:

Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5%. That's the same level as a Nuisance Effect or other minor problem. Yet it drops an advantage all the way down from 'usable whenever you want' to 'usable about ten times / about ten minutes, and then you need to sit around doing nothing for an hour and a half to recover.'

It's true for both types of advantages, really:

1) 'Always on' advantages with Costs Fatigue suddenly lose a lot of utility when you make them cost fatigue, because now they're 'only on for a few minutes every day'.
2) 'Transient' advantages (attacks and such) with Costs Fatigue 'run out of ammo' and cripple you in combat very quickly, especially if they cost 2 or more fatigue.

Costs Fatigue is kind of wonky and has been complained about before, but compare CF at various levels to an equivalent (in cost) Limited Uses.

[Venatius]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Actually DR that costs you fatigue when struck might be better defined as a Nuisance Effect, since Nuisance Effects could be anything.

I'm pretty sure you'd use the "Active Defense" version of "Requires (x) Roll". Unless you didn't want there to be a roll. I'm fairly sure Active Defense counts each given resistance as an "activation", and would thereby deduct the FP cost each time.

Regarding the concerns of Costs FP, I notice in my experience it's not as much an issue in really high point value games, where there's a lot of FP available or characters can buy Energy Reserves to power their abilities. If it's, say, a magical ability, and you have Recover Energy going, you're only looking at a "downtime" of 2 minutes per FP spent. I think some form of FP regeneration is also available from the Regenerate advantage, though I can't remember off the top of my head which/what/how. Of course, the potentially prohibitive costs of that would kind of defeat the point of using it as a countermeasure in a low-point game.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Venatius

Regarding the concerns of Costs FP, I notice in my experience it's not as much an issue in really high point value games, where there's a lot of FP available or characters can buy Energy Reserves to power their abilities. If it's, say, a magical ability, and you have Recover Energy going, you're only looking at a "downtime" of 2 minutes per FP spent.

You might have hit upon part of the reason for pricing the limitation as it is. In games where FP fuel for abilities is a concern, extra FP and ways to recover them are usually also readily available. As I was trying to point out in my last post, Costs FP is not so big a limitation as it might first appear, because even the natural recovery rate allows you to start fresh after a not overlong rest.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

You might have hit upon part of the reason for pricing the limitation as it is. In games where FP fuel for abilities is a concern, extra FP and ways to recover them are usually also readily available. As I was trying to point out in my last post, Costs FP is not so big a limitation as it might first appear, because even the natural recovery rate allows you to start fresh after a not overlong rest.

That does suggest that the per FP portion is worth about what is given for it, but doesn't change the fact that the very first FP also reduces the ability from continual use to a duration per use of no more than a minute, which by itself is similar to Maximum Duration (1 minute) -65%, albeit without the five minute downtime and with the option to continue use for additional FP cost.

Even with those caveats, this argues to me that the discount really should be something like -20% for Costs 1 FP/minute, -5% per additional FP, -40% for Costs 1 FP/second, -10% per additional FP.

[Venatius]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

That does suggest that the per FP portion is worth about what is given for it, but doesn't change the fact that the very first FP also reduces the ability from continual use to a duration per use of no more than a minute, which by itself is similar to Maximum Duration (1 minute) -65%, albeit without the five minute downtime and with the option to continue use for additional FP cost.

Even with those caveats, this argues to me that the discount really should be something like -20% for Costs 1 FP/minute, -5% per additional FP, -40% for Costs 1 FP/second, -10% per additional FP.

You've made a good point. That seems to make a great deal of sense. Granted, even the second FP you add to the cost effectively "halves" your available duration.

Drawing things a little more back onto the original point, I think a partial fix at least for per-second FP would be to use the "normal" Costs Fatigue -5%, and attach Reduced Duration (1/60) for -35%, thus giving a baseline -40% just for having switched to one FP per second. Alternatively, if you're going to be paying 4 or more FP per second, just use the -10% per FP rate as normal.

What's the view on FP cost per ACTION, though? Is "for one second" close enough to "for one action" that most would feel comfortable handwaving it to that for special situations, or does it really warrant a further discount?