Granting and Curing Afflictions

[munin]

Originally Posted by bonafidenubbin

The Modular Ability grants the demon a new Affliction she customizes to improve the enthralled person, possibly permanently but more likely temporarily. …

Right, so I'm saying the modular ability will be a lot cheaper if you don't have to pay modular ability pricing for the base Affliction it creates.

[bonafidenubbin]

Originally Posted by munin

Right, so I'm saying the modular ability will be a lot cheaper if you don't have to pay modular ability pricing for the base Affliction it creates.

But the base affliction is 1) so variable it makes no sense to buy a base form and 2) never accessible except after a contract, so.

[sir_pudding]

1) Anything you aren't paying 10 to 1 for is 90% less expensive.
2) These are just modifiers on both traits.

[munin]

Originally Posted by bonafidenubbin

But the base affliction is 1) so variable it makes no sense to buy a base form and 2) never accessible except after a contract, so.

By "base" Affliction I mean something like…

Affliction (Accessibility, Enthralled Only, -60%*; Cumulative, +400%; Extended Duration, Permanent, +300%) [74]

* equivalent to "1 in a million" (Power-Ups 8: Limitations, p. 5), vary as needed.

…which, by itself, simply permanently stuns people (um, cumulatively). This part of the Affliction never changes and is the same every time.

You then add something like "Advantage, Claws" or "Advantage, Alternate Form" to actually grant traits to the enthralled target instead of stunning them. That's the only part that changes each time.

Now let's say you're using something like Slotted Cosmic Power (Psionic Powers, p. 15) which costs 5 points per point of abilities (with "Physical Only, +50%; Limited, Afflictions with Cumulative and Permanent Only, -50%", so still 5 points per).

It's going to cost 74*5=370 points just to have the modular ability big enough to allocate that base Affliction, plus more points for the trait you're granting. (you mentioned a 200-point ability so maybe you're doing something cheaper?)

So instead of allocating that base part of Affliction within the Modular Ability, you simply buy it separately at a much cheaper cost (74 points instead of 370) and then only buy enough Modular Ability to improve that Affliction with the Advantage enhancement.

Unless you've munchkined the Modular Ability down to 1:1 or better (which admittedly was almost done in Psionic Powers), it'll be cheaper pulling the unchanging aspects of the Affliction out of the Modular Ability.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by munin

By "base" Affliction I mean something like…[INDENT]Affliction (Accessibility, Enthralled Only, -60%*; Cumulative, +400%; Extended Duration, Permanent, +300%) [74]

I would suggest using the Extended Duration, Permanent but "curable", +150% price instead. The sort of gifts that bonafidenubbin is talking about are usually subject to dispelling or some kind of removal, in my experience.

The general point, though, stands - this is going to be very expensive to do as a Modular Ability. I'd suggest, instead, looking at the Variable Enhancement modifer. This is from Power-Ups: Enhancements, and it basically lets you apply enhancements "on the fly". You assign a price to it, and then, each time you use the ability, you can choose any combination of enhancements on it that add up to 1/10th or less of the cost you assigned. So if you price it at +150%, you can choose from any enhancements that add up to +15%.

I'd also suggest you use the rules for Limited Enhancements here. Basically, apply Variable Enhancement, then put an Accessibility limitation on it, limiting it to "only Affliction enhancements that grant people's wishes", which I'd rate at -50%.

So, your final build could look something like this:

Affliction (the Enthrall affliction) [X] + Affliction (Accessibility, Only on targets successfully enthralled, -20%; Extended Duration, Permanent with dispelling condition, +150%; Malediction, -1/yard, +100%; Variable Enhancement, up to 150% enhancements (Accessibility, Only enhancements to afflict wished traits, -50%), +750%) [108].

This will let you afflict up to 15 points in Advantages, permanently unless someone magically removes them. To increase the number of advantages you can add, increase the level of Variable Enhancement. It's expensive, I'll grant, but still almost certainly cheaper than Modular Abilities.

[bonafidenubbin]

I'm a bit perplexed - all of these builds seem more cumbersome AND more expensive than my current build, and I'm not sure why they're being suggested.

That Affliction version gives you 15 points' worth of Advantage to afflict, yet costs 108, while mine cost something like 145 at the MOST for 40 points' worth of Affliction, and the Affliction itself doesn't have to be expensive.

Maybe I should have laid out the entire build to clarify, but it's an absolute ton of modifiers. Here we go:

Modular Ability (Slotted Cosmic Power):
Only usable once per Enthrall (-80%)
Trait-limited: One specific Trait (affliction; -50%)
Accessibility (Can only meet a wish's spirit, -20%);
Costs Fatigue (2; -10%);
Magical (-10%)
Link (Must be used with Enthrall, +10%);
Physical Only (Can grant a physical advantage, +50%);
Wish (40-pt slot, for +207 cost):

Total cost of this build is 42 points, or 145 if you disagree that the 80% limitation is acceptable.

Now, this allows the demon to build a 40-person affliction. Enthrall, I'll note, requires skin-to-skin contact on a willing target. All of those modifiers can be realistically carried over to the Affliction the demon builds, because she's actually reshaping their flesh.

So the demon uses her Modular Ability to build an Affliction that has Contact Agent/Melee Attack: Reach C on it, for a total of -60%. Only on willing targets for another -20%. I could buff the level of Affliction, but I don't really need to, given that it's beneficial. Sure, a bigger margin of success would grant me more duration... but let's say I decide I actually want this one to be permanent, so I slap on +150% for that. Now it doesn't matter how big the margin is.

Even with desiring a permanent effect, then, I can slap 23 CPs' worth of an effect on someone before I hit a 40-point Affliction.

This seems more than sufficient to my needs. So long as the -80% for one single use of the Modular Ability only is appropriate, this is really downright affordable.

Maybe Variable Enhancement is cheaper, but I'm stuck on a point here:

If I pay 150% for it, I can add enhancements that add up to 15%, right? But Advantages are +10% per POINT of advantage. So wouldn't that get me only 1.5 point of advantages, for a 15% enhancement? That'd make it WAY more expensive.

EDIT: Wait, I see, you actually did buy +1500 with 50% off, hence the +750%! I can't imagine that'd end up cheaper but I can math it out and see.

[bonafidenubbin]

Affliction (Permanent, +150%; Melee/Contact, -80%; Variable with Wish Limit, (+23 to add 230% worth of variability; +1150%; Only on the Willing, -20%) costs 132 to my 145 build - so it's slightly cheaper, but...

I can't use Limitations on the fly to make something cheaper, because Variable works solely on Enhancements. So I can't temporarily give someone a huge power I can't afford to make permanent, because the permanency is 'baked in', for example.

I think the slight difference in cost is worth it, unless I'm not thinking about some other downside of the Modular Ability approach.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by bonafidenubbin

Wish (40-pt slot, for +207 cost):

This, right here, is where I think we're diverging. A 40-point slot in the modular ability will give you, the demon character, a 40-point ability. But that's not giving your target that ability. To give someone an advantage, more-or-less permanently, you're going to have to use those 40 points to buy something like Affliction and then use that to give the advantage. And as munin already pointed out, any possible Affliction that actually grants an advantage on a long-term basis is probably going to cost a lot more than 40 points.

Originally Posted by bonafidenubbin

if you disagree that the 80% limitation is acceptable.

I would disagree here, actually. -80% might be valid if it was "one rearrangement of modular abilities ever" (or, more accurately, 1/5th cost for "pay a character point to rearrange modular abilities"), but it's definitely not that limiting when it's basically "one rearrangement of modular abilities per use of the linked Enthrall affliction".

[sir_pudding]

Yeah, "One use per unique trigger" is a variation on Trigger and probably should tack on -10% or so. There really isn't something like this already?

[bonafidenubbin]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

This, right here, is where I think we're diverging. A 40-point slot in the modular ability will give you, the demon character, a 40-point ability. But that's not giving your target that ability. To give someone an advantage, more-or-less permanently, you're going to have to use those 40 points to buy something like Affliction and then use that to give the advantage. And as munin already pointed out, any possible Affliction that actually grants an advantage on a long-term basis is probably going to cost a lot more than 40 points.

But that's exactly what I spelled out above - an Affliction that costs me 40 points and can grant up to a 23-point Advantage permanently. Isn't it?