Preparation Required vs. Alternate Ability

[oneofmanynameless]

I just noticed that the Preparation Required modifier includes a clause saying you can only have 1 ability with Preparation Required prepared at a time. I'm wondering what the rational behind this clause is?

It's certainly the sort of thing that I would want to be able to do, but I'd expect to combine the modifier with alternate ability to create sets of mutually exclusive "hangable" abilities, or to use modular points, for this sort of thing and in most of the scenarios I've thought of to use the modifier it was preferable (From a design perspective, obviously it's preferable from the players perspective but I'm not worried about that) for it to be possible to prepare all of them at the same time.

Is it important to the cost of the limiter to include that clause? How would ignoring it influence the cost? How would it influence the cost of Immediate Preparation Required?

[Gumby Bush]

I'd be fine with one prep to serve for any of a set of AAs.

What you want to avoid is:
I prep AA1, I prep AA2. I use AA1, I use AA2.

That is, the prep should continue to limit you to just one of the AAs, and not be close to a free lunch for later ones. The down time between one use of an item in the AA package and the next should be preserved.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Gumby Bush

I'd be fine with one prep to serve for any of a set of AAs.

What you want to avoid is:
I prep AA1, I prep AA2. I use AA1, I use AA2.

That is, the prep should continue to limit you to just one of the AAs, and not be close to a free lunch for later ones. The down time between one use of an item in the AA package and the next should be preserved.

Yeah, I'd assume that you'd have to pick which of the AA abilities you were preparing when you prepared it, and then that's the prepared ability and if you want to use a different ability you have start over by preparing a different ability (causing the first ability to become unprepared.)

I.e. alternating your abilities un-prepares any ability you had prepared.

[Gumby Bush]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

Yeah, I'd assume that you'd have to pick which of the AA abilities you were preparing when you prepared it, and then that's the prepared ability and if you want to use a different ability you have start over by preparing a different ability (causing the first ability to become unprepared.)

I.e. alternating your abilities un-prepares any ability you had prepared.

Per RAW, yes, but...

Say you have three AA abilities, each with Preparation Required, 1 hour.

I'd be fine if you said it takes you 1 hour to prepare the set, but then using any of the AAs triggers the waiting period and requirement to re-prepare.

It might be fairer to require you to spend time to prepare the set equal to (largest prep time) + (sum of the other prep times)/5. But that just sounds inconvenient to manage.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Gumby Bush

Per RAW, yes, but...

Say you have three AA abilities, each with Preparation Required, 1 hour.

I'd be fine if you said it takes you 1 hour to prepare the set, but then using any of the AAs triggers the waiting period and requirement to re-prepare.

It might be fairer to require you to spend time to prepare the set equal to (largest prep time) + (sum of the other prep times)/5. But that just sounds inconvenient to manage.

Oh I agree with you. There are plenty of times I build abilities that "can be used in a couple different ways", i.e. involve a few alternate abilities. In those cases I would want the whole ability to be considered the same ability and to be prepared as a set (allowing you to choose later which of them you're going to use.)

There are also occasionally times where I don't want it to work that way: I could see a system where every ability is a ritualistic spell off of a core advantage, like divine favor or sorcery only they require elaborate 10 minute rituals to prepare.

[Donny Brook]

I think the Prep Required texts means that it looks though whatever Alternative or Modular structure you might have. In respect of any and all Preparation Required abilities you have, there is only one 'prepared' space. Also, note that as a Limitation, Prep. Required must go on abilities individually, not at the group-level of Alternate abilities.

Maybe Compartmentalized Mind would allow for more than one ability to be in a state of 'prepared'.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

There are also occasionally times where I don't want it to work that way: I could see a system where every ability is a ritualistic spell off of a core advantage, like divine favor or sorcery only they require elaborate 10 minute rituals to prepare.

And then you get instances where one ability in the set is a use of what the other ability represents, but requires time to supercharge.

Flight
Crushing Attack (Double Knockback, Preparation Required, Alternate Ability)

You can fly using Iron Man style repulsors. You can also overcharge them to unleash a powerful force blast at a foe.

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I think the Prep Required texts means that it looks though whatever Alternative or Modular structure you might have. In respect of any and all Preparation Required abilities you have, there is only one 'prepared' space. Also, note that as a Limitation, Prep. Required must go on abilities individually, not at the group-level of Alternate abilities.

Maybe Compartmentalized Mind would allow for more than one ability to be in a state of 'prepared'.

My original question was actually why design the modifier that way? Why include that clause at all? What's it for? It seems like it ruins most of the use cases I'd want to use it for. Especially since it's such a smaller limitation then Alternate Ability or Takes Extra Time while seemingly including both.

[Plane]

F129 talks about using Preparation Required for Magery in the right column.

If you did that directly I think it would be like "I have a minute's worth of Magery and then need to do rituals to prep another minute's worth"

This doesn't actually seem to be the approach taken. Instead there are 3 paragraphs with alternative ones.

1) applying it to Modular Abilities: AFAIK this means "I have one minute's time to rearrange my abilities before I need to do prep to regain the ability to spend time rearranging abilities". You would then use whatever time the MA variant called for, modified by Reduced Time or Takes Extra Time as usual?

2) Restructurable Magery, which F130's Behind the Curtain explains is taking Divided Magery (equivalent to One College in pricing) then buying an inverse "Not Divided" enhancement as a limitd enhancement reduced in price using Preparation Required.

3) the weirdest least canon-adjacent thing I don't even have a name for (directly before the Restructurable Magery heading) which actually seems like it adds BENEFITS to normal spellcasting since it allows you to cast ANY spell in a single Concentrate maneuver so long as you prepped all it's normal castnig requirements ahead of time. This seems like it steps on the toes of "Hang Spell" and rubs me the wrong way.

If you were to allow the effect of (3) without casting Hang Spell I would think it should require using Trading Energy for Enhancements (T39) to buy either Triggered Delay (B139 +50%) or Delay, Supernatural (PU4p18 +100%) and to prevent this from being abused to prep unlimited spells, this should count as a "spell on" until it goes off.

To avoid that via "Maintain Spell" probably means we should assign it a duration. Given that "Temporary Enhancements" in Powers last one-minute increments that seems like an okay thing.

Allowing TE rules to be used on spells would be another interesting option. Basically you wouldn't penalize the spell at all, but would require the usual setup (Concentrate maneuver, spend FP, will roll) for adding temporary enhancements to it as if it were an ability.

Blending these into a single expenditure of FP and a single skill roll as Thaumatology does is kind of similar to what Psionic Powers did when it tweaked the Temporary Enhancements rules into creating psi-techniques. It gave an option for TE to be applied faster (no need for a prep Concentrate) but also made enhanced techniques harder (stack penalties)

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Plane

1) applying it to Modular Abilities: AFAIK this means "I have one minute's time to rearrange my abilities before I need to do prep to regain the ability to spend time rearranging abilities". You would then use whatever time the MA variant called for, modified by Reduced Time or Takes Extra Time as usual?

In basic set under modular abilities it says to use Preparation Required instead of Takes Extra Time for making modulating your points take longer. So in this context I think that Preparation Required is supposed to work like Immediate Preparation Required and just extend the "activation time", e.g. the time it takes to modulate your points. AFAIK.

Originally Posted by Plane

2) Restructurable Magery, which F130's Behind the Curtain explains is taking Divided Magery (equivalent to One College in pricing) then buying an inverse "Not Divided" enhancement as a limited enhancement reduced in price using Preparation Required.

That context appears to use Preparation Required like Immediate Preparation Required, which sort of bypasses the "only one thing prepared at a time" clause.

Originally Posted by Plane

Blending these into a single expenditure of FP and a single skill roll as Thaumatology does is kind of similar to what Psionic Powers did when it tweaked the Temporary Enhancements rules into creating psi-techniques. It gave an option for TE to be applied faster (no need for a prep Concentrate) but also made enhanced techniques harder (stack penalties)

Yeah, that's a useful trade off to know about. Kinda do some interesting powers games by making heavy use of those sorts of things. Like a game heavily based around Control (element) + TK (visible, environmental [same element], [maybe with aoe?]) to model Avatar, The Last Airbender style element bending. Then build some martial arts styles like those out of Martial Arts, but including TE and AoD techniques in the style. Although this train of thought isn't really on topic.