Alternitive to Frequency of Appearance?

[Edman]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

An argument against my own position:

Even if you accept that skill rolls work to replace FoA for Contacts, Allies and Patrons, they don't work in the same way to replace FoA for Dependents and Enemies.

Having two different solutions, one for advantages and one for disadvantages, is inelegant and may hit my tipping point for "needlessly complicated."

/Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

Well, if *that* is your problem, there's an easy solution - Dependents are in trouble when you fail to protect them, say by failing a Fast-talk roll to keep your curious wife off your superhero career, or a Law to explain to the judge why getting your insane high school teacher parole might be a bad idea.

Of course, I like FoA, simply because it decides, on average, how involved the ally/enemy/dependent is in the story. It's very easy to have a character's kung fu girlfriend show up and help kick some ass, because your sidekick turned bitter antagonist told the plot villains where they could find your girlfriend's son. And all of them, separetely and in pairs, could be removed from the equation. Maybe your girlfriend was there to save your mutual son, but now she's ****** off at your former sidekick, who in return fell for her when he saw her kung fu. Maybe the sidekick knocked her out and stole the son. Or maybe she knocked the villain out while the plot villains escaped with their hostage.

When it comes to how I play Allies and Contacts and the such, I let people throw in whatever NPCs they want, but those NPCs have no plot protection whatsoever unless they are on the sheet, and trust me, I'll do whatever it takes to motivate my players...