Maximum Duration Limitation on Alternate Form or Morph, abusive?

[Peter Knutsen]

-50% for a Maximum Duration of 10 Minutes, on Alternate Form(s) and/or Morph?

That's saving a lot of points. That's compensating for two-and-a-freakin'-half level of Reduced Time. Pretty damn attractive?

But isn't it a little bit abusive?

The character concept in question is a shapechanger, using a Shapeshift Power that's a combination of Druidic and Arcane power source, with two main tricks. One is a set of Alternate Forms, one for each element, intended mainly for combat (Fire, Earth), getting around (Air) and healing and putting out fires (Water), and the other is Morph with Cosmetic Only to do trickeries and impersonations. That'll eat up a lot of his CPs.

I'm thinking that -50% is just too generous, in this particular case. He'll be changing forms frequently. I imagine during a typical Dungeon Fantasy crawl session, he'll change form half a dozen times, or more.

How about, in this specific case, ruling that yes, Maximum Duration of 10 minutes, followed by a cooldown-period of 5 minutes, is limiting, but not extremely so, and therefore the magnitude of the Limitation is reduced from -50% to -30%?

[naloth]

-50% might be generous but it's not really abusive. There's some pretty severe drawbacks that apply for shape shifting. That -50% pretty much will need to offset Reduced Time (probably 4 lvls +80%, unless you want to spend more than a since turn transforming) and some Absorptive Change (+10% or more) for your equipment unless you want to have to strip as well.

-Tracking will generally take too long.
-Traveling especially by swimming or flying will be difficult with a lot of stops.
-Your ability to scout or hunt as an animal will be very limited.
-Since you cannot remain in animal form you can be hurt before you have a chance to transform. If your alternate form has HP 20+, you'll end up further down on HP then you would have as an animal.
-HP is proportional but even for healing many animals have a higher HT so they generally pass more healing rolls.
-Often you'll be vulnerable during time in hostile areas.

I'd go with the full -50%. BTW, it's only saving 7.5 points on Alternate Form. Sure on Morph -50% saves quite a bit more but that's going to be offset by the more expensive cost of the enhancements.

[Peter Knutsen]

Since the character has 4 Alternate forms, he's saving 30 CPs, not 7.5.

Also, I won't slap 4 levels of Reduced Time onto Morph. At least not for starters. It'll be a somewhat weak power for starters, with Cosmetic Only and that other Limitation Only Humanoid Shape or whatever, and nerfed down with a truckload of other Limitations to keep cost real low, although character development plans (abstract as they are) involve the buying away of some of those Limitations gradually.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

-50% for a Maximum Duration of 10 Minutes, on Alternate Form(s) and/or Morph?

That's saving a lot of points. That's compensating for two-and-a-freakin'-half level of Reduced Time. Pretty damn attractive?

But isn't it a little bit abusive?

The character concept in question is a shapechanger, using a Shapeshift Power that's a combination of Druidic and Arcane power source, with two main tricks. One is a set of Alternate Forms, one for each element, intended mainly for combat (Fire, Earth), getting around (Air) and healing and putting out fires (Water), and the other is Morph with Cosmetic Only to do trickeries and impersonations. That'll eat up a lot of his CPs.

I'm thinking that -50% is just too generous, in this particular case. He'll be changing forms frequently. I imagine during a typical Dungeon Fantasy crawl session, he'll change form half a dozen times, or more.

How about, in this specific case, ruling that yes, Maximum Duration of 10 minutes, followed by a cooldown-period of 5 minutes, is limiting, but not extremely so, and therefore the magnitude of the Limitation is reduced from -50% to -30%?

Considering that it affects only the base shapeshifting ability, and not the template cost, I don't see a problem with it, really. If your Alternate Forms are at all powerful, the template cost of the most powerful one will be the major factor really.

As for being able to counteract the cost of Reduced Time eventually, to my mind that's all to the good. The ten second base time is a weird artifact to my mind, anyway; I would have been happy if default time to shift were one turn of Ready or Concentrate, and all those shifters that take longer were getting the benefit of the Takes Extra Time limitation, honestly.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Considering that it affects only the base shapeshifting ability, and not the template cost, I don't see a problem with it, really. If your Alternate Forms are at all powerful, the template cost of the most powerful one will be the major factor really.

But the character has 4 Alternate Forms, for starters, and may develop more later on, although the intent is to require heavy GM involvement (each form must be "elemental" in nature, although pseudo-elements like Plant or Animal or Light or Shadow are as acceptable as the four regular ones), so the -50% Limitation applies to each Alternate Form, reducing the cost by 7.5 CPs.

Originally Posted by vitruvian

As for being able to counteract the cost of Reduced Time eventually, to my mind that's all to the good. The ten second base time is a weird artifact to my mind, anyway; I would have been happy if default time to shift were one turn of Ready or Concentrate, and all those shifters that take longer were getting the benefit of the Takes Extra Time limitation, honestly.

My preference would have been for both Alternate Form and Morph to come with a built-in rule, in GURPS Characters, for how the character can do something to speed up the process relative to the base time of 10 seconds. Like spending 1 FP and making a Will roll; if the Will roll succeeds, the time is halved, or quartered on a critical success.

That way, there's something very obvious that Power Talent can interact with, by adding to the roll.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

My preference would have been for both Alternate Form and Morph to come with a built-in rule, in GURPS Characters, for how the character can do something to speed up the process relative to the base time of 10 seconds. Like spending 1 FP and making a Will roll; if the Will roll succeeds, the time is halved, or quartered on a critical success.

That way, there's something very obvious that Power Talent can interact with, by adding to the roll.

Sounds like a great place to use the Extra Effort rules from Powers, p. 160. Each 1 second reduction in change time is a 10% reduction, so the roll would be against Will at -2/second reduction. Talent adds to the roll; a success lets you change more quickly.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Sounds like a great place to use the Extra Effort rules from Powers, p. 160. Each 1 second reduction in change time is a 10% reduction, so the roll would be against Will at -2/second reduction. Talent adds to the roll; a success lets you change more quickly.

I'm not sure how RAW-legal that is, but it sounds good, if a bit harsh.

However, my wish has all along been to combine a few levels of Reduced Time with some kind of Talent-involving roll, so that for instance 2 levels of Reduced Time reduces the change time from 10 seconds to 3 seconds, and then the Talent-involving roll can further reduce that.

If you were the GM, would you say that the 10% reduction is calculated based on the original change time, of 10 seconds, or the actual base change time of 3 seconds?

For the later, you'd need a -6 roll penalty in order to reduce the change time by 30% from 3 seconds to 2 seconds, which strikes me as unattractive. For the former, we're looking at -2 for 2 seconds, -4 for 1 second, or -6 for instant change, which is very attractive, especially since full Talent (4 levels) means the roll is unmodified Will.


Another option, although explicitly adviced against in the text, is to allow Temporary Enhancements, specifically Reduced Time. Two levels of temporary Reduced Time would be -4 to the Will roll, and with Talent added in.

Quite neatly, this also involves a Fatigue cost, of 2 FP, plus the option of spending more FP to reduce the magnitude of the roll penalty (if Talent does not already negate it completely).

The big problem is, you have to get that suggestion past the GM, since there's no RAW way to utilize Talent to speed up the change process. Not in Characters, not in Powers, and I haven't been able to find anything in Supers either.

Almost all other Advantages have some kind of rule where you can make a roll, or spend FP, or both, to improve the effect in some way, but Shapechange lacks this.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm not sure how RAW-legal that is, but it sounds good, if a bit harsh.

It's an extrapolation of the Extra Effort rules, so it's fairly RAW. It certainly doesn't feel game breaking to me in any way. Extra Effort always costs 1 FP, and success is not ensured.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

If you were the GM, would you say that the 10% reduction is calculated based on the original change time, of 10 seconds, or the actual base change time of 3 seconds?

I'd base it on the modified "activation" time, keeping a "100% reduction" at Will-20, so it would be -7 for 2 sec, -14 for 1 sec, and -20 for 0 sec. Even at those harsher penalties the guy with Reduced Time is still better off than the guy without it.

Another option would be to take Reduced Time with limitations stacked on that - Reduced Time +20% with Costs Fatigue -5% for a final cost of +19%. Unfortunately, this method results on some pretty poor cost reductions.

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

-50% for a Maximum Duration of 10 Minutes, on Alternate Form(s) and/or Morph?

It is not abusive for alternate forms, it saves 7.5 points. Remember modifiers for alternate forms only apply to the 15 point alternate form advantage.

It will not effect the cost of his maximum alternate form at all.

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Since the character has 4 Alternate forms, he's saving 30 CPs, not 7.5.

But this screams alternate abilities. So he should only buy one at full price and the rest at 20% of their final cost.