Requires literal cooldown

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Heya all!

So let's imagine a PC has a multipurpose gadget, and one of it's ability overheats it. Past it's normal use, this ability can still be used, but at the risk of damaging the gadget (shutting down other abilities it grants, or causing a fuel leak, and so on) until it's fixed.

Being due to heat, the normal cooldown could be partially bypassed by dumping the gadget in a nearby river/lake/sea and letting it cool down the gadget.

How much would that limitation be worth?

[Ulzgoroth]

Probably not a lot. It's kind of three different alternative Limitations:
-Requires Cooldown (not actually sure how you build that?)
or
-Backlash (overheat-induced malfunctions and damage)
or
-Environmental (immersion)

[Varyon]

Overall, something like an Either/Or Limitation combining Takes Recharge, Unreliable, and Trigger (Immersion in Water or similar) might work. Note by RAW this probably works out to "Not a Limitation."

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Overall, something like an Either/Or Limitation combining Takes Recharge, Unreliable, and Trigger (Immersion in Water or similar) might work. Note by RAW this probably works out to "Not a Limitation."

Which means that altogether its a nuisance limitation -5% on the one ability that has it. (not the whole gadget).

[Flyndaran]

Trying to think in Gurps terms, it works for a set period of time before bad things happen.

The salient disadvantages are Limited Use, Takes Recharge, Maximum Duration, and Costs HP.

Limited Use, but like with reloading ammo, uses can be refreshed with a not too difficult "cool off" immersion.
With an either/or addition of Costs HP. I don't know if that is official, but plenty of posters here have houserules for them.

Takes Recharge is best if it's something that needs to be operated in combat time frames.

Maximum Duration if it's something that you want to keep operating for longer time frames but losing its function is possibly a bigger hassle.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Like Ulzgoroth says, this sounds like a set of Either/Or limitations. I'd say that the cooldown element is Limited Use. I'd just treat the "dump it in water to cool it down faster" element as Fast Reload. Without that, I think it's fair to say it's about at limiting as Limited Use with Slow Reload - you don't have to take active actions to "reload" it, but you do have to wait longer than would be typical for Slow Reload.

The overheating is Backlash of some sort. You could use lost HT as the Backlash penalty, but (thanks to Christopher Rice), there's also now an enhancement to Affliction to worsen Malfunction, from Pyramid 3.78, in the "Cursed Thou Art" article. It's +10% per level for an Affliction, and each level worsens the Malfunction number by 1 step.

So you could build this by giving the ability that causes the overheating Either Limited Use, 2/day, Fast Reload (by dumping in water) (normally -15%), Or Backlash, Increased Malfunction by 2, (suffer for 1 minute after using the power, roll HT every minute to recover) (normally -20%), and the limitation value would be -15% X -20%, or -3% (I'd round this up to -5%). Less limiting than that wouldn't be a significant limitation. If you make the other abilities of the device Alternate Abilities of this one, that automatically handles the "shut down when the device fails" bit, since all Alternate Abilities are shut down when one is.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Limited Use, but like with reloading ammo, uses can be refreshed with a not too difficult "cool off" immersion.
With an either/or addition of Costs HP. I don't know if that is official, but plenty of posters here have houserules for them.

PK's official "pick any two of three limitations" build for Sorcery would work here as a "pick one of two".

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

PK's official "pick any two of three limitations" build for Sorcery would work here as a "pick one of two".

That build has the cost of one limitation, but you get to pick two of three limitations at a given time. I could see the same thing done in this situation.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

That build has the cost of one limitation, but you get to pick two of three limitations at a given time.

That isn't how it's priced at all...

You multiply the Limitations by each other, thus two -20% limitations on an Either/Or setting only count as -4% together.


I've long thought they were a ***, but my feelings in this matter are overruled by RAW.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

That build has the cost of one limitation, but you get to pick two of three limitations at a given time.

That's not quite accurate. For the "pick two out of three limitations" build inherent in Sorcery, two of the limitations involved (Requires Gestures and Requires Spoken Words) are actually -10% limitations, while the "overall" limitation is worth -5%. This thread goes into PK's thoughts on pricing the limitation, including the important note that he was sort of thinking of Costs Fatigue being worth -10% anyway. And the last post in the thread gives a decent formula for calculating this sort of "Choose X out of Y limitations, all with value Z" build.