Ending Effects early

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Check Powers under Healing. If you have the Cure Afflictions or the affliction only modifiers on your Healing ability, you can remove the effects of afflictions. The penalty depends on the percentage of the enhancement of the effect you wish to remove. I don't have my books with me right now, sorry.

Ah +50% to heal both -40% to heal only afflictions with a -1 penalty per 50% enhancement on afliction. That would be better for ending that than trying to work something out with static.

[PK]

Variable allows you to "pull your punch", which can reduce the duration of the affliction (assuming multiple levels) by reducing the effect of the subject's resistance roll. I'd call the ability to reduce the duration as an afterthought about twice as powerful, or +10%. It's not Switchable, but its own unique enhancement, "Early Termination" or whatever you want to call it.

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

That sounds exactly right, given the text quoted from Powers. Variable should only allow for stating a maximum duration before attacking, while Switchable would let it be turned off any time. LGTM... I'll use +10% from now on.

No. Because we're not discussing turning off the power. But it's after-effects. Once you inflict sombody with AIDS you can't simply cancel it. Switchable is not designed to affect the results of the ability once the effects have been determined by the margine of failure in the dispute. You can use it like that if you like, but it's not RAW.

Originally Posted by blacksmith

So normaly Afflictions are ALways On? Not by and ruleing I have seen. What Switchable does is it lets you take a power that is normaly always on and let you turn it off. Specificaly things like DR, claws and extra limbs.

I agree. Switchable is for allways on abilities, attacks, afflictions, and other such things don't aply.

Think of it like this: if you have Gadget (Sword), it's a trait with the power to chop people. The wounds are a result of the intended effect, but the ability is merely the means. You can't cancel the wounds after you've inflicted, just like you can't seem to cancel the effects of an afliction after you attacked. So if you go for a deadly attack and later change your mind... tough.

Offcourse, there are instances, with magical curses and the like, where it's plausible to have the effects "lifted". Doubly so if you're trying to recreate the magic system through advantages instead of spells. So the mechanism for this seems usefull to know, and that's what the discussion is about, I think.

How do we change an ability from "rolls against HT and effects last for a number of seconds equal to the margin" to "ditto... or until cancelled"??

I'm thinking that if we can apply Extended Duration to this period, we could apply other modifiers. In wich case Switchable does come to mind, but applied specifically to the after-effects. What do you guys think?

[hjo3]

Relevant thread from March 2005 where I asked the same question.