Modifying Alternate Abilities

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

I have Prime Trilogy but never noticed the hand thing, probably didn't get the Xray specs or pay attention.

Yeah, it's easy to miss, but in the first game you can see the outline of Samus' hand inside the arm cannon (where from the way it moves it is apparently floating, being either suspended by liquid or contragravity tech of some sort) when using the X-Ray Visor (which you can't beat the game without, so chances are pretty good you got it at some point). The symbols for the four weapons are actually stylized representations of the way in which she positions her fingers - I had just thought they were some sort of Chozo symbols (which they might still be, honestly - I believe they also had five fingers) until I noticed her hand changing when I changed weapons while using the X-Ray Visor. Echoes didn't have anything like this, and I never played Corruption, so I can't comment there. No clue if Other M might have something like this, but from what I've read, that's not something I even want to ever play.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

What about Extra Attack with the limitation of being used for changing guns?

Unless you are using a houserule that lets you use attacks in place of readies, you'd want Extra Ready for that. Rather than Limiting it to "Only to Negate the Takes Extra Time Limitation on My Abilities," you'd just... not have Takes Extra Time on those abilities.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Changing guns isn't something I normally did mid combat so I don't remember if there was I many interruption in rate of fire. I think I would change beam settings via the pause menu on Super Metroid which made it seem like a ready maneuver.

In the Prime series, you can change weapons without pausing (in fact, I think you can only change weapons in this manner) by using the C stick (on the Gamecube; I never played any of them on the Wii). It takes time to swap (somewhere around a second IIRC), during which you can still run around (Move), lock on to targets (Aim), and similar, and if the game had unarmed attacks you could probably do those. That's basically something like Takes Extra Time (Passive). (Passive) should be a modifier for things like Takes Extra Time, Preparation Required, etc, which means you have to wait for the ability to become ready, but don't need to actually take a Ready maneuver.

Changing weapons in the pause menu is, in the game world, an instantaneous effect. It's equivalent to rifling through your notes at the table to determine what weapon you want to change to, then declaring you change to it and immediately making an Attack with it. I actually prefer the flavor of how Prime handles things, however.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Do you think it would be possible to use rapid strike and then just roll ready and shoot both at -6?

I'd say with normal Takes Extra Time, doing the equivalent of Quick-Shooting Bows would probably be alright, although an extra +5% modifier to allow this wouldn't be out of line. For passive changes, however, it's unlikely there would be a way to speed things up - although if you wanted to go ahead and tack on that same +5%, it would probably be alright.