How do I have Alternate Form increase a non leveled Advantage?

[Jareth Valar]

I'm looking to have an Alternate Form increase a non-leveled advantage. I know if you have a leveled advantage like Hard to Kill or something, the levels automatically stack.

I'm looking to have an Altered Form increase the level a character has in Regeneration and Resistance. Right now I just created a New Advantage and wrote in the description with a static Limitation, but I was wondering if there is a "proper" way and one that will increase the Advantage depending on if the character has the ability outside the AF or if different characters have different starting levels.

[Armin]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the question. Regeneration does have levels, going from Slow to Regular to Fast and so on. It doesn't have uniform costs per level, but that doesn't matter to it receiving level bonuses.

As for a "proper" way, any way to do something unusual that results in you getting the result you want in a way that you understand should be just fine.

[Jareth Valar]

Originally Posted by Armin

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the question. Regeneration does have levels, going from Slow to Regular to Fast and so on. It doesn't have uniform costs per level, but that doesn't matter to it receiving level bonuses.

As for a "proper" way, any way to do something unusual that results in you getting the result you want in a way that you understand should be just fine.

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. We have a character that has Regeneration (Slow) in everyday adventuring, but has acquired Alternate Form that boosts his Regeneration to Regular, a 15 point difference. If I purchase Regeneration a second time to place in the Parent, it just duplicates the power at full price.

I was wondering if there was a formula or some modifier I was missing so that we don't have to go and adjust the price each time the player wishes to increase Regeneration to a faster level, or any other Advantage that is leveled similarly.

[Armin]

Okay, thanks for the clarification, I get it now.

I'm afraid that this is one of those things that 'what works for you' is what works. There are some things that occur to me, though.

You can include a 'negative trait' with the parent for the alternate form, for -15 points, that's just an 'already has regen' kinda thing. This is similar to how traits are nullified in racial templates, but just a custom trait you can make here.

You could use Transforms to reflect two states for the character - normal or alternate form. Put the slow regen in normal, and the full alternate form in the other. Then when you select one or the other, the traits from the unselected transform will be disabled. This doesn't affect point costs on its own, but you could still do the 'nullifier' thing for that.

Transforms are handy for things like this because they automatically disable (remove gives bonuses and such) from traits included in transforms that are not currently selected.

You could also just manually switch whichever trait between active/inactive using the right-click menu (not available on Sheet View) for the traits, but that's more work for complicated situations--not that this one is yet.

If you want to get complicated, you could indeed affect the cost of the more expensive regen by subtracting the cost of the cheaper one using a modifier, but there's no built-in way to do that, you'd have to write it yourself. I don't see any advantage to that over the 'nullifier' trait, though.

[Armin]

After typing all that, what I'd probably do is just add a new trait to the alternate form called "X's faster regen" or something, have it give a +1 bonus to the existing regen, and just cost it at 15 points. (If this should cost differently because it's only accessible in the other form, then adjust costs as you need to, of course.)

Then use Transforms to switch between forms when needed. (I like transforms for this kind of thing, because all bonuses from the alternate form can be turned on or off at once by changing the transform.)

IMO, trying to make something like this universally applicable is just more work than it's worth.

The one thing I don't get is that you seem very concerned about the price of the Regen in the different forms. If you want the character point costs to *change* based on which form the character is in, and I can't figure out why that would matter, then you'll have to do the more complicated method of adding a modifier to deal with that. There's nothing built in for that.

[Jareth Valar]

I appreciate the replay.

I hadn't even thought of the Transform Manager, I will definitely give that a try.

What I have right now is just a custom advantage "Increased Regen" like you mentioned. It works, but I was just trying to keep as few custom things as possible.

As for the points thing...that's just one of my OCD's. Manageable, just an annoying Quirk of mine.

Thank again. Always appreciated.