Alternate Abilite

[GodBeastX]

ETS and ATR have nothing to do with each other other than both having time as a factor.

In Basic Set ETS is subpar because most of its use was inferred by the descriptive text. However, books beyond Basic have since extended the definition and gave some clarity. There is no overlap.

ATR gives you more time slices.

ETS let's you process information faster in a time slice.

A hyper speedster will probably want both.

[Tornado]

Thank you all for the explanation. XD

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

"Never"? ATR does let you think faster (certainly in the sense of taking Concentrate Maneuvers), as you say. So when does ATR catch up to ETS?

Exactly! ATR explicitly “allows you the luxury of extensive planning...” and also “experience level+1 subjective seconds for each real second that passes”. With just a few levels of ATR, you can see individual movie frames, and at 23 levels, it would be one fps. ETS seems to imply that its speedup is infinite, but the benefit extends only to negating rushing penalties for mental tasks in non-combat situations, not giving bonuses for taking extra time.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

In Basic Set ETS is subpar because most of its use was inferred by the descriptive text. However, books beyond Basic have since extended the definition and gave some clarity. There is no overlap.

Except where there is overlap, like non-combat situations. Powers and Supers have no sections for ETS. Which other books do?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

The problem, though, is that Alternate Time Rate never seems to affect your "passive" reflexes.

Hm. That might be a workable rule.

I usually like to think of ATR just as "Extra Maneuver", with no extra speed implied. (It is of course hard to imagine doing twice as much as the next guy without actually moving faster, but perhaps only more efficiently. But it's also hard to imagine doing everything twice as fast as a normal human without dragging in all sorts of other connections.)

I was looking at Martial Arts (p. 44) for that, which clarifies some of the effects of ETS in combat.

That's right! Thanks for the reminder.

I haven't thought of a useful way to have a leveled ETS to go with levels of ATR (so you can match them up, or not, as a concept might call for). You could have a hierarchy of reaction speed, sort of like the hierarchy of Cosmic-ness of powers trumping the lesser ones, but that's only going to matter much in a game where everyone's a speedster of differing speeds.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

But it's also hard to imagine doing everything twice as fast as a normal human without dragging in all sorts of other connections.)

Sure, but they can just buy those other connections.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Sure, but they can just buy those other connections.

If the character is actually supposed to be physically moving twice as fast, sure. But absent all those other connections, which are not required, perhaps ATR should simply have a simpler name, reflecting its lesser scope, and avoid the fluff text that does say you're doing things twice as fast, even though for many things you're not (from this Advantage itself).

ATR says that "your rate of time perception is faster than that of a normal human. The first level of this advantage lets you experience time twice as fast as a normal." ATR's fluff is directly intruding on the proposed turf for ETS as the perception and thinking speed advantage, while ATR is only the active, physical part.

"Out of combat, Altered Time Rate allows you the luxury of extensive planning, even in crisis situations." "If you have ETS, your rapid thought processes always allow you to ponder a problem thoroughly and respond in the manner you think best..." Not at all a clean distinction when it comes to thinking, especially since ATR owns the extra Concentrates as the superset of Compartmentalized Mind.

Or even acting, since ETS "improves your mental speed – notably your reaction time – but not how fast you physically move once you react." Yet ETS is the ability that's a gatekeeper to improved defenses like parrying bullets, which certainly involves movement. (Otherwise, you're simply realizing you're going to get hit thanks to your mental speed, while being unable to actually do anything about it, like put something in the way or get out of the way yourself.)

Which only leads back to the debate about how much of Per is thinking and understanding what's happening (it's IQ-based, after all) and how much is just physical reactions of cells experiencing low-level stimuli -- and where subconscious reflexes and drilled reactions fall on that scale from physical to mental. How thoughtful does thought have to be before it becomes the province of ATR and multiple Concentrates per turn, rather than ETS and faster perception, reaction, and "pondering" and "responding" -- especially when the high end anchors in both Advantages?

It's easy if you buy everything, because then you don't have to worry about what you don't have, and can more easily ignore the question of exactly which bucket is the source of some ability. It's not so easy figuring out where the boundaries are when you leave out some of the parts, whether not purchased or somehow deactivated by enemy action or misfortune. It's also relatively easy if you just stick to mechanical effects listed in the text, but then the fluff text isn't very appropriate, and it becomes hard to extrapolate to any unlisted effects. (There, the simplest answer is again to deny that there are any such implied effects -- you didn't buy those connections; in fact they're not even listed anywhere! --, and just treat it as a collection of arbitrary abstract mechanics, while suffering the gnashing of teeth of simulationists and logical extrapolators.)

Perhaps just houserule ETS as a prerequisite for buying ATR. It's a relatively simple way to merge the two, at least, to avoid the issues from missing pieces of the puzzle.

[Anthony]

I prefer to just delete fluff (it's up to the person buying the power) and say:

Altered Time Rate [100]: you may take 2 actions per turn, or perform extended actions twice as fast.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If the character is actually supposed to be physically moving twice as fast, sure. But absent all those other connections, which are not required, perhaps ATR should simply have a simpler name, reflecting its lesser scope, and avoid the fluff text that does say you're doing things twice as fast, even though for many things you're not (from this Advantage itself).

ATR says that "your rate of time perception is faster than that of a normal human. The first level of this advantage lets you experience time twice as fast as a normal." ATR's fluff is directly intruding on the proposed turf for ETS as the perception and thinking speed advantage, while ATR is only the active, physical part.

"Out of combat, Altered Time Rate allows you the luxury of extensive planning, even in crisis situations." "If you have ETS, your rapid thought processes always allow you to ponder a problem thoroughly and respond in the manner you think best..." Not at all a clean distinction when it comes to thinking, especially since ATR owns the extra Concentrates as the superset of Compartmentalized Mind.

Or even acting, since ETS "improves your mental speed – notably your reaction time – but not how fast you physically move once you react." Yet ETS is the ability that's a gatekeeper to improved defenses like parrying bullets, which certainly involves movement. .

What makes you think it's ETS letting the character move fast and not the Parry Missiles skill?

[Celti]

Page 122 of Supers, under Parrying Bullets, equates Basic Speed 25 with Altered Time Rate 4 for the purposes of catching handgun bullets, and Basic Speed 100 with Altered Time Rate 19 for the purposes of catching rifle bullets, and specifically says that a character with Altered Time Rate that high can parry bullets without Enhanced Time Sense — so they are not wholly separate from one another at absurdly high levels.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I prefer to just delete fluff (it's up to the person buying the power) and say:

Altered Time Rate [100]: you may take [Level+1] actions per turn, or perform extended actions twice as fast.

In my reading “you can do X” isn’t fluff. Fluff would be “you’re attuned to the speed force, thus you can do X” or “you can step between time quanta, thus you can do X”. The X in this case involves perceiving and acting withing Level+1 seconds per real second.