Costs Fatigue on an Action

[Mark Skarr]

One of my players is interested in an ability similar to the Magic: the Gathering card “Ghostly Prison.” The gist of it is that it costs one mana, per creature, to attack your opponent.

Applying this as a supernatural ability, where it would cost an afflict-ee one Fatigue to take an attack action: this comes out as a -2pt disadvantage by my maths.

If we take an Attack Action as costing 25 points (from Extra Attack), and costs Fatigue is a -5% limitation, that comes to 1.25 pts (rounded up to 2).

If we were to apply this to any action, I would base it off of Altered Time Rate, and it would be a -5 pt disadvantage.

Now, while I think these values are drastically too low, that is more a byproduct of Costs Fatigue being a laughably underpriced limitation.

Comments or corrections?

[Sam Baughn]

I don't think you can just reverse the cost of buying more of something to calculate that of removing the same thing. Decreased Time Rate only removes half your actions for -100 points. Preventing basically all actions is more like Incapacitating Condition (Paralysis). Preventing all attacks is probably worth more than Pacifism (Total Nonviolence) [-30], which, despite the name, only prevents violence against sapient beings.
I think you should also get double value from Costs FP if you need to pay it every turn, rather than the default once for one minute and then half cost for each further minute.
However, I do agree that Costs FP is under-priced and this is a big part of the issue.
A better alternative might be to build the ability as a Fatigue Attack, with an accessibility limitation like 'only on those who attacked on their last turn' or 'not against anyone taking Do Nothing manoeuvrers'.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

One of my players is interested in an ability similar to the Magic: the Gathering card “Ghostly Prison.” The gist of it is that it costs one mana, per creature, to attack your opponent.

Applying this as a supernatural ability, where it would cost an afflict-ee one Fatigue to take an attack action: this comes out as a -2pt disadvantage by my maths.

If we take an Attack Action as costing 25 points (from Extra Attack), and costs Fatigue is a -5% limitation, that comes to 1.25 pts (rounded up to 2).

I think due to up-rounding of costs, 23.75 rounds up (away from zero) to 24 (saving you 1 point) while -1.25 round round up (toward zero) to -1, also saving just one point.

That said, I think normally -5% gives you 1 minute of being able to attack, if it only gives you one second of attacking you could get the -10% version, which would save your 2 points.

Just seems like Extra Attack could be viewed as a switchable ability which takes a free action to activate, rather than a transient ability which takes a free action to activate.

Temporary Draining (Fatigue Only) also might end up saving more points than Costs Fatigue in some cases.

[Shuckster]

You could build an Innate attack that dose FP damage with Aura, Always on, Cosmic and an Uncontrollably trigger: Attacking the character, couldn't you? This would basically mean that anybody in a set range of the character would take automatic FP loss if they used an Attack or All out Attack Maneuver on them. You could even expand the Area Effect with that modifier.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

One of my players is interested in an ability similar to the Magic: the Gathering card “Ghostly Prison.” The gist of it is that it costs one mana, per creature, to attack your opponent.

Applying this as a supernatural ability, where it would cost an afflict-ee one Fatigue to take an attack action: this comes out as a -2pt disadvantage by my maths.

If we take an Attack Action as costing 25 points (from Extra Attack), and costs Fatigue is a -5% limitation, that comes to 1.25 pts (rounded up to 2).

If we were to apply this to any action, I would base it off of Altered Time Rate, and it would be a -5 pt disadvantage.

Now, while I think these values are drastically too low, that is more a byproduct of Costs Fatigue being a laughably underpriced limitation.

Comments or corrections?

This feels kind of like a Divine Curse to me. That said, maybe price it as Weakness to get a better cost. If we assume that Attacking Others is an Common weakness in most games (and price it for the game itself, not how common it is in the world). Or as Very Common in combat heavy campaigns like Dungeon Fantasy you get something like . . .

Divine Curse (Do Unto Others): Whenever your character takes an Attack, All-Out Attack, or Committed Attack you must spend 1 FP (2 FP for an All-Out Attack) or take the Do Nothing action. You can pay from your HP for this, if necessary. Combats must end up short or your character will be quickly fatigued and likely in mortal danger.

Statistics: Weakness (1d-2 FP*; Attacking Others; Fatigue Only, -50%; Quickened 5, +120%; Variable, -40%) [-15].

* I just used the rules for Innate Attack to bring the base cost down from 1d to essentially 2 points so the base value of 1d/minute became -12 points instead of -20 points.

[Varyon]

I feel this is an Affliction (or Side Effect, or however you prefer to build debuffs) of Cannot Attack or Paralysis or similar, with a "Can be negated by Extra Effort" Limitation. Cannot Attack is comparable to No Bite [-2?], No Physical Attack on the character's arms [-10], and similar on the legs (perhaps [-5], or another [-10]). Honestly, that isn't too far off from Extra Attack's price, so I think you're fine using [-25] here. For the Extra Effort bit, that's arguably Negated Disadvantage: Cannot Attack (Costs 1 FP/second -10%) [22.5], or a net [-2.5] as you noted. Personally, I'd be inclined to just semi-arbitrarily put Cannot Attack (Negated by Extra Effort) at [-15], making the Limitation worth -40%. Apply that same -40% to Paralysis to get its cost.

You might instead decide that, as Extra Attack is 25% of the cost of ATR, Cannot Attack should be 25% of the cost of Paralysis, and go off that. I still feel -40% is around the right level for Negated by Extra Effort, but that's up to you.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Shuckster

You could build an Innate attack that dose FP damage with Aura, Always on, Cosmic and an Uncontrollably trigger: Attacking the character, couldn't you? This would basically mean that anybody in a set range of the character would take automatic FP loss if they used an Attack or All out Attack Maneuver on them. You could even expand the Area Effect with that modifier.

PU8p19 works like Uncontrollable (B116) except for item/environment instead of stress...

But I'm still kind of unclear how it works for a lot of transient targeted abilities like Innate Attack.

Aura is a great idea because it avoids the idea of 'what does my ability target' since the only thing uncontrollable is actually whether the ability switches on or off.

If there's ever only one possible effect and it's not targeted then Uncontrollable is simpler to fathom

[Mark Skarr]

Thanks hive-mind. I really appreciate these insights and help looking outside the box.

After some discussion, we're going to go with Christopher R. Rice's idea as we liked that one the most.

But, all, thanks.

Oh, and, yeah, Aura, AoE and some Malediction. And it'll probably get some Low or No signature so it's almost impossible to realize until it's too late.