Energy Accumulation for Powers

[dataweaver]

I was wondering how one would price an Ability that requires you to use something like the Energy Accumulation rules from Path/Book Magic or RPM to activate instead of just taking a turn of concentration. My initial thought is to use something to the effect of Preparation Required as a basis for this — say, at -25% for a requirement to roll against Will every five minutes to accumulate energy.

I'd supplement this with another limitation to the Ability representing how much energy needs to be accumulated in order to activate it. For that limitation, I'd use the pricing structure of Corrupting as a guideline: every x points of energy that you're required to accumulate reduces the cost of the Ability by one character point, to a minimum of 20% of the original price. I'm not sure how to set x, though.

Thoughts?

[Nereidalbel]

I'd actually treat it as Costs FP (Can only be powered by Energy Reserve), and then modify your ER with a Special Recharge limitation.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would actually take a different tack. From the Path of Forms, we have the example of a ritual replicates an ability costing 9 points for 15 CP, plus 1 point per 9 CP. Using that example, I do not think that it would be too broken to change every Power into a separate Book/Path and to have every ability be a separate ritual that would cost 6 points plus 1 point for every 5 CP of the cost of the ability (the default for Effect Shaping would be -1 per 5 CP of the cost of the ability).

While the ritual was active, the practitioner would gain the benefit of the ability, though it would be 'always on' until dismissed. Attack abilities would instead be one use, as would abilities based on Jumper and Warp. With conditional rituals, practitioners could have the rituals wait to activate the ability until a condition was met, such as a spoken phrase or a particular event.

[Ailluminus]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

I'd actually treat it as Costs FP (Can only be powered by Energy Reserve), and then modify your ER with a Special Recharge limitation.

I basically did one of these for a Pyromancy Power for a Low Tech setting using Sorcerer, but with the base ability being Control: Fire, rather than the everything-power of Sorcerer.

It cost ER to use any power, and ER recharged via Special Recharge, rather than Leech or over time. Basically, it required that the character have access to a source of flame in order to build up their power.

It worked well, though in the context of the world the ability to launch a 4d fireball fairly easily was a little overpowered.

[dataweaver]

Right. The problem with the ER approach is that it decouples the energy accumulation process from the choice of which Ritual you're performing. While there is some basis for that sort of thing (RPM explicitly includes an ER in the Magery Advantage for just this purpose), that's not how the default Energy Accumulation model works. If you go with the -80% version of Special Recharge, where you must use it quickly after you've gathered it, you get something closer; but again, it's operating on the basis of gathering the energy and then deciding what to with it.

That's why I was looking at Preparation Required instead of Costs FP: the defining feature of the Energy Accumulation rules isn't that it costs energy to do things; it's that you have to take time to do things; the energy accumulation total is merely an abstract measure of how much time you need to put into it.

I suppose that another approach with be to call it a -40% version of Preparation Required (between ten minutes and an hour on average) and just say that the amount of energy that you need to accumulate is based on the point cost of the Ability. Now, the Path/Book Rituals found in Thaumatology seem to cluster around 7–13 energy accumulation, with some outliers as low as 3 and a few open-ended ones (e.g., 9 points base, +1 per stage of effectiveness). This seems to be roughly in line with the “1/5 point cost” setup that Sorcery uses; so perhaps just do that: each point of energy accumulated (which is explicitly not the same thing as FP/ER, by the way) lets you power one use of 5 points worth of an Ability's Full Cost (as defined in Sorcery).

Of course, the other thing about the Energy Accumulation model is that it assumes that you can gather extra energy to extend the scope and/or duration of the result: stuff that, with the Powers model, normally requires Enhancements like Extended Duration or Area Effect. Powers lets you do something similar with Stunts (“Temporary Enhancements”); so I see no problem in just keeping that aspect of Energy Accumulation as written even when applied to Abilities instead of skill-based Rituals.

Alternately, adapt the aforementioned Stunt rules by translating their Will roll penalties into additional energy accumulation on a one-for-one basis and waiving the FP costs as redundant. So each level of Area Effect (+50% Enhancement) would require the accumulation of an additional 5 energy, and each level of Extended Duration (+20% Enhancement) would require the accumulation of an additional 2 energy.

Thoughts?