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Old 09-07-2020, 01:06 AM   #1
pgb
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
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Default Modifiers on normal senses

If I want to modify a normal sense, e.g. hearing, then there seem to be two different approaches.

In Power-Ups 8, Limitations (p6), the approach is to treat the normal sense as an advantage compared with its absence - so hearing is "No Deafness" [20] - and calculate the cost of a limitation on it accordingly. In Powers: Enhanced Senses, there is something similar (p9), but the base cost is smaller by a factor of 2.

Why are they different? What am I missing?

Thanks!
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Old 09-07-2020, 02:04 AM   #2
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Default Re: Modifiers on normal senses

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Originally Posted by pgb View Post
so hearing is "No Deafness" [20]
No. Having the Deafness disadvantage go away under a limited circumstance is "No Deafness." The character would have both Deafness [-20] and No Deafness (Only in Direct Sunlight, -30%) [14] on their character sheet.

Power-Ups 8 is describing how to apply limitations to Disadvantages to get a proper point cost for them.

Powers: Enhanced Senses is describing how to apply enhancements to inborn senses which don't normally have a point cost because they are part of the default "human" template (Hearing, Vision, etc).
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Old 09-07-2020, 03:39 AM   #3
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Default Re: Modifiers on normal senses

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
No. Having the Deafness disadvantage go away under a limited circumstance is "No Deafness." The character would have both Deafness [-20] and No Deafness (Only in Direct Sunlight, -30%) [14] on their character sheet.

Power-Ups 8 is describing how to apply limitations to Disadvantages to get a proper point cost for them.
Well, yes and no. Yes, that's what it is describing. But one reason to do that in cases like Deafness, as far as I can see, is that that *is* the way to apply things like limitations to inborn senses. (And that seems perfectly sensible.) So in such cases, apart from direction, it is exactly the same idea as ...

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
Powers: Enhanced Senses is describing how to apply enhancements to inborn senses which don't normally have a point cost because they are part of the default "human" template (Hearing, Vision, etc).
In Enhanced Senses, the calculation is described in a different way, but can still be thought of as "apply the enhancement to a (hypothetical) base cost that depends on the sense". It would seem natural to me *if* that base cost was the same as buying the sense back up from not having it; but it isn't.

To put it another way, what if I want to apply an Enhancement *and* a Limitation to my hearing, say? An enhancement and limitation that would cancel out in terms of cost if applied to an "artificial" sense would no longer cancel out because hearing is a human sense.
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Last edited by pgb; 09-07-2020 at 03:47 AM. Reason: Punctuation
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Old 09-07-2020, 05:09 AM   #4
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Default Re: Modifiers on normal senses

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Originally Posted by pgb View Post
In Enhanced Senses, the calculation is described in a different way, but can still be thought of as "apply the enhancement to a (hypothetical) base cost that depends on the sense". It would seem natural to me *if* that base cost was the same as buying the sense back up from not having it; but it isn't.

To put it another way, what if I want to apply an Enhancement *and* a Limitation to my hearing, say? An enhancement and limitation that would cancel out in terms of cost if applied to an "artificial" sense would no longer cancel out because hearing is a human sense.
The same issue arises with arms: the base cost per arm is 10 points, but One Arm is -20 points.

I don't have a definitive answer, but it seems to me that the simplest way to deal with this would be to say that if you have both an enhancement and a limitation, you apply both of them to the base cost for the sense. You aren't just buying off a trait like Blindness or Deafness; you're buying an extra capability and taking some limitations on the usability of the sense to compensate.
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Old 09-08-2020, 01:29 AM   #5
pgb
 
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Default Re: Modifiers on normal senses

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The same issue arises with arms: the base cost per arm is 10 points, but One Arm is -20 points.
Yes, this case is tricky; for good reasons, Basic has two (or three) candidates for the base cost to be used for modifications to a person's first or second arms. I'm not sure that the choice there is the right one, but it's probably simplest.

For senses, the argument for just using minus the cost of the disadvantage seems stronger, but that's not what's established in Enhanced Senses.

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I don't have a definitive answer, but it seems to me that the simplest way to deal with this would be to say that if you have both an enhancement and a limitation, you apply both of them to the base cost for the sense. You aren't just buying off a trait like Blindness or Deafness; you're buying an extra capability and taking some limitations on the usability of the sense to compensate.
I see that would work, but it contradicts Limitations. The alternative, which I think appeals slightly more, is to apply both to (minus the disadvantage cost), following Limitations but contradicting Enhanced Senses - sorry. I suppose your version is slightly more RAW.

Thanks for the response.
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