Limit Breakers

[Varyon]

This is an idea I had inspired by the Blazers of Chivalry of a Failed Knight, although there are undoubtedly other influences (The Stormlight Archives’ Surgebinders certainly come to mind). I’m not certain yet if it would be appropriate as the basis for an entire setting, or just a character template.

The idea is to have people who are known as Limit Breakers - Breakers for short - who have a few powers of note. First off, they have increased resilience - I’m thinking Regeneration (Regular) [25] and possibly Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction x0.7 [25] and Regrowth (at RPK’s reduced price of [10]). If using “The Last Gasp” (Pyramid #3/44), they recover FP at the same rate as characters under normal FP rules - 1 FP per 10 minutes of rest - for [25]*. Next, they have the ability to summon a melee weapon, built using “Natural Weapons* (Pyramid #3/65). Sort of - while that’s the background build, I’m actually going to have it be a sort of weapon-building system, with options and their costs worked out ahead of time (indeed, that will be the next post). A fairly barebones, baseline weapon would cost [10].

The final ability, and what the Breakers are named after, is the Limit Break. This basically results in the character functioning as though he/she were using every option for Extra Effort at once. So… I need to make certain I’m not missing any options for Extra Effort. Here’s what I have, please let me know if I missed anything.

Limit Break increases Move (for Move maneuvers or out of combat use only) and Basic Lift by 50% each. In combat, it results in a +2 to all defenses (Feverish Defense). It results in a halving of all Rapid Strike penalties (Flurry of Blows). It grants +2, or +1/die, to all damage rolls (Mighty Blow). It also gives you an additional Step each round (Giant Step) and grants a +1 to your Reach (Great Lunge). It allows you to do a Move and Attack without penalty (Heroic Charge), but this is incompatible with the halving of Rapid Strike penalties, the damage increase, and the additional Reach. Finally, it allows you to ignore the U Parry stat on weapons (Rapid Recovery). In addition to all of the Extra Effort effects, Limit Break also means the character is essentially sustained by the power (itself powered by the soul), and has no need to eat, drink, sleep, or even breathe. At the same time, the character lacks the ability to use FP, and is indeed treated as though he/she lacked FP, like a machine. If using “The Last Gasp,” during Limit Break a character regenerates all AP each round. All of this is worth [175]**, or [275] if using “The Last Gasp.”

Of course, I intend for Limit Breaks to have short durations, and be usable only rarely. Limit Break lasts for up to 1 minute, after which you must wait 10 hours before it can be used again. Once Limit Break ends, the character immediately suffers an Aftermath, losing 10% of their full FP for every 3 seconds (or fraction thereof) Limit Break was active. Optionally, high FP characters may opt to treat this as 3.33% of full FP each second (a character with a whopping 30 FP would burn through it at a rate of 1 FP per second). As a further option, the GM may allow a character to use it for more than 1 minute at a time, with a Will roll each time it is extended by 10 seconds (note extending it too long can actually kill the character when he/she comes out of the Limit Break). These Limitations work out to -65%***, reducing the Limit Break to [60], or [95] if using The Last Gasp (technically, [61.25] and [96.25], respectively, but I opted to round down). This works out to [130] for a baseline Breaker template/lens, or [190] if using “The Last Gasp.”

The above is, as noted, a baseline for Breakers. While their normal stats cannot exceed the maximum for their racial template, they can have remarkably powerful Limit Breaks. New abilities can be added, benefitting from the same -65% Limitation, but also only lasting as long as the Limit Break itself. Some Breakers even have alternate Limit Breaks - these are built as Alternative Abilities to the default Limit Break, and typically have a longer duration of 1 hour. This is built with Maximum Duration, 1 hour (-10%) and Takes Recharge, 10x use time (-30%). Such long-duration Limit Breaks don’t need to have an FP cost (but they can, and it can be a cost rather than an Aftermath). These are typically more utility powers than combat advantages - invisibility, flight, etc. A few Breakers have an alternate Limit Break that lasts only an instant, basically throwing everything into a single moment. Including the discount for Alternate Abilities, this costs 20% as much as their normal Limit Break. In exchange for it lasting only one second, build the alternate as though its base cost were twice that of the Limit Break. Such Limit Breaks have an Aftermath of 100% of the character’s full FP (discount already applied).

*1 FP per 12 minutes is [35], while 1 FP per 4 minutes is [40]. Those don’t require rest, however. I feel Requires Rest is worse than Requires All-Out Concentrate (the latter lets you move at ~1 yard per second), and the latter applied to [35] is [26.25]. I feel reducing this to [25] and letting it apply a little more often covers the problem with Requires Rest.

**Limit Break’s boost to Move is comparable to Enhanced Move 0.5, with Cosmic, Complete maneuverability +50% and Cosmic, Instantaneous Acceleration +50%. Being unusable with Move and Attack is arguably a Limitation, but since Heroic Charge is incompatible with the Move bonus, I’m just going to work them as Alternate Abilities. So, the Movement boost is worth [20]. The boost to Basic Lift is comparable to adding +20% to Lifting ST. I’m OK with standardizing the cost to an ST 10 character, so that makes it worth [6]. Feverish Defense is Enhanced Parry (All) 2 [20] and Enhanced Dodge 2 [30], for a total of [50] (I consider Enhanced Parry (All) as also including Enhanced Block). Flurry of Blows is like Trained by a Master. One could argue that TbaM is made up of 3 parts - reduced Rapid Strike penalties, reduced Parry iteration penalties, and access to cinematic skills/Advantages. A case can be made for setting the penalty reductions as equal in cost to each other, and access to all cinematic skills/Advantages could be argued to be worth a [10] Unusual Background (each cinematic skill/Advantage can be unlocked with a Perk; setting it as [5] for all cinematic skills and [5] for all cinematic Advantages sounds fair), which would make the Flurry of Blows part be worth [10]. Mighty Blows is roughly comparable to +2 to ST for sw, +4 to ST for thr, so I’d be comfortable calling it equal in cost to +3 to Striking ST, for [15]. Giant Step is comparable to Enhanced Move 1 (Second Nature +150%) [50], but only for Steps, which is arguably a -50% Limitation. This is a good case for Multiplicative Modifiers, dropping cost to [25]. Great Lunge is comparable to Stretching 2 (Takes Less Time, instant, +30%) [16] (this is Takes Less Time +20% on Stretching 1, Takes Less Time +40% on Stretching 2). As this can’t be used to do anything but increase Reach, dropping to [10] (roughly a -40% Limitation) may be appropriate. Heroic Charge is a Wildcard Technique, allowing you to negate the penalties for Move and Attack on all skills. As negating it on one would be [6], or [7] with Unique Technique, [21] seems appropriate for the Wildcard version (although I’ll just round it down to [20]. As Heroic Charge is incompatible with several of the others, it’s at 1/5th cost, or [4]. Rapid Recovery is akin to using Mighty Blows on a Defensive Attack, so the same price - [15] - seems appropriate. Lacking FP is a Feature, for [0]. Not needing to breathe is Doesn’t Breathe [20]. Not needing to eat/drink/sleep is unlikely to come into play (Limit Break only lasts a short period of time). That gets us to a grand total of [175] for the Limit Break. If using “The Last Gasp,” adding another [100] allows for regeneration of AP equal to HT, which should be sufficient.

***This was initially built as Limited Use, 1/day (-40%), and Aftermath, 10 FP (-25%). Take Recharge, 10 hours, seems like a logical next step after 1 hour (-30%), and seems roughly comparable to 1/day. I felt doubling the Aftermath - and making it scale with the character’s FP - balanced out with making it scale with use time.