Negating modified advantages

[Kirby]

Folks:

It seems intuitively obvious to me -- which is no guarantee that it's true, but it does seem intuitively obvious -- that when using an Affliction with the Negated Advantage enhancement, one must have a number of "levels" of Negated Advantage at least equal to the target's levels of the advantage in question in order to negate that advantage. Thus, for instance, if I want to make a character who destroys others' ability to Regenerate and I buy:

Affliction 1 (Negated Advantage: Regeneration +25%)

then I could negate Regular Regeneration, but not any higher level. On the other hand, if I buy:

Affliction 1 (Negated Advantage: Regeneration +150%)

then I can presumably negate any level of Regeneration.

So far, so good. But how does the Negated Advantage enhancement interact with enhanced or limited traits? If I buy an Affliction designed to negate World-Jumper and price the relevant enhancement at +100%, can I negate World-Jumper with the New Worlds enhancement? If I buy an Affliction designed to negate Regeneration and price the relevant enhancement at +25%, can I negate Very Fast Regeneration with -75% limitations?

The argument for a "yes" answer is, as I see it, that there's no reasonable way to predict the variety of enhancements and limitations one's opponents could have on their abilities; thus, answering "no" would render Negated Advantage useless in many campaigns.

The argument for a "no" answer is, as I see it, that answering "yes" means that you get something for nothing, i.e., the ability to negate arbitrarily powerful enhanced abilities for the same price as the ability to negate some particular level of an ability.

Thoughts?

--K

A postscript: Perhaps there is a third way; perhaps Negated Advantage: X +Y% should negate any version of advantage X costing up to Y character points. Thus, for instance, if I took Negated Advantage: Regeneration +200% I could negate any version of Regeneration with any combination of enhancements and limitations as long as that version of Regeneration costs 200 or fewer points. Does this seems like a reasonable solution?

[transmetahuman]

I always assumed that enhancements and limitations were ignored; you just negate the underlying advantage. You lose as much as you gain, because limitations are as common as enhancements (if not more so). And it's just so much simpler. In a similar vein, "Affliction, Negated Advantage, Alternate Form" works equally well on werewolves and wererats.

You can negate some but not all levels of a leveled advantage (Regeneration is a rare problem in that the levels don't cost the same - I would leave a partially-negated Regeneration working at the next level that costs at or below any "leftover" points).

A related question, though, is can you Negate a Disadvantage that has multiple possible variations with the same Affliction? For instance, does your "affliction, negated disadvantage, restricted diet" work on any restricted diet, or do you have to specify only martian's need for Xvilvbrap, or only a car's need for gasoline?

[Kirby]

Your argument seems good, although I might cavil at the wererat/werewolf example; I would want a really interesting special effect to justify negating two different (to my mind) lycanthropic conditions with the same ability. Your mileage, of course, may vary, given that how different lycanthropes are from one another isn't exactly reality-checkable.

In any case, I suspect your way of handling the matter is simplest.

With regards to the Negated Disadvantage question, I'd say it's entirely a matter of the special effect of the ability whether one can negate (e.g.) all Restricted Diets or only some. My reasoning is this: In principle, Restricted Diet is Restricted Diet; a power that negates one such disadvantage could negate all such disadvantages. However, it doesn't make sense for all special effects to negate all versions of Restricted Diet; the Xvilvbrap Converter, which the Martians use to transubstantiate Earth food into their preferred comestible, would have a hard time (without a Scotty present) making cars run on cake. And while it is not permissible to add enhancements to an ability for free, it is always permissible to remove minor abilities by fiat as part of the special effect of an ability.

So I'd say that for any but the most creatively-defined special effect of a Negated Disadvantage, you get to negate only a related set of versions of that disadvantage.

Seem reasonable?

--K

[transmetahuman]

Eminently reasonable. Too often, IMO, people build abilities with the tools in a game like this, without looking at what the build is supposed to mean in the game world. Sometimes I need reminding, myself. ;)

My rationale for the negated Alternate Form was the fairly common spell that locks you into your current form (from lots of games and probably some stories) - in that case, it doesn't matter whether you're a therianthrope, vampire, demon, or a mage with Great Shapeshifting; you're locked in your current form until the effect ends.

This actually brings up a question that underscores my problem with Negated Advantages and Disadvantages, and has to do with what you said about the game meaning of builds. In the "shape-locking" spell above, you could build it as Affliction, Negated Advantage, Alternate Form... but then what about people with Morph? Or the mage using the Shapeshift spell? Do you need to take every possible way of building an effect into account when you're trying to negate it?

This kind of thing is why I like that GURPS has Neutralize, though that has its own limitations (ineffective versus non-Powers, mainly). I prefer wider sfx-driven ways of negating abilities. But Neutralize is easier to modify to that end than Affliction. I'm thinking along the lines of letting a very narrowly defined sfx-specific Neutralize use Cosmic to negate even "wild" abilities.

For instance, say the shape-locking magical ability above should, in this game world, work equally well on non-magical shapeshifting abilities, even a protoplasmic blob's inherent shapeshifting or a shapeshifting spirit power (just like a magical jamming spell works on a mundane gun: it's what the magic does). Then you could use a Cosmic Neutralize with an "only for abilities which allow you to change shape" limitation to affect blobs and spirits, even though your ability itself is still magical and not usable in NMZs.

Whatcha think?

[Kirby]

Very interesting! I see your point on the shapeshift-locking ability; I usually think in terms of supers-genre special effects rather than fantasy-genre special effects, and so I missed that one. But it works; very Arabian Nights-ey.

With regards to the question of Neutralize versus Negated Advantage, I am of two minds. Neutralize is a very powerful ability, to my mind; it seems counterbalanced by the fact that it works only on powers and not on wild talents. I do, very firmly, agree with you that there should be some way to negate certain wild talents; your own shapeshifting-negation ability is an excellent example, in that nanomorphs and blob-monsters as well as Mutants (-10%) and Magicians (-10%) should be vulnerable to it. I have always assumed that this is the point of Negated Advantage, that it lets one negate even wild talents.

But... that does lead to a great deal of bookkeeping. Shapeshifting actually seems like a relatively manageable example, in that you'd just have to buy Negated Advantages: Alternate Form and Morph (+115%) for your Affliction. But if you're negating something like fire/heat abilities, and you want to be able to affect plasma aliens and dragons and so on, one shudders to think how many advantages one would have to negate. Cosmic Neutralize would be much simpler.

A final side note: If I were a player, and I had racked my brains trying to think of all the possible "fire/heat" advantages to negate and stuck them into my Affliction, and the GM thought of something I hadn't thought of and wouldn't let me negate it despite my special effect of firesnuffing, I'd be irate. Which, I think, is as good an argument as any for the restricted version of Cosmic Neutralize you propose. I think I will cautiously adopt this build.

--K

P.S.: A final final side note -- By comparison with "no defense allowed," it seems that this version of Cosmic should be priced at +300%, since the usual defense (i.e., being a wild talent) is useless against it. But that seems awfully expensive; +50% was my knee-jerk idea of the appropriate figure. But I really don't know which pricing scheme I'd favor.

P.P.S.: Really final this time. After I wrote all the above, I realized that even shapeshifting isn't as manageable as I thought, since one would also have to negate Switchable body parts, Injury Tolerances, Strikers, and Payloads, plus Hermaphromorph, Elastic Skin, 360-degree vision with the appropriate special effect... blah blah blah. Anyway, I was overconfident, and this is more argument for your Cosmic Neutralize build, Transmetahuman.