Cross posting this from the forums because I'm a bit wubbled about Modular Abilities. Modular abilities are new and shiny and confusing, so I'd appreciate it if you folks can give this a once over for me.
For my upcoming Hellboy game one player wants to play a mad scientist... the kind of guy who rants about his Hyperetheric Polysonic Pulse Ray, and produces highly unergonomic and erratic devices. He's definately going for Gadgeteer and a level of High Technology, although the player and I have agreed that if he produces something through Gadgeteer rather than through the normal invention process that it has to be big, clunky, and have unintended quirks. He only creates prototypes, essentially. The character will have some standard gadgets with the usual gadget limitations, a few gizmos, but he's also interested in being able to come up with a new device for each mission - a Modular Ability, in other words. I'm torn between defining it as a Physical Cosmic modular ability with limitations, or a custom Modular Ability as per Powers p63 (I just got my copy last night, weee!). I'm also a tad confused about the the rules for limiting a modular ability. I assume that the limitations for focus, or traits or whatever, are specifically for Cosmic abilities, because the rules for creating a custom modular ability already include point costs for how broad an ability can be added to it, and how difficult it is to reconfigure. That seems to cover the limitations for scope, and make Preparation Required redundant... but this isn't specifically mentioned, so I'm befuddled. Working on the assumption that I'm right, however, I'm deciding between offering him either of the following as his Mad Science pool: Cosmic Modular Ability (Physical Only, +50%; Focus Limited: Mad science, -5%; Trait limited: Only traits with Gadget Limitations, -20%; Environmental: workshop and tools required, -30%; Preparation Required: 8 hours, -60%) (This comes out to a base 10 per point, with a net -65% limitation on it, for a total of 4.5 points per character point in the ability (rounded up on the final cost of course). The benefit of buying it this way is that he can create any combination of physical advantages as long as he has enough points in his pool to pay for them.) Superscience Modular Ability: As an ability that allows nearly anything, but with Gadget limitations, it's a base of 5 points per 'slot', +50% for Physical for 7.5 points per slot (round up). Rearanging a slot takes a lot of time, equipment, and an Engineering roll, and is subject to external interfearance, so each point in a slot costs 2 cp +50% for physical, for a total of 3 cp. Assuming I'm costing this out correctly, the Cosmic pool is more point efficient for small pools or if the character will be splitting up into multiple gadgets and then recombining into one gadget on a regular basis. For big pools, buying individual 'gadget slots' would be more efficient but would limit how he could use that big pool. Quesiton, comments, kablitzing? -- "I hit him so hard he fell off the Internet." - Penny Arcade _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
