Modifying Powers: Sample Characters

As the proofing and playtesting ... and careful reading ... continues (indefinitely, it seems--although once everything is proofed, I'm publishing it even if other stuff is "in the works") I want to look at our on-going struggle with power modification.

Power Modification
The Hero system is sort of the ultimate in "effects based" power-mod systems. They sell you Energy Blast and then you modify it to get Fire Blast or Ice Blast or whatever. They have an extremely good system and if you are interested in customizing abilities it is one of--perhaps the--best place to go.

What are we doing in JAGS? I've talked about this before--and this actually is not the place for our current in-flight thinking (you've seen, maybe, post about Mod Points--and how to deal with attack mods like "Armor Piercing" and so on). We are not currently satisfied with the presentation of our thinking and we're looking at options.

Here is a brief overview of what is happening:

1. Modifiers are either +(an advantage) or -(a disadvantage)
2. They are expressed as a double-digit fraction multiple (i.e. .22). You take AP-Cost - (Mult x AP-Cost).
3. These fractions correlate to a 1/4th AP reduction for an 8 AP power (if that's not clear, okay--just skip it for now).
4. Fractional APs are made up for with DPs. If something winds up costing 3.75 AP you pay 4 AP for it and get an extra DP. Or you could pay 3 AP and lose 3 DP. Your choice ...
5. You round to the nearest .25 AP

So if I have an 8 AP power and I put a LARGE (.31) defect on it (-.31) the cost is 8 x .31 = 2.5 = 8 - 2.5 = 5.5 AP.

Simple? 

No--so, okay. No--it isn't. But that's the thinking right now. If you have something better, let me know.

So that was probably mind-boggling.

The Experiment: Worm, a Web Serial

We want to take our (large) existing power-set and use it to model characters. We started by choosing guys like Captain America and Batman. These posed several big problems (what, exactly, is "Batman" like?) and we felt reasonably side-tracked. We also didn't like the big names as a pool to choose from: our powers list pretty much already covered them to some degree.

We tried power randomizers, Marvel-Character-Randomizers, and even Supers games with random character creation rules. We weren't happy with those results either (I could write some posts on that too). Then I pointed out something I was reading: Worm, a Web Serial.

Worm is a super-villain story told in serial posts where a teen aged girl gets the ability to control insects, sets out to be a super hero--but falls in with super villains and ... well, that would be telling. There's a lot of it. It's published regularly. It is very well written. And the characters are wonderfully complex and (mostly) unique. It is deep and rich source material for thinking about powers and modification.

I'm a big fan of the work which is by turns tense, complicated, and intricate. The characters are sympathetic and the power-base is, well, it's interesting. 

So what we're going to do is select a character (major, minor, two-bit--background color, etc.) and discuss how exactly that works (or doesn't) in JAGS.

Without further ado ...

Oni Lee

Oni Lee is a two-bit street thug bad-guy. He's an Asian martial-arts firearm / knife using assassin who has the following power: he can teleport and, when he does, he leaves behind a duplicate of himself which can continue fighting for a few seconds before turning to dust! His power is subtle: when you see him appear and attack you have no idea that you are actually fighting a dupe! He's already teleported away or behind you or whatever.

How would we do him?

Basic Powers: the default for "supers" is 128 AP and around 50-75 CP. Oni is a badass in terms of combat training so he's probably closer to 75 CP. His powers, aside from teleporting would probably be something like:

• Tough Guy (a level or two)--strong, harder to hurt--but not super human.
• Athletic for speed. He's fast but not "super fast."
• He will pay AP for Guns / Knives. Note: he would use several weapons (hand gun, knife, sniper rifle, sub machine gun, etc.--whatever he can get his hands on). The standard super-hero rules say he will pay for weapons. So he has to pay around 20-24 AP for his most expensive gun. At a minimum, maybe 16 AP for a really bad-ass handgun? Something like that.
• He spends around, maybe, 20 AP on "fast, armed, tough guy." He may also spend 4 AP or so on body armor.

That leaves "around 100 AP to go."

Teleport + Duplicate: So now we need to add in Teleport and Duplicate and so on. This is, in our lexicon: Linking Powers (combining them in some way to create a new power). In this case we are actually linking: Teleport + Duplicate and Flicker + Duplicate. 

Teleport and Flicker both allow the character to teleport--but Flicker allows it "as a dodge action." So if you attack Oni, he can declare a dodge action (3 REA) and leave behind a duplicate (does it get hit? Yes--if he actually uses it as a dodge, the dupe will get hit--many dupilcates die this way in the story). He can also just take the standard Teleport Action (8 REA Long) and leave a duplicate behind.

The Duplicate ability has a defect: Duplicate lasts 1 Round and then has an 11- chance of lasting one additional Round (roll during Initiative). This is a "pretty big limitation."

So the things to look at are:

• Normally creating a duplicate costs 5 REA and is a Medium Action. In Oni's case it is a 3 REA Short Action.
• Teleporting is usually loud--Oni's is subtle. That's a small advantage. As no one can tell when he teleports characters must either see him appear somewhere or just guess as to whether they are fighting the real him or not. Creating a duplicate is usually quite obvious (unless the duplicate is invisible).
• Duplicates usually last ... well, a long, long time. You can send your dupe in to negotiate for you. You can be "two places at once." Your dupe can rob a bank and then "flicker out" when caught. Stuff like that. In this case, Oni can't do any of that--it's a HUGE defect. BUT: having a few dupes around is so damn good in combat and is, really, still pretty effective (the dupes appear with full REA and stuff so while Oni spends his precious action points to teleport he leaves behind fully capable actors).

So here's what we come up with: 

1. LINK: SMALL advantage. When you link two powers you usually take the "worst" REA cost of the two and the "worst" rule for using them--however, it's generally a medium advantage to take the better of the two so long as this does not result in "free attacks." In this case, having a duplicate appear and take the hit even removes some of the "dodge" potential so it clocks in at SMALL (which is +.06 in case you were wondering).
2. SUBTLE: SMALL. Attacks which are "silenced" are not "that much better" than loud attacks. Some attacks (psionics, gas, etc.) make no noise anyway. In this case the Subtle is a small advantage on both Duplicate and Teleport.
3. DUPLICATE DECAYS: "SIGNIFICANT." This is not as big a deal as you would think (it's 50% off). The complete rack of "roleplaying" value in the quickly decaying duplicates is superceded by the value of the duplicates in combat.

The total defect is around .42 as a multiple.

While I have not done all the math, the character works well at 128 AP.

A NOTE ABOUT WEAPONS: Oni makes the case for a "Guns and Knives" power which allows an AP "pool" which can be spent for easily accessible modern weapons upto the total AP. So if Oni spends, say 24 AP on "Guns and Knives" it allows him to carry hand guns, knives, assault weapons, and so on, up to that limit so long as (a) they are reasonably available and (b) he can "only use one at a time." I haven't made a final call on this--but it seems like a good idea. Maybe the pool of guns costs an extra 1 or 2 APs or something?

Hiatus -- and A Quick Attempt To Answer Some Questions!

So our family had our second son (Leo Chacon, welcome to the world!). Which has made blogging and JAGS a little delayed of late--and the hiatus might last a few weeks. However:

Right Now: I'm doing energy attacks in Innate Powers. So that's something.

To Answer Some Questions:


REACH and Movement
In JAGS you can't just "run in" on someone with a weapon. They get a 'zone of control' at their Reach and moving within it takes 5 REA Step moves. I think one of the things that was either incorrect or just not clear in the book is that if the target does not have a weapon you can move up to the reach of their arms right away.

That is, if someone is unarmed (Short Reach) you can move right up to short reach with a Step action. You don't have to stop at Long or Medium Reach. If that's not clear in the book (probably not)--it needs to be cleared up.

If someone did take a Step Action (3 or 4 yards) to "move in to Short or Close reach range" of someone with a sword, presumably the person moving in would get hit with the sword. The rules don't spell this out--but you could play it that way (maybe an advanced/optional rule).

Resisted Attacks Revised
The new rules for Resisted attacks are as follows:

1. The attack has an Intensity (which is a scalar number like number of DP is) and a POWER which is usually 12- for everything.
2. You compare the attack's Intensity to the target's DP+ADP (DP is their listed "undamaged" DP but ADP is whatever they have left). This gives a roll using the Resisted Attack Rules. NOTE: We are considering that it might be CON+DP+ADP for the target which would have some advantages (notably giving everyone a 20 to start with).
3. You then modify the roll based on the target's CON (or WIL for psionic Resisted Attacks) vs. POWER. So if I have a 13 CON I get +1 to my Resistance roll.
4. You then make the roll and apply the result to the effects table like it says in the book.

Example: Elephant Tranquilizer vs. Elephant and normal person.

An elephant tranquilzier has a Catastrophic Effect of death. It has an Intensity of 500. An elephant has a DP of 500. Both the Elephant and the tranq have a POWER and CON of 12. The tranq dart has a 10- against the elephant.  Odds are of a Minor or Standard Effect (in this case: the target gets sleepy and drops after a few Rounds).

Against a person who is, unfortunately hit with the same dose: the roll is something like 400- for the tranq. Any roll results in death for the normal human as they don't have nearly the DP of the elephant.

Usually attacks will have an Intensity of between 15 and 25. A store-bought Taser might have like a 19 Intensity. 

Slow But Steady

I'm working my way slowly through Innate Powers--which is tough because there's a lot of stuff to review and try to get right. And the explanations of it all have to be at least decent if not actually "tight."

There is some question where to put standard blocks of rules. Take, for example, Charge Up.

Charge Up
Charge up means, in the simulator, that the ability (an attack) is not useful on Round 1 (or Round 2, for example, if it has a Charge Up of "2"). It generally does not cost REA to "charge" the ability (if it does that's a different matter) and, well, that's that. Contrast to Cool Down which means the ability is useful on the first Round of combat but then takes some "time off" after use.

These are simple rules--but the specifics get more complex. Let's take a look:

1. Charging an ability allows a Roll for Initiative by everyone who can sense it. It's presumed to have some audio component and it's unambiguously a readying for attack. You can't be facing down the enemy leader and "charge your fire blast" and have him 'not realize it.'
2. You can't "hold" a charged power. If you don't use it next Round it's inactive the Round after--in general--although the intent of the rule is take the ability out of play on the first Round of combat so there are some optional rules about "holding" the charge so long as "combat is still going on." This would, likely, be a GM call at some point.
3. Activation Abilities Work With Charge-Up. If the power has a Charge and an Activation Roll that's okay. The charge Round happens (there is no activation roll--the power simply isn't available) and then on the first Round where the ability is possibly active you start rolling. If you make the roll, the ability is online. If you miss it, the "charge" is saved until the activation roll is made. Then it's either use it or lose it.
4. Once charged an ability can be used for its entire Rate of Fire. If the Rate of Fire is Standard (two shots a Round for 5 REA each) you can Charge the ability, fire both shots (or however many), and then it's off-line after that until it charges again. Some abilities have both Charge Up and Rate of Fire of 1--meaning you must charge after every shot--but not all of them do.

Who knows, there might be some more.

Clearly this text, with an example or two, needs to go somewhere. But where? How many places? In the first chapter there will be some mention of these standard rules--and short descriptions.

In the back of the book there will likely be the full descriptions with all the caveats.

What goes in each section or each power description? That's not so clear to me. The obvious answer is to produce some boiler-plate that goes in the beginning of each chapter. However each chapter has multiple sections. Do I need a table or description there? It has been suggested that if I can get things short enough I could have like a "footer" on every page with some notes about the rules. That's interesting--but I'm afraid that very short descriptions may actually make things worse if they are not extremely clear.

And that's just one of the issues I'm struggling with.

Body Types

Here are some notes on "Body Types." This is still under heavy consideration.




Robot Body
Tends to keep going after taking component damage

• No biological weaknesses
• Few Vital Organs: PEN Doubling on 6+
• Must go to Injured before taking "Minor Wounds": No HURT, No MW until Injured
• CON +1
• Can be re-built if robo-brain is intact (limited true-death)
• Component Damage: Damage results MAY be "capped" (Round 2, Fight-style) with limited results (the robot is cut in half and upper-body still functions fine)

Animated Material (Rock Body / Iron Golem)
Very hard to stop. Crumbles and cracks instead of bleeding

• No biological weaknesses
• Small-ish wounds have NO effect (chip-away/cracks): NO HURT, NO INJURED
• Feels No Pain: +2 CON
• Hard To Stop: No Stunned until Injured
• No Vital Systems: NO PEN Doubling, No PEN
• Limb-Loss Option: Can Round-2 Fight with limb-loss effect

Crystalline Body
Hard but fragile.

• No biological weaknesses
• Turn 1/2 DP into Armor (4 DP : 1 Armor)
• 1.5x PEN Defense
• No Minor Wound
• No Hurt Condition
• PEN doubles on 2+
• Major Wound is 2/3rd DP (fracture)
• At Injured Condition, Minor Wound *does* become Major Wound and is 1/3rd DP as normal

Energy Body
Protected by an energy field instead of skin

• No biological weaknesses
• Slow flight
• No PEN Doubling / PEN Damage (all damage is impact)
• Automatic Force Field 
• Automatic Recovery when paying REA for a Wound Effect
• "Dispersed" (STUNNED) when Force Field is down. Recovers for the 5 REA
• Normal Stunned effect is 3 REA.
• Wound Effects allow some movement as the character re-forms close-by.
• Hard to hurt (negative damage mods) when Dispersed.
• Hard to mix armor with (armor is still "inside" the Force Field

Liquid Body
Easy to "splash" but hard to hurt really badly. Especially resistant to physical damge

• No biological weaknesses
• Impossible to hold/grapple (very high Def-Grapple and Auto Escape) (other L-bodies can grapple)
• 'Flow' movement form
• Does not automatically stretch unless stretching is bought
• Puddle defense move (10 REA for large negative damage modifiers)
• Characters get 2x BLD in ADP against Physical Attacks
• Hard to mix armor with: Armor does not apply to SPLASH threshold
• No PEN Doubling / PEN Damage
• SPLASH THRESHOLD: 1/3rd DP. Any attack that does more than that gets auto-Stun (NO Effect is Stunned)
• SPLASH THRESHOLD: You can still get a Daze or "Unconscious" (splattered) which is 10 REA instead of 8.
• You CANNOT get anything more than that.
• Each SPLASH done in the same Round gives a cumulative -1 CON Roll towards Splattered
• NO Hurt Condition
• NO Injured Condition
• At Serious Condition, any wound is a Major Wound and can take the character out
• ?Check how Force Field works with this (is it "too good")?

Gas Body
Very hard to damage, has trouble dealing damage.

• Gas movement (float, go through vents, etc.)
• Immune to most physical damage
• -8 DM from Energy Damage
• No Armor effects in gas-form (armor only applies in the physical form)
• ?Maybe Armor counts as ADP in gas form?
• No PEN Damage / PEN Doubling (from energy)
• Large Weapon bonuses DISPERSE. A hit is checked for damage. If damage is => Minor Wound,Disperses the gas body (Daze)
• Can be grappled by vacuum cleaners and collected in force fields and so on
• Character takes a -8 DM to any attack launched while in Gas Body against the physical world. This may/may not apply to Psi attacks (i.e. it doesn't if the GM rules there are enough Psi attacks to make the gas body vulnerable to those)

Chi Moves -- First Draft

Here's a list of Chi Moves in first-draft form. Let's review how this works:

1. You buy your HTH damage with GATS or some kind of Super Strength or whatever.
2. You buy Chi Focus which costs exactly 1/3rd (round normally) of your A-Cost (so if you have 6 AP spent on HTH Damage you pay 2 AP for Chi Focus).
3. You buy the Chi Focus Skill which costs 4-8 CP (I have not decided yet)

You Then Buy Chi Moves
4. These are bought using Character Points.
5. You can get 4 CP just to buy moves for 1 AP

NOTE You may also buy standard AP-based abilities like Vital Strike, Focus Punch, Hard To Block, Damage Point Pools, and so on.



Some Thoughts
Right now these cost (CP cost) are roughly eye-balled. I have some thoughts behind how it works but they're not concrete yet. There are a few basic kinds of "strategies" to building these guys that I need to figure out.

The ability to have all kinds of abilities that are normally reserved for AP bought with CP is breaking the rules. So is having Chi Focus add to HTH damage without having it add to A-Cost. Quite a few things in here run backwards. What does all this mean?

Chi Fighters Might Often Be More CP Than 'Regular Characters'
Most JAGS Revised characters will be around 50 CP to start. Chi Fighters might be 75 or even 100 CP. This makes sense as they are expected to be "extensively trained" (you'd do the same for a Navy SEALs game). The second thing it means is that they will have a lot of powers--but the intent is that these powers somewhat "crowd out others."

What do I mean by this? Well, you should only be able to use one Chi Attack at a time. Thus, having a lot to choose from isn't worth that much. As for the Defenses? Most of them will cost REA or some other currency. You generally won't get DP or Armor without paying REA for it, and so on.

A Note On JAGS Standard Magic
This is all similar to the way that JAGS Standard Magic works. We wrote the first draft of Magic to be similar to a computer game in feel (and not all that dissimilar to AD&D in its way). It uses spell points to power spells and you get a small number of them.

In the Revised Version this is still going to be similar. You are going to pay CP in order to get spells and AP for the ability to cast magic at all. The amount of AP you spend on casting magic will determine the power of the individual spells in a similar fashion to the way that your A-Cost determines the damage done by these Chi Moves.

Also Note: I haven't covered edge conditions such as what happens if a character has an A-Cost of 0. There are probably some minimum rules floating around about how these characters need to be constructed that we'll lay out in more detail given time.

Buying GATs

Generic Archetype Abilities

Generic Archetype Traits (called GATs) are unusual, special, or exceptional abilities that are both not specific to any particular genre and fall into the category of not-quite-super powers. As a general rule they are available in any game where you have APs although checking with the GM and other players is always a good idea.

GATS And Super Powers (And the Meta Game)

Generic Archetype Abilities are meant to be used to build “heroic” characters for various genres of fiction (for bullet-dodging higher-powered ‘action heroes’ also look at the Fast Company chapter). Using these rules, and with enough APs you can be quite a bit more than humanly possible.

This raises some questions about what exactly a Generic Archetype Trait is. In this section we sell:

v  Extra size and strength. If you buy enough of it you will be stronger than any human who has ever been measured.

v  Extra Toughness and actual armor. If you interpret this literally as an innate ability it would mean, for example, armored skin or that the character is able to absorb bullet fire without (much) consequence.

v  Abilities explicitly described as equipment (“Chainmail”). This could mean paying APs for “mundane equipment”—something that usually doesn’t happen for most games.

v  Extreme abilities such as the ability to unleash flurries of attacks or a “hail of bullets.” You can also buy the ability to apply your full Dodge roll against ranged attacks (bullets and lasers)—this is likely to fall into the category of a “super power” in many people’s minds.

So what does this all mean? Are GATs super powers or not? Are they equipment? Can you actually have a “normal person” being armored with the GAT “Tank”?

Here is our thinking:

1.       One of our goals with GATs was to take a set of abilities that many games would like to use (and which didn’t have a specific flavor) and put them all together in one place for convenience. We left actual super powers (like “teleport”) for the Powers chapter—but even so, some things (such as Armor as given in the ability “Tank”) are listed here because there are a lot of conditions where a character might have the Armor ability, you might want to track it with APs, and we wanted a “Generic” version of Armor in a centralized place where you would likely go looking for it.

2.       The interpretation of a GAT is left up to the players and can change from game to game or even between characters in the same game. Take a character with 8 / 40 Armor bought as a GAT. In one game that would be a literal super power (armored skin!). In another game it might be that the character is just “really, really tough.” In yet another game, the armor-effect could be defined as luck—attacks always seem to “miss” or “don’t get a good hit” or whatever. In many games that ability wouldn’t be legal if the characters aren’t allowed to have abilities like that. Finally: it might be worn armor if that piece of gear was not normally available to the characters without their spending APs for it. How the in-game fiction treats things can be quite different from how the mechanics treat these. That said, we expect more literal game than a less literal one—the “luck” interpretation could get hard to explain after a while.  Also note: we have specified some GATs as extreme meaning that they are not available when playing with either low numbers of APs or more “mundane” games.

3.       A GAT can indicate equipment. We included GATs that read like equipment even though characters don’t usually pay APs for mundane equipment and even though there are more detailed equipment rules later on. We did this because of the way that weapons work when they are bought (The “Level 1” vs. “Level +” Costs for damage). We wanted a (small) section of GATs that would buy damage at the Level 1 cost so that if players were playing a game where they were expected to pay APs for weapons the rules would be centralized. We described these as weapons and armor even though they could represent other things in a given game.

A Final Note On GAT Names: We’ve tried to give the GATs somewhat colorful names because it’s more interesting and they are “generic” already. Just because a GAT has a specific name doesn’t mean that’s the only way it can be interpreted. Usually the mechanical effect can be attributed to many different things. Work with the GM and other players to determine what is appropriate for a given game.

Combat GATS (general)

Combat GATs

These are the Generic Archetype Traits that are impact physical stats and/or directly improve the combat ability of the character.

Combat GATS (TAP)

Total Archetype Point GATs

These Combat GATs improve things like REA, AGI Bonus, and Skill Rolls. GATs that modify rolls have a cost based on the total AP count of your character as they are essentially a percentage of your total points. As such, we have given you a cost table for each GAT instead of a fixed cost. Choose the value closest to your character’s AP value to get the cost for your character.

NOTE: Each GAT has 3 decimal numbers after the word TAP. These are the decimal multipliers we got from testing at the 16 AP, 32 AP, and 64 AP levels. The %-cost of a TAP GAT changes at each level for most GATs.

This is explained in greater detail in the back of the book.

Non-Combat GATS

Non-Combat GATS tend to give bonuses that aren’t focused on improving stats or damage. They may well help with combat in other ways (such as providing a Success Point Pool that can be used for any purpose—including combat) but are usually not as good as combat GATs in the same range (the pool in question may only recharge once per game session instead of every combat).

Advantages that Non-Combat GATS give tend to fall into one of several categories:

Bonus Type	Applying The Bonus
Event Success Point Pool	An Event Success Point Pool is an SP Pool in the form of [ Total SPs / Amount You Can Spend On Any One Roll ] that recharges when some specified event happens (such as when the character beats someone at a game of chance/skill that has real stakes). The thinking is that the player will try to maneuver the character to set up these situations to recharge the SP pool. The GM can limit the recharge of this to once per session if necessary to cut down on side-trips but should allow a recharge (possibly with minimal time at the table) whenever there is a logical organic circumstance for it. An example would be a character with an event pool that recharges when they win a pool game for small stakes. Every time the group rolls into a new town the character will seek out a game. If this is interesting to play out, play it out. If it isn’t for the specific time the GM and Player can agree to recharge it. The ideal situation, however, will be to have the character’s interaction with NPCs drive interesting encounters (a con-artist trying to recharge their pool may meet the local con artist community, etc.)
Session Success Pool	A Session Success Pool is an SP pool in the form of [ Total SPs / Amount You Can Spend On Any One Roll ] that is recharged at the beginning of every game session and doesn’t recharge during the session except at the GM’s discretion if “sufficient time” passes (usually a day or so of no important activity—but just “waiting for the pool to recharge” may not work.

“Can You Have ‘Fans’ Without Paying APs?”

A lot of these GATs give you things (for APs) that a character who has spent only CPs on things maybe ought to have. Can a multi-millionaire (someone with 12 CP in Wealth) have a secret base? How about a Level 4 rock-god—can’t they have fans? Or even a level 3 rock star? The answer is “yes.”

If you have paid the character points or otherwise built a character who ought to have some of these things you can, in fact, get them without paying APs. The line of thinking here is as follows:

v  If You Pay APs Everything is Easier: A secret base bought with APs would still probably have a bunch of people who know about it—someone had to do the work. There are probably plans on file with someone somewhere. It might be very secure—but really secret? That’s hard to do. You also tend to get “top quality” things you pay APs for. If you have fans or believers or whatever they’ll likely be a good deal better behaved if you paid APs for them—after all, they’re an advantage. If you just paid the CP for the status you may get more of the headache as well.

v  If You Pay APs You Get What You Pay For: If you paid CPs, you get what you “deserve.” A character with a L3 skill will get income from it. If you have the Trait “Wealth” you get a CP multiplier. You can have a L2 skill (or, conceivably, no skill at all) and have fans or believers or a secret base or whatever if you pay the APs for it—and it’s legitimate (or at least seen as legitimate by a lot of people).

v  You Can Get Some Extreme Stuff More Easily: You should always get GM permission for anything that’s listed as Extreme—but unlike a Level 4 skill—which makes you either “the best in the world” or one of the top tier and therefore has implications for the campaign, if you are spending your APs on some exotic trait you may still be one of a very rare handful but the GM isn’t obligated to treat you as the absolute top of the pyramid and that should make having a character with it less of a hassle for the GM.

A view of stretching

So one of our players wants the Stretching Power in our post-apocalypse game. As we've been re-designing things, here's one of the potential builds that I'm considering:

Two Parts
Stretching is likely to have two basic "parts" to it: a base-cost for the stuff Elastic Body gives you (like the ability to flow under doors, reduce collision damage, and so on) and a level (4 or 8 AP levels as is standard for JAGS) that give you things like more Grapple, armor, and Damage Points--basically that make you more and more "stretchy."

The First Part
The "base-cost" for Stretching is stuff that you more or less get that doesn't "increase" as you buy more levels. For Stretching this is (a) movement powers (flowing under doors and so on) and (b) some Defenses and Offenses like Negative Damage Modifiers and Long Reach for your hand to hand attacks. Here's the breakdown I am currently looking at:

• Flow [ 2 AP ]: Character can go under doors, through any baseball sized hole (moving at about 20 BLD per Round so very large characters will be slower) and can move vertically so long as something can be grabbed on to at BLD yards range (about 10 yards for most characters). Flowing is always an 8 REA Action and moves at 2x Ground Move Speeds.
• Stride [ Part of Flow ]: The character can spend an 8 REA long Action to grow long legs and walk around. This moves at 4x Running Speed for Walking Endurance. While Striding the character has no AGI bonus. It takes an 8 REA Long action to shrink back down. The character will gain BLD/5 yards of height.
• Collision Defense [ 1 AP, +2 DP ]: The character takes -10 Damage Mods from Collisions or falling.
• Elastic Body [ 2 AP ]: The character can flatten out and fold up allowing them to hind in places a human could not (+4 to Stealth Attempts with a 5 REA Medium Action). The can stretch up for a look around (5 REA, add up to BLD yards in height) or stretch their head around corners (up to BLD yards in range). They can do things like flatten out as a parachute or otherwise spread to block a doorway (+5 to be hit, no AGI bonus, takes an 8 REA Long Action). They may modify limbs to act as tools or even lockpicks but they still require the skills to use them.
• Plastic Body [ TAP, See Chart ]: The character gets a -4 Damage Modifier from all attacks and NO pen Doubling. This is reduced to the cost of -4 DM alone.
• Stretching Attacks [ 1 AP per 8 A-Cost, Round Normally ]: The character can spend a 5 REA Action to grow a large "hammer hand" that gets a +2 Large Weapon Bonus. They can also use their STR or Grapple at Long Reach (note: this is not ranged--the target's block and full AGI modifiers apply).

A Level of Stretching

• 8 AP Full Level
• Stretching Grapple:  +11 Grapple Score L1, +9 Grapple L+
• 2 Armor
• +5 DP
• 4 AP Half-Level
• +6 Grapple L1, +5 L+
• +1 Armor
• +3 DP

So a character with 24 AP spent on Stretching with 12 AP spent on Levels would cost at:

Base-Cost: 5 (Base) + 5 (-4 DM Cost. No PEN Doubling is free) + 2 (Stretching Attacks) = 12 + 12 AP on Stretching (1 Full Level, 1 Half Level) = 24 AP.

The character gets:

• -4 DM, No PEN Doubling
• 3 Armor
• +10 DP
• +17 Grapple (stretching)
• Flow, Elastic Body, Collision Defense, Stride, Long Reach STR

-Marco

Cost Estimation

After doing some checking it appears the cost is (Current/(1-Factor))-Current where "Factor" is the decimal number in the "average" column (so .38 for -8 DM) and Current is whatever AP value you are presently at.

• This is the last step you do when totaling up your character.
• If you have more than 1 TAP you add all the Factors together.
• Round all fractions up
• If the sum is more than 1 it won't work (the formula goes into negatives which isn't right

The solution is what you pay in addition to your already computed AP cost.

The tested values come out pretty close to the computed values. Here's an example:

I have a character with Built (8 AP) and Tank (Armor) for 8 AP. The current character is 16 AP. I want to add -8 DM to that character. The math is: (16/(1-.38))-16 = (16-.62)-16 which is 25.80-16 which is 9.81 which rounds to 10 AP. The total cost is 16+10 = 26 AP for the character. According to the chart the cost for -8 DM between the 24 and 32 AP range is 10 AP. So that works.

Whether or not the math is right, however, isn't really the point here. The interesting part of this is how much math do we expect the JAGS player to do?

The answer is not summed up easily. Here's my thinking.

First Things First: There is a Basic and Advanced/Optional Game
Ideally players who are either (a) new to JAGS and/or (b) have no patience for decimal math should not be forced to do it to get a reasonable experience out of the game. That means breaking down things into tables where the math is already done as possible. It means not having skill costs or AP costs that use fractions (other than maybe .5). It means rounding and doing best-fits where we can.

NOTE that the table for TAPs more or less accomplishes that: the costs are all whole numbers and all you have to do is find your AP cost and you know what you pay (assuming you are building on a fixed budget).

However: We Expect the GM Might Do More Math
What role the GM plays in a traditional RPG is very complex (well, my thinking on it is, anyway) and it's outside the scope of this post. Notably, though, the GM may do some things very differently than players. The GM will likely have different goals and will have a broader spectrum of responsibilities with  regards to some mechanics issues (such as trying to ensure that the elements that appear in the game are at least "reasonable" and perhaps "fair.")

In order to do this the GM may do things like:

1. Build characters "without a budget" but wish to know "how much they cost."
2. Attempt to create challenges such as battles within a certain specific tolerance level for difficulty (this would be seen if the GM is interested in creating interesting battles that are essentially fair fights)
3. Create single opponents that will fight many (such as Boss characters)
4. And so on.

Note: I'm not saying the GM will do all these things (a given GM may simply create challenges he or she thinks "make sense" without regards to "fairness" and may never have anything resembling a "boss"--this is a legitimate way to play so long as everyone is on the same page).

Because the GM may take on deeper responsibilities and will be facilitating the game which is supposed to be a good time for the participants they may be in a position where more and deeper math is required. Since I think it is reasonable to hold that GM'ing is in general somewhat more complex than playing (that is, the set of GM'ing activities is often--or at least can be--a super-set of the Playing activities) so expecting the GM to do or want to do some heavier math is okay.

Also: the GM will likely be doing prep-work prior to everyone getting together and thus will have more time to do math without "slowing the game down."

Then There Are Optional And Advanced Rules

The two concepts are not the same. An Advanced Rule is one we "expect" you to use after a certain level of familiarity with play. It shouldn't be necessary but it should be used once you're comfortable enough to do so. An Optional rule might never be used or might only be used for some games. An example is tracking ammunition for your weapons. In a lot of fiction (not to mention action movies) the characters are assumed to have essentially infinite ammunition and don't bother checking for reload times.

In other games it could well be necessary and an even fun part of the game. In the Have-Not post-apocalypse dungeon-delving adventure I'm playing in now I track every shot fired. As I fire 3 shots a Round at maximum rate of fire (14 REA) I can eat up a six-shooter in 2 Rounds and then have to reload. As I found an expanded magazine (filled with High Explosive or "HEX" rounds) I get 17 bullets before I have to reload. That was a good piece of treasure.

The "wasteland shotgun" I have now costs 10 Credits every time I fire it. So I have to track ammo for that carefully. This, believe it or not, adds to the fun of playing. The different guns behave differently. If I find a super-revolver I'll have to decide if I want to be switching weapons during combat. I can buy some (Optional) Traits to let me re-holster stuff instantly or dual-wield two pistols. Do I want to invest in that? Maybe.

So these are optional.

What about math is Optional?

The Question Is: How Much Do You Care About Balance?

Before we had the simulator we had to do math and thought-experiments to try to work out "what was balanced." We kind of intuitively understood that negative Damage Mods were a percentage of character cost (or, as I've said, more correctly a multiplier of your defenses) but we couldn't say how much and we had a seriously hard time quantifying that (back then we didn't even see characters as coming in 8 AP levels--a decision which, once we made it, greatly simplified the way we thought about power-brackets).

But we wanted, ideally, for the GM and players to be able to create characters as "abusively" as possible (within the spirit of the specific game) and still have things be reasonable. We didn't want iffy powers like Resisted Attack gas-guns which were cheap shots not because of the nature of poison gas but rather because of holes in the rules (originally a poison was often just rolled against a specific stat so the same gas gun that could knock out a thug could be used pretty effectively on Godzilla--or a bear).

We knew things like "continued burning" or knock-back inducing effects were pretty good but we had no clear ideal how good. So we guessed--and we gave up on the kind of pin-point accuracy that we wanted.

The simulator changed that: the Have-Not game we're playing now is very much like a computer-run MMO. To be certain it's more work than some GMs will want to do--but we're not historically a very go-in-the-dungeon adventuring group ... and this game is fun. The promise of balanced treasure and careful character builds is a different kind of game than we imagined being possible two years ago. It's a vision we like--and gratifyingly, most of the final product is simple enough so that there is no math that a casual player will have to do: we do it up front.

But we're putting the math in the book--the Have Not book will have costing tables for treasure costs (converting AP's worth of gear to credits). This will be math-heavy but it'll only be necessary when the GM is creating their own treasure (we plan to give you a lot of it pre-generated).

So I expect to see some players really interested in balance and getting it right and so one--and some just saying "What the hell, I give the guy +2 CON and +2 AGI vs. Ranged and Built and I don't care what it costs." Both are okay so long as the people involved know what to expect.

-Marco