Powers is entirely clear on the fact that one level of Affects Others + any amount of Area Effect + Force Field creates an area defense that surrounds the edge of the affected area. It explicitly limits this option to the advantages listed under Force Field. This is cheaper than the usual level of Affects Others per person because: (1) you can't choose who you affect, because you're protecting an area, not individuals, and (2) nobody inside actually gains the defensive advantage, so threats that go off inside the area still get you. Radiation Tolerance with Affects Others N lets you grant N people plus yourself Radiation Tolerance. Radiation Tolerance with Affects Others, Area Effect, and Force Field lets you surround everybody in your area with a radiation-blocking screen – including an enemy who grapples you and shoves plutonium in your face, which will still hurt you because your protection is at the edges of the field, not on your person.
No. All-Out works exactly like it says. The rules are explicit: take an All-Out Attack manoeuvre (instead of the one you took without the limitation). You can't really interrupt most abilities anyway, but if for some reason it becomes possible, All-Out Attack isn't Concentrate, and none of the rules for Concentrate apply.
You can come close simply by taking Healing, allowing one of the FP-healing modifiers for Regeneration (Heals FP Only -0% or Heals FP +100%), and simply ruling that the rate is 1:1 because 2:1 would be abusive.
Here's an quick fix from Kromm:
Maybe -10% for 1/3 duration, -15% for 1/6 duration, -20% for 1/10 duration, -25% for 1/20 duration, -30% for 1/30 duration, -35% for 1/60 duration, -40% for 1/100 duration, etc. About 1/3 off for going from minutes to seconds seems quite fair.
Consider adapting the Energy Reserve idea to HP instead of to FP. A "Vitality Reserve" should do what you want. To fully parallel the behavior of ER, it should be depleted independently of HP, not be subject to the ill effects of HP loss, heal in parallel with HP, and heal irrespective of rest. So VR would amount to HP that you can lose without shock, knockdown, knockout, or death, and that regenerate at the rate of 1 HP/day on a successful HT roll, regardless of conditions. Most of these advantages parallel Ablative DR (which is also independent of HP and not subject to the ill effects of HP loss). Moreover, neither affects what happens in slams and falls. The differences:
Advantages of Ablative DR:
Advantages of Vitality Reserve:
That justifies simply pricing VR like HP, much as ER is priced like FP.
Control + Persistent has a duration that is indefinite. It could be days if you have enough caffeine in you. This is balanced by the fact that you have to sit there and concentrate.
Control + Independent is a flat (well, more flat than the above, hopefully you know what I mean) duration of a few minutes. This is balanced by the fact that you can walk away.
There are two ways to define a magical weapon as an Innate Attack. The first is to define the weapon itself as an Innate Attack, and the other is to define an Innate Attack that is delivered through the use of a weapon. Let's examine the two.
This is probably the most straightforward way to do this. This is a simple damage-dealing attack.
Breakable and Can Be Stolen are also de rigueur, to represent the fact that your Innate Attack is a real, physical object. Finally, if you want your weapon to disappear when you don't need to use it, add Switchable (+10%).
One property of weapons is that they can often deliver more than one type of damage; for example, a sword can deliver both cutting and impaling damage. Being magical, they could also possess both a melee and a ranged attack. To represent this, define one Innate Attack for each type of damage, and buy all but the most expansive as Alternative Attacks (at 1/5th price).
This method can be used to represent a power that comes from the wielder but can only be delivered through the use of a physical weapon, or it can also represents damage a certain weapon deals in addition to its normal, physical attack (for example a Flaming sword that inflicts fire damage in addition to its normal cutting and impaling damage).
First, you need to define your Innate Attack normally. Since the attack depends on the presence of a sword, your innate attack should have either an Accessibility (only while wielding magical sword, -40%) or some of the Gadgets limitations (Breakable, Can be Stolen, etc.). This assumes that the power comes from within the wielder and can work with any magical sword; if it works with only one particular sword, or the power comes from the sword itself, add Unique (-25%).
Second, decide how the damage will be inflicted.
Again, if you want to buy two or more innate attacks for your weapon (for example, an Air Jet ranged attack and a cutting melee Air attack), buy the most expansive at full cost and the others as Alternative Attacks.
Buy the Innate Attack with the Cosmic (Irresistible Attack) +300% and Cosmic (Bend rules: ignores Hardened too) +50% enhancements. It will only be countered with Cosmic DR. In general, the GM should consider power tiers if such issues are common.
In one word, No! You can buy 20 levels to make the resistance roll penalized by -19. You can take Cosmic (Irresistible Attack) to ignore DR, Minds Shield, Resistant etc. You can not negate the resistance roll altogether. That would cost an infinite amount of points.
NO! C(IA) means that the attack is not resistible by 'secondary' defenses - DR, Resistant etc. An Affliction that ignores the resistance roll is the same as an Innate Attack which ignores HP and kills the character on any hit. Read: grand ultimate munchkin stuff.
If there is only one instance of a weapon (not weapon class) that can be used as a carrier (probably bought as Signature Gear), then it is just a +0% Follow-Up (usually, see below). If it can work with any weapon, it is a case of adding +50% Rule-Bending Cosmic enhancement. If the GM is willing to bother, s/he should assign values of +10% to +40% for different category sizes. Please remember that Follow-Up cost is modified from +0% to something else by the various characteristics of the carrier attack (Range, Homing etc.).
You might also want to look at Power Ups 1: Imbuements.
You buy a Link, probably the +20% one. Then you add an Accessibility to reflect the weapon category size of applicable weapons. This is indeed cheaper than the Follow-Up case, because it doesn't overcome DR if the primary attack does. Please note that Linked attacks should still have the appropriate Range/Reach, Acc etc.
Sure. But you lose all the niceties of having a personal Advantage and get all the effects of being Afflicted (HT roll, uncontrollability after activation, variable duration etc.).
Powers states that an always-on damage field requires Aura (+80%), Always On (-40%), and Melee Attack (-30%). That's a range 0, "if I touch you or you touch me" type of thing. An actual radius would amount to adding Area Effect on top of it all. That might not be "canon," but it's logical and the simplest way to do it. So a 4-yard field would add Area Effect 2 (+100%) and the net modifier would be +110%. I don't see any conflicts: Aura covers the "free attack" effect, Always On addresses the "constant effect" angle, Melee Attack takes care of the "ground zero is at range zero" element, and Area Effect handles the "blankets an area" aspect. You can omit Always On – for a net +150% – if you want it to work like an ordinary Aura that you can switch on and off. The other aspects don't seem negotiable.
You don't *have* to take it. If all you want to do is use your hands to poke things (and, with Can Carry Objects, carry things), Partial will do all on its own. If you want to use other abilities in the material world – like use your hand to Deathtouch people – then you also need Affect Substantial.
If it affects the material world, then you need Affect Substantial. If it only affects the insubstantial world, then you do not. The 'Only while insubstantial' by itself is usually worth -10%.
Yes. Partial strictly lets you use natural body parts in mundane ways. It does not let you activate special abilities on those body parts as a way to short-circuit the need for Affect Substantial. The Innate Attack being "on" your fist is a special effect – it could just as easily be a zero-range mental blast.
No. You're limited exactly as if you had Shadow Form, which means you cannot make purely physical attacks.
You take half *damage.* Damage is the roll before DR. "Half injury" would be after DR.
That depends on what you want to do. If you want your body to be partly solid and also partly able to affect the material world, then combine Illusory Form with Partial. If you want to be a magical illusion that can be damaged by attacks but that can also wield magical powers in the material world, then combine Affect Substantial with Illusory Form. Combine all three if you can affect the material world with your body *and* special powers, and the material world can somewhat affect you.
An Insubstantial character can ignore hazardous temperatures, pressures, and radiation. Even though he needs to breathe, he is immune to toxic gases, air-borne (or any other mundane form of) disease or poison, or any other physical condition of his environment. He is immune to altitude sickness, the bends, seasickness, jet lag, G-forces from tight high speed turns; basically anything the physical world can do to harm someone except cut off his oxygen. Oxygen is normally only cut off by large solid, nonfluid objects. The cosmological explanation is up to the GM.
He is vulnerable to attacks channeled through his senses (flash-bangs, basilisk gazes). If he was subject to a cyclic attack while still substantial, he is still affected by any remaining cycles. If an advantage requires the user to touch his target (like Possession or Neutralize), the user can still "touch" the insubstantial character by reaching into the space he occupies, IF the attack is a supernatural one. Magical or psionic Possession would work; physical brain-drilling tendrils would not. He is vulnerable to non-physical supernatural attacks, including anything with the Malediction enhancement.
P66 suggests 80 points, if you really need it. Insubstantiality might be a better alternative, depending on what exactly you want to be able to do.
Metal armor works just fine against your attacks, for the same reason that attacks with metal work just fine against you: you can walk bodily through a material, but you have no immunity at all to sudden, violent encounters with that material.
You cannot use Permeation to bypass DR at all. For that, buy a suitable Innate Attack and add Cosmic, +300%. You can link it to Permeation, if you like.
Yes. It's important to understand that Permeation doesn't mean "This material and my body can't interact at all." It means nothing more than "I can walk (not reach, not attack) through this material."
No and no. Buy those abilities separately as Innate Attack and Healing with suitable modifiers.
See above. It has nothing to do with Permeation. It's a separate set of abilities.
