Q About maintaining an action

[bawonsamdi]

I was wondering: does spending stones to maintain an action (as invisibility) counts against your 2 actions/panel max ?

[Pope Mega Force]

Yes. Unfortunately for those with invisibility, it's not like in games where you can just activate it and be done with it. You have to keep one stone in it at all times.

[malice]

Actually I prefer to play it as: Maintaining actions may cost stones but doesn't count against your two actions per panel. This allows people to multi-task without getting too far behind powered armor, and it also keeps them from having to give up their defensive action so they can use something mundane like social skills. So a person with invisibility can still put stones into Black Ops and Speed to move silently, but will still have to spend that 1 stone to maintain invisibility.

[bawonsamdi]

malice said:

So a person with invisibility can still put stones into Black Ops and Speed to move silently, but will still have to spend that 1 stone to maintain invisibility.

You are reading my mind, aren't you ? ;D

[malice]

bawonsamdi said:

malice said:

So a person with invisibility can still put stones into Black Ops and Speed to move silently, but will still have to spend that 1 stone to maintain invisibility.

You are reading my mind, aren't you ? ;D

Well I wanted to keep a consistent example and I suspect I'm in the game you were concerned about.

[Kaimontfendo]

I agree with Malice on this one. Things like Invisibility and Shape-Shifting wouldn't be useful enough if maintaining them also counted as half your action limit for the panel. If you're paying +3 for an action, it darn well better not count against your action limit to maintain.

Note however, that activating such an action still counts against your per-panel limit. (Not that I like the 2-action per panel limit anyway, but still...)

[malice]

kaimontfendo said:

Note however, that activating such an action still counts against your per-panel limit. (Not that I like the 2-action per panel limit anyway, but still...)

Agreed

[Scriptus]

technically i think it does count against your limit. with that being said i would rather play in a game where the gm allowed the maintainence stone to be a freebie like malice is suggesting.

[quixoteles]

So how do you catch these mother again without overloading them? This sounds great when the player gets that advantage but not so much when it removes clever ways of defeating the enemy.

[thedragonmaster]

I suppose that would come down to sit mods. "The enemy is invisible, but you know they are in this locked room because they just smacked you in the back of the head? +1 Sit Mod to all (reasonable) attempts to detect their presence." Though I prefer it counting towards the 2 Action Limit myself.

Any other ideas of how to level the playing field?

[Brainstem]

Clever use of resources. It's unlikely that any place you fight in will be devoid of props. Scatter paper on the floor, splash some water up, cut out the light sources to the room (now you're both invisible... kind of), etc. If a player pays for the actions, then they should be able to get the benefits they paid for. They're balanced by the Modifiers and Actions that are used for detection; if another player doesn't invest in these, then they'll be hard pressed to beat the foe. It really isn't much of an issue of balance, though.

[thanos]

The main book never definitively states whether maintaining is or is not an action. I could find no examples of powers that require maintaining were used with any other power. However, there is an interesting difference between the normal Phase Shift ability and the Magical Travel Phase Shift. The Ability requires the user to pay all the stones up front for the length of the phase. Magical Travel requires a 1 stone per panel maintenance fee if the user is not moving (ie you have to pay 2 stones to move at speed 4 for flight). This implies that paying 3 in speed to run while phased does not require the maintenance fee, which implies that maintenance is just an energy allocation and not an action.

I know, I know, its a bad example because the book is written horribly, but it is the only thing I could find.