For players to ask the mods rules questions.

Hey guys, remember that your characters get 5 influence points to spend, with none higher than a 3 at start of character.

My apologies to those I told 3 to, I misremembered.

Influences can be spent on arenas like Meida, Business, Police, Transportation, Health, Academics, Occult, Underworld, Street, High Society, Politics, or individual groups like Utopia, the Teragen, or the Abberants. Feel free to get as specific as you want. The more specific, the more each dot gets you from that smaller group.

Influences are all subject to Moderator approval.

What are the rules for purchasing powers? Must it be done 1 dot at a time? If so, how long must pass before a new dot may be purchased? Can we save our XP and just master the power outright? When may XP be spent or not spent?

Since it is mentioned in one of the threads that apotheosis is a theme here but only with the use of saved xp (ie no price breaks for chrysalis but you can use that as the IC reasoning).

So I would think you can save your xp and by more than one dot at a time.

Speculation doesn't interest me. I'm asking for facts.

Not maybes, or perhaps, or 'I would thinks'. This is where we ask questions about the rules to be answered with facts so we don't make mistakes.

Trust me, thinking gets you nowhere around here. It's best to know for sure so someone doesn't snivel and whine about it later.

As I understand it (as the numbers Mod):

* You can spend your XP whenever you sodding well feel like it, but...
* No more than one dot in any given trait may be purchased in a single month. The exception to this is the aforementioned Apotheosis for 2ndGen and 3rdGen characters (which happens only one in the nova's lifetime, so use it well), or Chrysalis for Terat characters (of any generation).
* Pre-approvals are not needed for spending your XP on standard book stuff within the standard parameters laid out in the MCoH Orientation; however, said purchases are subject to Mod review. Purchases for anything that isn't book-standard or is listed in the Orientation as an approval item need to be run by the Mods first.
* Influence is a special case; after the initial allotment, only the first dot in any given Influence may be purchased with XP. Further increases in Influence are gain by devoting Influence dots to growing said Influence (as explained in the MCoH Orientation).

May a player purchase multiple enhancements for the same Mega-Attribute more than once per month?

What about enhancements that may be purchased multiple times (quickness for example), is there a limit to the number of times those may be purchased? Can a character have Quickness x21 & Enhanced Initiative x15?

I know I am not a mod, so this isn't official (don't bash me okay) for this game, but there is nothing in the rules that states a limit on how many times you can buy "multiple level" enhancments. If thats how you want to spend your xp there isnt anything wrong with it. However for things like quickness, it becomes expensive quick in QP terms, and often you dont need many levels to be crazy effective. As Courier pointed out to me once, quickness is lethally effective, and even the big T only has 3 levels of it.

True. As an example however, in my TT game I limit the number of times an enhancement can be purchased to a value of the Mega-Attribute it's attached to.

So if you have Mega-Wits 2 you can only have Quickness x2. Simply because Mega-Wits 1 with Quickness x20 seems to me that your moving far faster than you Mega 1 score should be able to keep up with.

It also prevents asswipes from buying one dot in Mega-Wits and not bothering with anything else but massive Quickness and Enhanced Initiative purchases. A Node 5 and a Q-Pool of 90+ go a long way. I prevent that in my games if at all possible. Depends on the players though. The more responsible they are the less I have to invoke rules like that.

Good point. Although maybe Mega attribute +1 since T has Quickx3 but Mega Wits of 2. Of course it's not as if White Wolf cheats on their NPC write-ups all the time... :sarcasm:

What are you talking about? What has M-Wits 2 but Quickness x3?

<----- I'm over here.

Your over there somewhere ------------------------------->

Focus.

Sorry. Big T or T = Totentanz.

I wouldn't base any standard off an NPC. Instead of bumping it to M-Att +1 I'd just take one of Tote's Quicknesses away.

Either way its a house rule.

Here's another rules question.

Looking at the chart for extras at Q6, it would seem one could have a great deal of extras on powers that are lower to start from, though I may be mistaken as this chart can be confusing.

Heres an example of what I was thinking of:

Immolate starts at L2. 1 dot with extras area effect and burning. Since the first extra doesn't raise the power level we pay the same as a dot: 6 xp. The second extra raises the dot to L3 so we pay 9 xp.

That seems straight forward. But now what if on top of that I want to add reduced q cost and mastery? When you normally buy an extra at Q5 or lower you just add in all the extras and determine what the final cost is for that dot. So here we are with the first dot that ultimately is going to be L4, so we pay 12 xp for it. Then the +6 for the area extra that didnt raise it to L3 and then +9 for the the RQC extra that didn't raise it from L3 (since L3 gets two before it ups the level).

So the final cost in this accounting for an area effect, burning, reduced q cost, mastery level immolate at 1 dot costs, 27 xp for the first dot, and then 9 for the second, 18 for the third etc...

Did I get that right?


Or how about this one: What if I just want the burning, RQC and mastery on the immolate? It starts at L2, the burning costs 6 xp, but then the RQC makes it L3 and then mastery immediately jumps it to L4. So the price should be...12+6 = 18 xp for the first dot and then L4 prices after that?

If I decided to buy RQC twice, then burning at L3 without raising a level and then mastery does that mean I would pay 0 QP to activate it, since it would be L4 = 4 QP/2= 2/2= 1/2= .5 round down to zero?

Also, the chart says at Q6 a single extra will raise an L4 power to an L5 but this doesn't make sense as you need Q8 to have an L5 power. Shouldn't the chart for extras say 0 or N/A under L4-Q6?

The chart will be reviewed and fixed, if required.

As for your calculation, you don't get a free extra per level. You get it per power. So if you have Immolate, a level two, you get one extra that won't raise the level. You get another one that will raise the level, making it a level three power. Mastery will make it a level 4. So with the set up you want, you can have RQC twice or RQC once with burning, plus Mastery and all its bonuses and inherant abilities.

In theory, with RQC twice with Mastery would create a power with 0 quantum cost. Whether the mods will allow such a thing is another matter.

Hope that helped.

In the example in the APG on page 120 it shows that buying the first extra for a lvl 1 power doesn't raise it's level. Adding a second extra raise's the power lvl to 2. You can't add a third extra which would make it a lvl 3 power unless have Q9.


As for the cost of adding an extra with xp read page 230 of the Core book.

Katalyst,

You got it half-right. At Q6, adding one extra to a Level 1 power doesn't raise the power level (but does cost NP/XP equal to what a single dot of the power would cost). Adding a second extra bumps it up to a Level 2 power. A third extra would make it Level 3, and a fourth would make it Level 4. A fifth would make it Level 5, but you can't have a Level 5 power at Q6.

I need to revise my post above. In the AGP on page 120 in the Quantum and Extra's part there is an example of how a power changes with your quantum. The example uses the power bioluminescence a level 1 power and Q6. The first extra is free, the second raises it to level 2. A third extra at Q6 is not possible as the chart says you can have 2 extra's at Q6. If you look you need a Q9 to have 3 extra's for a level 3 power.

Katalyst, you're mis-reading the example. It says:

"Many years later, she rises to Quantum 7. If she adds a third Extra, the Bioluminescence power will become a Level 3 power. She cannot add a third Extra without boosting it that way until she reaches Quantum 9."

I'm going to follow this up with a post about a number of things, including this issue.

Various answers to various questions:

* The multiple-instances-of-an-Enhancement thing: I need to check with MCoH Mod on this one, but I lean *very* much in favor of limiting iterations of an Enhancement to the dots in the governing Mega-Attribute. (i.e., with Mega-Wits 3, one could have no more than three instances of Quickness.)

* The multiple-instances-of-an-Enhancement-purchased-in-a-month thing: No. Buying (for example) instances of Quickness is very much like buying dots in a power (albeit without the multiplied XP cost); increasing it by more than one dot in a month isn't kosher (outside of things like Apotheosis and Chrysalis).

* The free-extras-at-Q6 thing: This one involves the chart on p 120 of the Players Guide that is often mis-read. Here goes...
----First of all, the numbers in that chart do not represent a cap on extras. What they do represent is how many extras it takes to raise a given power by a level.
----Since we're currently limited to Q6, what that means for us is that for a Q6 character the first extra purchased for a L1, L2 or L3 power doesn't raise the level of the power (but does cost NP/XP equal to what a single dot of the power would cost).
----Extras beyond the first one for L1, L2 and L3 powers do raise the level of the power by one. Thus at Q6, an L1 power with two extras becomes L2, an L2 power with two extras becomes L3, and an L3 power with two extras becomes L4.
----As L4 powers don't get a "free" extra, any extra applied would raise them to L5... which you can't have at Q6.
----You can dump as many extras on a power as you care to, until the thing hits the level cap dictated by your Quantum rating. So at Q6 you could indeed take a L1 power and add four extras (including the "free" one) to the sodding thing, bumping it up to L4. It'd cost you dearly to do so: 8NP or 12XP for the first dot (1NP or 3XP for the "free" extra plus 7NP or 9XP for the L4 power), and then 7NP or 9 x current level of XP for every dot thereafter. Hope those extras are worth it....

* The multiple-instances-of-RQC thing: See the chart in the MCoH Orientation Thread.

* Gaining Extras with Experience: A character may "upgrade" her powers by purchasing an extra later in the game. The cost of doing so is equal to the total difference between the experience point costs of all the dots without the Extra and the cost of all the dots with the Extra, calculated as if the character had used experience points to purchase the power "from the ground up". A character may halve this cost by taking a point of permanent Taint at the time the Extra is purchased. Extras that don't raise the power to a new level cost the same as a single dot of the power at its current level: one nova point or three experience points for Level 1, three nova points or five experience points for Level 2, etc.

Nah, you are both not getting it right.

The chart clearly states that the number under the level is the number of extras it takes before boosting it to the next higher level.
So at Q6 it takes 2 extras to boost an L1 to an L2. Looking at L2 it takes 2 extras to make it an L3, and then 2 extras after that to jump it to L4.

This is in line with the standard rules for extras.

In other words, normally you can add 2 extras to an L1 power, making it an L3. So with L4 opening up at Q6, why would you not be able to add a third extra boosting it up? Only at that point you could actually add 2 new extras since the 3rd wouldnt jump it to 4 right away.

As for your comment Dawn, my thought was what if it wasnt mastery you were buying? Then you can have RQC, RQC, (making an L2 become L3). At that point Mastery (which jumps regardless) would make it an L4. If it wasn't mastery extra though you could actualy add 2 extras.

The_Fool: please see my post immediately preceeding yours.

Ah...simul post...will read.

EDIT:

Okay I read it and the part that I am still not getting is, so long as one of them isn't mastery, at Q6, an L1 power shuold be able to have 6 extras.

2 to raise it to L2, then 2 more to raise it to L3, then another 2 more before it gets raised to L4.

Silly chart is confusing.

No Fool, the example below that chart derails your "I can have 6 extras on a Level 1 power." idea.

Read it more carefully.

Can we just redo the chart to make it more clear? Because that example is screwy according to the RAW.

Fool:

No. The L-rating at the top of the chart refers to the STARTING LEVEL of the power. You do NOT get to double-dip the free extra sauce by nipping one at each level. After the first free extra (or second or third or whatever at Q-levels that we don't have), everything raises power levels from then on.

Done. End of story.

It's quite clear, I don't understand how you can't grasp it.

If it were that simple there would be no need for a chart. It would just simply state "At Q6 you get a free extra. At Q7 you get 2 freebies, etc."

But no, that's not what it says. It says, and I quote,

I'm so glad I don't have to deal with you.

What? That is what it says. Direct quote from the book.

David, I would appreciate it if you would keep your comments on topic. If you don't have anything constructive to add and just want to say something snide or mean, I would ask that you please keep it to yourself.

Yep that's true, no one is saying that is the case. You don't get a "free" extra, you just don't raise the power level of the power. If you haven't already bought an extra for the power you want to add another extra on. For a new power the first extra you get doesn't raise the power lvl and cost stays the same. The second extra raises the power level!


What the chart says is that if you have Q6 you can have two count them 1,2 extra's for a lvl 1,2,3 power. That's it. No more than that. Quite simple really if you just read it right!

According to PW, Katalyst you are still incorrect. According to PW's interp, an L1 power can have 4 extras, an L2 can have 3, and an L3 2, discounting the effect of the mastery extra at any of those stages.

She may have that in her post, but it still is not possible for a lvl 1 power to have 4 extra's. Again a level 2 power at Q6 can only have 2 extra's. The same with a level 3 power. At level 4 one extra makes it a lvl 5. Now granted as I make this post PW is not here to either edit her post or say that I'm wrong.

The example listed clearly shows that. I don't understand why you refuse to accept that. There's no reason that this system can't work with your concept. Just accept it and move on.

*sigh*

The following are the rules for the purposes of MCoH (and for any other game that follows what the rules actually say), and are not up for debate.

THE CHART OF EXTRAS

At Q1 through Q5:
A Level 1 power may have up to two Extras, each of which raise the level of the power, up to a maximum of two Extras at Level 3.
A Level 2 power may have one Extra, raising the level of the power up to Level 3.
A Level 3 power may have no Extras.
Level 4, 5 and 6 powers are not avai