Difference between revisions of "Advantages"

Revision as of 01:56, 4 September 2017

This news file covers how we handle Advantages; our means of encompassing the powers, skills, assets, etc. that a character may have.

Advantage Policy and Philosophy

As MCM allows an extremely wide variety of characters and character abilities, for the sake of keeping things sane, there are a few universal rules that Advantages must abide by, in order to keep things fun and relatively straightforward.

A Foreword on the Player Character Glass Ceiling: In general, we don't allow for entities that flat overpower or supersede PC action, and so MCM is not a game where Cthulhu or Cain will simply defeat you automatically for challenging them. That said, we can play looser with this regarding things that aren't meant to be a permanent fixture on the MUSH. If a plot demands that ghosts need to be dealt with by resolving their issues instead of re-killing them, we may decide that you won't be able to re-kill them in a fight like you would a ghost PC. It's both impolite, and incorrect, to speculate how beyond a PC your Plot Boss is, and it discourages staff from greenlighting those concepts for you if you do.

Threat to Player Characters: MCM requires that all player characters are capable of being threatened by physical danger under reasonable circumstances. This is to maintain a consistent tone of enemies and hazards being able to present a credible risk to PCs regardless of theme, or else conflicts quickly lose their integrity in a story. This usually relates to two Advantage types:

Interaction by Proxy: Characters who act through proxies in lieu of their own physical presence, such as remotely piloted or exchangeable bodies, possession, astral projection, etc. must receive feedback when damaged, that is no less dangerous to them than the proportional damage suffered by their proxy. Characters aren't meant to be de facto immortal by using an “avatar” at scenes. Primary examples include .Hack, Sword Art Online, Warframe, and strongly transhuman characters such as Eclipse Phase.

- Minions and Monsters of the Week: Characters who engage through minions (who can be lost and inflict a meaningful failure on the character) do not fall under this rule. Queen Beryl may not fight directly that often, but she can be meaningfully physically threatened and her minions can botch their mission and die.

- Drones and Summons: Characters who engage with support from remote controlled robots or creatures, but are physically present and an accessible target at the scene, likewise do not fall under this rule. These tools do not constitute a meaningful threat buffer as long as someone can simply attack your character right there.

Immortality, Invincibility, Intangibility: We don't allow PCs to have abilities that prevent them from physically threatened at a scene, as our core policy is that engagement between PCs must occur by means and methodology that all parties can fairly interact with. Characters who soak up damage like Superman and Dracula are still considered to be very tough, but people are assumed to be able to inflict meaningful damage to their life bar all the same. For ghosts and spirits, it is assumed by default that all PCs have the requisite properties to both perceive and damage them in a conflict.

PCs likewise can't have unconditional immortality. Immortality must exist with a clearly defined and reasonably accessible Catch; a way for another character to kill them for good. It's important that a Catch be accessible enough that the character's life can be credibly threatened by someone willing to put some effort into it. Being killable with a single, specific weapon doesn't qualify as a Catch, but being killable with a special class of weapon, or “with enough overkill” is fine. As-is, though, condeath is rarely ever lost by players. We do this to maintain aforementioned tone.

- Damage Immunities: Damage immunities generally don't apply to other PCs. You can be invulnerable to to natural fire, naturally occurring illnesses, etc. But as noted above, even something that shouldn't be physically interactable, like a spirit, is assumed to be vulnerable to PC action here. Niche immunities such as elemental immunity get a little more respect, but only a little. For example, if somebody is fire-immune and you have ways to attack them that aren't fire, it's pretty rude to consciously choose to keep slamming them with fire where they should be strong against it. On the other hand, Fire Man from Megaman or a Firebender from Avatar would be within their rights to light you up and have it work just fine, as fire is their main means of fighting you.

Scope of Effect: In day-to-day use, Advantages shouldn't exceed a Scope of Effect of one city block, the upper end of which we identify as Kowloon Walled City. When mass destruction happens, we want it to be a plot-significant event, such as when Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star; not Nappa blowing up a city for giggles. If an environment has little narrative weight or doesn't map to realspace, we don't mind if destruction is abnormally upscaled there. Blowing up a mountain in the boonies or a pocket dimension just doesn't matter that much. This is to keep the stakes of conflicts roughly within a ball park that most PCs can interact with.

Range of Effect: Any Advantage that targets another PC is assumed a delivery mechanism that is avoidable, even if it doesn't in the source material. To put it another way, Everyone Gets A Save Against Everything. All combat powers are assumed to function with range and methodology which permits meaningful interaction between all players. That means if you are attacking another PC, that PC can fight back somehow; otherwise a scene just becomes tedious and one-sided.

Intensity of Effect: Almost no Advantages are absolute. Defensive Advantages acting against highly dictatorial effects can be, but when someone “attempts to do a thing to you”, it's preferable for “something to happen” rather than “nothing to happen”, although the specifics are in your court. For example, in Harry Potter, the Avada Kedavra spell kills anyone it hits instantly. On MCM, Avada Kedavra would be a powerful attack, but nobody would expect you to automatically die from it.

Dictatorial Advantages: These are advantages that strip control of a PC from their player, or which are highly invasive, or which substantially dictate the outcome of events. Mind control, investigative powers that examine the minutiae of a target's being, transformatives, depowering, instant incapacitation, significant alteration, or abilities that remove from a PC in play in any way, all qualify as Dictatorial Advantages. Abilities like these can always be non-consented to even without a counteracting Advantage. To be transparently straightforward this does mean Professor Xavier will have a harder time using his abilities than Magneto. This also includes characters like Magneto, or Blood Benders from Avatar the Last Airbender, trying to control materials in another character's body. Simply put, you can't use an Advantage and decide for yourself what happens to someone else's character.

Interaction with MUSH Meta-Elements: Advantages that interact with natural Warpgates, Unification, or any other element of the MUSH's back-end, are not possible to have. You can't "de-unify" or leave the Multiverse or MUSH setting.

Conservation of Ninjutsu: It's possible to create PC-class power. It isn't possible to mass-produce PC-Class power. Cloning Superman once might get you another Superman, cloning him a hundred times gets you Superman-flavored mooks.

Advantage Classification and Tags

Advantages are given a classification and tag based on the Advantage's power, scope, and narrative relevance to the character. The core classifications fall into three tiers: Defining, Significant and Minor. Tags, written like <this>, denote specific properties of some Advantages to present important information up front.

An entry might read → Buster System <Copy1>: Megaman can copy one attack from an enemy's arsenal. This is easier to do on a defeated foe, and the target's player determines the attack received.

Defining

Defining Advantages are the skills, powers and assets so centrally iconic to the character, and so vital to their tackling obstacles or living their lives, that the character would no longer be the same character without them. They don't have to be really powerful or flashy, but they represent the core of the character's abilities, and where they would be sinking their metaphorical XP into. To a certain extent, Defining Advantages will get a little extra respect in play, and in some situations, the Defining classification will allow a greater ceiling of power for certain beefier Advantages, and so consideration should go to how much an Advantage is used and how important it is to the character, rather than what their strongest technique is. A player character is limited to two Defining Advantages.

Examples: Wolverine's Regeneration and Adamantium skeleton, Magneto's Electromagnetic control, Darth Vader's cybernetics and telekinesis / telepathy, Megaman's power copy, Himura Kenshin's swordsmanship, Willy Wonka's candy-making acumen, C3-P0's vast communications library, Link's Master Sword, Ganondorf's Triforce of Power, Batman's investigative skills.

Significant

A Significant Advantage is an important and effective part of a character's arsenal. The character may use them all the time, or only very rarely, but they are go-to tools for the situation that calls for them. These are areas where the character is highly skilled or specialized, and have much greater potency than the average person, but are not their core identity, and are generally greater in number and less vital than Defining Advantages. These are usually where the greatest volume of a character's abilities will be, or sometimes lesser used extensions of Defining ones. A player character is limited to four Significant Advantages. Examples of Significant Advantages: Wolverine's special ops training and enhanced senses, Darth Vader's piloting and mechanical skills, Magneto's technical skills which allow him to construct an anti-telepathy helmet or machines that boost the magnitude of a mutant's powers. Link's inventory of gadgets like the hookshot and boomerang. Batman's Batmobile.

Minor

A Minor Advantage is something useful, but often more of a passive perk or situational tool that the character doesn't really focus on, and rarely seeks to significantly improve. They typically provide thematic flavour, unique conveniences, or occasionally allow for a very niche application. They likewise don't have much narrative potency, and shouldn't be expected to tackle major obstacles. Minor Advantages may also be lesser versions of a character's Significant and Defining Advantages that simply aren't conceptually related. A player character is not strictly limited to a specific number of Minor Advantages, but players are asked to keep them within reason, and may be asked to cut or condense large numbers of Minor Advantages.

Examples of Minor Advantages: Wolverine's physical traits are generally superhuman but only really on the order of you might expect of a larger animal. Darth Vader showing up with a team of Stormtroopers is certainly something he does, but they rarely accomplish much more than menial tasks and adding scenery to a fight where he does all the heavy lifting. Link accrues a number of items that are important to game progression, but rarely all that important otherwise, or else eclipsed by later acquisitions, such as the ability to hold his breath longer underwater, or fire a slingshot in addition to a bow.

Supplemental Tags

Supplemental tags are attached to Advantages to identify specific qualities that are best communicated up front and without ambiguity.

Consent Consent is a tag that is attached to dictatorial advantages, as described in policy and philosophy (mind control, invasive scanning, transforming people, etc.) Consent tags may wind up being attached to an Advantage where only a specific application requires consent. This is fine, and doesn't make all other applications require consent as well. Where it is obvious which part requires consent, it need not be noted, but sometimes a short explanation may be included when it's unclear, usually in parentheses. Overall, MCM is a consent-based MUSH, however this tag denotes an Advantage to which the player or scene runner it is being used towards should feel no need for an IC justification for saying no. If a character tries to mind control another character, the other player is pointedly free to veto being mind controlled even without a relevant Advantage.

Copy# Copy is a tag that is attached to Advantages that copy other Advantages. The # indicates the type of power copying, with Copy1 being standard, Copy2 being Assimilation, and Copy3 being Mimicry, described in the Power Copy file. Copy2 and Copy3 double as Consent tags.

MDA MDA stands for Multiple Discrete Actions. These are Advantages that allow a character to take multiple major actions simultaneously in a scene, accomplishing several important tasks or pursuing several threads of progress. Normally, it is assumed that a PC is in one place and focusing on one thing at a time (a fight, an examination, a repair, a computer hack, etc.) and their other actions are supplemental or extraneous to the task (having a conversation, checking reference, setting up tools, watching for something, etc.), as this is the default of the overwhelming majority of RP. With Multiple Discrete Actions, a PC is handling a second major “thing” in the same pose round (fighting while disarming a bomb, investigating a crime scene while breaking into a computer network, etc.). This caps out at one extra action.

- Multiple Opponents: Note that by default, the side of a fight between PCs with fewer members than the other automatically gets enough “bonus actions” to engage the full number of opponents. For instance, four members of the Concord are fighting six members of the Watch. The Concord gets two “extra actions” split among its PCs for the purposes of engaging those two extra Watch PCs. If a member of the Concord had MDA, they would get an additional action to do whatever they want. If a member of the Watch had MDA, the Concord would not get another extra action to counter it.

- NPCs and Parties: Characters with access to NPCs, or bits that are made up of multiple characters, are not obligated to take an MDA Advantage just because they theoretically could split up. JRPG parties, military squad leaders, Pokemon trainers, and the like, traditionally stick together and direct their group through a single objective at a time anyways, so this is our default assumption as to how these characters are played. MDA represents a desire of the player to use greater numbers as a primary problem solving tool, rather than only their collective skills and abilities.

Advantage Style

Overall, the only thing that an Advantage entry should be concerned with is telling others what the character does. They should be written concisely, clearly, and with a minimum of theme-specific jargon, and “fluffy” explanation of how they work or where the character got them. It cannot be stressed enough that an Advantage should quickly tell the reader what it actually DOES in play, and character applications will be bounced back for revisions if there are Advantages that are sufficiently unclear in this aspect.

- Conceptual and Molecular Keywords: The term “conceptual” applied to a power is often used as shorthand for “massive, reaching control over a thematic space”, that ends up interpreted with no implicit limitations, and becomes a catchall power. Don't use this terminology. Explain in detail what your Advantage is and what it does. “Molecular-level control” is often the comic book equivalent, and should likewise be avoided.

Advantage Structure

As MCM is an environment where an enormous variety of characters are possible, and which supports those characters growing from exposure to other themes and plots, the primary thing we look out for in a character's Advantages is the point of “conceptual fullness” where the character has slipped from reasonable into ridiculous. Even in cases where a character picks up new tricks, talents and gear from other worlds over a long period of time, where each upgrade and acquisition was well earned and sensible, there eventually comes a time where a long-running character who was originally well-designed, has become the time-manipulating psychic dragon slayer and pokemon trainer who pilots a super robot and uses three different kinds of magic and a lightsaber, and everyone begins to roll their eyes.

While our basic Advantage policy is geared towards managing the wide vertical scope of Advantages that can be played on MCM, we use the Defining/Significant/Minor system for the purposes of managing an their breadth. It is rare, but technically possible, for an FC to be so broad in their capabilities that they do not completely fit within these parameters from the start, in which case a player is should app something like “the movie version” of that character, which focuses on what the character would actually use in play, rather than powers stapled on to them through their published lifetime. It bears mentioning that these changes are RETROACTIVE to the character's source. That is, if Superman as apped on MCM cannot hurl planets out of orbit (likely because it would never come up), he COULD NOT in his own world before it unified. This is to prevent “I'd kick your ass if the Multiverse hadn't nerfed me!” attitudes.

Advantage Slots

As a refresher, a character gets: 2 Defining Advantages, 4 Significant Advantages, and a flexible number of Minor Advantages that is rarely more than 5-6. These are often referred to as “slots”, because they're the maximum allotment a character gets for their Advantages before they risk becoming conceptually bloated.

A single Advantage entry constitutes 1-3 conceptually related “tricks” or “feats” that the character is capable of using to tackle challenges (frequently called “bullet points” “bullets” or “dots” by players), making for a maximum of up to 18 total. Some individual abilities are so flexible and powerful that they can easily constitute several of these on their own, and so are restricted to being standalone entries, that occupy their entire slot.

What constitutes a “trick” is almost wholly narrative, with little to no concern for the exact mechanics, justification, or different flavors behind it. It is entirely defined by its end impact. The ability to fly, read minds, pilot giant robots, hack computers, telekinetically manipulate objects, regenerate from injuries, heal people with spells, shoot fire, ice and lightning, wield mastery of martial arts, repair machinery, defuse bombs, crack security devices, juggle trains, absorb magic, copy people’s appearances, and so on and so forth, are all equally valid “tricks”, despite their very different uses and genres of origin. They describe obvious and self-contained ways the character can apply their Advantages to the narrative of a scene, and can be used as building blocks to describe a broad, compound ability. A comic book telekinetic who can cube trucks with his mind and use his telekinesis to fly, should list his telekinesis as an Advantage entry, and in that slot, list remote object manipulation, flight, and super strength, as the “tricks” he can use his telekinesis for.

On Specialism and Multiple Slots

In many cases, a character will have an ability, or conceptually related set of skills or items, that is broad enough that it cannot be encompassed in a single slot of 3 narrative applications, often being things like a wizard's ability to cast magic, or a mad scientist's arsenal of inventions. This is perfectly fine, and easily worked with by simply using up multiple slots to encompass the full range of the Advantage's capabilities. e.g. a wizard may have a Defining Advantage for their blasting spells, buffing spells, and status infliction spells, and a Significant Advantage for summoning spells, defensive spells, and enchantments.

e.x. A space marine has super strength granted by his genetic modifications and his power armor. He cannot buy super strength twice to make it super strength+1 and be stronger than everyone else. They're simply two parts of the justification for “my character has super strength”, though he may certainly mention both in his entry.

The only case in which an extra dot would be added to existing Advantages is when the character can apply its benefits to other people, or vice versa, take the benefits for himself. e.g. a space engineer can expand his personal energy shield to defend everyone else around him, or a white mage can target himself with all his healing magic.

Standalone Advantages

Some abilities that characters have access to have such broad power or narrative-bending weight that they can only be taken as an Advantage that fills up its entire slot by itself. These abilities are:

Power Copying: Copy1, Copy2 and Copy3 are all obligate standalone, and also obligate Defining. Power copying should be a central part of a character's gig, and power copying itself allows for a large number of additional abilities.

Resurrection: This is where a character that has been declared dead, and would naturally stay dead, comes back to life full stop. Regardless of the limitations of the power, resurrection has enormous potential to radically warp stories, as well as obviate other healing abilities, and is obligate Defining as well as standalone. This does not extend to forms of resuscitation that would only work on a character a scene runner would be explicitly allowing to come back to life anyways, such as defibrillation or Phoenix Downs. Your own character coming back to life is not considered resurrection for these purposes, and cannot implicitly be part of a standalone resurrection Advantage (though this kind of immortality does not require a full slot).

Stable Time Loops: MCM typically does not allow casual time travel. The most acceptable form is the stable time loop, where a character's future self returns to the present to perform some task, and then the present character must then do the same when he catches up to his future self. This is obligate Defining, as it pretty much always functions very similarly to MDA.

Multiple Discrete Actions: MDA is likewise obligate Defining for the massive amount of extra agency it gives a PC in a scene.

Long-Term Future Sight: As opposed to short-term battle precognition, or “spidey sense” Advantages. This must be Significant at minimum, though Defining future sight is generally rare, due to the realities of playing it in a MUSH environment.

Teleportation: Teleportation Advantages must include as much necessary information as possible, such as its maximum distance, what places it can access, whether the teleporter can bring passengers, if it works in anti-teleport areas, any indirect applications (telefragging for example), usability while imprisoned, etc.

Defining-Grade: The teleportation has little to no limits. They always penetrate preventative measures, usually accommodate passengers, and at most might have a range limit. In other words, they can just Go Places and there's almost nothing anyone can do to stop them. Examples are Protoman from Megaman, Kibito from Dragon Ball, and Nightcrawler from X-Men.

Significant-Grade: The teleportation has flexible limits. It might need to know a target location, have range or arrival limitations, and might be stoppable with dedicated effort. Highly powerful but extremely conditional teleportation, like being summoned when your name is called, also goes here. Examples include Star Trek Transporters, D&D's Teleport spell, Beetlejuice or Hastur.

Minor-Grade: The teleportation resembles a Stage Select, video game “fast travel”, or “false” teleports such as flash steps. It might get you a scene at “the start of the level”, or take you back to someplace you've already been, but it has no narrative strength, and exists only as a convenience. It won't get you out of a jail cell, intense combat, or anyone you'd assume somebody should use it but never does. Examples include every Megaman robot, common RPG town recall items, and nearly every single shounen character who gains teleportation in-story.

Invisibility: Concealment powers that are potent enough for the default assumption to be that the character simply will not be found unless he does something obvious, are all considered standalone invisibility, including chameleonic and psychic compulsion effects. The difference between this, and a single dot stealth ability, largely comes down to or not a character could credibly spot your character if they were putting some effort into looking for them, without dedicated Advantages. That said, even characters with standalone invisibility are expected to play it in such a way that other characters have a reasonable chance of being able to stop them, even if they can't find them outright.

Defining-Grade: The invisibility is at near enough to flawless that the character flat out won't be found out until they do something overtly noticeable, or are contested by a great deal of effort put towards finding them. It may conceal them in multiple ways beyond purely vision, or naturally resist methods that would normally be expected to reveal the character, and it likely continues to function in combat. Similar to Defining teleportation, the character can reliably enter and exit even highly secure areas without trouble. Examples are Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, Kusanagi Motoko's opticamo, the Invisible Stalker from D&D, or Toru Hagakure from My Hero Academia.

Significant-Grade: The invisibility has notable limitations that are sufficient to cap the character's ability to go where they please. It may fail against reasonably important equipment or spells, have a strict time limit, dispel when the character attacks, or give off subtle clues a wary PC can watch for. Examples are most incarnations of the Predator, the Spy's cloaking watch from Team Fortress, the Dummy Check esper ability from A Certain Scientific Railgun, and your typical tabletop RPG invisibility spells.

Minor-Grade: The invisibility is only useful for discretion's sake, and likely only effective against unimportant NPCs. Anyone relevant to the plot will likely see through it immediately unless they have some sort of deficiency, or aren't paying attention at all. If the invisibility can be obviated by a special trait that is common in the cast of the original source, it's assumed that all PCs count as having that trait. Examples are dematerialized Heroic Spirits, a Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, various ghosts and spirits with true forms, and basically every single ninja in shounen anime.

NPC Advantages

Similar to some standalone Advantages, the effectiveness of any NPCs is graded in three levels. NPCs may also not have Advantages that differ from the character's without allocating slots or bullets to them, and must be bought the same as any other Advantage.

Defining-Grade: The NPCs are essentially at the same tier as PCs. They are serious combat entities, may be stronger or more capable than the character themselves in some areas, and can generally expect to viably compete with PCs in relevant situations. Usually, some Advantage space is dedicated to fleshing out their personal abilities. An example is Paine and Rikku being taken as Yuna's Defining NPCs in Final Fantasy X-2.

Significant-Grade: The NPCs are essentially at the tier of a miniboss. They are meaningful obstacles in a conflict situation, and may have specialist skills or unique abilities, though they generally cannot expect to outdo a PC within their arena of expertise. Examples include R2-D2 or generic SOLDIERS from FF7.

Minor-Grade: The NPCs are essentially window dressing or props. Their skills have niche uses at most, and cannot contribute more than a similar Minor Advantage would. Minor NPCs cannot have a PL, and are presumed to lose in any combat engagement against anything more important than them. Examples include C3-P0 or generic Stormtroopers from Star Wars, or generic “redshirts” from Star Trek.

- Noncombatants: Where it actually matters, a Minor NPC specialized in combat will beat a Minor NPC that has no combat role. C3-P0 still loses to a squad of Stormtroopers, even though they're both Minor-grade.

Sharing Advantages

The ability to give some of a PC’s Advantages to other characters, such as through passing out gear or casting magical spells, is typically permissible as only a single bullet so long as it is thematically coherent. A Character who has the ability to share their Advantages may only do so with Advantages of the same or lower tier as the sharing ability. e.g. Minor power sharing can only share Minors, Significant power sharing can share Minor and Significants, and Defining power sharing can share all three.

However, when sharing Standalone Advantages, the method of power sharing must require a significant level of cohesion between affected parties to be valid. In other words, they must be, more or less, taking the same “action”. Harry Potter hiding others under his Invisibility Cloak is a valid bullet, but obviously the characters must all be in the same place and moving with it. Nightcrawler teleporting people is likewise valid, but he does so with the limitation that he has to be physically grabbing them, and take them to the same destination. Casting mass invisibility and leaving eight PCs to run around invisible all scene on their own is not acceptable.

Resurrection, MDA/Time Loops, and Copy3 may not be shared at all. Obviously, the individual powers copied by Copy1 and Copy2 are what is being shared by an Advantage like this, since impermanent power copying itself is near-useless in the first place. Other people using a shared Copy1 still counts as a use of the stored power that was shared.

The Et Cetera Rule

Using “etc.”, “and so forth”, and other thought extenders, should only be done in the context of a tight grouping of examples that relate in an obvious fashion.

-Acceptable: “Black Mage has the magical power to fire blasts of elemental energy (fire, ice, lighting, etc.)” The “etc.” clearly indicates extra elements, but the magic itself has a clear and sufficiently narrow scope. Black Mage could shoot dark or water or earth element attack spells, but it doesn't expand on the utility of the Advantage, merely the VFX.

-Unacceptable: “Superman has Kryptonian abilities, including flight, laser eyes, ice breath, a powerful superhuman physique, etc.” The “etc.” has no clear bounding or obvious continuation. None of the listed examples are intuitively related, and the entry could spiral into x-ray vision, super hearing, flying so fast he goes backwards in time, or super knitting for all the reader knows. This forces other players, not to mention staff, to consult a wiki to understand what the character does.

Implicit Limitations

Though we prefer Advantages to be explained in narrative terms rather than hard numbers, just because an Advantage doesn't explicitly bar you from doing something, doesn't mean you can do that thing. It can considered abuse to reach into things that your character has no business doing, just because they have a vaguely relevant Advantage that doesn't explicitly bar them from it. Superman, Cloud Strife and a vampire will probably have similar-looking superhumanity Advantages, but it's understood that they do not have the exact same superhuman qualities or limits to their scope.

Likewise, if an Advantage is not on your character's application, they do not have it, full stop. Advantages cannot be gotten for free by stating that the character refuses to use them, or by implicit association with something else. If a player wants their character to go around hacking computers, they must have a computer hacking Advantage, not an AI programming Advantage they stretch incredulously into the realm of hacking. Similarly, if the character can technically bring someone back from the dead, but simply refuses to do so on ethical grounds, they either have the Advantage and can if they ever changed their minds, or they don't have the Advantage and they cannot, even if they had a great reason to.

Conceptualizing Advantages

For players who are more used to mechanically quantified characters rather than narrative quantification, what is constitutes a bullet point in an Advantage slot may be unclear or difficult to define. The below is a section dedicated to some common questions, to help draw lines and divide up the functionality of their Advantages.

“How Much Space Does X Take?”

Overall, one “trick” is A Thing Your Character Contributes To A Scene. It matters very little how or why or in how many ways they can pull it off, only that they can fill a specific role or function in the story. As a general milestone, a single bullet point is typically easy to judge by its associated trope in fiction. When certain roles always appear together, they are likely to occupy only one bullet point, but when it is relatively common that characters exist with proficiency in only one or the other, they are likely separate bullets.

As a detailed example, rapid healing of wounds is a common ability in fiction, through magic, science, superpowers, etc. Those same abilities may also perform other medical functions, like neutralizing poison, curing paralysis, and restoring crippled limbs. While oftentimes a character is capable of all these things, it is equally common to see a holy healer or super regenerator who can can mend wounds, but not do anything about debilitating effects, which serve as a lingering problem. Likewise, it's common to see doctors and spirit healers who can purge all sorts of nasty effects, but not miraculously heal battle injuries in seconds. It is, however, very rare to find a doctor who can cure only one type of poison, or restore a paralyzed limb but not a crippled one, and so forth. You can thus infer that “healing injuries” fills a separate bullet point to “curing debilitating effects”, being narratively separate, but curing the vast majority of debilitating effects probably only occupies a single bullet point itself, as they're usually narratively related. If a character wants to be a consummate healer, they list both, taking up a little extra conceptual space.

Elemental Bullets vs Elemental Control

A common example of this is RPGs where mages have huge lists of flashy attack spells that ultimately serve the purpose of “shoot magic to damage the enemy's HP”. Said mage need not actually buy all these spells separately. Fireball, lightning bolt, ice spear, and the like, will all only occupy a single “dot” on their sheet, because they're merely elementally flavored projectiles to shoot at people. This is what we like to refer to as “Elemental Bullets”, but it applies to all genres. e.g. a mecha that can shoot lasers, missiles, bullets and particle beams, can list them all as one dot, as they're simply “sci-fi flavored shooting”.

What this does not cover are the secondary effects that might be associated with these. Within reason, shooting a fireball at an oil drum is probably going to light it on fire, but if a character expects to freeze an enemy solid with their ice attack, it's no longer within the scope of “shooting a damaging ice bolt”. The character would need to list “debilitating enemies with status effects” separately (which, in turn, may additionally cover things like paralyzing lightning attacks, or poisoning attacks, as different flavors of status). Furthermore, attacks don't extend to manipulating the environment, like creating ice pillars or freezing a lake to walk across it. Thus, a character whose main power super ice control will probably use an entire slot to encompass ice attacks, ice debilities, and ice utility, compared to a Black Mage who merely casts Blizzard and Blizzaga as part of his attack spells.

Weapon “Classes”

For the most part, we don't care to minutely split how many weapon types should be allowed in an Advantage. Only the broadest divisors really matter, commonly being melee, and ranged. A swordsman can parry attacks, maneuver foes, execute silent takedowns, and carve a hole through a fence, while a gunman can snipe targets, lay down suppressing fire, shoot out engines or detonate explosives, and in neither case is their specific blade or gun really all that relevant. Either can be easily boiled down to “weapon elemental bullets” within their category.

Attacks that cause destruction on a scale that makes them casually suited to altering the scene itself, such as leveling buildings or collapsing an underground cavern, are equivalent to “elemental control” in this sense, and so an RPG and a backpack full of C-4 inhabit different conceptual spaces. Likewise, though technically hitting someone with a rifle butt or the flat of a sword can knock them out, attacks that are supposed to reliably and effectively take out a target non-lethally fill an entirely different narrative niche: aiding capture rather than elimination. It is still possible to do this without weapons/attacks that are specifically intended for this purpose, though this type of advantage makes it easier to do so without accidentally killing anyone. This does not mean that sparring is prohibited without a non-lethal advantage, either!

- Weapon Mastery: Being exceptionally skilled in a specific form of combat is treated somewhat differently. Being a consummate master of every melee weapon in the Multiverse, for instance, is both silly and not acceptable as a single dot, as it can very easily result in the character constantly gaining freebie Advantages whenever a remotely exotic melee weapon is present in a scene. Sufficiently advanced fighting styles will usually be asked to be a little narrower, similar in scope to “unarmed combat”, “infantry firearms”, “polearms”, “hand-powered projectiles”, etc.

Generic Superhumanity

Being broadly superhuman in terms of strength, speed, endurance, and other universal physical qualities, is so extremely common in fiction that it can always be taken as only a single bullet point. Doing so indicates that the character is not an iconic specialist in a single trait, such as the Hulk's super strength or the Flash's super speed, but generally enjoys greater-than-human physical ability overall.

Advantage Redundancy and Prerequisites

Continuing in line, if an Advantage serves the same purpose as another Advantage the character has on their sheet, the character does not spend any space on it. It would be ridiculous to force a character who can already fly to pay for being able to hover. At most, he would note the fact in a Minor Advantage, in the case he can hover without his primary flight equipment. As a general rule, if an Advantage appears once on a character's list, further forms of it are freebies.

e.x. A character has spent on an Advantage slot that gives him sturdy power armor, which provides him superhuman strength and environmental filters. When he uses another Advantage for a mecha suit, his mecha suit may have sturdy armor, superhuman strength, and environmental filters, without using up any of the Advantage slot.

Equipment Without Skills & Skills Without Equipment

Furthermore, Advantages are assumed to “come with” the basic skills, knowledge, traits, or equipment required for them to function. This extends only to the bare minimum required to accomplish what the Advantage says it does. A character cannot gain implied extra Advantages, but a doctor is not obligated to purchase dots of chemistry expertise any more than a mage is obligated to purchase having an MP pool as an Advantage. Likewise, a master fencer is not required to purchase a dot for having a sword to make use of his fencing with, though said free swords would be about as basic as they get.

e.x. A character who fills a slot with a legendary sword need not also fill the slot with swordsmanship skills just to be able to use it. It's assumed he is fit enough, and knows enough basic swordplay, to be able to wield it competently, and that most of his effectiveness while using it comes from how awesome the sword is, rather than how good he is at using it. If he were also to fill the slot with swordsmanship skill, his technique is noteworthy enough to be narratively powerful, and he could then expect to perform significant feats with all kinds of swords.

Crafting, NPCs and Buffs

When it comes to characters who craft equipment or command NPCs with Advantages of their own, or lend their abilities to others, they need only list them as single bullets on their sheet for the equipment, NPCs, or buffs, to possess or imbue some of the same Advantages the character already has, so long as their scope is well-defined. Essentially, they are purchasing the singular “trick” of being able to apply their abilities in the form of an item that can be given out, through a minion or ally, or as a loan to another character. This works in reverse as well, for characters who are heavily specialized in crafting, NPCs, or using support abilities. An inventor who has already purchased the ability to build robots and laser guns can Just Have robots and laser guns with a single bullet. Expanding the versatility of crafting, NPCs or buffs beyond these freebies still takes up space as normal. Note that these three categories are separate bullet points from each other.

-Generic Buffs: In the case of generalized, RPG-style buffs, such as spells that just make the recipient do more damage or move faster or resist attacks or status, these can all be considered a single bullet on an Advantage. Their narrative role is simply to make the recipient a more effective fighter (or something else the buffs revolve around), without providing significant utility. The same goes for generic debuffs.

e.x. A mage has magic Advantages that allow him to fly, resist elements, create illusions, grant him generic buffs, and make him intangible. He then buys an Advantage to represent his enchanted tailoring, which he uses to make magic clothing. For a single bullet out of the three, he can create boots of flight, belts of resistance, cloaks of intangibility, etc. If he then wants to create clothes that generate a magic shield around the wearer, he must use another bullet.

e.x. A knight lord who is skilled at riding and swordplay buys an Advantage to command an army. Once he has bought “having soldiers” as a single bullet, those soldiers can be skilled riders and swordsmen without re-purchasing the skills. He must then fill out Advantage bullets as normal to give them new skills.

e.x. A cleric has a variety of powers in his Advantages that let him buff others by granting immunity to mental compulsions, blessing weapons with a holy aspect, bestowing battle regeneration on them, increasing their strength to superhuman levels, etc. He then only needs to spend one bullet to indicate that he can apply all of these same effects to himself. If he has further blessings he can only use on himself, they take up space as normal.

Non-Advantages

Some capabilities of a character can be considered so mundane, easily imitable, or else irrelevant in the Multiverse, that there is no need to actually note them. Generally, if it could be easily acquired or accomplished by a totally average, middle-class member of a first world country, it's not worth writing down. Having a magic crystal that lets you talk to people over long distances just isn't relevant when it's assumed anyone in the Multiverse could get a hold of a radio or phone, and having an ordinary place to live or mundane friend or relative doesn't provide any substantial benefit.

Note that this never extends to professional-grade weapons or equipment that a character doesn’t have an Advantage related to. If a character has a combat surgeon Advantage, they don’t require any further justification to show up with a medical kit full of morphine and blood bags, but a character with no conceptual space dedicated to medicine shouldn’t be doing so, even if it’s feasibly possible for an average person to afford one with some paperwork. Showing up to a scene with a generic first-aid kit full of bandages, gauze and rubbing alcohol, however, falls under having no Advantage requirement.

- Being Multilingual: Because of the Translation Effect, knowing a second or third or fourth language is rarely ever important. Even for written languages, we assume that there is commonly available translation software or magic for the sake of the scene. Linguistic fluency is only necessary to note when it extends to things like code languages, languages with inherent supernatural power, or extremely rare or niche ones.

Advantage and Flaws Reference

See here for Devola's Advantage & Flaws spreadsheet

Patch Notes 2/22/17 7:15 P.M.: Edited the Conceptual file to encompass another form of broad shorthand: Molecular-level control.

Patch Notes 1/16/2017 6:18 P.M.: Edited Minor NPCs to clarify that they cannot have a PL, and how two minor NPCs of different specialties might interact.

Patch Notes 1/12/2017 8:31 P.M.: Edited out Monsters of the Week as a standalone advantage. A MotW would be a "blank" Defining NPC entry with possible advantages fleshed out as a mix'n'match package defined as a part of the character's other advantages.

Patch Notes 6/14/2017: Edited to flow better for learning the new system.