I was making a character whose body produces nanites and realized there’s no way to reduce the range of Technology Control to touch. I figure giving it a miscellaneous limited scope would be right.
But what should the discount percentage be? I figure most of the time the hero wouldn’t be touching the thing he needs to control which would make me think it’s on the high end, 66% or 85% unavailable. But the character also has flight 6 meaning it wouldn’t be that hard to get in contact with most things.
The example of Aurora’s limited scope on page 76 indicates the discount should be dependent on things like the presence of undead in the GMs plan but doesn’t specify if it should be dependent on the character’s other powers.
Flight is one example, but what if I had superspeed, flight, invisibility, and intangibility meaning it wouldn’t be hard under most circumstances to get to touch range, maybe even trivially easy under most circumstances.
Does he have to Touch the object to get control or to retain control?
If he has to touch it just to get control, then I would suggest a 15% to 20% Power Flaw discount for Touch would be appropriate.
If he has to touch it to retain control, then that’s more like a 33% to 50% discount – one of the major benefits of Technology Control is the ability to work from afar via networks or at least at range.
I was thinking just touching it to gain control and then being subject to standard range.
Can you tell why you think the discount should be set to 15-20%? The rules say it’s more of an art than a science but without much info on how to do the art that’s not super helpful It’s like being told to make a painting without knowing what paint is.
Just in case anyone ever comes to this topic, we talked more about it on Discord.
Basically, don’t try to calculate a discount like this based on the character alone (unless it’s a solo game) but consider the character within a team. This character might have an issue getting to the bridge of an aircraft carrier but a teleporting hero could get him there instantaneously.
Just because a team could make it easy doesn’t mean there’s no discount. It’s still in the 15-20% range because the hero still has to put himself in not inconsiderable danger for a page or more while taking control and is using another hero’s actions.
Autarch also makes a very good secondary point for any kind of situation where the player and GM are figuring out a cost or discount. It’s better to be overly cautious than overly generous to start. Deciding that you were too cautious and giving your player more CP is a very different conversation than taking some away.
It’s like being told to make a painting without knowing what paint is.