Question on how Duration interacts with certain Extras

[William Seaton]

I'm trying to understand how Duration, or it's sibling Extras, interact with with a couple of other Extras, specifically Interference  and Depleted. This is also all in relation to a Defends power. 

Just reading the bit on Duration, do you have to roll each round when using Interference, each time when defending against an Attack or when? The description is a bit confusing there. 

The next is simpler. Depleted states each attempt to use the power uses a charge. So using a Defends power with Duration and Depleted, does that use a charge each time it tries to defend against an attack, or just when the power is activated?

[Allan Goodall]

Duration (and the other time-extending extras) allows you to make a single roll and have that roll stay in effect for a length of time without having to reroll. On a power where your roll turns it on, like alternate form and changing into the Hulk or something, Duration is simple to understand. You roll the dice, the power turns on with a success, and you stay in your alternate form until the end of the scene.

For defensive powers with Duration, such as a force field, you roll the dice and whatever you roll is what you have to defend yourself with for the rest of the scene. If you rolled 4x9, you get to defend with a width of 4 and a height of 9 against all attacks targeted against you for the duration of the scene.

If you don't like your roll, at any time you can choose to reroll. This can be risky, though, as you have to take whatever you rolled. This is why a lot of defensive powers use hard dice.

Duration with Interference is a bit different. Interference is a reaction extra. It allows you to react to your opponent without necessarily being conscious of it. On a defensive power, Interference is reacting to your opponent for you.

The rules are confusing because the rule book is vague as to what's happening. The way I interpreted it, from reading and re-reading the Duration and Interference entries, is that you roll the dice for your power every time someone attacks you, but you only have to spend an action once for the duration of your power in order to turn it on. 

An enemy attacks. In the Declare phase, you state that you're going to defend with your power that has Duration and Interference. That's an action. If you want to do something else, too, you'll have to do it as multiple actions. You roll the dice. If the roll succeeds, the power has been activated and you can use the result set as gobble dice. The power stays on for the duration of the scene, without you having to declare it's turned on. Suddenly, another attacker goes after you. You don't have to declare your power, but you do have to roll the dice for the second attack. If you fail to get a matching set, then the enemy's attack went through. If he attacks next round, you get to roll the dice without declaring an action again. 

As you can see, if you want to cut down on the variables you buy your Defends power with Duration and Interference with hard dice. 

To your question about Depleted, you deplete a charge every time you attempt to use a power. That would mean that you use up a charge when you first activate the power. If you have Duration, the charge lasts you until the end of the scene. If you turn off the power before the end of the scene and then turn it on later in the same scene, that takes a second charge.

The rules don't cover what happens when you have a Defends power with Duration, Interference and Depletion. The way I would handle it is to use up a charge when you first declare you're using the power to defend yourself. The power stays on for the length of the scene without costing another charge. You roll for each attack against you, but they don't eat up a charge.

In case someone thought that attaching Depleted to an Endless or Permanent power is an easy way to make a power cheap with no actual negative effect, I'll say two things. 1. As a GM, if you thought you'd min/max your way around the rules, you should be prepared for a villain with Nullify. 2. The rules already state that a flaw that has no actual effect is not a flaw. If you set it up so that your character will never run through its charges, then as a GM I wouldn't let you take Depleted (or you wouldn't get any points for it).

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[matt]

I'm in agreement with Allan on all counts.

[John Poole]

I dunno. In the entry for Interference in the Essential Edition, it says,

"Long-Term Interference: A Power Quality that has Interference and also is a long-term effect, through an Extra such as Duration, is an automatic defense or “jinx.” It applies the same Interference result separately against each opponent that’s affected by your power."

Doesn't that mean one roll for the entire duration of the power?

John

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 11:37 AM, matt <iamaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm in agreement with Allan on all counts.

[William Seaton]

In response, there's the Direct Feed versus Wilpower Cost Flaws in that regard. Pay Willpower upon use versus upon activation. I've seen on this forum the difference between the two explained, specifically in relation to the Duration Extras. Your explanation of how Depleted and Duration work would go against that. This is why I'm seeking clarification. The two terms are somewhat used interchangeably, on top of that, what Interference states in it's description in how it works with Duration goes somewhat against Duration's description in how it interacts with Interference. At the very least Interference is vague enough to be confusing. Hence why I'm trying to figure this out.

[Allan Goodall]

That's in the main WT2 rulebook too. The confusion comes in with the description of Duration in the main rulebook. 

"Two important circumstances change the way Duration works.... The second is if your power doesn’t roll for its own effect, but instead augments some other roll using the Augment Extra or impedes some other roll using the Interference Extra."

"...If your Duration power doesn’t roll for its own effect but instead affects some other roll, as with the Augment Extra or the Interference Extra, you must roll its dice anew every time it takes effect. After all, you’re not rolling to activate a power but to affect some other action."

I dug further into the rules (man, it's been a while since I've gone through Wild Talents; now Godlike on the other hand...). Under the section on Power Duration, the rules say, " You declare its action, roll for it, and it takes effect in the resolve phase."

With that in mind, I'm revising my opinion. It appears that you should roll the dice every time it "takes effect", which would be every combat round that you need to use it, after the opponents' declare an attack on you. The one roll, though, would apply to all attacks in that round, That covers the part under the Interference extra that you quoted, "It applies the same Interference result separately against each opponent that ’s affected by your power."

[Allan Goodall]

At this point I'm going to let Shane explain Depleted with Duration. :-)

[Shane Ivey]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Allan Goodall <awgo...@gmail.com> wrote:

At this point I'm going to let Shane explain Depleted with Duration. :-)

The underlying logic of Duration is, basically, you roll the dice and instead of that roll being your one action for that one round it instead lasts for a while. So every time something comes into contact with your power, it comes into contact with whatever you rolled to activate your power.

Augment and Interference are both consistently pains in the ass because they change fundamental things about the way the dice work in the game. Mix that with duration and yeah, it gets sketchy. Since they change the fundamentals of the dice, they also change how Duration works since Duration just extends the life of a single roll of dice. And on top of that it sounds like we had conflicting interpretations in different places. Mea culpa. 

When in doubt, err on the side of simplicity. Leave the matching dice on the table for the Duration of the power's effect. (Unless there are unhappy ramifications of that and they're escaping me at the moment. It's late.)

Depleted is just "limited number of activations." If you have a six-shooter and each shot has Duration, you can have six things lingering. But again, if it's just free points because Duration makes the limited number of uses irrelevant, then it doesn't count as a Flaw that gives you points. The GM and other players ought to call shenanigans.

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[Matt Conlon]

Interference is basically "makes dice gobble all the time."

Let's say you have "auto block" some kind of reflexive sword interpositioning power based on super training.  Without Interference, you roll 3x10.  So you have a block roll of 3w and 10h against every attack thrown your way for the scene.

So if an attack comes in with 4w, its initiative beats your block speed and your blocking has no effect on that attack, nor any other attack with a w>3.

Now with Interference, your 3x10 become gobble dice against every attack thrown your way for the scene.  An attack with 4w is still affected and reduced to 1w, or no effect.  A roll of 6x9 would hit you with an effective result of 3x9 as your 3x10 eats 3 of the dice from that 6w set.

So if you have depleted on a duration power, you have a certain number of charges/uses before needing to restock/recharge.  That's effectively a number of scenes for a duration power before needing recharge.  You activate the power, it functions for the duration on one charge.  

It's not as cheesy as you think because as the GM one can make all manner of nonsense interfere with recharging/restocking depleted powers so the flaw comes into effect.  Costly components, break-ins, shipping debacles, a termite infestation that makes "meditating to recharge" impossible for a few crucial days.  And any good long term villain will have a handle on a PC's weaknesses soon enough.

Good luck!

--

[William Seaton]

Huh. Nearly two years since last time I asked something regard Duration. Sorry for resurrecting this one. This is an add-on to my original question, so it made sense. Was going over Duration again and how Augment interacts with it, I'm wondering if this interpretation of how it works is correct:

Based on what Shaun suggested before, setting the dice of the Augment/Duration power that were rolled aside, and merely adding them to the power your augmenting each Roll Phase.

If that's not correct, I'm curious what would be, since rolling the Augmented/Duration power dice each time along with the power your Augmenting, then Duration is a useless Extra. Granted, I might be missing something, but the above is the only way I can see those two interacting at all.

[Daniel Kane]

If I recall correctly, there are two possibilities for Augment:

You add the dice but ignore any Extras that the two Qualities don't share.

~or~

You combine the Extras of both Qualities, but take the lower of the two dice pools.

e.g. 

Everything I Hold Is Sharper A+3 10d

Attacks: Augment +4, Attacks +3, Touch Only -2, Deadly +1

If you wanted to add dice to a knife attack with 5d, you can ignore the Attacks +3 quality for Touch Only -2, Deadly +1 (the same as a knife attack!) and add 10 dice for a whopping total of 10d + 5d of penalty cancellation.

If you wanted to enhance your attack, you can take 5d (the lower of the two pools) and add +3 damage to successful attacks and make your attack do Shock + Killing damage.

The same applies to any other Extras. You don't get to add dice to a Power Quality with Duration +2 unless your Augments Quality has Duration +2.  You can use an Augment Quality with Duration +2 to add the Extra to another Quality of the same type, but at the cost of (again) using the smaller dice pool.

Is that helpful?

-- Daniel

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