Proximity Equals Power excess = nearly unlimited ISP?

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Axelmania
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Proximity Equals Power excess = nearly unlimited ISP?

Unread post by Axelmania »

pages 30-33 of BTS2 has these rules and led me to that impression, until reading the example...

going by "Fred" on page 32, it appears that to get a "reset" of the bonus ISP, an hour must pass. I don't think that was mentioned earlier so reading the example appears to be necessary to understand that.

only whatever unspent I.S.P. remains from the original doubling is available to the character.


This only appears to apply to maintaining same-level though. The subsequent language seems to give a free bonus if there is an upgrade
When the threat level changes, the previous I.S.P. amount is forgotten and gone, and the new amount of available I.S.P. is the Base I.S.P. number times the appropriate modifier for the new threat.


In the example, despite going from 11>22 and spending 6 (leaving him with 16), he gets the full 11x4=44 when the threat level upgrades. It's like he never spent that 6 at all!

Furthermore, this loophole also appears to exist in reverse:
In Fred's case, that means dropping from 38 I.S.P. to 11 or 22


However a return doesn't appear to reset it (22 goes back up to merely 38, not 110) so that's one slowdown...

I'm trying to think of a more incremental way of representing all this, instead of this weird magical 1 hour tier where there's a sudden reset, and to reflect how independent all these multipliers/pools seem to be.

Looking for ideas/supplementation of these approaches to "non-base" ISP...

    Tier 1 (x1) is base ISP. No special rules needed.
    Tier 2 (x2) is "Investigating the Supernatural". You can perceive this as a separate pool equal to 100% base accessible only when fighting that tier (nothing higher, nothing lower)
    Tier 3 (x4) is "Lesser Demons". You can perceive that as a separate pool equal to 300% base accessible only when fighting that tier (nothing higher, nothing lower)
    Tier 4 (x6) is "Greater Demons", which is a 500% base tier.
    Tier 5 (x10) is Alien Intelligences, which is a 900% base tier.

I think it's easier to just always track the base separately, and never both adressing if iti s targeted until the tier-of-the-moment pool is expelled.

We know that coming back to these tiers keeps them where they were at, however they do not appear to interact with each other.

We know from the examples that Tier 3 (+300% to base) is not merely a +200% on top of using Tier 2 (+100% to base), because Tier 3 does not actually access the Tier 2 ISP at all, because we know from an example that going 22>16 doesn't inhibit getting the full +33 ISP (to 44 total) whereas if it did, you would be -6 ISP to that 44 giving you merely 38.

(pure coincidence that 38 happens to be what he was reduced to from 110, I think)

So I think the question is how to break down these 100% / 300% / 500% / 900% pools' regeneration over 1 hour. Rather than being "it stays where it is, but after an hour, it's suddenly back to full" which can lead to weird meta-gaming.

The simplest approximation I think, is firstly to say that 10% (+10%/+30%/+50%/+90%) regenerates per 6 minutes.

Since 6 minutes is 360 seconds, you could further say that 1% regenerates per 36 seconds.

This would mean you would get +1% / +3% / +5% / +9% gets restored to these threat tiers (separately and simultaneously).

These increases of course, would normally apply to whatever base ISP you happened to have at the moment of encountering the threat level. Instead I am suggesting the ISP restored to this pool (up to the normal maximum) is based on the % of your current (rather than maximum) base, since that is what the normal cap implies.

Obviously this caps out at the normal % maximum based on your base though.

I think I will go with 1/10 per 6 min rather than 1/100 per 36 min to explain though. It makes things easier. Some might enjoy that level of recordkeeping (2 decimal places!) others may not.

Say Edward has 20 ISP. His 2nd Tier backup also has 20 ISP.

Normally, that extra 20 could not regenerate at all until 1 full hour later, in which case it will go up to 10 no matter where it was (0 to 19)

I'm proposing that if his base is at 20, we treat that pool as regenerating 1/10 (2 ISP) per 6 minutes. This has the same benefit for it being fully expended (0 to 20 in 60 minutes) while at the same time, not having silly long-wait periods if he merely spend 1 or 2 from it.

However: the downside to this is that if he expended his base, that will be much lower. If he went down from 20 to 10 in his case (perhaps he needed to activeate a 30 ISP power, which he couldn't fully pay for using the extra) then he would only regenerate 1 ISP per 6 minutes to his tier-2 bonus pool.

If he had spent 18 of his base and was down to merely 2/20 base ISP (10%) then he'd only be getting back 0.2 ISP per 6 minutes! ALSO he could never build that bonus pool up to more than 2 ISP (+100%) until his own base ISP was recovered higher than 2. If say, he recovered 2 from sleeping, he would be a +0.4 ISP per 6 minutes until the bonus pool grew from 2 to 4.


Of course, you could increase that relative ISP for restoring your base. For example, if you had only 1/20 ISP left and got a +900% (1+9=10) because a Splugorth shows up, if there was a ley line and you tapped it for 19 ISP, not only would your base increase from 1/20 to 20/20, but since the +900% is based on the base, you wuold get +180 ISP instead (total 200).

So basically the relative ISP fluctuates by the base, so before you spend it, you should increase your base.

What I'm not exactly sure of is what would happen if you spent part of your temporary increase but then restored your base so it buffs the increase.

For example, if you spend 1 of the 9 extra ISP you got (bonus pool is 8/9 now) and then your bonus pool was increased from 9 to 180 (20x as much) would you still be down 1 (bonus pool is 179/189) or would you be down 1/9, so you'd only have 160/180 in the bonus pool, proportionate to the % you had spent?

The rules/example don't seem to cover what occurs if you recover base ISP during an enhanced-ISP state, it only talks to what you shoot up to based on your base, seeming to assume you will not be recovering your base during that time.

That's reasonable to assume normally (probably can't relax enough to sleep or meditate unless you are at tier 1, moving up to higher tiers probably interrupts sleep/meditation from the reaction?) but not in regards to tapping ley lines or if a power like "Restore ISP" is used by an ally on you, which would lead to mid-confrontation base ISP adjustments.

The "one hour must pass" rule seems like it ought to be flexible and incremental, since it doesn't actually require focus/relaxation to recover these pools like sleep/meditation would. Sleep recovering 2 ISP per hour shouldn't necessarily mean you get 1 ISP back from a 30 minute nap, nor Meditation recovering 4 mean you get 1 ISP back for a mere 15 minute meditation. It may require continuous focus to get those benefits...

But since you can't interrupt the hour needed to recover the ISP gains from PEP, may as well spread those out!
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mrloucifer
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Re: Proximity Equals Power excess = nearly unlimited ISP?

Unread post by mrloucifer »

Uhh, wow...

Honestly, in my many years of xp, unless you've got a group of math geeks, all these math exercises will only prove to be a great cure for insomnia and bogs down the game.

The basics of BTS work in such a way that you're not likely to get more than one of that particular tier per hour anyway, so a lot of this is moot, unless you're running an action heavy game which is counter intuitive to BTS in general.

The generic BTS investigation scene tends to happen in an hour's time, like this example:

Fred has 11 base ISP, gets x2 tier (22) while investigating an abandoned building where supernatural activity has happened. Lets say he uses 12 ISP, bringing his base to 10 while investigating the scene.
If the monster Fred's investigating/hunting is in the building AND Fred finds it (or it finds him), the ISP tier increases to x4 (raises to 40). However, while Fred hunts for the beast, he's still in the same x2 tier as its part of the same investigation/scene. If he spends an hour or more in the building hunting it, then give him a recharge of x2. I don't see that happening a lot unless the building is enormous or he's tracking/chasing it outside the building.

If Fred slays the beast. The investigation is over and he wont have to worry about the hour wait time anyway.

If you want to make it a more intense action oriented game, you could have other monsters in the building to hunt, but unless you have enough monsters in the same scene/area to increase the tier level, Fred's still only has whatever ISP he has and will have to decide if he wants to continue as is, or retreat until later after he's rested, or an hour has past, or he gets some backup, etc.

That's just part of the life of a BTS hero.

ON THE OTHER HAND: If you're hung up on the once per hour aspect, let me offer you an alternative: Change the "hour" to "scene" or perhaps "chapter".
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."
–H.P. Lovecraft

By night I'm known as Steven Dawes, that "BTS" guy, and the Host of the House of BTS!
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Axelmania
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Re: Proximity Equals Power excess = nearly unlimited ISP?

Unread post by Axelmania »

Chapter/scene is even worse, I usually like breaking down lump sump rates into micro-rates, like if someone gets back 2 ISP per hour of activity, instead make it 1 ISP per 30 minutes.

The reason for the complicated math is due to the ISP resets which happen at various tiers: spent ISP only appears to carry over when resuming the same tier, otherwise it gets reset at max for whatever the level is. It seems off as you'd think greater-supie ISP would partly be the lesser-supie ISP, but based on the examples it doesn't (ie nothing higher nothing lower)

Why the variable rates is due to the dependance of the temporary pools upon the base pool: if your base is depleted, the bonus you get is depleted too.

This leads to weird situations like this:
"I have 1 ISP left. Alien intelligence appears, so I gain a bonus 9 ISP so my total ISP is current x 10"
"I run away and my friend does Restore ISP on me to give me +9 to my base then I run back and face the AI, and now my ISP is +90 for total 100"

The issue here is that the recuperation of the bonus ISP (+9 to +90) had nothing to do with an hour passing (which is normally what you would wait for if you had expended it) and everything to do with the base recuperating.

I believe the recuperation of the base should totally establish the upper limits on the temporary bonus pools, but I think that those bonus pools ought to built up to that upper limit at a fixed timeline whether they're getting there from being used or getting there from having the cap expanded.
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mrloucifer
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Re: Proximity Equals Power excess = nearly unlimited ISP?

Unread post by mrloucifer »

Do you live near Omaha, Nebraska? This sounds like a subject better handled in person as I'm just not seeing what you are. Besides, any excuse to play BTS with someone is a good one, even if its to debate/discuss ISP recovery. :)
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."
–H.P. Lovecraft

By night I'm known as Steven Dawes, that "BTS" guy, and the Host of the House of BTS!
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