[Strange Visitor]

Originally Posted by Ranger7

I can see the logic; I remember taking a flack vest and SMG in the old Marvel Super Heroes game by TSR simply because of the added protection. Then again, if you are running a gritty game this type of thing adds to the flavour ("That guy just shot me...but I'm the Amazing Strobe...damn, next time I am wearing a vest...and calling myself something that attracts less bullets!") and in a high-powered game it shouldn't matter ("Bullets mean nothing to I, Captain Particle, lord of styrofoam!"). I think its the the mid-powered games that suffer in this case and they are the ones who can get the most use out of the equipment points. But thats just my odd view of the world, everyone likes something different.

Even in a low-powered game you don't want _everyone_ to be an enhanced gunslinger usually, and that's what this tends to produce. While there are obviously some advantages to having an attack power you can carry through metal detectors, unless your low powered game is _heavily_ covert, that still never seems to justify the difference between, say, 10% of your character points (the cost of a Blast 6 for a PL 8 M&M character) and 0%.

In a high powered game you're right it matters less, but you still run into situations where people try to pay for the right to run around with otherwise free rocket launchers (which will still likely be a concern) because its immensely cheaper than actually buying a power.

You really need to have _some_ kind of non-trivial overhead on this stuff in one way or another (and usually not just an entry price) or it can way too easily become overly attractive.