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Originally Posted by R00kie
However the section on power design is poor. When stood up against the likes of either Hero 5th edition or MnM 2e if not only shows cracks.. it crumbles. The choice to base costs on effects is the correct move, however the system needs to take into account that attacking and defending are far too generic for the only combat effects, and that out of combat effects needs to be broken down a lot. It just doesn't work to assume all out of combat effects are equally valuable. In addition the maths behind costs needs to be stated explicitly as a formula. Its not difficult to work out, but its omission is inexcusable. To a large extent the caffetery style example powers list, combined with a large chunck of GM veto should get around this problem, but it is still true that unusual characters will be unneccesarily difficult to build with this system and large numbers of house rules will need to be invented for all sorts of character concepts.
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I had this problem a bit myself when trying to create a character who animated images. Strangely enough, for me a lot of the powers soon started looking like each other based on their game effects, which were mechanically very similar (do Shock damage if you also have Defends, Shock and Killing if you don't, for example). Tweaking powers also seemed a bit too expensive/complex for certain basic genre concepts like the speedster.
Quote:
Originally Posted by R00kie
In addition I have huge concerns about willpower, and in particular willpower regeneration. Many powers are going to end up with huge willpower costs. As an example I tried to create a character with a power similar to Hiro in NBCs Heroes!. A radius effect Time Fugue costs 1 willpower per person effected per dice. Affecting ten people with a 5d Time Fugue will cost 50 willpower. Unless the character has huge amounts of willpower they are going to have to cut heavily into their base willpower just to use the power (and this can only be replaced through character advancement). Alternatively, even if they do have a huge pool of willpower, they can only replace this through either rest (at a point per night), saving people, or perfect successes (pairs of 10s). Its going to be a very very long time before the hero can use that power again. Again I could solve this with a simple house rule (or two).
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This was my biggest concern about the game, in that powers more versatile than "Blast him" seemed heavily penalized for that versatility in terms of Will costs, which again didn't fit well with the genre. By this I mean that a Harm attack that can defend and attack has a lot of in play utility/versatility even when compared to a Create or Control power, but costs much less Willpower to use
for the same effects.
There should be more of a sliding scale of Will costs to balance this out for the Control and Create style powers, so that harming someone using Create doesn't cost more Will than just shooting them with an energy blast. Or characters should start play with a much bigger Will pool. Several of the characters in the sample adventure can't even trigger their own powers with the Willpower they have listed, or they don't list Willpower at all, which would raise their actual character point costs a lot to give them enough to be playable. Dennis Detwiller said in a forum that the GM could assign starting Willpower as needed in the case of the adventure, but I'd need to houserule that for all starting characters to feel like the game could emulate the games I want to play.
That being said, I'm happy I bought the game as it has many, many cool setting details and an interesting if challenging mechanic. And Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller were very, very cool guys during the playtesting and development process. They should be proud of putting Wild Talents on the shelf. I wouldn't put WT above DC Heroes or MnM, but it is on par with SAS/Authority in my book (two other systems that as written have some great elements but need some modifications). And I find Marvel SAGA a great introductory game for new roleplayers.
Just my two cents.