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Shannon (PBlackCrow) and I have been working on this, tell me what you think.

If PPE goes below 25% apply a penalty of -10 to all skills, at below 20% he has 0 bonuses on melee actions and -15 to all skills, below 10% he becomes sluggish like sugar has just bottomed with 0 bonuses he is -5 to melee actions and -20 all skills, below 5% he wants to sleep, and if it drops to 0 he will pass out in 1d6 rounds. Heavy sleeper when PPE is below 20%.

We are thinking about having Psychic develop headaches when they run low and suffer from mental fatigue.

so in addition to not being able to do the entire thing their character revolves around, they also can't do anything else.


pray tell, why?

I understand why, from a story telling point of view, this might be considered interesting but from a character and game mechanics POV I have to agree with Shark on this. I mean are you going to start penalizing tech characters when an e-clip runs dry.

What I have always thought about doing is allowing a psychic definitely and maybe a mage to go below zero in ISP / maybe PPE that would cause penalties like these.

This would give the kind of storytelling device you are trying to create while at the same times not neutering the OCCs.

I'll third this. It kind of penalizes the character for doing what they're built to do. Though again, this is really cool from a story telling point of view. I would second something like Warshield said where it allows them to burn some extra points beyond their normal abilities for this kind of penalty.

Either way, the concept of this is pretty cool. I would be tempted to implement this kind of thing in my own games with a little bit of tweaking.

I would just use the prolonged combat rule and have it apply when the mage or psychic drops below 30% PPE/ISP.

It also makes players have an artificial floor when it comes to managing their PPE.

Sorry, unless someone is dying I’m not using my last 25%... It effectively just cuts down their usable pool.

If you did this, it shouldn't just penalize mages, muggles below cutoff (perhaps someone the mage drained without consent?) would also suffer penalties if brought down to that level.

Though in most cases that wouldn't be possible, since even voluntary help is cut off at 70% donation (30% remaining) and involuntary is worse (50%).

Of course... the Channeler (PPE vamp option) from Through the Glass Darkly doesn't have any cutoffs like that, so they could instantly go around knocking people out

I went a slightly different route.

The PPE score of the standard mage is their battery... it's not much different than an eclip made out of the souls of dead children mystic energy. However, a mage can dip into his PERSONAL PPE... basically, the kind of stuff regular people have... if they need to.

If I was going to go with the "artificial floor", I would set it, not as a ratio of their PPE/ISP, but at the part that comes from their raw attribute... so, for PPE that is 3d6*10+PE, I would make that artificial floor the amount equal to their PE. For ISP that is ME+X or ME*X, I would leave their floor at their ME.

Get more experienced, get more PPE/ISP? Your floor doesn't rise, just your roof.

You lost me there. Are you saying that someone with a higher ME/PE would reach their floor before someone with a lower one?

If your going to do something like this than Mark's idea really is the best way to go. I still disagree with the idea though as does real harm to psionic characters as the mages have extra "battery". As it stands if a group was using this rule I wouldn't run a PCC.

Essentially, yes. But my view is more that they have a larger reserve, while someone with a smaller ME/PE has a smaller one.

We thought about doing it that way, but in the current game I am running, and I have based the PPE level to be that of HU. Although, it IS a modern day multi-system game; it is far from a single source story. PPE is not 3d6x10+PE. That is why Shannon is finding it easier to kill rats to recharge up his items. It's based in NYC, so there is little chance in him running out of rats.

Shannon is all about character flaws enhancing the story. And he is right, having these rules does totally enhance roleplay and problem solving, because it forces you to reserve PPE and think about things out.

If low PPE should harm mages then it should harm muggles too.

Maybe so as not to upset anything, we should just have rules for "surviving negative PPE" where you can spend it below 0 but each lost PPE causes 1 HP of damage, allowing the potential to fall into a coma?

Vampires suddenly become 20% cooler.

You can do anything you want when it comes to bending the rules in your games. House rules can be fun and also suit a particular group's needs just fine. Personally, this doesn't appeal to me. I would find it to be just one more thing to have to worry about, one more modifier to factor in, and one more mechanic to slow down gameplay. Recently, I was GMing a game and during combat, there were so many factors and outside forces that weighed into my NPC's roll, I almost needed a scientific calculator to figure out what the final bonus or penalty was to the raw dice roll.

If this works for your group, keep doing it. Just because some don't care for it (like me), that shouldn't stop you from using it and having a good time in the process.

That's a thought.

Like I said, we are experimenting with it.