- Is there a limit or some kind of restriction to the number of aspects a character can have? I know you get five of them with the creation process through the background and guest stars but can you ass some to flesh out a character more. Do you have to earn more through gameplay or is it something thats up to the gamemaster?

As far as permanent aspects, you can only have the seven (High Concept, Trouble, Background, Rising Conflict, Story, and two Guest Stars), though those can be changed at any milestone. You can however have any number of temporary aspects. Those are the aspects that you create through maneuvers and declarations, as well as consequences. Also you can make use of any aspect that you are aware of. Those would be aspects on the scene, other characters, or even the city.

-How exactly do your characters grow stronger and more experienced? Are they rewarded more powers/stunts/whatever after completing an adventure?

I mentioned milestones above. Check out pages 88-91 in Your Story.

- Can anyone point me to a good resource for high concept examples?

We have our very own thread with aspect examples right here on the resources board. It can be kind of dry reading though. You could also check out the spare character concepts thread and the generic NPCs thread for other ideas.

And Tedronai gets there first. Oh well.

You know what Sancta? It's all perfectly relevant. You asked what we thought of your rules changes. I mentioned that I already use one and otherwise have no problem with the current system. PI was mentioned, you said it's wrong, I said I disagree and have had good experiences with it, then you attacked my reasoning. Just because I disagree with you, doesn't mean that I'm "unhelpful." Dissenting opinions are necessary for balance.

So, I'll say it again, then leave it alone. I don't have any significant problems with the current system.

You can't model a power on how useful it will be in a given campaign.  The GM can technically make sure any immunity comes up NEVER.  Quite literally.  They can choose to do it on purpose.

Actually you can provided that you and the GM are working together instead of being antagonistic to each other.

The current system I use for The Catch (and to a lesser extent the RAW system for The Catch) is modeled on how useful it should be in a given campaign.

@Sancta: You do realize that PI is specifically intended for NPCs, and having a player take it is the exception.

The Mythic
level is nearly always reserved for potent NPCs,
as is the special Physical Immunity ability.

So the natural state of this power is for the GM to veto it.

Ok, this is a bit of a inflammatory question on the boards here. We recently had a fairly heated discussion on the matter. You can find the whole thing here.

During the course of the discussion one of us asked Fred Hicks (our major conduit of communication with Evil Hat here) what he thought. Here's the whole bit.

I sent Fred an email, saying:

Quote

I know that you don't like being asked for "official rules calls", but this has more to do with the reason behind a small part of the game.  The why behind the Pure Mortal refresh bonus and how much it can be stretched.  With the ultimate rules authority (the table) unable to reach a consensus I thought I'd ask you about the reasoning behind its design.
1) Does the Pure Mortal refresh bonus represent a sort of "negative lawbreaker" bit? I.E. does someone with no supernatural powers have more freewill than a character with any supernatural elements?
1a) If not, is it just a game balance thing without any underlying philosophy?

2) Can a Pure Mortal have a High Concept that mentions supernatural ability?
EG 1: "Untrained Wizard with White Council Potential" - to be tagged when the character's innate powers might save him?
EG 2: "Distant Descendant of the Luck God" - to be tagged when luck is needed.

3) Could a Pure Mortal have a non-High Concept Aspect that references the supernatural?
EG: A Background Aspect: "Distant Descendant of the Luck God"

When he wrote back the individual points weren't addressed, but the gist of the question was.

Quote

We tried to build unity between the mechanical incentive (game balance, if you want to call it that) and the world philosophy, that pure mortals are potent because they have the benefit of so much free will. Mortals who get entangled in the affairs of the supernatural can turn into food, yes, but they can also screw it all up right proper (hello, Murphy).

It's also a representation that they have a lot of open potential in there, which locks down fast once they start heading a particular supernatural direction.

But, from a mechanical standpoint, the pure mortal bonus makes sense up until you start buying supernatural powers. Once you do, it goes away, full stop. Before then, you are, mechanically, a pure mortal without any supernatural powers, so I'd stick with keeping it.

Fred

So from a philosophical point, the "negative lawbreaker" thing fits.  Up until I got to the "But, from a mechanical standpoint,..." I thought the Aspect thing fit in as well.  Maybe it's a conflict between the design philosophy and resulting mechanics.

Having given you all of the roots of the discussion, I'll tell you what I think. Personally I don't have a problem with it. Invoking aspects can be powerful, and in my experience it generally doesn't matter whether it's a supernatural aspect or a mundane aspect. He could have the aspect "Weird Luck" or "Action Hero" and it would have similar results. At least this aspect will also give you very powerful compels. Also keep in mind that you (The GM) are the arbiter of how the invokes work mechanically. You can choose which zones are affected, how they are affected, etc. You can even decide that it's a weak invoke/compel. This makes it hard for the player to really exploit this kind of thing.

In general, I don't think PI is a suitable power for player characters, with the possible exception of narrowly-focused immunities (what I referred to as 'Specific Physical Immunity').  It's basically a plot device power, which makes it great for NPCs (ie, the storyline revolves around figuring out how to take down the bad guy who can't be hurt by any obvious means).  But not so much for PCs.

I agree, but what I see is a lot of proposed solutions that make PI less accessable for the right uses. I don't even see a benefit to changing it. Currently it's available when it's appropriate, and when inappropriate, the GM should be vetoing it. I don't have any problem with a system that relies on the GM to remain viable.

I don't think they did.

I think they just screwed up. There's nothing in the actual rules that suggests social stunts are doubly powerful. The only way to arrive at that conclusion is to extrapolate from the examples given.

If they wanted to make social stunts an exception from the normal stunt rules, don't you think they'd say so?

A lot of what we've heard from Fred in the way of rules explanation is that they expected us to extrapolate from the examples given. If every social attack stunt in the book has twice the power, is it not reasonable to assume that social attacks are in and of themselves narrow enough restrictions to justify it?

Specific Physical Immunity is immunity only to a specific subset of attack types, and is what you get when you add a Stacked Catch to Physical Immunity.  The normal Catch doesn't apply, so it counts as zero levels for purposes of the Catch rebate, but should have a cost reduction based on how commonly it offers protection from attacks.

Perhaps Specific Physical Immunity should be priced something like this:
Common PI: A significant number of opponents will be at a disadvantage against the character.  Cost: -4
Uncommon PI: An opponent or two per fight or a hostile group or two per session will be at a disadvantage against the character, or a larger number will be inconvenienced.  Cost -2.
Rare PI: Perhaps as few as several opponents per campaign will be at a disadvantage, or a larger number will be inconvenienced.  Cost -1.

For purposes of the above, assume an opponent is 'disadvantaged' if they are unable to hurt the character at all (because they either don't have an alternate attack or are unlikely to realize that an alternate attack would improve things), and that an opponent is 'inconvenienced' if they are able to bypass the PI, and can quickly recognize the need to, but with significantly inferior attacks.  Also note that if the number of opponents that are disadvantaged even begins to approach a majority, then the character should probably be buying Full Physical Immunity (possibly with a serious Catch) rather than Specific Physical Immunity.

Hmm. I'm having issues with this, but I'm not sure why here and not with toughness.

I could not have done this with the last character I made with PI. I was making an outsider scion and gave him immunity to magic (cause it makes sense story-wise and I thought it was cool). I had no way of knowing how often the GM would involve magic. Looking back on the game I can tell you that it came up somewhere between 0 and 2 times a session (mostly due to friendly fire) and the GM had actually planned an outsider themed campaign, but I didn't know any of this. How are we to cost things if we have no idea how often they will come up?

Still not sure why I see this as an issue with PI and not with toughness, but there you go.