(M&M 3e) Create & Deflect PL Caps?

[jait]

I apologize for the newbie question, but I'm obviously missing something here.

I have a player who wants to put together a characters for a PL10-150pp game that has, among others, the following powers:
* Force Constructs: Create 12 (Volume: 4000 cft., DC 22)
* Vector: Deflect 12

The problem is that when I run it through HeroLab, I get the following validation errors, and I don't know why:
* Force Constructs: Create 12: Exceeds Power Level limit by 2;
* Vector: Deflect 12: Too many ranks - limited to 10 ranks by Power Level


The player is asking me why and hasn't been satisfied with my answers.

I understand about the Attack/Damage trade-offs. And the Toughness/Dodge & Toughenss/Parry tradeoffs.

But I get these messages even when I open a new portfolio, start a new character and add only these two powers. Nothing else has yet been defined. So why is Create and Deflect limited to a rank of 10?

I'm particularly interested as he wants to do a Force Constructs kind of thing with Create 12. HeroLab allows Force Field 12 with validation...

So... What am I missing?

[Duggan]

As mentioned on the message board, Create doesn't do trade-offs due to the ranged attack option being returned via errata to the 2E standard of an area attack. Reverting to the pre-errata version can be done by using the .user file over here.

No idea on Deflect. I'm guessing that the book doesn't list it as being capped at PL and there are no tradeoffs with defense that we're missing here?

[jait]

It does say Deflect Modifiers are limited by Power Level, but that's not the same thing as a cap on Deflect, is it?

When I open a new portfolio, add a brand new hero and add only the Deflect power at rank-12, I still get the error message.

I'm probably spending way too much time on this. I should just accept it as a false validation warning and move on.

[charlieluce]

It does indeed look like Deflect is being treated as not being affected by the Defense/Toughness trade-off, and I'm pretty sure that's a bug.

[Duggan]

Actually, according to the DCA errata, it's supposed to be limited by PL. Maybe Green Ronin intended to say "this trades off" but usually Colen asks them their intent on things like this, so I think this is a case where we disagree with Green Ronin's ruling.

Edit: Looking more closely at Deflect in the power editor and fiddling with it, there is a bug. Right now, Deflect is being set at the trade-off value of Dodge. Raise Dodge to 12 and you can have Deflect at 12 with no error. This might need to balance against Parry as well for melee attacks. Not sure.

[CelticREI]

Deflect does indeed trade off on the side with Defenses (thus a high Toughness limits how high Deflect ye can have), though it's odd that ye need to raise your Dodge to be at or above your Deflect for the validation errors to go away, that shouldn't happen from what I know of the rules

[Duggan]

If I'm understanding the power correctly, the limit for Deflect should be (PL*2 - Max(Parry/Dodge). The problem in the current code is that it uses a function to check to see what the maximum Dodge is given the current tradeoffs. If Dodge has not been increased past PL, there are no tradeoffs even if Toughness does not match the PL.

I'll see if I can't write something up on this tonight. Seems like it should be easy enough to fix.

[Duggan]

It's slightly ugly, but the following in Eval Rules works:

      ~ Deflect is limited by PL
      validif (hero.tagis[Hero.NoPLLimits] <> 0)

      var limit as number
      limit = hero.child[defTough].field[PLBaseMax].value  - hero.child[defTough].field[PLOver].value
      validif (field[pwBaseRank].value <= limit)
      @message = "Too many ranks - limited to " & limit & " ranks by Power Level"

I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but this method works alright for what it is.

Attached is a zipped .user file that replaces Deflect with my version. The usual fair warning that using this version of Deflect makes you dependent on my .user file until you replace it with the fixed version Colen will no doubt include in the next update.

[Duggan]

Can anyone confirm that this got fixed in the latest release? I would check but I'm nowhere near my laptop at the moment.

[Duggan]

^_^ It is. And I'm blamed in the comments if it doesn't work. Thanks, Colen!