M&M 3rd ed. Question about Reaction Extra

[ValaraukarU]

I have been looking at the reaction extra and noticed that trying to apply a reaction to a permanent power modified to a sustained power (0/r) (free action to activate) is costing 3 PP per rank. Can any one explain to me?

 

[Duggan]

I have been looking at the reaction extra and noticed that trying to apply a reaction to a permanent power modified to a sustained power (0/r) (free action to activate) is costing 3 PP per rank. Can any one explain to me?

Hmm... I believe the intent is to have it be a +1 for something with a Free action. Can you tell us what power it is you're trying to use?

 

[ValaraukarU]

An example is to take Protection, add Sustained to make it a free action to activate and maintain. Then try to add Reaction. The reaction adds as +3PP/rank. I think it happens to any power that starts as permanent. Note that in the protection example the reaction is grayed out and says the 'Power must use a Free Action or Standard Action'. I guess the issue is that a power modified to Free Action by Sustained is not actually registering as a Free Action power.

 

[Duggan]

{nods} I don't have the code in hand, but I suspect that's something that could probably be fixed readily enough. As a potential alternative, does 3E still have the Force Field, which starts as Sustained?

I suppose the second question is, how exactly does Reaction Protection get what you need? Does it apply right before the hit and then go away afterwards? If so, what's the difference between that and regular Protection other than not happening as often?

 

[ValaraukarU]

There was no functional benefit from doing it as a reaction other than making it noticeable with reaction. I ended up dropping it since it was more costly for no benefit on the final build, but I still thought it was calculating wrong. Since I also saw it calculating wrong on other powers (don't have examples) with similar action changes I thought I would ask if I was missing something or if it was a bug. I also can make it work by applying a -2/Rank Custom extra on the same power to offset.

 

[Duggan]

Alright. I've found the issue. Sustained is not explicitly setting the action to Free (presumably, it should only do this for originally Permanent powers, so there's some minor chicanery that can go on if you mark a non-Permanent Power as Permanent and then mark it was Sustained). Adding the lines of

      call ActChange
      perform parent.assign[pwAction.Free]

and setting the Sustained Eval Script to have a lower priority than Permanent makes it work.

Colen, do you think it's reasonable to get this into the next update?

 

[ValaraukarU]

Thank you for looking at this. It was a minor inconvenience more than anything.

 

[Colen]

Thanks for the bug report - I'll put this on our fix list.