New Power Levels

[Jeckel]

I'm working on extending the Power Levels to cover each Refresh Rate from 1 to 10.

In the table below, the canon items are prefixed with a * character. The new items each list two names, the first follows the theme of water and the second follows the theme of transitioning from away from water to being "submerged".

I'm looking for opinions on which theme of names is better, as well as any advice or suggestions about the names, refresh rates, skill points, and skill caps. This is meant to be an extension, not a replacement, for the Power Levels, so changing the canon items is not an option.

EDIT: I've decide on a few of the names below, and have striked out the other name in those cases.

Names	Refresh Rate	Skill Points	Skill Cap
Hydrophobic and Proud or Under the Covers	1	10	Fair
Rain Doesn't Scare You or Out of the House	2	10	Fair
Playing in the Tub is Fun or Stuck in Traffic	3	15	Good
Almost Ready to Swim or Nearing the Shore	4	15	Good
King of the Water-park or Walking the Beach	5	20	Great
*Feet in the Water	6	20	Great
*Up to Your Waist	7	25	Great
*Chest-Deep	8	30	Superb
Out of the Shallows or Into the Deep	9	35	Superb
*Submerged	10	35	Superb

Update (Friday, July 30, 2010): Tbora posted a nice Custom Power Level list on the second page of this thread. Though ideally an extended list wouldn't move any of the canon level names around, I totally understand the choice to do so since it makes the thematic path of the names up the levels tons easier. Good job and much thanks to Tbora.

Here is the table for power levels I set up, because I could not really find a good way to work with the ones given in the books given what I was trying for.So I said to hell with it, and just built from the ground up.Hope you find it useful.

Custom Power Levels

Names	Refresh Rate	Skill Points	Skill Cap
Hydrophobic And Proud	1	10	Fair
Rain Doesn’t Scare Me	2	10	Fair
Playing In the Tub is Fun	3	15	Fair
Nearing the Shore	4	15	Good
Walking the Beach	5	20	Good
Feet in the Water	6	20	Good
Up To Your Knees	7	25	Great
At The Waist	8	30	Great
Chest Deep	9	30	Great
Neck High	10	35	Superb
Submerged	11	35	Superb
Bottom Of The Pool	12	40	Superb
In Need of A Snorkel	13	45	Superb
With The Fishes	14	45	Fantastic
SCUBA Gear Time!	15	50	Fantastic
Big Fish, Bigger Ocean	16	50	Fantastic
Punched a Shark in the Nose!	17	55	Fantastic
Wish I Had a Submarine...	18	60	Fantastic
I Spy Atlantis!	19	60	Epic
Swimming In Weeds	20	70	Epic

[Mal_Luck]

Better name for PL9 would be Up To Your Neck

And lower than PL6 I think would be... too difficult.

[Vash the white]

for 18 drowning

waaaay later at like refresh cap 35, scuba diving

[Moriden]

40 Aquatic ?

[Walker_Blade]

I've been playing around with the numbers on high powered characters and here is what I've been using:

Desden-Level:  18 Refresh 45 Skill points (This is roughly the power level of Harry after Turn Coat give or take a refresh)

Epic-Level: 30 Refresh 60 sill points (This is for playing a Denarian or senior council member.)

[Vash the white]

40 Aquatic ?

i like it

45 area= Sleepin with da fishes
50=BIG FISHIE!!!!!

I've been playing around with the numbers on high powered characters and here is what I've been using:

Desden-Level:  18 Refresh 45 Skill points (This is roughly the power level of Harry after Turn Coat give or take a refresh)

Epic-Level: 30 Refresh 60 sill points (This is for playing a Denarian or senior council member.)

nice

[JustinS]

Epic-Level: 30 Refresh 60 sill points (This is for playing a Denarian or senior council member.)

If I were a deep one...

[Deadmanwalking]

I've been playing around with the numbers on high powered characters and here is what I've been using:

Desden-Level:  18 Refresh 45 Skill points (This is roughly the power level of Harry after Turn Coat give or take a refresh)

Epic-Level: 30 Refresh 60 sill points (This is for playing a Denarian or senior council member.)

Those are quite close to what I came up with. I have Harry at closer to 50 skill points post-Turn coat...but the Refresh is right. And the Senior Council are scary, man. I'm currently making them at around 35 Refresh. Probably a bit more for the Merlin.

[Archmage_Cowl]

my senior council members mostly come out around 35 refresh too. but i have the merlin statted up as basicly a pure wiz with 42 refresh. refinement 30 some times= omg huge bonus's on spell casting lol.

On an on topic note. I totally love the idea of lower level players, my team likes big levels though so we would probably never get to play them but ya know though i totally have a cool idea of playing like a pizza delivery guy who's pizza truck gets jumped by fairies and he has to fight them off at around the your not afraid of rain level.

[Biff Dyskolos]

50 Benthic
60 Abyssal

[chadu]

70 Summon Bigger Fish

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SummonBiggerFish

[pfloyd]

75 = Lower than whale poop?
100+ = Marianas?

[Jeckel]

Better name for PL9 would be Up To Your Neck

Yea, that was the first one I picked, but if you notice PL7 is exactly the same. I'm trying to avoid formulaic similarities between the names of different levels. I agree it would be ideal to have the word 'head' or 'neck' in the PL9 name, but I can't think of a good one that doesn't just madlib one of the other names.

And lower than PL6 I think would be... too difficult.

That is basically the same thing my players said back in the day when I told them to start our new OWoD campaign without choosing anything that a pure mortal wouldn't have. After we had played for a month (RL time) and they had taken control of the hood from the gangs, only to find out that vampires are real and are the real power behind the area, their characters developed into supernaturals based purely on story/character development. After the whole campaign was over, they had characters that had developed from pure mortal, through supernaturals, and up to deities.

Everyone agreed that it was one of our best campaigns because the players didn't just decide they wanted to be vamps or whatever, instead their characters got to make choices that led to them becoming vamps or whatever. In the end, any power level can be to difficult, or to easy, if the GM doesn't balance the opposition correctly.

[Jeckel]

for 18 drowning

waaaay later at like refresh cap 35, scuba diving

40 Aquatic ?

Desden-Level:  18 Refresh 45 Skill points (This is roughly the power level of Harry after Turn Coat give or take a refresh)

Epic-Level: 30 Refresh 60 sill points (This is for playing a Denarian or senior council member.)

45 area= Sleepin with da fishes
50=BIG FISHIE!!!!!nice

50 Benthic
60 Abyssal

70 Summon Bigger Fish

75 = Lower than whale poop?
100+ = Marianas?

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

However, before I start listing out the extensions above PL10, a few things need to be laid out.

1) How does Refresh Rate grow after PL10?

Seeing as the canon stops growing by +1 at PL7-8, and then uses +2 for PL8-10, I'm guessing the devs decided that once you reach PL8, +1 refresh isn't big enough. So should the refresh grow by +2 for some amount of levels (ie PL10 -> PL12 -> PL14 -> etc)? Or, since the extension adds PL9 making it +1 up to PL10, should +2 be ignored completely and +5 used instead (ie PL10 -> PL15 -> PL20 -> etc)?

2) We need a cutoff for now, so what should it be?

Conceptually I see no need to place an upper limit on how larger a PL there can be, but for the purposes of developing these new levels, we need to place some limit and work to it, then place a higher limit and continue up to that, and so on.

The first limit will depend on the answer to the first question.
Lets say we decided to increment the refresh rate by +5 per power level. How high do we want to use +5 before we start incrementing the level by, say, +10? If we want to use +5 till PL 50 and then use +10 from PL50 up, we could say PL50 is the current cutoff.

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My suggestion would be to use +2 from PL10 to PL20, giving 5 additional new Power Levels.. or +5 from PL10 to PL40, giving 6 additional new Power Levels. But that is just off the top of my head, and I'm not to sure about how special each new fate point would be at these levels.

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On a final note about the suggestion of new level names. The names must fit the theme of water, and more specifically "the character" and water.

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Keep up the good work guys. There is a lot of good information on this forum and I think a community developed standard extension to the Power Levels is a good place to start in building other extensions to the wonderful system we've been given.

[Vash the white]

Jeckal, i would do it by two up to 20, then i might start going by 5's, but making it harder to get too points where you advance, and the i would up it again at 40 and so on, just my idea