Teleport Question

[izlear]

I have a Player who is playing a robot and because of that He asked if he could have the teleport gadget trait, I did some looking and found that robots can take gadget traits. He had a cool backstory and it made sense for this robot to have a teleport. Now that I'm a couple of sessions in and the player is starting to make use of teleport we started looking up and I couldn't find any usage guidelines and worse limitations.

Since the robot took it as a trait, he did not have to take a weakness related to the gadget trait.

However I think I am going to make him take a weakness related to that trait.

So tell me. Is there something I am missing or reading wrong abut the teleport gadget trait. Is there some kind of limitation to it. should I make the character use a story point every time he uses it, can it ONLY go long distances, is there something I am not seeing?

Thanks,

[lomythica]

Does he have reduced story points for taking the trait? You stated that robots can take gadget traits, but gadgets require reductions in story points. In general, being a robot does not have to relate to having a gadget. Robot could basically be an electronic species. When you start adding gadget rules on, would be when they take traits that a 'normal' character build would not allow.

If a character wanted to play a robot, and said that he or she's character should get increased strength, or keen senses due to their construction, I would consider the strength (even though it is notcspecifically a trait, but think of it as a minor good trait) and the keen senses trait to be gadget traits. Therefore, use gadget rules to determine limitations.
To combine your example and. Mine, if you had a robot with extra strength, teleport, and keen senses, that would be 4 points of gadget traits. The character would then either take some bad traits to lessen the points, or lose appropriate story points. Of course, this would all be done with gm approval.

Off the top of my head, some obvious restrictions for teleport might be that it must charge over a period of time, so can't be used more than once a session. Perhaps it has a fault, and on. A snake eyes roll, just doesn't work, or maybe it is susceptible to not working in certain conditions, such as high radiation disables it. Just a few ideas..

As a note, with strength, I mean if the character has already spent their build points, but thinks the species would be stronger.

Lomythica

[knasser]

Robot and Alien are both gateway traits, i.e. they let you buy things that you couldn't if you were human. That includes attributes above 6, so if you have paid for one of these two, I allow you to just go ahead and buy up the higher ratings. You don't get them for free, mind!

Being a robot means that he can get Gadgets built into him. But again, Robot is just a "gateway" trait that allows you to do this, it doesn't give you Gadgets for free. So he will need to have paid for the Gadget with character points during creation. If he hasn't, you'd better give him or ask him to pick some bad traits to balance it out. There's no reason these can't be picked up during play with prior agreement.

The Teleport trait for Gadgets says that normally they need to recharge once they've been used. You could pick a suitable time for that, e.g. once per day, or you could be a bit looser and say that it requires spending 2 Story Points to recharge. I like the latter myself as it lets the player do more. For example, the player could blow a whopping 4 Story Points to go somewhere do something and then get back to the party. Sounds a lot, but this is potentially hugely useful. Or the player might spend 4 Story Points to teleport both himself and another player together. Or perhaps the teleporter isn't based on time or Story Points, but requires actual recharging, e.g. the PC has to go and plug themselves into a power outlet for an hour to recharge it. That could be interesting.

By the book, the Gadget should hold a couple of Story Points of its own for teleporting. Maybe you should set the cost at 1 Story Point per use, and then its got two uses when fully charged.

[Curufea]

DWAITAS as a rules light system, does not go in for granularity - so my advice is that in the future, when a player makes a character - they should define what their character is able to do, rather than just picking things from the rulebook.
It's much better to come up with the character idea first, and then fit it into a rules light system - because looking at the rules first, and how generic and ambiguous they are is not going to help players that are used to rules heavy systems that specifically define everything they possibly can.

[izlear]

OK so to answer some questions The character DID pay for the trait as a normal trait per the robot rules. H did not opt to take the higher attributes, and the teleport actually fit into his backstory, and that is why I let him have it.

I think the best way to do this is to add a weakness to the trait, and/or put a limitation on the teleport ability. Probably a limit on number teleports per game without use of story points, of course if he chooses to use story points to do somethig that progresses the story We could say he shifted reserve energy to the teleport or something like that.