Every Time Agent has a broken Vortex Manipulator

[garethl]

I know the title doesn't have to be true. The Doctor could meet Time Agent NPCs with fully functional Vortex Manipulators.

My concern is with Time Agent PCs in a Doctor Who campaign. When the Vortex Manipulator is not the main method of time transportation it costs 10 story points. That's very costly when you start with only 12 and the Time Agent trait costs another two story points. You end up with a character with zero storypoints. I don't know how feasible that it is and it probably depends on your GM but not being able to duck out of a energy beam's way when you've rolled badly is very bad in a Dalek adventure.

The alternative is lowering the cost of the Vortex Manipulator by breaking it, which takes away the fun of playing a Time Agent (for me at least). However I feel that a lot of players would take this option.

A possible strategy I've come up with for playing a Time Agent without story points :
Create a Time Agent that's heroic but values his own life. When things are about to go wrong (you hear Cybermen around the corner) heroically declare you are buying the Doctor and companions some time to get away. Try to speak to the Cybermen and when they shoot at you/delete you/try to convert you teleport away with the Vortex Manipulator. Try to get back to the rest as heroically as possible.

You have acted heroically and saved yourself. The gm should give you storypoints for that.

Repeat this every episode!

Am I wrong in thinking 10 story points might be too much? What other ways are there to lower/compensate the cost of a Vortex Manipulator?

[faure]

In our Doctor Who campaign, my son wanted to play a Time Agent from the 51st century (and, yes, wanted a Vortex Manipulator as well as a Squareness Gun). So I ruled that his Vortex Manipulator cost 2 story points. The trade-off conditions that I made were the following:

• his Vortex Manipulator is preset by the Time Agency to return him following his mission to the 51st century (probably some days after his departure so he can make an appropriate de-briefing)
  
• it doesn't have sufficient power to reliably send him off on his missions (the Time Agency uses what I called a Vortex Primer to do that, which is far more accurate in getting someone to the 'right' time and place in the past)
  
• trying to move through time with the Vortex Manipulator using other than the preset return coordinates is highly unreliable and could result in the Time Agent going to who knows where and when (though localized teleporting works ok to get out of the way of cybermen or the like)
  

This leaves him with a reasonable number of story points initially (9 in his case), and keeps the Vortex Manipulator from serving as a mini-TARDIS.

So far he's just been sent back into the past to 2210 A.D. (I happen to be using the RISK 2210 map/history to represent this future point and all activities have happened so far in the Exiled States of America -- i.e. Greenland after global warming). He's currently trying to stop a small unit of cybermen and has not tried to go bounding through time (yet).

[garethl]

That's one way of solving the problem!

In our campaign, when someone wants to play a Time Agent with working Vortex Manipulator that person will have to discuss it with the GM. I think I'll be able to convince the current GM* to allow me a working Vortex Manipulator.

* We regularly swap GMs