Better to decrease error range by 1, or increase the AD cost to activate?

[Hobbes]

As it says on the tin. I'm tinkering with a new skill subsystem. An error is bad (take 1d4-3d4 lethal damage), a critical failure is horrible (take 1d4-6d4 stress and 1d4-6d4 lethal damage).  When making the Mastery/Supremacy feats, one will decrease the error range from 1-3 to 1-2, and one will increase the cost to activate an error by 1 (both will do other things as well, but this is probably the prime factor). Which one should go with the higher-level feat?

[Black Cheese]

Meta-questions: Why muck around with it? What about the way it's written doesn't suit your game? What are you simulating?
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My gut says that with Critical Failures being so horrible (stress damage ends agents) that the error range decrease should come first. The extra Action Die cost should be in the Supremacy along with other serious bonuses (the GC has more action dice than the PCs have stress resistance).

[Hobbes]

To answer the meta-question, I'm trying to add psychic powers as skills, not revamping any of the core skills. I might post the whole damn thing on the boards at some point, but the short version is that manifesting a power deals you 1d4 stress damage per its D&D "level," rather than have D&D style power points (which don't really fit in the per session/per mission framework). An error adds half that many dice in lethal (round up), and a crit does that and doubles the stress.

Anyway, more opinions welcome; I don't really have a good intuitive feel as to which is better, so I'm happy to hear from people who do. I'm interested to hear that Stress damage 'ends agents,' as I haven't seen it come up in play that heavily (for example, Threaten never seemed that good of a choice compared to shooting someone, and Stress never seemed a good advantage to shoot for over Lead).

[MilitiaJim]

Stress damage gets Really nasty Really fast.  1d4 Stress per level of the power can see players knocking themselves out with three level two powers in a scene, is that what you want?

Easiest thing to do is to use "psychic powers" instead of "magic."  Chop down the spell list and bring it right over.

[Krensky]

Or use Archer's system.

[Hobbes]

Either of those would be something I would look into, if I had either of those books. As it is, I'm enjoying tinkering; also, at least part of the reason I'm doing this is porting an existing d20 modern campaign, so I don't want too much of a change in how powers look at work. Although I wouldn't say no to a summary of how those systems work.

As far as Stress damage goes, is it really that bad? "three level two powers" ends up being, on average, 15 points of stress, which at most gives you a -4 penalty to Wisdom and Charisma checks -- not exactly the end of the world, and a fair trade for three uses of Suggestion, or Read Thoughts, or an augmented Mind Thrust. Considering character options will almost certainly exist to mitigate that damage, I almost wonder if a d4 a level is too kind!

Perhaps I should start a different thread about this, since there's interest. But, in topic, what do y'all think about the relative virtues of reducing the threat range from 1-3 to 1-2 vs. requiring 2 action dice to activate the critical failure?

[Krensky]

Stress looks good for powering Powers, but there is a reason the developers don't use it.

It is really nasty.

That -4 is bad, and shaken gets worse as it stacks up, and it will stack up fast. Once your stress is above your Wisdom, you save everytime you take stress, picking up a new level of Shaken.

Magic in SC2 is covered by Spellbound. Basically, spells are cast using an Int based skill, with Cha and Wis also being crucial to an effective magic user. Spell use is limited via spell points, which are lowish in number and per scene.

Psionics in archer is based on skills and is fueled by vitality. There's a conversion document with the main archer pdf, and some additional notes from Morgenstern in a thread about converting them to FC over in license to improvise.

[Black Cheese]

Also, stress damage heals very slowly. By doing nothing, an agent regains Vitality at his level an hour and a Wound per day. By virtue of just hanging out. By contrast, an agent must make at least a 1-hour, minimum-DC-15 Resolve/R&R check or get Therapy (which takes 4 hours) to recover either 1d4 or 1d6+therapist's Wis modifier.

So, yeah. You can use stress damage if you want, but it should be substantially less than you're talking--like 1 stress for level 1-3 powers, 2 for 4-6, and 3 for 7-9.
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But, seriously, I wouldn't charge them anything.

Just write better mechanics.

The characters have already chosen psionics. That means they haven't chosen something else. Assuming a balanced system, that should mean that the characters--both the psions and the brutes--bring equal power to the table. To then hobble the psion because he's a psion makes no sense unless psionic powers are substantially better than what the brute can do--in which case you need to make the brute better, not the psion worse.

Everyone knows a competent 10th-level wizard will nuke the crap out of any 10th-level fighter. The balancing factor is supposed to be the wizard running out of spells while the fighter never runs out of sword. But that just leads to the 15-minute workday wherein it's one fight and the wizard rests to fight again tomorrow, a paradigm everyone can agree is crap.* But by charging stress damage for psionic powers, you'll get the same thing unless everything you run has a hard deadline.

I don't even like Spellbound's spell points system because it's also combined with the Spellcasting skill, which means allocating resources to 3 things (spell points, skill points, and time) to cast a spell. Until it's substantially better than a gun, who gives a damn?

One more thing--just because it's different doesn't make it better. Yes, the Chn6 is hucking 3d8 laser damage, but he's only doing that 4 times and needs to succeed on a DC 22 check (admittedly, he could have, like, a +15 bonus to that check, but that's still a 30% failure rate) and spend 4 half-actions on different initiative counts and then he's not casting for the rest of the scene. And casting's his schtick. It's 3 of his class features at 6th level. He could have done the same with an Caliber III Attack gadget and 2 Caliber I Battery Boost gadgets.**

Consider carefully why you're trying to balance things before you "balance" them. Even if a psionic power gives the characters more options, that doesn't have to mean taking away those options later (via spell point depletion, over-stressing, failing a check, etc.). Every character gets unique options, and how much would it suck if every 6th-level ability dealt the character 6d4 stress damage because "no one else can do that"?

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* This is in D&D 3.5 and earlier. I continue to ignore the abomination that is EverWorld of Dungeons and Dragons Quest.
** I know this isn't entirely accurate, but you know what I mean.