Heightened Concentration counter to blindness? Options

[Stahlseele]

Randomly ruling it turns off automagically opens the door to saying 'oh no, sorry, your improved reflexes suddenly turn off. Sorry dude.' Double standards like that are bad.

Background Count?

[Yerameyahu]

It certainly does not open to door to saying the Improved Reflexes suddenly turns off. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ol' Scratch]

Funk, the power doesn't reference action types at all. It references situational modifiers. They problem with your opinion on how it works is you're not considering which bonuses are instant, and which are short lived. There is absolutely no reason HC should stop working. Adept powers are -always- there, instant-on, for adepts to claim. They can't be counterspelled or taken away - and its one of the key advantages to being an adept. Why should heightened concentration be any different, just because its a powerful ability?

Randomly ruling it turns off automagically opens the door to saying 'oh no, sorry, your improved reflexes suddenly turn off. Sorry dude.' Double standards like that are bad.

1. No, not all adept powers are 'always on.' Attribute Boost is another example of an activated one. Others include Astral Sight, Commanding Voice, Three-Dimensional Memory, and Empathic Healing just off the top of my head. Some require rolls, some don't. Some require actions, some don't. Heightened Concentration is -- without any doubt whatsoever -- one of those powers. There's no reason at all to mention that it takes a Complex Action to activate if there was no reason to activate it.

2. No, adept powers can most certainly be taken away. Background counts, Essence loss, Control Thoughts, and several other methods exist that can do precisely that.

3. No, the power most definitely does reference more than situational modifiers. You're just choosing to ignore the other bits of the description. No, "task" doesn't have an in-game definition, but that's a fuck-up of the people responsible for writing the shitty description. In context, it's perfectly clear what they're getting at.

4. And no, treating the power as it's described is not a "random ruling." No matter how much it upsets you that Heightened Concentration isn't as all-powerful as you wish it were. You don't get to break a rule then claim it's powerful, then use both of those to defend why you broke it and why it's powerful. That's just stupid.

[Nifft]

3. No, the power most definitely does reference more than situational modifiers. You're just choosing to ignore the other bits of the description. No, "task" doesn't have an in-game definition, but that's a fuck-up of the people responsible for writing the shitty description. In context, it's perfectly clear what they're getting at.

4. And no, treating the power as it's described is not a "random ruling." No matter how much it upsets you that Heightened Concentration isn't as all-powerful as you wish it were. You don't get to break a rule then claim it's powerful, then use both of those to defend why you broke it and why it's powerful. That's just stupid.

When many people read the power differently, it cannot be described as "perfectly clear".

Also, HC usually sucks compared to Adept Centering, once you get rid of the potential for HC to sustain 3 spells at -0 penalty... and getting rid of that sustain thing is an arbitrary ruling, because the rules don't say if sustaining 3 spells should be 3 separate -2 penalties or a single big -6 penalty. It's an arbitrary ruling I'm heavily in favor of, because I don't like broken things in my game, but I can't pretend it is anything other than arbitrary.

[Ol' Scratch]

Yes, it does suck compared to it. As it very well should, being a cheap adept power compared to a metamagic technique.