Murderous Precision

Ok… keeping it simple.. if we see it still being to powerful we will restrict it some more.

Tier I: Once per Scene, and only if you have the Tactical Advantage, you may with a successfully attack you may instantly vanquish or slay that humanoid despite its armor rating, remaining Wounds, or Stamina as long as it is a minion or common threat. If the humanoid attacked is not a minion or common threat you instead deal your passive (In) in additional damage. You must declare the use of this talent before you roll; if you miss you expend the use of this talent for the remainder of the scene.

Ok, I think I have an insight.
Murderous Precision isn’t Murderous Precision’s problem.

Let’s take as true that a volley of early combat MP’s knocks a lot of the difficulty off a fight, given it has an “average” spread of Minons, Commons, and better. The Heroes then move in and mob the rest, focusing fire with much more efficiency with just a Mastermind to aggressively engage. But that’s how the fight would have ended anyway.

In my experience 95% of all combats conclude with no critical expenditure of material. Unless someone takes a Wound the most that’s usually expended is a few shots of blastpowder and a few Fate Points. Fundamentally the Heroes have finished a combat in much the same state statistically as they started.

So what did Murderous Precision contribute?

Not much. It accelerated the expected and likely outcome of the battle. That Murderous Prowess might be overpowered is part of a perception that’s an artifact of the system; LoA fights are, imho, very all-or-nothing. Prolonged fights like Battle Interactive scenarios start to stretch out party expendables, but otherwise that’s how it works out.

What helps in measuring the balance of something is how it comes to comparably accessible resources, but in this system there aren’t any others really. Murderous Precision doesn’t cost anything besides the investment cost, but neither does anything else. No spell levels, no PSP’s, no potions, no wand charges, etc etc etc. If MP saved the expenditure of tangible materials that would raise definite questions of it’s balance. But, it doesn’t because nothing does.

I don’t think a group that doesn’t take multiple uses of Murderous Precision is compromising itself. Odds are the fight would have ended in exactly the same way without it.

That is, in a way, kind of a blessing. For most of a group’s outcomes whether they are highly efficient or tremendously silly won’t greatly affect their long-term outcomes. The Silly Nannies should probably step carefully during BI’s, but otherwise they’re probably fine. That’s not such a bad thing at all -I love low-stakes fluff investment, I think it’s just more fun.

Yet I wonder if that doesn’t make cases like Murderous Precision seem unfairly effective.

+1 in agreement with Scott.