Wise Turtle Publishing

How, exactly, does Time Freeze work?

How do you want to describe it?

Mechanically it gives you bonus dice to roll initiative and off sets dice penalties for multiple actions. Also it gives you a bonus in tests of quickness or speed, or give opponents a penalty.

For example Cho the magical girl must fight Yoshiro and his pesky ninjas. She has time freeze 3.

So Cho rolls 5d6 for initiative 2 base +3 for Time Freeze.

In combat she decides to do a multiple attack Punching Yoshiro then kicking the Ninja in the face. Now normally she could take a -2 dice penalty next turn for doing that. But thanks to her Time Freeze +3 that penalty is ignored.

Hmmm.....OK thats about what i thought. It was the part where it says, "While this Ability requires you to perform an action", that confused me.

What it means is that to activate Time Freeze requires an action, rather than being passively effective. You have to wave your arms, press a button on a watch, or hold your breath before you can gain the benefits of Time Freeze.

However, because Time Freeze alleviates the multiple actions Penalty, you can activate it and go on with your round with a lessened, or nonexistent, Penalty.

Clay wrote:What it means is that to activate Time Freeze requires an action, rather than being passively effective. You have to wave your arms, press a button on a watch, or hold your breath before you can gain the benefits of Time Freeze.

However, because Time Freeze alleviates the multiple actions Penalty, you can activate it and go on with your round with a lessened, or nonexistent, Penalty.

This is useful information

I thought turning it on was a free action. That means if you don't have time freeze at least +3 it is almost worthless.

While +1 is admittedly an underwhelming effect (as most +1 Abilities are), at +2 you can gain a +2 or give a –2 for free, take an action, and then take another action for only a -1 Penalty. All in all, even at +1 it's more versatile than just taking Quick at the same Level.