Not sure if this belongs here or in a different section, but…
What are your takes on the Whisper’s Channel special ability? What do you think it can actually do? What is this “magnitude” that’s referenced?
My suggestion:
The use of channel works in a very similar way to flashbacks. With a flashback you can set up an opportunity, and usually the more beneficial the opportunity, the less likely you would have had a clear chance to do it (I’d say the two are related, but not in any way dependent on each other). Instead of going back to make an opportunity, you are creating one out of channeled electroplasma on the spot. So, by taking stress you can use skills that you normally wouldn’t be able to (such as creating a blast of lightning to cause havok and justify making a mayhem roll). The first time you manifest a particular use of channel you take one stress more than you would have normally. You can negate this by spending downtime activity to work through a 6-10 clock (depending on the magnitude). Finally, you can use it to increase your own scale by increasing the magnitude (1, 2, and 4 respectively).
What are your suggestions and ideas?
I had to make a ruling on this during my last session. I probably got it completely wrong, but we made channeling essentially a new effect whose dots were determined at roll-time by how much stress was spent. Since it describes 0-4 stress, I took this to mean that if the player did not want to spend stress on the effect, they could go with a 0 dot effect. He still had to complete the action as normal but got to describe the effect as supernatural. Pretty simple and it worked well.
Nice. I recall thinking about doing that but my group then questioned what sort of actions could be completed. How is your group limiting the scope?
Since I used it as an effect, it simply worked the same way any other effect would, except dealing with magic. He wanted to create a flame that he could use as an attack so he used murder as the action and succeeded. He added one stress-dot to the effect (he already had a fine instrument) and rolled 2d for the effect. If I recall correctly, it was a 4 seg result which was inline with the narrative.
That sounds awesome. I think I’m going to bring this method up with my group