Hoihoi!
A new player who will enter my campaign rolled trasnmutation for his character. His idea is to use it as a buff ability to give himself and others wings, gills, armor etc. In principle this seems to be easy but I am stuck at the costs for the ability.
Is it possible to refrain from the save roll against transmutation? This way the effect would stay active as long as the target is willing to have it - otherwise it would be necessary to take the "stays active" modifier - but how exactly is the interaction between stays active and the save rolls? If you take it as an attack ability and make it permanent you would circumvent the save roll - thus making the ability incredibly powerful. Third option would be to take "duration" and extend the time between saves. This would also be quite expensive ... Any ideas on how to handle it without skyrocketing costs or completely tipping the game balance?
Sorry, I just found the other topic that partially solves the question. So you can skip the attack if you don't resist the attack but the recovery save will automatically end the buff as soon as it is successful.
So do you have a recommendation how to use it as a buff without being too expensive?
My personal feeling is that a target should be able to voluntarily skip their Save. Transmutation costs a lot of Power and handing out buffs will quickly drain the user. The Power cost of Transmutation could be bought down, but I feel that's fair because it costs 2.5 CPs per step on the Reduced PR chart. If your players are gaining all sorts of Abilities for long periods of time, you might want to set a cap on it. Have them expire after X minutes, or at the end of combat, etc.
I'm glad to see other players are interested in using Transmutation for buffing their teammates. It's a very cool use of a little used Ability. Good luck!
