I completely agree. But that's why I think it's "unbalanced". Again, it's not the power level that's out of control in this case - it's been limited nicely. But that all justmakes it more and more interesting. In Hero System, when building a power, the total cost of the power is based on the limitations that it has reducing the cost - so, in this case, you'd be making it purchaseable from a cost perspective. But it would still be illegal, becuase it would violate what's called the "Active Point Limit", which is the cap on how powerful a power can be if it's limitations do not apply. Which will sometimes be the case. Basically what they noted is that limitations make a power more interesting, but not less desirable.
Now that's an analysis from the power standpoint, but the principle holds across to the general potence of an ability to make a protagonist of a character. That is, the rules in HQ make characters of roughly equal levels of interest. This power is just a step more interesting. Think of it this way, even if I had a character with all sorts of Advanced Experience, who had abilities that equalled the animists in power, he would still be less interesting, because his abilities wouldn't have all the nifty detail hung on it.
This is not a game breaker or anything, because HQ makes it easy to make a protagonist out of any character. But it's certainly an odd anomaly, IMO.
Mike
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