Choosing not to use hyperstats?

[easl]

Hey all, a few questions. Apologies if these have been covered in the archives, that link seems to be dead.

1. Can you choose not to use a hyperstat? I'm thinking specifically of a situation where a talent with hypercoordination, low on will, wants to shoot another talent, and to prevent a loss of will/contest of wills the shooter would rather just use their 'normal' pool.

2. Related to shooting talents with guns, do hyperskills like pistol trigger a contest of wills? What about the hyperskill of throwing? Is this like hypercoord in that it "targets" another talent or is it like hyperbody in that it lets you grab and heft an object better? (Personally I find the whole distinction wierd.)

And now a few unrelated questions:
3. If a talent has comic-book-style x-ray vision, looks through a wall, and sees an ubermenschen, does the ubermenechen know he's being watched via talent detection?

4. Detection at base cost: does this allow the talent to choose to detect different things with every use, or does it mean that when designing the talent you may choose any one specific thing that you can detect?

5. Is there a limit to the number of spray dice you can have in a Harm pool? It seems very cheesy to make a Harm power with tons of extras (i.e. electrocuting+splash+burn+spray for 13/26/52), take 1 die of it, and then buy 4 other spray dice at 3 points each.

thanks!

[countrysamurai]

Here's my take. I'm by no means an expert.

1. A talent doesn't have to use a hyperstat if he doesn't want to.
2. Hyperskills in pistol do trigger contest of will.
3. A talent with x-ray vision can see an ubermenschen without him knowing he's being watched.
4.Talents can detect different things with every use.
5. Yes that is cheesy. Hand the player a Munchkin degree.

[Gustav]

2. I would say that using the hyper skill throwing would trigger a contest of wills. The talent is using his skill to hit you rather than affect the object he is throwing at you. I think its pretty well explained on p.96 i the MRB. But yeah, it get a bit unintuitvie now and again.

5. I would limit the number of ranks in spray to the levev of Harm. I've avvtually had the same thougths about the limiting the number of spray dice a character can add to his roll to his stat+skill. Reflecting that he is just not skilled enough to take full advantage of his weapons high rate of fire or to compensate for the recoil.

[Shane Ivey]

I don't allow players to use more dice of Spray than they have dice in the original attack, whether it's Harm or a machine gun. If you have 3d in your Coordination + Machine Gun pool and a gun with Spray 6, you only get to add three of the Spray dice because that's how many dice you started with.