Mirror-like combat talents?

I'm not sure if this belongs in the monster's section or here...

Our DM made a Changeling opponent, which had the following ability:

[0] Echo – Immediate Reaction
Trigger - An enemy takes a standard action.
You may copy that standard action, paying the pip cost.

If said changeling used this on... Say [+1] Gather Energy... Would they also gain the PiPs?

This is quite annoying to encounter if they can copy it.

Snagging Roots wrote:I'm not sure if this belongs in the monster's section or here...

Our DM made a Changeling opponent, which had the following ability:

[0] Echo – Immediate Reaction
Trigger - An enemy takes a standard action.
You may copy that standard action, paying the pip cost.

If said changeling used this on... Say [+1] Gather Energy... Would they also gain the PiPs?

This is quite annoying to encounter if they can copy it.

Assumedly, yes, if that's exactly what the ability says. Paying the PiP cost includes [+] moves, as far as I can recall. However, it might be a little imbalanced in that regard, considering you could just do it constantly, miming everything the party does. After all, a reaction doesn't cost your own standard action.
Perhaps something more like a Mirror Move might be better:
[0] Mirror Move
You perform the exact same standard action as the last move, as well as paying its PiP cost.

I think an easy way to balance this is to make it usable only once per round?

It could make for an interesting boss encounter, if your PCs have the means to deal with it. You can exploit status effects, reactions (and other free actions), and group-target healing spells to keep ahead of him. If you've got some clever players with the right talents (like, say, Confusion), it could give them an excellent opportunity to show off.

If your DM throws multiple enemies with this move (as written) against you in a single fight, you're probably justified if you punch him. But a once-per-round limitation sounds like it would be pretty balanced for general use.

I would have made it so that the changeling stores the move for later use, and maybe gets 1 or 2 pips when it does so. Then on it's turn it could hit you with the move you just used. It would turn into something of a puzzle game as your party decides what move to allow the changeling to use and what to finish it off with. Hmm, maybe I'll use something like that in my next ponytales session.

But yeah, as for the original question, the wording of Echo is very unfair if you are fighting more than one of them, although I'm sure the DM didn't intend for it to be that way.

Xel Unknown wrote:I think an easy way to balance this is to make it usable only once per round?

Perhaps make it a free action, then.