Failing to activate a power: is one power point still spent?

[Jim1]

If a character fails to activate a power are zero Power Points spent? Or is it still the minimum of one Power Point?

[PEGClint]

If a character fails to activate a power are zero Power Points spent? Or is it still the minimum of one Power Point?

It usually costs 1 PP. Per Activation in the Powers chapter, "A roll less than 4 means the power doesn’t activate. The caster spends one Power Point regardless of any Edges such as Channeling, unless the ability specifically says it reduces the minimum cost to 0."

So unless the character specifically has an ability that says, "It costs 0 PPs to activate this power," a failure costs a PP. Now, a character could use Shorting to reduce the cost of a power to 0 PPs, but in that case, any failure counts as a critical failure resulting in Backlash, not simply the loss of 1 PP.

Hope that helps.