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Old 02-17-2019, 03:46 PM   #1
fengmd
 
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Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: USA
Default Reality Bending Power/Ability

Hi everyone, I'm still fairly new to tabletop gaming and GURPS, but I'm definitely interested in learning more, which is why I've found these forums/fora and people I've met through them very helpful.

So here's my problem: I've been struggling to adapt a power/ability from a show to GURPS 4E because I can't decide on the best/most efficient way of doing that. I've looked in Psionic Powers, Powers, Basic Set, here, and fiddled around in GCA trying to figure out/make the ability work without much success.

The ability is a kind of speech-based reality bending/causal manipulation in which the user of the ability says to an enemy something, like, "your attacks won't work on me," which then makes the enemy's attacks useless. One idea someone had when I asked them about this was to create an affliction with the advantage insubstantial that had a trigger of "only when attacking me."

I liked that, and was going to try working on something like it, but then I saw a comment on the 100+ Points Abilities (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=19605&page=9 ) thread by "Der Wanderer." Yes, I know that comment was made 13 years ago and a lot has happened to the game since then, but I am wondering if the stuff in that comment could be updated to do what I asked about in terms of changing reality based on what another person hears, similar to what Der Wanderer was suggesting with his Words of God ability.

Anyhow, I messed around with his idea in GCA a little because I wanted to get the cost down a little. If possible, I don't want this ability to cost an astronomical amount of CP, and if it must cost a lot of CP, that's fine too because I still want to learn more about how the mechanics of making things in the game works.

For the mind control ability I dropped the AOE and made it LOS (which I probably don't need if it's based on hearing?) because I want the ability to only affect one person at a time. I thought about decreasing the duration down to x100 because I didn't think the effect needed to be permanent, but then I realized that if the ability was used to heal someone else, that would also be temporary. I also thought about adding a -20% limitation of , "must be heard and understood in the language being spoken."

Then for the cosmic slotted abilities, I didn't know if 100 pts was any more useful than having 50 points to do what the character might want to manipulate, so I lowered that. I also wanted the cosmic modular ability stuff to only be usable/triggered by using the mind control ability. How would I do that? Would that be an accessibility limitation to just the spoken word ability or something else? I did include ATR, the +6 Will, and Compartmentalized Mind as Der Wanderer described in his post. I was a little confused about creating the Power Talent, but I did make one called "Infinite Deception of Words (the name of the ability in the source I'm adapting it from)" with four points in it that cost 20 pts.

And that's where I stopped trying and decided to come here and ask for some help. I apologize if what I'm trying to do isn't making sense, but I'll try to explain it better if people ask me to.

Thanks for looking at my post and I appreciate any feedback you might have! :)
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