[Kallatari]

I'm about to start up an Infinite Worlds campaign, and I was wondering the same thing. Not in the sense of how they play or how Infinity reacts to it, but rather in the sense of game mechanics in how the power sources are affected in different worldlines.

Currently, the two official (as in fully described beyond just casual mention) Infinite World power sources work as follows:

Magic: Affected by Mana, which varies from world to world. Every world description indicates the local mana level, therefore you know how it works. There are several no-mana, low-mana worlds, and normal mana worlds. There are only a few high- and very-high mana worlds (just 1 of the latter that I recall). Exact numbers aren't really relevant; the point is mana levels - and thus magic availability - will likely change every time the mage changes worlds.

Psionics: Appears to be universal in that it works equally in all worlds, with rare exceptions noted. Even these exceptions tend to be ability specific: e.g., Jumper-based powers have difficulty working to get out of some world. So, a psi who changes worlds can be pretty confident that his powers will continue to work as normal.

So what about the others? Should Divine Favor be universal just like psionics? What if you are from a world that actually has local gods (Orichaculm, for example, actually has the Greek gods and Infinity does its best to avoid them). Would their Divine favor only work in that world? Would a Divine Favor to the Christian God work in every other world but not in Orichalcum because of the Greek gods (i..e., no Sanctity)? Would it work in worlds where the timeline predates the Christian religion? Or should I just randomly pick Sanctity levels in different worlds, sort of like the mana level? Do I need to pick them for every religion/god?

What about Supers as a power origin? Do they only work in worlds with supers, or every world equally? The list goes on for Elemental, Chi, Nature, etc.

At the moment, I'm leaning toward every other power source effectively being universal. I view Supers as just a variation of Psionics. Also, with the Cabal-multiverse in the background of Infinite Worlds, this means the various gods can technically reach all worlds, so Divine Favor should be universal. Besides, if I only make Divine Favor work where the gods are actually active, I've basically rendered it useless in 99% of the worlds. Anyway, I reserve the right for one-off exceptions, like psi, but characters can be pretty sure their powers will work as is almost everywhere.

My one dislike of this is it makes mana-based magic seem second-hand compared to everything else. There are several no-mana worlds, but nothing specifically stopping other power sources. To sort of back this up, none of draft characters submitted for my review have taken Magic as the power source, but I have four characters with four different power sources other than magic. I guess that's just a feature of the setting, but was wondering if others have any other thoughts on that.

(Note: I want to exclude any debates along skill-based vs. powers-based, because many power sources can now be bought either way; e.g. Magery spells vs Sorcery; clerical magic vs Divine Favor; chi skills vs chi powers (as defined in a pyramid article). This shouldn't be a factor in deciding in which worlds they work on.)

Anyway, those were my thoughts and questions. Anyone else make any decisions on how other power sources worked on different worlds in their campaigns?