[Powers] [Weird] New ability / power / style ideas and builds

[whswhs]

The weird science style I worked on seriously for P:tW, and gave up on because I was finding it too hard to make sense of, was Harmonics: The style based on the arithmetic of fractions and the application of resonance sonic frequencies. It would have included sonic levitation, as in Fantasy-Tech, and sonic destruction of buildings a la Tesla or Joshua, and esoterica like hearing the music of the spheres (probably a perk).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I can't imagine being able to do that. I would need the option in Gnosis:

If you have too little information to define the alternatives, you can still roll, but at ‑5 to IQ or skill.

Mind you, I'll stipulate that there are people who can come up with that sort of list. I just don't think that way.

IME what Intuition helps with is sorting through ideas and knowing whether you need to come up with more. Say I have 3 ideas, I can roll at -3 (presumably 3 bad answers and 1 good answer) to see if any one of the ideas is good, or if a different course is required (although that gives no details about what that new course needs to be).
In gaming groups where few ideas are proposed, it's not very useful, even though it still helps with Ladies and Tigers.

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you take that literally, it seems to make Intuition unplayable. In the kind of situation where you would want to apply it, you're not going to be able to count on coming up with the option that's valid; you may not have any idea what the options could be. If a character of mine took it, I would expect to spend a lot of time with the GM saying, "What do you think it could be?" and my saying, "I don't know enough to have an opinion." Of course that's why I would never take Intuition; it rather baffles me that anyone would.

I don't really get how you came to this conclusion. If intuition is allowed to answer open-ended questions, it seems to me like it would take away a lot of the decision-making and planning parts of the game with questions like "What should I do next?", "Where should I get my next clue?", "How do I overcome this challenge?", which doesn't seem particularly fun to me.

I run a campaign where several PCs have it and they get good use out of it with questions like "Is taking this job offer wise?", "Should we go through the mountain pass or around the mountains?" and "Can I trust this man not to stab me in the back?". This winds up feeling like an intuitive character: they get hunches about options in front of them like "I got a bad feeling about those mountains" and the like without spontaneously being like "I have a hunch that if we go into the nuclear power plant down the street, we'll find something useful". I'm pretty sure they can get their [15] worth.

[Refplace]

I let Intuition be used for Lady/Tiger choices and several PCs found that enjoyable and even critical for deathtraps, bombs and the like.
I also let it be used in a more abstract way, especially when there too many choices and I didn't require the Player to come up with the list all the time. That my more impulsive players liked as when the other players were taking too long to plan they could just jump in and not always make a total botch of it.
Also it was good for occasionally just moving things along.

[Fred Brackin]

I've got one from the Lensman setting. It would be called Pure Thought or something like that that. It would be similar to Logos in some respects but not quite a direct match.

All abilities of Pure Thought would count as Cosmic as they are the result of achieving a transcendent state of ability rather than learning an esoteric body of knowledge.. Also, there are few limitations and no real countermeasures.

We would begin with 2 related but minor powers of The Lens. The first would be a slot of Cosmic Modular Abilities limited to the One Way fluency or One Way Literacy Perk.

Yje anility to communicate with a living min d regardless of language barriers is the Universal Enhancement on Telesend or Mind Reading. and would appear to be a universal characteristic of those Traits in this setting.

However, the Lends has an unlimited ability to translate the written or spoken word even when no one possessing the knowledge to do so is within the Lensbeing's telepathic range.

Presumably only archaeologists would freak out over the ability to sight read Linear B but intelligence agencies and possibly some GMs might have a cow over the related ability to ee through any sort of encryption.

What it looks like to me is True Sight(Encryption) and while Doc Smith may not have known about the concept of one time pads I can think of no reason why they should come any closer to frustrating the Lens than an Enigma machine would. This is simply not any sort of conventional cryptographic process. It's a Cosmic ability to pierce any attempt to hide the meaning of any intelligent message. I am getting a cost of at least 30 pts.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

What it looks like to me is True Sight(Encryption) and while Doc Smith may not have known about the concept of one time pads I can think of no reason why they should come any closer to frustrating the Lens than an Enigma machine would. This is simply not any sort of conventional cryptographic process. It's a Cosmic ability to pierce any attempt to hide the meaning of any intelligent message. I am getting a cost of at least 30 pts.

It's at least very closely akin to what Hyperliteracy does, though Hyperliteracy relies on writing symbols that function as active universal translation algorithms. I'm not sure what cost to assign to its working on things that have been intentionally encrypted.

In First Lensman, Jack Kinnison reads a set of coded instructions taken from a pair of streetwalker/spies; she exclaims that that code is unbreakable. It could plausibly have been a one-time pad, as they were in use when Smith was writing and were unbreakable if used properly.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I've got one from the Lensman setting. It would be called Pure Thought or something like that that. It would be similar to Logos in some respects but not quite a direct match.

All abilities of Pure Thought would count as Cosmic as they are the result of achieving a transcendent state of ability rather than learning an esoteric body of knowledge.. Also, there are few limitations and no real countermeasures.

We would begin with 2 related but minor powers of The Lens. The first would be a slot of Cosmic Modular Abilities limited to the One Way fluency or One Way Literacy Perk.

Yje anility to communicate with a living min d regardless of language barriers is the Universal Enhancement on Telesend or Mind Reading. and would appear to be a universal characteristic of those Traits in this setting.

However, the Lends has an unlimited ability to translate the written or spoken word even when no one possessing the knowledge to do so is within the Lensbeing's telepathic range.

Presumably only archaeologists would freak out over the ability to sight read Linear B but intelligence agencies and possibly some GMs might have a cow over the related ability to ee through any sort of encryption.

What it looks like to me is True Sight(Encryption) and while Doc Smith may not have known about the concept of one time pads I can think of no reason why they should come any closer to frustrating the Lens than an Enigma machine would. This is simply not any sort of conventional cryptographic process. It's a Cosmic ability to pierce any attempt to hide the meaning of any intelligent message. I am getting a cost of at least 30 pts.

I tend to see the language-translation and code-breaking as two separate abilities. The former is easily bought as Omnilingual. The latter I wanted to ask how to build, and I do like your See Invisible/True Sight solution. That was actually one of the two effects of Discerning Savant's Eye (a weird ability from another system that I was curious how to build).
And now that the idea is in the air, I'd like to propose True Sight (See through garbled messages, such as scratched clay tableds, jamming in a radio transmission etc.).

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And now that the idea is in the air, I'd like to propose True Sight (See through garbled messages, such as scratched clay tableds, jamming in a radio transmission etc.).

Well True Sight is an enhancement for Invisibility that covers deliberate obscuration so its the most fitting thing I can think of at the moment.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And now that the idea is in the air, I'd like to propose True Sight (See through garbled messages, such as scratched clay tableds, jamming in a radio transmission etc.).

Working from cause and/or intent. True sight was the choice for negating attempted deception.

Garbled transmission is presumably non-intentional and the Power I would use to bypass it would be Psychometry. You'd get a good Limitation (Aspected?) for how specialized the power is but I think you might need a +50% Cosmic for the way the power would be trying to read only the message's "past" (it might even be Timespanning) while ignoring the differences in space between points of transmission and reception.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Working from cause and/or intent. True sight was the choice for negating attempted deception.

Garbled transmission is presumably non-intentional and the Power I would use to bypass it would be Psychometry. You'd get a good Limitation (Aspected?) for how specialized the power is but I think you might need a +50% Cosmic for the way the power would be trying to read only the message's "past" (it might even be Timespanning) while ignoring the differences in space between points of transmission and reception.

Well, that interpretation changes the nature of the power. It's meant to make the character immune to garbling. Person speaking with a thick accent (but not a different dialect). Damaged clay tablets. Water-soaked map. Jammed or natural static interfering on a radio transmission. Person trying to speak with a damaged tongue and voicebox or jaws. That sort of thing.