Gadgets as Alternate Abilities

[AlexanderHowl]

So, I was wondering if anyone had played with gadgets as alternate abilities (not gadgets with alternate abilities but, instead, an alternate ability that manifests as gadget when used). I do not see particular reason why it would not work, other than the inconvenience of having a stolen/destroyed gadget crippling the associated power until it is replaced, but I do not believe that I have seen it done. What about you, have you seen a gadget as an alternate ability of a non-gadget ability (or visa versa)?

[Anaraxes]

The concept as stated doesn't really make that much sense to me.

I can picture a bunch of gadgets as AAs; Inspector Gadget himself generally only gets to use one a time, after all. Or a morphing "single" gadget that just has multiple functions, like Larry Niven's "The Soft Weapon".

But mixing a gadget with a non-gadget ability is a little strange. AAs are supposed to model a single conceptual ability or power that can be used in mechanically different ways. They're not just a point crock to make abilities cheaper. Starting off with two abilities that are conceived and described as deriving from different sources doesn't seem to lend itself to that model.

How do you see these two abilities as being aspects of the same thing with different applications?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, I was wondering if anyone had played with gadgets as alternate abilities (not gadgets with alternate abilities but, instead, an alternate ability that manifests as gadget when used)

Well the primary barrier is I don't see any easy way to conceptualize a set of alternate powers where some but not all of them are based on a gadget. But if you could present me with a case where it makes sense, I wouldn't say no just because of the names used.

I am pretty strict about stuff like Gadget and especially Alternate Abilities, that seem to function almost entirely to lower costs by an unreasonably large degree, to the extent I'm skeptical of even some of the "official" ones (well actually more like *most* of them), so it would need to be pretty convincing, but maybe you can come up with one that makes sense.

Note that I do insist on playing up the risks of something being a gadget, and in this case if something happens to it, you could easily lose all the AAs for long stretches, or forever. So I might discourage you from doing it so that something that I'm just about obligated to force to have happen sometime in the game, in order to justify that big discount, doesn't end up crippling your character concept when it does turn up.

Conversely I might slash the discount instead. By a lot. If it doesn't *exist* most of the time, and hence is usually invulnerable to being stolen, don't expect full value for Can Be Stolen, or if it's something you'd rarely use in combat and hence isn't ever going to be present to be vulnerable to damage, then if it has enough durability to survive being dropped or some other plausible accident that might come up when you are using it, it doesn't earn anything for Breakable either.

[Culture20]

There are quite a few Anime where the characters have personal abilities which can coalesce as a magic weapon of great power. In one, the characters each have an ally which changes into the gadgets! In Marvel, Magick’s soulsword might be similar, except she seems to be able to do magic with the sword invoked.
The danger I see is that if your gadget is stolen or broken, you also lose any AA advantages.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

In this sort of situation I might encourage the player to take a lesser Limitation along the lines of "Can be temporarily disarmed (i.e. shut off)" with a duration that represents some kind of narrative time-limit during which their power/gadget will be away from them. So they're guaranteed to get their power back eventually just by strict mechanics.

I acknowledge this is a very non-simulationist way to do things.

[khorboth]

I had a gadgeteer-type super who had two super-suits as alternate-ability gadgets. One 6' tall 50lbs suit for frequent use and one 15' tall 2 ton suit which was mostly a tank. I only had one set of abilities or the other.

If a super-suit was statted as powers with gadget limiter, then I could see some personal powers being unavailable when in the suit. Maybe striker, innate attacks, and some sensory abilities could be in one package with the suit in the other.

As a simpler idea... magic sunglasses give protected vision but negate innate night vision.

As a GM, I'd heavily monitor what is discounted and what is full price to make sure they are really exclusive and similar.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, I was wondering if anyone had played with gadgets as alternate abilities (not gadgets with alternate abilities but, instead, an alternate ability that manifests as gadget when used). I do not see particular reason why it would not work, other than the inconvenience of having a stolen/destroyed gadget crippling the associated power until it is replaced, but I do not believe that I have seen it done. What about you, have you seen a gadget as an alternate ability of a non-gadget ability (or visa versa)?

Such a power would be very strange and hard to justify. But not impossible. The idea that comes to mind is that the gadget is in fact the source of the characters power, but usually the gadget is actually buried inside the body making it impossible to steal without some kind of major surgery. But for a certain special purpose the character can summon the source of their power making it vulnerable to attack.

[dataweaver]

I think the most logical explanation for such a power would be, say, the ability to concentrate your chi into a physical blade. With “Breakable”, damaging the blade would cripple your power; with “Can be Stolen”, the chi in the blade would be in a stable configuration that can exist independently from you, and even used by others; but you can't reabsorb the chi into your body unless you have possession of the blade.

[Daigoro]

Another possibility is nanotech- usually residing in the body for enhancing strength and endurance, but you can extrude all your nanobots T-1000-like to make an external weapon. You need to reabsorb them to regain their internal powers.

[dataweaver]

Or project mental energy to form a stable astral construct.

These are all different ways of describing the same concept, but with different Power Modifiers (Chi, Nanotech, and Psionics, respectively): namely, you have the ability to externalize the source of your power, making it sharable but also vulnerable to being harmed and/or taken from you.

I wonder: could whoever takes it from you absorb it into his or her body, in effect switching it to another ability after taking it?