01-18-2019, 12:51 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ft Collins, CO
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Invoking Limitations
So if I were a GM running a Supers game, and some of my players took their super powers with the limitation "Super -10%", and say I wanted to use that to deactivate their powers, how would I go about that?
Obviously, I could just handwave a 'non-super' field and call it good. What if I wanted to construct a gadget that would target that limitation in a large area? Is that using powers like Static? Neutralize? Neither seems a particularly good fit out of the box. Am I missing something here? |
01-18-2019, 01:05 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: Invoking Limitations
The standard "Super" power limitation is composed of -5% for the existence of "anti-powers", paranormal abilities that can cancel abilities with it, and -5% for power-neutralizing technology. The first would definitely include Static and Neutralize, but would also include things like Affliction (Negated Advantage, Flight with the Super limitation) and other builds like that. The second means that it's possible to build devices and technology that can shut down abilities that anyone with the appropriate technical training can use.
So if Super, -10% is a thing you allow in your setting, it implies that characters like Rogue or Leech exist in the setting, and that even enemies without superpowers of their own could deploy "power dampeners" or something like that to potentially shut down the heroes' abilities. As to how to deploy them, bear in mind that you don't have to build everything with points, particularly if they're not characters at all, but rather equipment. You can just say that Null-Woman emits a power-dampening field that forces everyone within 100 yards to roll against Will or lose all their abilities with the Super limitation, without specifically working out how much that would cost or which modifiers to use on the Neutralize ability. |
01-18-2019, 01:09 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Invoking Limitations
Super is intended to imitate the way things work in the comics. For example, during the Justice League's trial run, close to 60 years ago, five of the members—Aquaman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, and Wonder Woman—experienced momentary shutdowns of their powers. (Fortunately, Aquaman wasn't hundreds of fathoms under water!) It turned out that there was a criminal scientist, Professor Ivo, who had constructed an android, Amazo, as a controllable vehicle for superpowers, and he needed to use some sort of ray to tap their abilities and confer them on Amazo. Now, this made no sense, because Aquaman's and the Martian Manhunter's abilities were racial traits—they weren't modified humans—and Wonder Woman's were, well, Divine, and Green Lantern's came from a device. But to the comics writers they were all "super" and could be nullified, or swapped around, or stolen by a device.
So you can either look at the devices in Psi-Tech for doing those things with psi, and adapt them to work with super; or do Neutralize or Static or maybe an Affliction with Gadget modifiers, and figure out what level of invention you want it to be. Either way it's going to be kind of handwavy. Or you can not use Super. I wrote a Pyramid article a while back that presented a timeline with over a dozen power modifiers for "supers" of different sorts; I think it's Pyramid #102. In some ways that's more comic-booky, in that supers don't all have the same origin or power source.
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01-18-2019, 01:15 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Invoking Limitations
I think those limitations are supposed to exist where abilities can be from different sources. If it's a supers campaign, and everyone's powers are from the supers source, then it's sort of meaningless.
If for example, someone's power is from psionics, and they can read thoughts, their target might have a resistance that works against psionics, but not magic... and the guy that can read thoughts magically won't go up against the resistance. Or a neutralize might only work on magic, but not psionics. |
01-18-2019, 01:23 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: Invoking Limitations
That's not necessarily the case at all. Super, for example, just needs to have abilities and devices that can negate it. It doesn't say anything about whether or not other types of powers can be negated. Even if Super is the only power source in the world, the fact that someone with a power neutralizer collar or the Null-supers ability can shut down those abilities makes them more limited than unmodified abilities, which is what they're being compared against.
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01-18-2019, 02:12 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Invoking Limitations
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Even where it would be the case, it's useful to know what abilities they have without use of their powers if those can be taken away for any reason. |
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01-19-2019, 12:18 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Invoking Limitations
I just mean that if "super" is the only power source, it's a campaign feature, not something characters should get points back for. Whether or not there are things that can resist or shut down a super power is up to the GM at that point.
I'm also not a big fan of the power sources in general. It feels like the kind of thing that leads to Players vs GM very easily. It's one of the things that happened when I ran a high point campaign a long time ago. The characters were so powerful that really nothing was a challenge, and to challenge them I would find things to negate their abilities. Those are the things the players paid points for... negating those abilities so that their characters have a challenge is a broken way to do things that feels antagonistic to me. So, having an official way in the rules for GMs to screw over the characters feels weird to me. And seeing it used to make abilities cheaper feels wrong to me too. The only way for those points to mean anything is if the GM specifically does something to screw over the characters. Maybe there's a gray area in the middle I'm not seeing... I just don't like it. |
01-19-2019, 12:48 PM | #8 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: Invoking Limitations
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01-19-2019, 01:19 PM | #9 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Invoking Limitations
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Tags |
limitations, powers, supers |
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