[3e] Awareness advantage at 15 points - Overpowered or Useless?

[Sekkira]

I've recently plonked a character into an established campaign with the concept that it can see the world beyond normal sight and have the appropriate artistic skill to paint this.

I added Spirit Sight (from here), Second Sight and Awareness. Initially, I was trying to push for the 35 point Awareness for the ability to see auras, but it was deemed too powerful for the character. This is a bit disconcerting being pushed to the 15 point version of the advantage as the description is rather vague in terms of what it can and can't do.

Mage: The Ascension allows a character to pinpoint the location and power of nearby Talismans, people's Karmic balance, mental state and more! The Compendium I generalises this to a magic item, mental state and anything else the GM allows.

I've tried checking the conversions to 4th edition of GURPS to see if had been clarified for the later edition, instead, it seems both Second Sight and Awareness (15 point) have been translated to a new advantage called Detect (10 points and 30 points respectively). Which is great in the way it's more detailed in what it can do, but trying to put Awareness into those specifications would make Second Sight redundant. Spirit Sight isn't even mentioned in the official books (as far as I'm aware), but also seemed to be made redundant with this attempted conversion.

The group and GM are sticking with 3rd Edition for now, so doing a straight conversion of systems with the characters aren't being considered yet. However, I'd still like to be able to find some sort of use for the 15 point Awareness that is clearly layed out as to not cross and replace other advantages such as Empathy or left open to interpretation to technically play the character as "Aware of EVERYTHING".

Does anybody have any advice/input into this?

[Refplace]

See invisible (spirits) or medium with the enhancements.

Awareness was IIRC a specific setting power so outside that settign your not going to find exactly the same thing.
I lost my Mage conversion books in a move so cant look it up but ...hold on let me check Compendium...
OK Awareness is a detect pure and simple in 4E and one with vague at the level you bought it. I don't see why you cant go with whats written. Is your problem the GM gets to decide whats detectable? Its just a detect magic and supernatural powers, entities and effects.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Awareness was IIRC a specific setting power so outside that settign your not going to find exactly the same thing.

This is essentially true. What Awareness does is highly dependent on the setting assumptions. Awareness is at it's best in a secret magic/supernatural horror/monster hunters style game, where it's assumed that the masses are essentially unaware of what is going on behind the veil of reality. In an magic-is-common fantasy game, it'll be sorta useful but nothing special. In a straight mundane campaign, it's essentially useless (though I'd throw it into a game set in The Matrix without hesitation, although there it represents an awareness of the simulation.)

Unfortunately, I've usually played the 15-point version as dealing more with intuitive, gut-feeling, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck sensations rather than sight. So I'd be hard pressed to allow a character with Awareness to draw or paint what he sees, because what he sees with his eyes isn't all that different from what other people see. It's just that, while all he *sees* is a simple clay cup - the same cup everyone else sees - the Aware character just intuitively *knows* that this cup isn't some ceramics student's weekend project. It's much, much more important than that.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Sekkira

Does anybody have any advice/input into this?

Just ask your GM whether it will do anything, and if so, what?

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Sekkira

Does anybody have any advice/input into this?

For my Weird WWII campaign, I reduced the range to (IQ) yards (I found the range in the advantage description rather unplayable). Awareness allows the characters (two of them) to sense the location and relative power of spirits in range, as well as enchanted items. It also can sense the benevolence or malevolence of the spirit, if it is strong enough either way. Unless the spirit manifests on it's own (or the characters -- also mages -- summon it to make it manifest), the characters rarely see anything more than an indistinct translucent blob.

If you have access, the Hellboy RPG has an alternative way of handling Awareness (as a psionic power) that may be helpful.

[Sekkira]

The Hellboy RPG seems to make more sense as with your description, copeab. What was throwing me off initially about the advantage was the "anything else the GM allows" part, which is almost incredibly vague as it gave two unrelated descriptions of what Awareness could do previously - hinting that it's quite possible to bull**** your way through anything with the advantage and a lot of questions could be wasted on barraging the GM with a bunch of questions of whether your character is able to do whatever you felt like the situation presented.

It seems to me that the best way to use it in this case on the character is to bring the two advantages (Spirit Sight and Second Sight) together as well as giving the capability to discern a lot more about what they're seeing.

[Mithlas]

Within single-digit meters tends to be "nearby" whether they give exact numbers or not.

Not knowing anything about Mage: the Ascension, there's little else I can think to comment and contrast.