Control Over Reality for Supers
 

So a concept I'm playing with for my upcoming Supers campaign, Aeon is the ability to "control reality" by some of the more powerful superbeings in the setting. I'm thinking the easiest way to do this is probably some combination of Super Luck + a form of God-Like Control (Reality). With the Control having a higher than normal base cost - at least 60 points. Regardless, how would you price this. Please no posts of "You're the GM, handwave it" I already know this, that's not what I'm asking. Thanks for anyone who reply!

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Serendipity!

IDHMBWM but serendipity lets something go your way once per session or something (I never use it). I would take that at a high enough level to justify having everything go your way all the time and then slap on the wildcard power modifier (x4 cost) and BAM!.

Anything they can think of that fits with bending reality (and fits withing the price range) they would be able to pull off, as long as they still have a usage of serendipity left.

This also gives a nice weakness if you can figure it out :D

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I'd go with a 100/lvl Create + Control. At that point cost, the limits are the imagination of the player, and the occasional GM saying "Umm, no."

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Serendipity...Hmmm. That's clever. Let's see. Something like...


Serendipity 1 (Game Time, +0%; PM, -10%; Reduced Time 14, +280%; Wishing, +100%) [71].


No, that's too cheap for being able to use Serendipity every 36 seconds... It does kind of prove that "Control (Reality)" is probably worth around 60 points though.

Hmmm. Interesting. So Control (Reality) + Create (anything) or something like that? Could you elaborate a bit please?

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Then don't allow Reduced Time on Serendipity. Require it to be bought in levels, or at least limit Reduced Time to 1-3 levels, then it won't be cheap.

As for Control (reality) [100] seems right to me. I would have the in-game effect give a +1 or -1 to all rolls the character can influence (generally anything they know is happening).

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I'm not worried too much about price, I'm just trying to get the details right. This is something that may end up published and I'd rather not have to renoddle the concept if I can just get it right the first time. I wonder if God-Like Control made into a Wildcard! Power might be another way to go. Hmmm.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

you forgot the wildcard part:

Serendipity 1 (Game Time, +0%; PM, -10%; Wishing, +100%; Cosmic, Godlike, +300%; Wildcard, x4) [294]

Once per (In game) week you can dictate what happens per level of this ability you can also use any other ability that can be explained as you use this ability. To use the ability more frequent buy more levels.


The Cosmic part is there so the user can make the implausible and impossible happen without the GM saying "No, No no no. NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!"

as far as I know you can not put reduce time on meta traits like Serendipity and Luck. you just have to buy more of it to use it more often.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

A few (lots) levels of the right power Talent, Ultrapower, a LOT of Will, and a FP pool several multiples of his natural FP score?

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

When I played Victory in a deities campaign, she had Visualization with Blessing, Affects Others (several, plus Area Affect 11 (2048 yard radius, effectively line of sight)), Reduced Time (down to instantaneous). Luck and Serendipity rounded out the build. It's all subtle reality control though, not anything that you'd expect from Q from Star Trek, a Genie, or Proteus from X-Men.
There's no good way to model "I'm co-GM, and if I roll well enough, I get to overrule the other co-GM" style of reality control.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I think a good opening question is 'what does controlling reality look like'.

(1)Is it a subtle manipulation of fate so that everything can go in the PCs favor (or against the PCs foes)?

(2)Is it the ability to warp the world- so that the PC can think 'X-box 360' really hard and get an X-box 360.

(3)Is it the ability to warp terrain in impressive, and occasionally horrifying, ways.

1- Visualization + cursing +blessing reduced time 6, + compartmentalized mind (only to visualize) will get you shaping fate

2- Snatcher+creation+permanent possibly with extra weight

3- Lots of ways to do this: Creatre/Control: Terrain; or affliction: morph (only to target the terrain)

Possibly put all three on the same character, or pick the most predominant way you want it to manifest and superpower it for the remainder.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Control + Create Reality. Levels improve mass and radius, with literally everything being valid. Time, space, matter, and energy are all covered under reality, and the only hard limitation is the GM saying no. Even the laws of physics have no say over your creations, and any character with sufficient levels to make a personal universe can write their own laws of physics!

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Hmmm. Thanks.

That's actually something I didn't think about. Nice catch, thank you.

Interesting. Thank you.

Good stuff, here. Thanks, Starslayer.

I like the other options quite a bit, but I really think defining new forms of Control and Create are probably the best way to go to achieve what I want to.

Thank you, everyone. I appreciate all of your help. :-)

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I had a similar idea for a character once and ended up using Ritual Path Magic. Start with Ritual Adept and add Cosmic (Irresistible) +300% to get a power that doesn't require Mana and can't be blocked or affected by regular magic (i.e. counter spells, magic resistance, etc), use Cosmic Talent for 15 points per level instead of Magery, have a high energy reserve, or better yet regeneration with Heals ER. I used Weird Science for the core skill and all the regular Path Skills as normal. You can also add in the Natural Caster Talent if you want. This will cost a lot of points, provide a rules framework so that it's easier to control what happens when some one alters reality, and provide a way for the different beings to specialize in different areas.
Hope this helps.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

From Probability Alteration in powers:

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

In the Supers game I'm currently playing in, my character has a Cosmic power, Wild Talent (Wild Ability), Ultrapower, and several Impulse Points.

The situation has to be desperate and all other options exhausted before she will use them (usually resulting in her rolling at -10 to perform the feat instantly), but so far she has:

• Shifted every explosive device within a hundred yards into another plane of existence.
• Generated a field of impenetrable Cosmic Static to neutralise the use of every power (except her own) within the hotel the fight was taking place in — permanently (or at least until the building was destroyed later in the campaign).
• Reached back in time and wiped an enemy's entire existence from history.
• Repeated her first feat on a thousand-odd simultaneous locations throughout the city of Chicago.

There's probably a couple other feats in there I've missed, and bound to be more to come — but that's a fair bit of reality control, there.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I believe Serendipity needs to be bought in levels. Reduced Time would be inappropriate. PK used it (Serendipity) in a build here on the forums and bought in levels, so that seems to give weight to that method. I'll see if I can find it...Here.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

The first thing I would is ask myself, "What does it mean to 'Control Reality'?". What can you do with that ability?

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Yes - I would like to hear more examples of how Ghostdancer intends this ability to be used...

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Sorry, guys. I'm doing renovations on my mother's house right now and it's EATING MY SOUL. DEAR GLOB PLEASE SEND HALP.

Ahem. To the point. I'm envisioning a super with the power to literally change reality around him. Say he wants the trees to bow down to him - he can do that. Say he wants to turn an abandoned building into a ice cream shop - he can do that. He can penalize or enhance dice rolls of anyone he can physically see. At the most highest levels he can do this for miles. And now that I described what "Control Reality" means to me, I'd be interested in seeing what it means to other posters.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Yep, definitely [100]/level for both Create and Control. If somebody is willing to pay for Destruction on their Create, I would allow them a Technique based on IA to pay 1 FP, and give their damage from Create the Cosmic: Irresistable Attack (+300%) enhancement, and describe the attack as literally erasing the target from reality.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Control of reality - For my purposes it doesn't have to be the dramatic Wish fulfullment of changing/rearranging matter to suit the whim of the controller. Besides how does the controller take care of all the myriad little details like what kind of art is on the wall and how long the steak knives in the drawer are?

I would prefer to limit it to changing the underlying rules of the physical universe for the making of exotic materials or applying that power to areas of space-time so that Things are Different in that area.

Like Ghostdancer, I know these things could be handwaved but I would prefer to have a points based means to act as a guide.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Some things that come to my mind when I hear of reality-control powers:

• Enable a skill-based task whose difficulty is supposed to be beyond the impossible. For instance, enabling an instant-use roll of Electronics Repair at -10, fixing a complicated device with a single touch instantly, avoiding the usual -9 cap.
• Parry an arrow with a well-written poem, or parry a good argument in a debate with a flick of a rapier.
• While lacking any equipment (even Improvised), disguise yourself as another person, and fool everybody in the classroom. Not shapeshift, not cast an optical and audial illusion, not mind-control people into misidentifying you. Disguise yourself. That's what makes it reality-bending.
• Change the local laws of nature. Say, change the laws of sociology in such a way that commanding more people becomes easier (like commanding few), while commanding few becomes difficult (like commanding many). Or making it so that there are more natural numbers than fractional numbers. Or make sound waves incapable of transfering symbolic meaning (the meaning becomes garbled even though the sounds are 100% 'undamaged').

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

I would use Syntactic Magic, from Thaumatology. Specifically, Realms and Power with one level and one realm, costing 300 points.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Now that is a neat idea.

EDIT: Personally I'd use the option to ignore energy costs and use penalties/margin of success instead, but that's a matter of personal taste. To me a reality warping super shouldn't tire after using his abilities, but they should be tricky to control. Through in a 10-point power talent that effects any rolls made as part of warping reality (including rolls to hit with floating magically-created swords, Aerobatics rolls to use those giant wings you made for yourself, etc.), and keep the idea of a Very Hard Skill to use your single realm, and you should have a workable system.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

As you did ask for it, when I think of "Control Reality" I think of Modular Abilities (Cosmic Power) Enhanced to produce any kind of Trait the user desires: physical, mental or social. Yes, that is ridiculously expensive but if you want to be able to reshape yourself, reshape your world and reshape the intangibles*. With the freedom to reinvest your CP you can tailor yourself to the situation and then tailor the situation to yourself.

Of course ultimately this is a non-answer: you need to know what traits you'll be creating with Modular Abilities anyway, but at the same time I find it difficult to separate the two. It just strikes me as odd that at the generic** and highest levels someone who can control reality can't manipulate their own being or the being of the people etc. but it does make sense that at the lower levels someone with the generic** power to do this could do any of it but not all of it at the same time.

I would also expect the "Cosmic" Power Modifier to be tiered. However the specifics are handled, if someone can shape reality to do something and they encounter someone with a previously established trait that can also do it, it again seems "odd" if the one able to literally reshape reality as he or she sees fit lacks priority. It is kind of like in various games where two - well anything really - may be affecting the game at the same time but each has mutually exclusive effects so one must be prioritized over the other.



*by which I mean ideas, relationships, etc. and not beings with Insubstantiality. ;)
**In this case, generic means we aren't dealing with a character that is supposed to be all about how he/she/it/they can affect the world but not the people, or the people's bodies but not their minds, etc.

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Thanks everyone who's responded to this threat. I've not abandoned it, I'm just stupid busy renovating my new living quarters. I'll get back here when I have some more time (hopefully tonight).

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

Actually, a good set of questions based on the rpm suggestions.

Do your reality shapers all exert the same force over creation or are some better than others?

Do they have flavors (ie is one better at making things from nothing another at making impossible physics and another one at alerting fate)

Is the power 100% reliable within their power scope or is there the possibility of failure, what does failure look like (just does not work or disastrous),

can they exert themselves to exceed their regular scope, can they play it safe with reduced power?

Re: Control Over Reality for Supers
 

For Control (Reality) wouldn't a single level only let you adjust "reality" by 10% so if it is 60 points per level you would need to spend 600+ points to achive 100% reality changes instantly, and then possibly persistent enhancement to make it last, or cosmic enhancement to make it permanent right?

But I think using a 300% cosmic enhancement to make changes permanent would let you warp reality in a 1 hex radius completely with 10 seconds of concentration [changing things 10% a second] and that costs 240 points per level, letting you change things more
I suppose you could essentially use it to give a + or - 1 per level to pretty much any task but that would be underpowered until high levels
With 2400 points you would have someone who could concentrate for a single second and make a 100% chnage ti reality in a 10 hex radius and give any taske in than radius a + or - 10 so that feels pretty godlike