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Old 08-26-2021, 03:29 PM   #52
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: [Powers / Psionics] Help with Uncontrollable

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
It will act against people who are trying to kill you before others because it will die with you if you are killed
I'm not sure it actually would have a sense of self-preservation though... or if it did, the intelligence to actually realize what is in the best interest of the character who owns the advantage.

Say for example you have an enemy in town: a thief who robbed you and who plans to ambush you in an alley later that night and silence you before you can point him out to the local sheriff.

You see the thief in town and get angry/scared and fail your self-control roll: and against your better judgment you breathe a jet of fire and incinerate the thief.

This removes the potential threat of getting stabbed in an alley later: but perhaps you could've handled that (you're an expert with Judo and have Danger Sense) compared to the new threat your power just created for you: dozens of people just saw you breathe fire and think you're some kind of alien/witch/demon and now the sheriff and all his men will be ordered by the mayor to execute you.

This swaps out the local thief (a danger you could've easily dispatched) with a greater danger of an entire town's garrison.

This is a bad thing in terms of your survival and thus the survival of your power, so if the power understood this and valued it's own survival, it wouldn't have attacked that thief in broad daylight (instead waiting for a time when fewer witnesses were around).

What probably makes is a disadvantage is the idea that it lacks self-preservation and can actually make decisions like this which cause greater long-terms problems (even long-term dangers) for the character with the uncontrollable advantae: even if it has the ability to help you out with more immediate dangers (like an enemy out to kill you in a given moment)

This is part of why I like the idea of designing it as some mix of ally/enemy because then you could stat out better how it would react to and predict things...
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