"World Shaking" Pricing/Designing a limitation

[somecallmetim]

Hello,

I am about to run a supers game, there will be PCs at various power levels, but in the top tier we have a couple of characters. One is basically the settings "Superman", she's very powerful, very fast, flies, heat vision, but her powers are largely "realistic" in the sense that if she punches someone, the don't fly backwards, they'd splatter. So she doesn't generally brawl with normal criminals.

Another character is, essentially, the settings analogue to Captain Marvel. He's the result of an 8 year old boy who read lots of silver age comics being exposed to a Cosmic energy that can reshape reality. His powers work with a lot of the silver age setting tropes turned on, weirdly nonlethal property damage, punching people through walls and leaving them unconcious instead of smashing all their bones and so on. One of ther things I'd like to do is put some of this characters wilder abilities (most likely including Ultrapower) under a limitation that their use causes reality tremblors / quakes. I'd like to use the chart in Infinite Worlds as the baseline. Does anyone have any advice on pricing or setting ub a table. I was thinking, with Ultrapower, of making the Simple uses less dangerous than Average, which are less risky than Amazing.

So, I thank you for your time and await your wisdom.

[somecallmetim]

Sorry to "bump" my own thread, but I had access to my books and wanted to elaborate on this idea a little bit. I was thinking about just putting the limitation on Ultrapower, and changing the modifiers reality quake roll to be more supers relevant. For example:

+1 for a battle involving powers with the Super power modifier
+1 for use of powers with the Magic PM
+2 for other users of cosmic PM
+0 for Titanic uses
+2 for Legendary uses
+4 for Awesome uses
+8 for Transcendant uses
+1 for the presence of extradimensional beings
+1 for attacks of over 20 dices of damage, control greater than level 15, etc.

The character is heroic, so up-ending history is not going to be a good thing from his point of view. So I doubt he'll abuse it.

Does anyone have an idea of how to price this as a limitation?

[Refplace]

Maybe -10%? Nuisance effects are real hard to guess at and I am hesitant to give much to something that does not directly hurt the character but the world instead.

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Maybe -10%? Nuisance effects are real hard to guess at and I am hesitant to give much to something that does not directly hurt the character but the world instead.

Thank you, that makes sense. I was planning on making sure the quakes were trouble (irruptors are hostile, reality shards empower supervillains, reality quakes wipe out allies or important history and have to be undone somehow, etc.) But I think you're right, it isn't impeding him directly enough to be worth many points.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Well ...

Temporary Disadvantage: Weirdness Magnet, -15%

... does the "things go weird when I use my powers" and so makes for a good initial pricing guideline. But it is also "not immediately hostile weirdness" and so you'd want a modifier as this characters' weirdness appears to be hostile. I'd say somewhere from (Temporary Disadvantage: Weirdness Magnet (Unluckiness, 1x/Session), -25%) up to (Temporary Disadvantage: Weirdness Magnet (Cursed), -90%), depending on how badly and how often you're going to fsk the character over for using its' powers.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Maybe -10%? Nuisance effects are real hard to guess at and I am hesitant to give much to something that does not directly hurt the character but the world instead.

I'd call it more of a 'Backlash' than a Nuisance Effect, but requiring rolls on that table in Infinite Worlds isn't quite so bad as automatic reality temblors when you use your powers. S_F's initial suggestion of Weirdness Magnet looks like it might be closer.

[samd6]

If the reality shakes are minor, annoying, and weird, weirdness magnet fits as a backlash.

Minor rewrites to reality that just re-fluff (but don't re-stat) characters are probably nuisance effect. Frex, the Guardians of time are now silver blobs, instead of pastel blue streamers.

Genre-changing effects should probably not be in the hands of the players

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by samd6

Genre-changing effects should probably not be in the hands of the players

I'd say so as well. Even it's an NPC, you probably don't want big game-changing events coming regularly.