Power-Disrupting Innate Attack

[Coinage]

Quick Question.

My goal is to create a type of attack used by my setting's Men in Black. They have an attack which, if it connects, disrupts the victim's ability to use any magic or super-powers.

My initial take is to use an Innate Attack (B61) as the base-line, with a type of Enhancement. The first idea I had was to have a Side Effect (B109). The second idea was to have a Symptom (B109), with Negated Advantage (B109). However, I am curious as to how to calculate the cost of a Negated Advantage.

I was inspired by the Overseer Music Boxes found in the Dishonoured series. They disrupt the brain, making it difficult to use superpowers. Spitballing here, I was thinking of using some sort of Innate attack similar to Neural Weapons in Ultra-Tech, p. 121-122. However, I am open to other suggestions

[cvannrederode]

I would base this off of the Mana-Damper advantage, with enough levels to drop High or even very high mana to none, which will prevent who ever is affected from casting magic.

You can either have an AoE, where the MiB is the damper with area of effect and possibly switchable. Or they could use an affliction to give the *advantage* to someone else and remove their ability to cast spells.

Then you can duplicate that for each other "origin" for powers: chi, science, psionics, etc. A modifier of "+100% cosmic" (or more) can be used to affect everything, but you'll want to define what is a superpower, and what isn't. Like a mundane person having danger sense...with that get turned off?

Another place to look for inspiration is Anti-Psi, but I'm not familiar with how that works off the top of my head.

[oneofmanynameless]

Have you checked out the Neutralize advantage in GURPS: Powers? It is for this. You'd want to add the ranged modifier. And if you want the ability to do damage then make it linked to an innate attack or a follow-up.

[Taneli]

Innate Attack linked to Neutralize (Powers 97) with Ranged?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Quick Question.

My goal is to create a type of attack used by my setting's Men in Black. They have an attack which, if it connects, disrupts the victim's ability to use any magic or super-powers.

My initial take is to use an Innate Attack as the base-line, with a type of Enhancement. The first idea I had was to have a Side Effect (B109). The second idea was to have a Symptom (B109), with Negated Advantage (B109). However, I am curious as to how to calculate the cost of a Negated Advantage.

I am just wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

Isn't this just Neutralize perhaps with the Weaponized enhancement from Psionic Powers?

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Isn't this just Neutralize perhaps with the Weaponized enhancement from Psionic Powers?

Weaponized from Psionic Powers., pg. 21? That could work. If my reading of the text is correct, neutralize just shuts down superpowers right away. However, I was hoping for a more cumulative effect. The more damage taken, the more difficult it is to use powers.

Hence, that's why I was looking at Enhancement of Symptoms.

[Coinage]

Here is something I have developed.

Innate Attack, Corrosion 1 [10] (B61)
ENHANCEMENTS:
-Symptoms, (B109)
--Negated Advantage: Magery 1 [+1% per 1 point, 5 + 10 = +15% = ]
--Threshold: 2/3 Victim’s HP.
[+1% per 1 point, 15 points = +15% = 1.5]
Total: 11.5 = 12

Obviously, if I wanted to make it more powerful, I could give it a Cosmic advantage, like the one below

Cosmic, Godlike: Able to negate any Supernatural or Exotic advantage that falls within the price range [+300%] (PU4, p. 8)

How does this work?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Weaponized from Psionic Powers., pg. 21? That could work. If my reading of the text is correct, neutralize just shuts down superpowers right away. However, I was hoping for a more cumulative effect. The more damage taken, the more difficult it is to use powers.

Hence, that's why I was looking at Enhancement of Symptoms.

Why not just used Limited by Margin and flip it around for effect instead of basing it on the user's roll? (This can be found in Pyramid #3/9: Space Opera, p. 16.)

[Coinage]

I see. I could use a Weaponized (PP, p. 21) version of Neutralize [50] (B71, P97). By adding "Limited by Margin" (Pyramid #3-09, pg. 16), the effect of Neutralize would be determined by the margin of success the attack roll had versus the target.

I don't know how that would work for Neutralize. If I am reading the text correctly, Neutralize seems to be an "all-or-nothing" ability. I don't know how to apply Neutralize that would "scale" based on the margin of success.

Plus, I do want the attack to actually do damage, although I could just Link (B106) it with an basic Innate Attack.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I had another thought. It would be really expensive and not exactly RAW though. You could have Side Effect + Negated Advantage! (Only Powers, -40%). Wildcard enhancements would be 4x as expensive, but let you do anything the base trait could do. It might be a neater methodology.