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Supervillain Handcuffs?


Echo3Niner

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Hey, trying to make up supervillain hand cuffs for my game; for the heroes to use when arresting villains.  Tried to come up with a couple thoughts, and Cassandra gave me a couple ideas in the chat, so thought I'd post what I've got here and see what everyone thought:

 

Super Villain Hand Cuffs:  Drain REC 6d6, Persistent (+1/4), Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger requires a Full Phase to reset; +1/4), Affects Desolidified Any form of Desolidification (+1/2), Constant (+1/2) (150 Active Points); OAF Unbreakable (-1), Unified Power (-1/4), Conditional Power Power does not work in Uncommon Circumstances (-1/4)

 

These things are 150AP and 60RP.

 

I'm thinking perhaps this should be suppression version of drain?  Or, is there a way to have them trigger as soon as someone ramps up their power, so it can be cheaper as that wouldn't have to be constant?

 

The idea here is that if the heroes have knocked the villains out, the cuffs restricting REC keeps them from recovering and they can't use any of their powers or STR, etc.

 

Thoughts on these?  Other ideas?

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I think it depends on how these are going to be used in the campaign. If you want villains to be able to break out of them, then some sort of Suppress (or whatever the obfuscated 6e equivalent is) would probably work best. However, the need to suppress pretty much everything in the game makes it really cumbersome to build formally. I would just make them plot devices, literally, and declare that they just "work" (until the plot demands that they don't). Maybe use Unluck to give them a bit of unpredictability.

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You've already played around with a Mental Entangle.  Maybe they work like that.  They generate some kind of neural field that convinces a supervillain's subconscious that their powers don't work.  Somebody with a strong enough willpower (who can break the mental entangle) can snap out of it.  Put a limitation on it so that they can still walk and talk, but that's it.

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Drain vs EGO, 0 END, Persistant, Continous, and something else I canna remember right now.

 

Reduces Targets EGO to point he/she obeys all commands without interfearing with their powers. Great for Masterminds and Interrogators, but then with EGO of 0 Anybody can order them to go sit quietly in the corner and suck on their thumb until Police remove device.

 

Kinda evil, easily abused, but relatively cheap.

 

 

QM

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xd6 Transform:  Severe Transformation, Superpowered organism to normal human.  All or Nothing, Heals back instantly if Super Cuffs removed.  OAF "supercuffs"  ; no Range; Limited power, only works against compliant or restrained target.  1 Recoverable Charge.

 

6d6 would be enough to work on targets with 10 Body most of the time.  Active Cost 90;  Real Cost 17

 

Personally, I would ask the GM for an exemption to the Active Cost max and bump it up to:

 

8d6,  Active Cost 120;  Real Cost 23

 

You're still going to have a hard time with High Body and/or High Power Defense, but c'est la vie.

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It seems to me that if these things suppress powers, then they should just be built with Suppress. The fact that Suppress must now be built from other constituent parts in 6e shouldn't be much of an obstacle. Just build it as the equivalent of a very large 5e Suppress with Variable Effect +2 and Variable Special Effect +2 so it affects all powers with all special effects, make it 0 End, Persistent, Continuous, yadda, yadda, and don't even worry about how many points it comes to. Just make sure there's enough of it to overcome a reasonable amount of Power Defense. This would still allow characters with unusually high Power Defense (archvillains, demi-gods, etc.) to still have some of their power available, which you might want. If not, then just make a ruling that all powers in the game have an unwritten -0 Limitation on them of "Does Not Work When In Supercuffs".

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This is one of those common comic book conventions that can be stupidly expensive to build in Champions. There are two "book" solutions:

 

1) The simplest way is Entangle with enough Def to resist whatever attack the target can use to break out, plus Takes No Damage From All Attack, and Set Effect: Hands/feet Only. Can be customized to block teleportation, mental powers, etc, but won't stop everything. It'll run you a couple hundred AP to get enough Def.

 

2) If you want true power negation, then you probably do want Suppress instead of Drain, but you'll need at least 15d6, all sfx (+1) all power simultaneously (+4), which is something like 900 AP. And you'll need 1 Continuous Charge or an END Reserve or something.

 

So yeah...plot device powers. OK as long as they're in the hands of NPCs, but tricksy to handle if the PCs want one.

 

xd6 Transform:  Severe Transformation, Superpowered organism to normal human.  All or Nothing, Heals back instantly if Super Cuffs removed.  OAF "supercuffs"  ; no Range; Limited power, only works against compliant or restrained target.  1 Recoverable Charge.

 

6d6 would be enough to work on targets with 10 Body most of the time.  Active Cost 90;  Real Cost 17.

I'd never thought of using Transform for this - nice idea! Giving/removing individual Powers is normally only a Major Transform, but given that you're taking away all their powers, Severe sounds appropriate to me. And since Transform is inherently Cumulative, you can reduce the number of dice and it just takes a few Phases to reach full effect, so that would lower the cost even further. Only downside I can see is that both Entangle and Suppress give the character some chance of breaking out or overcoming the effect. Transform is pretty-much all or nothing. (Which is okay if you want that.)

 

Edit: Thinking more about this. I'm not crazy about the fact that would work better against say Gravitar (uber-powerful master villain with 15 BODY) than Orge (medium-powerful thug with 20 BODY). Anyone have any thoughts on how to modify this so the Transform works against the AP of the largest power or something?

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Oh...it's also not uncommon to have different types of cuffs for different sets of sfx: ie, power-draining cuffs for energy projectors, magic-dampeners for mystics, electro-suppressors for tech-based characters, etc. You could even go further and require one set of cuffs to hold the Human Bonfire and another set of cuffs to hold Icicle Woman. Depends on how closely-related superpowers are in your campaign.

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Suppress vrs. all powers all sfx;  does that cover Characteristics? 

 

If it doesn't apply to Characteristics, then bricks can ignore the super cuffs.

 

If it does apply to Characteristics, then won't you end up with a lot of Unconscious/Dead people as most super powered individuals have far more points in flashy powers like Blast, Super Strength, Flight, etc. than Stun or Body.

 

Suppress will only be effective with bending the rules and/or a lot of hand wavium at which point you should just resort to hand wavium rather than trying to model it by the book.

 

The only way I can see for it to work is a Transform.  I don't see any difference between having an instant heal mechanic "breaking the cuffs" and "the constant Suppress ceases to attack and all points are returned when the cuffs are broken." Cuffs on, target has only normal capabilities.  Cuffs off, target regains all exceptional abilities.

 

In any event, using a Constant 0 End Suppress would eventually causes all powers effected to have vastly negative values within minutes, if not phases, at which point your target will be unable to move, unless you add a limitation "only to suppress abilities that exceed normal human" in which case you've just created an over costed Transform.

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Well, since my PC's are going to be using these, on one hand, I'd like them to make some sense, as they'll ask me how they work, so they know if they can rely on them or not (I'll hold them off with an sfx explanation for now).  But at the same time, since the PC's will use them, I want my NPC's to break out of them, when the time is right.

 

At this point, I'm leaning towards story elements only; for the reason described above.  For now.

 

However, at some point the players may have to PAY for these cuffs, so that's when I'll need to figure out the CP of them...  So any further ideas of realistic cuffs, that are not absolute, would be greatly appreciated.

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Suppress vrs. all powers all sfx;  does that cover Characteristics?

Well it depends on how you define superpowers in your game, but typically it means "all superhuman abilities" whether modeled as Characteristics, Powers or whatever. (That's what the +1 Variable SFX buys you.) If you follow that literally, then Blasto-Man's energy blast is Suppressed to 0, while Brick Girl's STR is only Suppressed to 20, which may not seem totally fair. But season heavily with common sense to keep things balanced.

 

The only way I can see for it to work is a Transform.  I don't see any difference between having an instant heal mechanic "breaking the cuffs" and "the constant Suppress ceases to attack and all points are returned when the cuffs are broken." Cuffs on, target has only normal capabilities.  Cuffs off, target regains all exceptional abilities.

You're thinking only about physically breaking the cuffs by external means. But there are also plenty of genre examples of the captive being too powerful and managing to overcome the suppression. For example, a 20d6 magic-suppression field will hold Talisman (60 AP Spells) easily. But try it on someone like Skarn (120 AP spells), and he'll be able to overpower the field. Transform, being all-or-nothing, doesn't allow for that.

 

Again, if you want it to be all-or-nothing so the prisoner has no chance of escaping that way, then Transform is a good way of modeling it. (I'd still like to come up with a way to base it on the captive's power level rather than their BODY or EGO.) But if you want to give the captive (PC or NPC) a shot at overpowering it, then Suppress probably works better.

 

In any event, using a Constant 0 End Suppress would eventually causes all powers effected to have vastly negative values within minutes, if not phases, at which point your target will be unable to move, unless you add a limitation "only to suppress abilities that exceed normal human" in which case you've just created an over costed Transform.

Suppress isn't Constant (typically). It just adds Costs Endurance To Maintain, which prevents the Suppressed elements from returning as long as END is paid.

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The point of making Suppress Continuous is to remove the need to constantly re-roll to maintain its effects. Suppress isn't Drain.

Well, in 6ed it actually is. :winkgrin:

 

But in either edition, you don't need to re-roll to maintain the effect; you roll once, you Suppress that many points worth of power, and they stay Suppressed as long as you continue to pay END, and return immediately once you stop. Re-rolling adds additional rolls to the effect, which is useful if you didn't have enough dice up front. Perfectly valid build, of course, and not trying to be pedantic; just making sure we're talking about the same thing.

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