New power construction

[kuriequinn]

Hi All!!!!

 

I want to run this power I am trying to create by you guys. I ran it by my husband, who we refer to as the walking champs book and he wasn't too sure.

 

The power I would like to create is the ability to age things, either older or younger. Right now I am thinking maybe it only affects non-living things. The extent of this would be he would be able to age a piece of paper until it was so old it would turn to dust. On the flip side, he would also be able to de-age something back to original condition.

 

What I have so far is this would be a major transfomartion, with the advantage continous.

 

The questions I have:

Should anything else be added? Should there be a body drain since it is destroying things by aging them? LAstly, if I decide to have this affect living things, how does that change the mechanics?

 

We are playing 4th edition and at the super heroic level.

[BoneDaddy]

This can be complicated. It could be an aid or a drain, if that's the primary effect you're after. It could be a transform. It could be a summon. It could be a form of pre or post cognition.

 

How do you plan to use it, heroically?

 

Would it reverse the radioactive decay of a given isotope? Could you turn a beluga into caviar? An egg into a chicken?

 

Are you reversing the effects of time, or what has happened to the object during that time? For example, could you return ashes to the original wood? Unbreak an egg?

[devlin1]

Make it a BODY Drain. Actually, make it two BODY Drains in a Multipower:

 

2d6 Drain BODY, Only vs. Non-living Targets

2d6 Drain BODY, Only vs. Living Targets, Delayed Return Rate: 5 pts/Year plus 2d6 Drain STR, Linked plus 2d6 Drain DEX, Linked plus 2d6 Drain CON, Linked

 

Maybe a smaller Drain if you don't want to just kill people outright. IMO, the aging aspect is SFX; what your power is really doing is reducing the targets' physical characteristics and making them less effective.

 

This is all off the top of my head. There's very likely a better way to do it, but this is what springs to mind.

[Guest Kolava]

Adding the age limitation to the target sounds good at first, until you realise that this only affects Characteristic Maxima, not finished characters. Perhaps drain END, to weaken the bodies of living things? It may not sound as powerful as drain body at first, but it will often take a lot of END, and if it is continious then the character isn't going to be very active anytim soon. (maybe drain REC too) The SFX would, of course, be all sorts of withering (maybe drain COM too?)

[devlin1]

Oh! I didn't see the "or younger" part. Depending on how young you made someone, it could also drain the physical characteristics I suggested previously. Making an 80 year old man a 40 year old man, though, should Aid all those same characteristics simultaneously. Also, I get the impression maybe you're going for more gradual effects; if so, both the Drain and Aid could be bought as low as 1d6, although the Aid would need the max amount increased to make it effective. And both would need Decreased Return Rate.

 

That Aid would be weird, though.

 

1d6 Aid, All Physical Characteristics Simultaneously, Only vs. Living Targets Who Would Benefit From Being Younger...?

[kuriequinn]

Thanks for the responses.

 

More information needed.

 

The idea of the character is that he some what controls time, space and dimension. This particular power I want him to be able control the age as in how old it is. In some cases it is meant to restore things in others, destroy. However, he would not be able to restore something from ashes or complete destruction. It mainly would be able to reverse the effects of time on something.

 

Example, he is trying to get away from some one, ends up in a dead end, he could age a wall enough to the point the wall would fall apart. Well if he really wanted to. His other powers probably would be better for this example.

 

As I said, I am not sure it will affect living things yet.

 

If it does include affecting living objects, then yes he'd be able to turn a egg into a chicken by rapidly aging it. Or the reverse.

 

The other thing is it would be a gradual effect. Much more useful that way. He can control how far he wants to age or de-age something.

 

His other powers would include:

extra-dimenasional movement, he'd be able to open doors to other dimensions

 

teleport

 

missle deflection and a force field based on the fact he can create a bubble of slowed down time and avoid being hit

 

and retro-cognition, he'd be able to view the past. there would be a focus on this though, only in a body of water he'd view it.

 

All of his powers are based off the idea of time, space and dimension manipulation.

[Vex]

I would go the transform method with the +1 Improved Target Group Advantage of into anything. Keep in mind that you can add disadvantages to characters this way to "pay" for the changes in their abilities (changing an egg into a chicken would give it an increase in character points). This increase makes the transform a bit more difficult but not that much so.

[zornwil]

When I ran a campaign with a PC who had precisely this ability, we didn't cost out the effects of the Transformation separately (the Aids and such mentioned above); rather, it was left to the GM (me) to assign the effects of aging or youthing (so to speak).

 

Guess what happens when you de-age an elemental to his primordial state?

 

Anyway, we found this quite workable, both for players and GM. Add on top that what I do with Major Transforms in general is to ensure that the target remains (generally, exceptions as in the paragraph just above) equivalent to whatever it was in points, so basically what I tend to do is lump their many lost abilities and the like into all PD/ED or similar - essentially I just conclude their "life force" concentrates and makes them tougher, unless there are other advantages/changes that make sense with a Major Transform.

[devlin1]

I just thought of a very time consuming but flexible way to do this: use the Major Transform, as suggested previously. If/when it exceeds the target's BODY, the GM uses the total of the Transform dice as character points that can be used to alter the target's Characteristics up or down, as appropriate.

 

E.g., the target has 10 BODY, and the Transform dice total 17. If the target is being aged and weakened, those 17 points could be used as follows: 5 points to lower STR by 5, 9 points to lower DEX by 3, and 3 points to lower END by 6. That kind of thing.

 

There are probably huge, game-imbalancing flaws in this somewhere.

[nexus]

If it were just to age non living things I'd simply call it a Killing Attack, possibly NND:Being an imperishable or self repairing material, Does body if the end result is to destroy it. Making an inanimate object "younger" might have the same result as its falls back into its component parts. Making younger could also be an AID ((any lower Char) to objects as it returns to a more functional state.