Applicability of Detect Life Energy

[Gemphyre]

Greetings all,

 

I am starting up a Champions game locally between friends, and I have a questions about the "range" of an effect. This is a standard Supers game, btw.

 

The character is basically a super-powered physician/surgeon with Sense, Ranged, Analyze, Discriminatory Life Energy. The charcter also has the appropriate medical skills for a doctor and paramedic. (Yes, there are other powers, but they are not applicable to the question.)

 

The question becomes, besides the obvious, what can and cannot be determined about a person with this detect? Obviously, the heroine can tell if a person is alive or dead, and probably if a person is undead. However, since she has the medical knowledge and training, can she diagnose a person's injuries and aliments with reasonable accuracy? What about diseases? Congenital defects? What might she be able to figure out that I have not mentioned.

 

Life Energy is a 10 point base sense, indicating that it has a wide range of use. I am just trying to figure out how wide it is with this character.

 

By the way, most of the charcter's powers are based on manipulating the chemistry of her body and others. Those powers also do not work well on robots (no organic body to affect), undead (organic body is not really working), and aliens with enough differences (bodies do not work in the same manner).

 

I have tried looking through the existing threads, but I cannot find an answer to this question.

 

Thank You in advance,

Gemphyre

[BlackCobra]

I'd say, decide first how your metaphysics work. If Life Energy is tied to the health of the body, they should definitely be able, given sufficient time, to diagnose and proscribe treatment for an individual who fits the parameters of the ability.

 

Now, the really sticky question is how super powers, mutations and mutant powers tie in to Life Energy, if at all. I'd write down what you consider the major types of powers and abilities and work out how (if at all) they tie into Life Energy. For instance, Magic -- does it have anything at all to do with someone's Life Energy? A power full mage might be unusually healthy, but I'd say they wouldn't otherwise seem unusual. On the other hand, in my book, a powerful mutant with regeneration would be like a small beacon.

 

I don't know that there are any hard-and-fast Hero rules for this situation (which is one of the great things about it as a system, really), so you'll have to figure most of this out for yourself. I'd be wary of letting the person turn this one power into too much of a Swiss-Army knife.

 

Hope that helps!

[TheEmerged]

Since this detect has Analyze (and by definition Discrimintory), pretty much anything that you feel is connected to "life energy" in your campaign world.

 

For example, if you feel diseases would register on Life Energy, then this character could discern that the target has a disease and might be able to distinguish the disease via skill rolls.

 

However, *personally* I'd invoke Microscopic penalties in this case -- to detect the "life energies" of the microbes causing the disease. There's another issue here as well (see below).

 

If the power didn't have Discriminatory, I wouldn't allow the character to distinguish between different types of life energy. The character would have no way of telling whether that life energy ahead belonged to a human, animal, or plant for example.

 

I notice the sense doesn't have Targetting. That tells you one important game fact right off the bat: it can't be used to target opponents. That's probably indicative of the fact that the life energy isn't "shaped" like the entity generating said life energy.

 

I also notice the power doesn't have N-Ray Vision, or the "penetrating" adder as I prefer to call it. That limits the power in ways you might not expect -- I wouldn't allow the character to detect the life energy of a parasite/symbiote or unborn baby with it. This would also penalize any effort to detect microbes (AKA diseases). However, the player might well be able to discern the existance of such with a skill roll -- by noticeing the effects/symptoms in the "energy reading".

 

The power doesn't have Tracking either, so there won't be any following a person by their "background deposits" so to speak.

[Snarf]

It could be like real diagnosis where the symptoms are obvious but the cause isn't. For example, fever, stomach trouble, tiredness, discomfort, and massive antibody output are detected so make a physician roll to figure out this is dysentry and the person need penicillin.