Sensory Help

[Blue]

Hi gang,

 

I have a player who has built a character with a sort of cross between N-ray and spatial awareness. What he was going for is a character with an ability to know where people are and what's going on around him, even through walls and such (like n-ray), but lacking the fine detail (as with spatial awareness). He's purchased it as a Sense, so it takes no action to apply and bought 360 degree vision.

 

This makes it a power that's hard to get around.

 

In this particular case, the heroes track down an NPC who has been running for their life and who is paranoid about who to trust. Into the middle of this, one of the player's hunteds (Viper) appears. During the ensuing fray, the NPC is supposed to escape. Problem is that the hero with the sense listed above is pretty much able to track everything.

 

What is a reasonable way to make sure that someone misses details that they *should* miss. I know with N-Ray you have to define a substance they can't see through. But every time I need to hide something that substance should be there? That gets a little unreasonable. Especially since soon the person is thinking "Can't see through that wall! That's where I need to go!"

 

Any suggestions on getting around the "I can see everything" conundrum?

[OddHat]

Distract him.

 

1) In the middle of a fire fight, agents everywhere, doging and weaving for his life, he missed the guy leaving. Perfectly reasonable unless he has +10 or more to his per rolls.

 

2) Teleportation.

 

3) Hit him with an Entangle, or an attack powerful enough to stun him, or Mind Control, or Mental Illusions, or...anything to keep him from worrying about one image moving away from him.

 

4) Lots of agents. He can't make out fine details, so how does he know that it was the important NPC who ran away. Even better if a half dozen agents also run.

 

5) Hang the adventure on something other than a character not using a core power you allowed.

[Talon]

Perhaps Viper has developed a Darkness field for his sense (which is in part the reason for springing the ambush)?

 

Perhaps the guy pulls a Thomas Crowne and has numerous look-alikes...

[Blue]

I probably shouldn't have included the example I included, because I'm not so much concerned about that event; It's already happened and I worked around the issue fine.

 

I'm just considering for the future good ways of getting around a character who basically has a good chance of seeing anything going on around him. It's not that the character is mega-powerful; quite the contrary. He just has this extrordinary sense. But I find myself needing to find a good way to make him "miss" things.

 

I like some of the suggestions. Images to mask departure would work. Invis and Darkness dont work so well since they'd have to be bought specifically for this sense (which is fairly unique; the bad guy would have had to study him specifically to prepare for him; which is something that may yet happen).

[Simon]

What Sense Group did he define the Detect as belonging to?

 

If it's the Unusual Group, then your job in blocking it will be harder, but he would have had to have purchased Range, Targeting Sense, etc. Since he bought "Sense", it sounds like this is they method he chose (since Sense is automatic when it's assigned to any Sense Group except for Unusual and Mental).

 

If it's been assigned to one of the other Sense Groups (like the Sight Group), then you can always just do a Flash against that Sense Group (you can't buy a Flash against the Unusual Group).

 

If it's been assigned to the Unusual Group or "no Sense Group", then you'll need to work on something else....like have someone with a high degree of Stealth sneak up on him. Even if he is _able_ to perceive someone, he still needs to make a PER Roll.

[Talon]

Generally speaking, if you approach the power with the objective of getting around it on any sort of regular basis, the player will feel gypped; they bought the power, it should get used.

 

Don't plan encounters that neutralize the power; plan encounters that are interesting and challenging even though the power exists. Perhaps this means adding a couple more agents, knowing that some will be neutralized earlier, for example.

 

If you let the player use the power, but the group is still challenged, everyone will be happy. Then you can pull out the occasional special encounter where it's neutralized and no one will complain.

[Blue]

I've only had two instances in 4 games where something was to be hidden from the characters. The fact that the first one was foiled was no problem; It just means they found something that they wouldn't have found until the 5th or 6th game otherwise. Didn't sidetrack anything really. The other one was the one I described above. And the fact that he didn't capture the NPC but opted to let them go still works out to the same result.

 

It's not my intent to regularly make them miss things. As stated, I'm planning for that rare instance where they need to miss something.

 

It is an Unusual Sense.

 

Good point about the stealth. And the character was sneaking away (I made one character tracking by sight have to make the perception roll). I think my logic short-circuited when it came to that sense still requiring a perception roll.

 

Thanks everyone.

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Geoff Speare

Generally speaking, if you approach the power with the objective of getting around it on any sort of regular basis, the player will feel gypped; they bought the power, it should get used.

 

Don't plan encounters that neutralize the power; plan encounters that are interesting and challenging even though the power exists. Perhaps this means adding a couple more agents, knowing that some will be neutralized earlier, for example.

 

If you let the player use the power, but the group is still challenged, everyone will be happy. Then you can pull out the occasional special encounter where it's neutralized and no one will complain.

 

Strongly seconded.

 

That said, non-combat sensory powers are every bit as hard to ballance as combat powers. It's easy to give Doc Megaton trouble by making him go up against a foe with Reflect at Any Target; it can be harder to run a mystery if you've allowed Retrocognitive Tony to join the PCs.

 

I'd handle this by letting him sense what was going on most of the time and finding other ways to keep the game moving. If something had to be hidden, there are all kinds of legitamate subtractions from his per roll that could be enforced, from tiny targets to stealth and concealment to images to mental illusions to a flash built just for him.

[astralfrontier]

Originally posted by Blue

I probably shouldn't have included the example I included, because I'm not so much concerned about that event; It's already happened and I worked around the issue fine.

 

I'm just considering for the future good ways of getting around a character who basically has a good chance of seeing anything going on around him. It's not that the character is mega-powerful; quite the contrary. He just has this extrordinary sense. But I find myself needing to find a good way to make him "miss" things.

 

I play a character with a power similar to this, and here's the suggestions I made to the GM.

 

First, sensory overload. Anyone can suffer from it, with almost any sense. Demanding PER rolls, at high penalties, in situations where there's a great deal of things to keep track of is entirely appropriate.

 

Second, the "blocking substance". My PC can't recognize or see "through" anything alive, which I thought was a fairly broad and gameable limitation. Rather than chucking darts at a periodic table, some real thought needs to be done between player and GM about how the power works, and what would logically block it. Remember that N-Ray Vision specifies "reasonably common substances". I would read "substances" as "conditions", myself.

[Farkling]

"Wishes and Curses and Everfilled purse

Prophecies, wishes, and knells"

-- "The Sorceror" , Gilbert and Sullivan.

 

Heh. Drugs....Curses....

 

1) N-Ray still gets its PER modified by what it is peering through if I remember right.

 

2) Curse/Inhibition Spell - 6d6 INT Drain.

Also works with dazzle flares and white sound generators. "Too much noise" destroys characters concentration completely unless he can block it out.

 

3) Drugs - Mental Illusions (10d6), only to distort reality

 

4) The Thomas Crown approach is great. So many moving about that tracking one requires REPEATED PER rolls at -1 per additional person moving in the room....

A more interesting approach is -1 per doubling of targets moving about each other. A crowd might hit -10 easily (1000 people) Kinda like the Mind Scan approach

 

Let's apply the -2 modifier at a reasonable amount that we can juggle... say 5 events

-2 = 5 events

-4 = 10 events

-6 = 20 events

....yadda yadda yadda

using the amount of tracked events instead of the range mods would be 'firmer ?'...considering your explanation of what he is tracking. It actually sounds like a Mental perceptual power to me as you explained it.

[altamaros]

I had roughly the same problem.

 

one of my players has a telekinetic radar :

Sp. Aw., 360°, N-Ray (not through Mental Defense)

add to that a bunch of telescopic modifiers with concentration and he's able to get the complete map of a building and a rough idea of who's inside (and where) at first sight.

 

so the suggestions above are good :

 

- asking PER rolls

- use modifiers for PER rolls

- NPCs use Stealth : hmm, as a personla thought, i wonder if a character can make a stealth roll vs a sense he doesn't have himself. (a blind character can probably be silent but will he know how to stay unseen ?)

- use this trick (i did it once or twice)

PC - "Can't see through that wall! That's where I need to go!"

GM- "Okey, you go there, there's nothing..."

PC- "what ?, i'm searching (concealmeent roll)"

GM-"this will take you some time: nothing!"

PC -"huh ?"

other PC - "we're doing during this time"

 

End of the game : less XP for the PC because while searching for inexistant stuff, he missed something important.

after losing his time once or twice, the player will be less eager to think that. yes, i know: it's vicious and reserved to abusing PCs

[Hugh Neilson]

Originally posted by altamaros

- use this trick (i did it once or twice)

PC - "Can't see through that wall! That's where I need to go!"

GM- "Okey, you go there, there's nothing..."

PC- "what ?, i'm searching (concealmeent roll)"

GM-"this will take you some time: nothing!"

PC -"huh ?"

other PC - "we're doing during this time"

 

End of the game : less XP for the PC because while searching for inexistant stuff, he missed something important.

after losing his time once or twice, the player will be less eager to think that. yes, i know: it's vicious and reserved to abusing PCs

 

Sounds like it's being used for abuysing PC's who are trying to metagame.

 

Player: The only reason that the common substance I can't see through wuld ever be encountered is because the GM is trying to hide something.

 

GM: No, you encounter a common substance fairly commonly because - guess what - it's common! If you think this substance isn't common, you should not have defined it as the common substance you can't perceive through, should you?

[Blue]

I think I need to suggest a better "blocking substance".

 

The special effects of the power... I'm trying to think of how to describe it... It doesn't have a "mystical" special effect, but it does come across that way. Essentially the player says that his character is connected to all things and has an innate sense of where they are and when they are moving. I've had him explain it to me three times and I can't quite zero in on the special effect, so I'm going with the concept that it's some kind of "Zen" or (for lack of a better term) Starwars "The Force" sense of placement of objects in the cosmos (or at least the immediate cosmos).

 

He uses it to do things like tell where people are going in the building, shoot people through walls with armor-piercing rounds, etc.

 

What substance do you suppose this would not work through?

[Stray Cat]

Originally posted by Blue

What substance do you suppose this would not work through?

 

Wow, that's hard. But not impossible. Sensory overload seems like it would work on almost any sense.

 

Also, in a physical universe (wonderin how philosophical this could get), there would still need to be some form of transmission of sensory information. Maybe it's electromagnetic in nature. Some odd frequency based on the quantum vibrations of each particle of matter in the universe? If that's the case, then funky aberrations in the EM fields would mess with it. And those can be narrowly-enough defined as to keep the power useful without being debilitating, I think.

 

So, near strong magnetic or electric fields he could have difficulties. Neutron's EM static field could cause him grief too.

 

Cat

[JMHammer]

Showing my age again

 

"If I can't see it, it must be there!"

 

Reminds me of a Legion of Super-Heroes story of 20 or more years ago. Ultraboy is on the run from the rest of the Legionairres, who think he has murdered an old flame of his. He's hiding out in a room lined with lead. (FYI, Ultraboy's Penetra-vision, his X-ray Vision equivalent, can see through anything except certain energy fields.)

 

Mon-el and Superboy are searching the entire planet for him using their X-ray Vision and other super-vision senses. One of the other Legionairres asks a smart-aleck question along the lines of, "How do you think you're going to find him? He's not stupid; he'll be hiding in a lead-lined room!" To which they reply, "That's why we're looking for lead-lined rooms. And one of them has Penetra-vision beams coming out of it!" So they swoop down and mayhem ensues.

 

Many old Superman stories also had Supes finding the bad guy's hideout by looking for large lead chambers in the middle of mountains, deep underground, etc. He figured there'd be little reason for something like that to be there unless someone had built it specifically to hide from his X-ray vision. And of course he was usually right!

 

Meaninglessly yours,

John H

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Showing my age again

 

Originally posted by JMHammer

Many old Superman stories also had Supes finding the bad guy's hideout by looking for large lead chambers in the middle of mountains, deep underground, etc. He figured there'd be little reason for something like that to be there unless someone had built it specifically to hide from his X-ray vision. And of course he was usually right!

 

Yeah, but couldn't you just see....

"Ah, Superman, do you mind telling us why you dug up our super secret deep underground miltary headquarters?"

 

"I thought you were the bad guys?"

[Blue]

I don't want to use time (anachronistic) things as a thing he can't see through because that gives him a free "detect" ability. "I can't see through that. There must be some time displacement involved with it". Though I like the idea.

 

Instead, I definitely like the idea of force fields interfering. They're common enough in a superhero game; I might include very strong energy fields as well.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!