Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

[BhelliomRahl]

Good day.

 

I am creating a character with Zeus (Greek god) style powers, dominion of the sky. Mainly this is control over the weather and elements of it.

 

A key aspect I want to give him is that his emotional state effects the weather. When he happy its Sunny, when he sad it rains and when he's angry storms.

He has several psycological complication representing different emotion state, mainly that due to him developing these powers when he was a kid to stop the freak weather his guardian gave him medication to suppress his emotions. So he is emotional undeveloped/repressed and when they do surface they tend to come out in sudden uncontrolled bursts.

 

I have most of the power build, using Champion Powers for others but was wondering how to incorporate the emotional instability into the powers. Does this need to be a mechanical effect or just Special Effects. Potentially it could have implications on the game, if the villians know of his weakness, they could attempt to anger him in a city which could potential create hurricanes and lightning storms leveling the place.

Potentially his emotional state could supercede his concious control of his powers.

 

What are peoples opinions?

[Christopher]

Re: Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

 

There are other factors:

Weather like rain or fog can severly hamper friend & enemies combat abilities, by reducing sightrange

And also it would give people a hint at hsi mood. Makign it easier to manipulate him.

 

Asuming he himself is immune to the weather effects (or at least no severly limited), I would write them down as normal powers. Then limit them with some form of No Conscious Controll.

 

 

What would happen if his "mood weather" clashes with someone elses manipulated weather?

Would a storm with natural/artificial sources also cause anger or is this a one way street?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

 

It all depends on how limiting you really want this to be for the character.

 

You could:

 

1. Limit the Power with Side Effects
   
2. Build a separate Power with NCC. In essence paying for a Limitation which seems counterintuitive (similar to how END Reserves are sometimes used).
   
3. Take a 5-10 point Custom Disadvantage
   

[esampson]

Re: Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

 

Christopher is right in that No Conscious Control is the most accurate way of modelling what you're describing. That said I'm not sure I would build a character where nearly all of his powers are at a -2 No Conscious Control. Doing that would mean that A) you're practically not playing since the GM is making all the decisions about when your powers activate and you're putting an awful lot on your poor GM. I've always thought that NCC worked better at the -1 level (you can chose to turn it on and off but you can't exactly control what form the effect takes. Used for things like Mental Illusions) or on just a smaller subset of powers so that the player can continue to control the character but with occasional flashes of something happening beyond the character's conscious control.

 

I think you would have a more playable character by taking a small limitation that represents not having full control over the power while allowing you, the player, to still be the one making the decisions. One possibility would be a small Side Effect limitation with an explanation that the special effect isn't that you become sad because you're making it rain but that you're making it rain because you became sad. The other possibility would be a Limited Power limitation such as "only works if the character can be sad and works automatically if the character can't stop being sad".

 

As a final alternative you might just lump it as a Special Effect. It depends in large part as to how much control you are giving over to the GM.

[Christopher]

Re: Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

 

I think you would have a more playable character by taking a small limitation that represents not having full control over the power while allowing you, the player, to still be the one making the decisions. One possibility would be a small Side Effect limitation with an explanation that the special effect isn't that you become sad because you're making it rain but that you're making it rain because you became sad. The other possibility would be a Limited Power limitation such as "only works if the character can be sad and works automatically if the character can't stop being sad".

 

As a final alternative you might just lump it as a Special Effect. It depends in large part as to how much control you are giving over to the GM.

When I would be writing up a Hulk-Clone, I would mostly keep the transformation under player controll. I even think about adding such a power to a PC right now:

Multiform (250 Points), 50 AP, Full Phase, Concentration to Activate, Requires a Roll.

 

In game the character "uncontrollably" Zones out for a moment fighting the Transformation.

In reality I - the player - choose to spend a phase to try to activate this power.

 

I might add a small accidental Change/Enraged Complciation to allow really uncontrolled changes. But for most part, I have controll about when and how the character transforms.

[Arkham]

Re: Powers controlled by the Characters Emotional State

 

Sounds like a simple Enraged/Berserk Complication. When his emotions get out of control, his powers go on a rampage.