Pondering a Limitation value; Invisibility/Darkness

[randian]

When blocking sense groups, allow only the normal sense to work. I have two concepts in mind.

 

1) Doesn't affect Targeting. You can see and hit me, but Discriminatory, Analyze, Dimensional, Microscopic, or Tracking don't work. Flashes and Transmit don't work (in Darkness). No application to Range, Rapid, or Telescopic.

 

2) Only block out of band senses. Normal sight works but UV/IR don't. Normal hearing works but Ultrasonic or Sonar don't. Doesn't apply to sense groups that don't have "normal" senses, like Radio and Mental.

 

 

(1) seems like a -1.5 or -2 Limitation. The primary reason you buy Invisibility or Darkness is to affect Targeting. (2) also doesn't have much effect but to a smaller degree. -1?

 

[massey]

Sounds more like shapeshift with a limitation.

[randian]

Sounds more like shapeshift with a limitation.

I could go with that. Can you elaborate?

[Grailknight]

More like a Mental Illusion or Mind Control to me, you're there but I don't get any deep details.

[randian]

More like a Mental Illusion or Mind Control to me, you're there but I don't get any deep details.

Sounds overly expensive for the effect. For one thing, neither affect all observers.

[Talon]

For both of these I would want a solid special effect - interesting game mechanics, I want to know how it's being applied!

 

"Doesn't affect Targeting" seems like a -1 for Darkness at most, given that it stops Flash (plus a bunch of sense modifiers that the character presumably doesn't have). For Invisibility I agree it's worth more, though in a game where there's a lot of the modifiers that it stops, the value might go down.

 

I agree that Shape Shift might be a better way to do this than Invisibility, depending on the special effect.

 

"Only out of band senses"...probably in the -1 range. It's rare for characters to only have out of band senses, so I might rate it even higher depending on the campaign. 

[randian]

The idea for #1 was some sort of psychic or magical "nothing special here" field. It's not a "somebody else's problem" field, because it doesn't cause the viewer to ignore or forget the subject. The subject appears normal, but more stringent analysis reveals nothing. The subject has no powers or abilities that can be detected beforehand, though of course their effects (being bulletproof, fire blast) are detected normally. Were you to specifically do a "detect resistant protection" on the subject the answer would be no. An even stronger ability would be to add that he doesn't register as a mutant, a magician, or a robot, presuming he was any of those things.

 

Personal Immunity for Darkness is pretty cheap if you have the sense modifiers in question. For Invisibility generally the only modifier anybody cares about is Targeting. They could care less if their Analyze didn't work on you. Tracking is so rarely used, at least in a supers game, they probably wouldn't care about that either. Stopping Enhanced or Telescopic is a more interesting question. I can see you fine in person, but telescopes don't work is an odd but interesting mechanic.

 

Shape Shift might work for #1, though I'm not sure what if any Limitations, as massey suggests, would apply. Generally the "one shape" you get is obviously not you, but in this case you are always obviously you.

[Talon]

Invisibility implies that nothing is perceived. Imagine an NPC with Sense Life Force, Targeting and no other senses. Invisibility means the NPC cannot sense this character at all even at the level of "normal human life force". With Shape Shift the character could assume the life force of a normal human; this NPC would then target and perceive them like any other character.

 

I'm not sure I would put any Limitation on Shape Shift - as you describe it, the power would only apply to Unusual Senses, so just buy it for that Sense Group. I suppose if the character had weird emanations you would need to buy it for IR/UV, then you might have some sort of Limitation to make it not apply to normal sight.

[randian]

I'm not sure I would put any Limitation on Shape Shift - as you describe it, the power would only apply to Unusual Senses, so just buy it for that Sense Group. I suppose if the character had weird emanations you would need to buy it for IR/UV, then you might have some sort of Limitation to make it not apply to normal sight.

If I read the Shape Shift description correctly, by RAW that doesn't work. You can't apply Shape Shift, or any other sensory ability, to Unusual Senses as a group, and the wording of the Unusual adder for Shape Shift doesn't say "any unusual sense", it says "any usual sense not assigned to a Sense Group". That implies that if the Unusual Sense you want to mislead is defined as Sight by one character and Smell by another, the Unusual Sense adder won't affect it, so you need ALL the adders making the power astronomically more expensive. This is unlike Invisibility or Darkness, which can specifically affect an Unusual Sense regardless of its sense group.

[IndianaJoe3]

The idea for #1 was some sort of psychic or magical "nothing special here" field. It's not a "somebody else's problem" field, because it doesn't cause the viewer to ignore or forget the subject. The subject appears normal, but more stringent analysis reveals nothing. The subject has no powers or abilities that can be detected beforehand, though of course their effects (being bulletproof, fire blast) are detected normally. Were you to specifically do a "detect resistant protection" on the subject the answer would be no. An even stronger ability would be to add that he doesn't register as a mutant, a magician, or a robot, presuming he was any of those things.

 

That sounds more like Images, although working out which sense groups are affected might be a bit tricky. However, not detecting as mutant/magic/whatever is easy - don't take a Distinctive Feature describing yourself as such.

[Talon]

I would use the Absolute Effect rule and ask your GM for a threshold - when you buy enough Unusual Senses, the power is assumed to cover all of them.

 

Note that a similar rule applies to Invisibility (see 6E1 209) since it's a Sense-Affecting Power.

 

If I read the Shape Shift description correctly, by RAW that doesn't work. You can't apply Shape Shift, or any other sensory ability, to Unusual Senses as a group, and the wording of the Unusual adder for Shape Shift doesn't say "any unusual sense", it says "any usual sense not assigned to a Sense Group". That implies that if the Unusual Sense you want to mislead is defined as Sight by one character and Smell by another, the Unusual Sense adder won't affect it, so you need ALL the adders making the power astronomically more expensive. This is unlike Invisibility or Darkness, which can specifically affect an Unusual Sense regardless of its sense group.

[randian]

I would use the Absolute Effect rule and ask your GM for a threshold - when you buy enough Unusual Senses, the power is assumed to cover all of them.

 

Note that a similar rule applies to Invisibility (see 6E1 209) since it's a Sense-Affecting Power.

Not sure what you mean here. You could just ignore the bizarre "not assigned to a sense group" restriction and make Shape Shift work like Darkness and Invisibility: just buy the adder (3 points for Shape Shift) once for each specific unusual sense and be done with it. Three points is probably more in line with the practical value of a "shape shift vs detect" ability. There's a reason, after all, why Shape Shift vs sight is 8 points but Invisibility vs sight is 20 points.

[massey]

I could go with that. Can you elaborate?

 

As I reread your original statement, I think I'd have to back off on the shapeshift.  Since you want it to stop flashes, it needs to be Darkness with a limitation.  My thought of Shapeshift to "normal", or to "generic humanoid shape" would cover preventing Analyze and other things like that from working, but they'd still be able to Flash you.

 

I'm still trying to figure out what the special effect of this power is.  Why does it work the way it does?  What does it look like?

[randian]

As I reread your original statement, I think I'd have to back off on the shapeshift.  Since you want it to stop flashes, it needs to be Darkness with a limitation.  My thought of Shapeshift to "normal", or to "generic humanoid shape" would cover preventing Analyze and other things like that from working, but they'd still be able to Flash you.

 

I'm still trying to figure out what the special effect of this power is.  Why does it work the way it does?  What does it look like?

I only mentioned Flashes because that's what Darkness does. See the thread title. I'm not wedded to Darkness, I just didn't think of Shape Shift at the time. I usually think of Shape Shift for actually changing shape, not its other properties. You'd probably have to restrict it to 2-3 specific detects. Buying all the basic sense groups is 20 points before Reduced END and such, pretty expensive for a power that doesn't really disguise you in the normal sense of that term.

 

Darkness, of course, would also prevent Analyze, though you'd have to get weird (Invisible Power Effects) if you wanted to not be walking around town like a black blob. A No Range, Fully Invisible, Personally Immune Darkness. It stops the Analyze, but the viewer can't tell why. Probably on the order of -1/2 to -1 on the "doesn't prevent perception by basic senses" limitation, depending on whether you still wanted to block flashes to basic senses and which other than basic senses you're letting through.

 

If the power looked like something then the people looking for abnormals would know something was up.