Modeling Personal Immunity to Someone Else's Power

[Scott Anderson]

A character has Darkness defined as smoke bombs.  She wears specially-tuned goggles that give her Personal Immunity to Darkness, OIF.  Can her teammate also buy identical goggles?

[Durzan Malakim]

For the teammate, the game effect of the goggles would be enhanced senses that provide +PER in smoke and possibly allowing Infrared or Ultraviolet vision. The teammate isn't buying personal immunity, but rather buying one or more related powers to counteract the effects of the darkness. Or at least that's what I would suggest.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I would allow it as a GM, yes.

[Rhino]

I would model this by buying the penetrating vision that is limited to only penetrate your partner's smoke as well as focus based.

[massey]

Sounds like naked advantage to me.

[Hyper-Man]

A character has Darkness defined as smoke bombs.  She wears specially-tuned goggles that give her Personal Immunity to Darkness, OIF.  Can her teammate also buy identical goggles?

 

Sure.

 

The question is how to pay for it which boils down to 2 choices:

 

1. Determine the Real Point spent on just Personal Immunity by Character #1 and build a Custom Power for Character #2 with this cost.  It ONLY works against Character #1's power.

 

2. Build a 'generic' Enhance Senses based version as suggested by several posters that could otherwise work against any other mechanically similar Darkness Power and apply a Limitation to restrict it to only working vs. Character #1's Darkness Power.

 

HM

[eepjr24]

In either case, be prepared for villains to swipe a pair. =P

 

- E

[Doc Democracy]

Hmmm.  Obviously one option is for team-mates to build powers that negate the effects of the darkness generating person.  The other option is to build in a back-door to the power.  Obviously this provides for anyone that knows the weakness to exploit it but it is far less onerous for team-mates.  The question is, what to make the power.

 

You could make the power (not versus anyone wearing OptiLenses +0) and simply have small focii that you give out to people.  Those could be stolen or replicated by nefarious villains.  You could make it not versus a low cost power that team-mates could buy (and so avoid having to spend enough to negate the whole power).  The whole question is how you want to go about it.  

 

 

Doc

[ghost-angel]

For the teammate, the game effect of the goggles would be enhanced senses that provide +PER in smoke and possibly allowing Infrared or Ultraviolet vision. The teammate isn't buying personal immunity, but rather buying one or more related powers to counteract the effects of the darkness. Or at least that's what I would suggest.

 

Sounds good in theory, but you can't buy PER Modifiers against the Darkness Power.

 

I would follow along with Hyper-Man's suggestion;

 

Figure out how much a Naked Personal Immunity Advantage costs for the Darkness Power in question, and use that as the Point Base;

 

Or, charge Character 2 the 5 Points for a "Second Pair" from Character 1 (via the Doubling Model) and call it good.

[JohnnyAppleseed098]

I would say to use a Naked Advantage Personal Immunity Modifier with a UBO and OIF. 

[Kesedrith]

In either case, be prepared for villains to swipe a pair. =P

 

- E

This.  Always this in this sort of situation.  

[Durzan Malakim]

Sounds good in theory, but you can't buy PER Modifiers against the Darkness Power.

 

Darn you Darkness rules! (Conveniently available from 6E1 p186-187):

 

 

It doesn't just make PER Rolls with the affected Senses harder, it makes them impossible.

 

I suppose the meta-rule, "you get what you pay for" applies here.

 

If Character 1 pays for multiple foci, then she has a backup pair and can in theory use the backups when her primary pair is inevitably taken away from her. If character 2 pays for the backup pair, then that character gets to use them and see through the Darkness until someone inevitably takes the focus away.

 

The benefit of paying for a separate power such as Enhanced Senses: Infrared Sight Group would be the option to see through other people's Darkness powers, not just Character 1's Darkness Power.

[Tasha]

A character has Darkness defined as smoke bombs.  She wears specially-tuned goggles that give her Personal Immunity to Darkness, OIF.  Can her teammate also buy identical goggles?

 

The Advantage mentions that it is ok to define someone else as also being immune to your power. (ie like Cyclops and Havoc, who are totally immune to their Brother's blasts). So for that, I would probably allow it. Though I MAY have a villain who figures out how to circumvent the Darkness using the same technology (it's up to the Heroine to get her technology back from the baddies, or for her to alter her darkness so a different frequency goggle would be required).

[Tasha]

The Advantage mentions that it is ok to define someone else as also being immune to your power. (ie like Cyclops and Havoc, who are totally immune to their Brother's blasts). So for that, I would probably allow it. Though I MAY have a villain who figures out how to circumvent the Darkness using the same technology (it's up to the Heroine to get her technology back from the baddies, or for her to alter her darkness so a different frequency goggle would be required).

Also you could have a little limitation (Not vs people with the Special Circumventing Goggles... -1/4 at most).

[Amorkca]

Can't you buy the darkness as Selective?

[Hyper-Man]

Can't you buy the darkness as Selective?

 

Selective just affects the targeting of the Power.  Even if a character isn't specifically targeted or 'inside' the Area of Effect they would still need a way around the sensory affecting portion of the Darkness Power to see through the Area of Effect.

 

HM

[Christopher]

A character has Darkness defined as smoke bombs.  She wears specially-tuned goggles that give her Personal Immunity to Darkness, OIF.  Can her teammate also buy identical goggles?

I think that Personal Immunity build is faulty to begin with. PI on a Sensory Power that others can have too sounds not like PI, but it just not affecting every Sense in the group.

 

Alternative idea:

Define the power as "Darkness, Normal Vision" (pricing for affecting a single targetting sense).

And the googles as "Infrared Vision, OIF".

That way everyone else buy identical IR Vision. Everyone with existing IR vision is also not affected.

 

I more or less copied that idea from Shadowrun where IR vision is so common (Dwarfs and Trolls), people started decveloping "Thermal Smoke", wich blocks that vision too.

 

There is a big difference between the Sense Group and the seperate Senses inside that Group.

Darkness, Normal Vision will not affect IR, UV or Radar Vision.

Darkness, Sight Group will affect IR, UV and Radar Vision. But not affect IR hearing or smelling.

 

The upside of putting a sense into a existing group (especially sight) is getting a ton of Sense Modifiers for free.

The downside is that any Sense Affecting Power targetting that group will also affect that sense.

You can only put the sense into a less common group (to make it beign flashed harder) or not int oa group at all - in both cases you pay a premium in form of additional Sense Modifiers you have to buy.

[IndianaJoe3]

A character has Darkness defined as smoke bombs.  She wears specially-tuned goggles that give her Personal Immunity to Darkness, OIF.  Can her teammate also buy identical goggles?

 

I've used a similar build. "Personal Immunity" was bought as a Naked Advantage, Usable by One Other, OIF.

[JohnnyAppleseed098]

I've used a similar build. "Personal Immunity" was bought as a Naked Advantage, Usable by One Other, OIF.

 

That is exactly what I said!

[IndianaJoe3]

That is exactly what I said!

 

Great minds think alike. :-)

[Lucius]

"radar vision?"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, say what?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Radar's vision wasn't very good without his glasses

 

[Cantriped]

Having a power with Personal Immunity often gives the characters Immunity to related powers with the same special effect. For example, a character with Magic Fire Blast (built as Personal Immunity Blast), might similarly be immune to another character's Mystic Flame Bolt (built as Autofire, Personal Immunity RKA).

 

For one campaign I designed one of the available shared origins was having been being struck by the "Rainbow Oouh Ray" (a satellite weapon that malfunctioned during testing and hit a large swath of an urban area). Everyone struck by the Oouh Ray developed some kind of "Rainbow Power", and people with Rainbow Powers were immune to all other direct applications of Rainbow Powers (including their own if applicable). So almost all Rainbow Powers took Personal Immunity to represent this fact (and I think a minor Limited Power modifier as well).

 

In a similar vain. I think buying Independent Personal Immunity to a specific special effect of Darkness Powers through a Universal Focus. I wouldn't bother with UBO in this instance; I think that is sufficiently covered by the mechanics of Universal Foci and the fact your allies/enemies should be paying for these goggles themselves if they use them more than once or twice. The value of the independent advantage should be based on the value of the most powerful version of Darkness in that campaign which uses that special effect. If said most powerful darkness power later grows more powerful, the goggles have to be upgraded too, or they cease to grant immunity to that darkness (in other words they don't grant immunity to stronger Darkness powers of that special effect than they were priced based on).

 

Honestly though, the simplest (most legal) advice is something along the lines of Christopher's (http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/93377-modeling-personal-immunity-to-someone-elses-power/?p=2508100). Either buy the Darkness so that it only affects Normal Sight, or else such that a specific Sight-Group Sense penetrates it (such as Infrared Vision or Nightvision). Then Build the Goggles such that they provide the appropriate unaffected Sense.