13 thoughts on “Invisibility. Making it not be incredibly broken. how?”

  1. It has a weakness… you can be smelled, you cast a shadow, it flickers when you are emotional, you leave footprints, etc. Any failed roll could bring one of these forward, no? It would all depend on the fiction of the power, no?

  2. Right but some of those are suggested weaknesses that wouldn’t normally happen. So you’d make up the weakness and put it where exactly? Also, why would the player build in a weakness like that if they just wanted to be purely invisible.

  4. Yes I did. But you suggested things that are not all necessarily attached weaknesses to invisibility. So I was asking if you meant adding those on as specific weaknesses, and how you would specifically do that. In the powers profile? And if yes, why would a random player one was the EIC for choose to make the invisibility weaker rather than being completely unseen all of the time when he wants to?

  5. The same reason they don’t put ‘complete omnipotence’ in their power profile: because they went their character’s life to be interesting and complicated.

    Also, invisibility isn’t really a big deal anyway. It’s good for sneaking, and that’s about it; sneaking is not a huge part of heroic fiction, so being good at it doesn’t unbalance anything.

  6. Think of how Sue Storm can be countered. Infra red vision, true seeing, footprints etc. It doesn’t have to necessarily be built into the power but the EIC should think of a few ways that it doesn’t always work perfectly.

  7. James, invisibility is unlimited assassination potential if you can constantly be invisible. Or stealing stuff, etc. That’s what I meant. But yeah, I get the common sense and discretion part for not purposefully making a god character. And for Ade, yeah I guess specifically throwing in counters would work. Still doesn’t seem like a baked in solution but I get it.

  8. Yup. That’s the thing about narrative powers, there are no ranks as such to say one beats the other. You could as EIC just disallow invisibility or make it more of a blur effect (like Predator) even its just when the character moves.

  9. some downsides players with invisibility have had in my games: their skin physically, painfully changing over a period of time (easy defy danger to see if they can do it on time). Needing to concentrate to be invisible (same thing, it tends to be hard to concentrate in a charged situation or a fight, make em defy danger!). The invisibility effect becoming weaker as the PC moves faster (i really like this one personally).

    Also, “assassinations” aren’t really a thing. Sure, if a player has gun to somebody’s back and they are unaware, let them inflict a critical condition if they pull the trigger. but real NPCs will have plenty of agency left after being shot in the back – most of my villains would laugh it off.

  10. When players are defining their powers, make sure they are specific about how their powers work. Which level the put their invisibility at and what parameters they put around it to define it are what you are looking for.

    For example, if they just put “Invisibility” under Simple powers, you could ask them to clarify details around that.

    – Can turn invisible for 10 seconds

    – Can make self invisible for up to 12 people

    If you get them to define the limitations, you create opportunities for them to Push – which are great either way. Maybe they get to grow stronger as they discover more about how their powers work, or maybe they fail and something spectacular happens! Either way, the act of setting limitations and attempting to exceed them makes the story more interesting.

  11. Beyond that, if they expect to get away with murdering villains who are unaware of them, give them blind ninjas to fight who can hear their heartbeat from across the room and use it to fling sharp things at them.

    Put them up against villains who have self-detonation powers and a room full of hostages. If they’re desperate to not be a target, make your GM moves and target someone they care about that the villains can see.

    If they want to avoid accountability, doing good without ever being recognized so no one can retaliate against them and their personal life, have some wanna-be heroes take credit for what they’ve been doing, going on TV and getting rich and famous off their efforts… then have a bad guy they’ve pissed off publicly murder that guy and his entire family in a huge spectacle.

    Be a fan of your players. They want to be invisible, let them be invisible. Let them be awesome with their invisibility. Once they’ve gotten to see how badass they are with their invisibility and think they’re completely invincible, twist it up and give them a challenge where being invisible doesn’t help, worse than that, is a disadvantage, or worse yet, hurts someone else.

  12. Great advice in here! Grey Kitten has great advice about being a fan of the players. If they’re all about their invisibility, give them challenges that play to that. Most of the time you don’t really need to negate or counter their powers (you want to validate those powers choices though of course) – you just need to put them in situations where they have to make hard choices. If you’re making them dive under a collapsing tower to rescue people, for example, it doesn’t matter if they’re invisible or not.

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