I’m curious as to how the Delinquent ability of power negation manifests mechanically. I’m guessing to use it would be Unleash Your Powers, and on a success, the target’s powers are negated. But how does that impact the ability of the target to do anything? Do I just sort of remove super-stuff from the list of potential Moves?
I’m curious as to how the Delinquent ability of power negation manifests mechanically.
I’m curious as to how the Delinquent ability of power negation manifests mechanically.
It could be a factor in Directly Engage a Threat by temporarily removing elements that make a villain normally protected from attack.
It could be an element in Protecting someone as it could cancel an attack used against them.
It could be a factor in the comfort/support move by being used to cancel an effect on someone placed by a power.
Unleash your powers would be big scale stuff like trying to shut down an extradimensional vortex or multiple green lantern-esque constructs.
Lots of ways it could be used.
You could say
“I negate his fire blast to protect the civilian.” And roll a Protect move.
Or use it with Unleash Powers to prevent their own powers from altering the environment. “I negate the storm she’s trying to create with her weather control.”
Directly Engage would be iffy, but could likely done if in the right circumstances or used creatively. “I negate his flight power to make him fall.” (Thus causing him potential injury and gain a condition.)
That’s the beauty of how powers in general work in this game.
Tim Osburn negate invulnerability and hit him with a baseball bat too.
Yeah, it’s a hard power to make exciting. I’ve never seen it work in a satisfactory manner as a protagonist power. The closest I’ve seen was in the series Chase, and it only works there because it only activated under extreme stress; it wasn’t under her control.
How do you treat it when villain is using supertech? Does it still apply? I found that problematic.
Benjamin Davis Depends on the technobabble you want to get into. If you start delving into the way powers and power cancellation work, then maybe you can backdoor into some other power expression via Unleash your Power.
I wouldn’t think it would effect tech.
There’s some sort of energy exchange going on unless it operates psychically.
Personally in games ive run and been in it is important to define how power negation itself works at creation. Since in the fiction it would not work on things like Natural Ability’s, Tech or Magic perhaps.
Main example used was that the Giant Godzilla Monster would really be a viable target in most cases as its Hide , Size and everything that comes with it would be difficult to just negate.
Best use i found was a character that pretty much used a Batman style approach, having a gadget or making a gadget in order to address the particular issue and negate their power in a sense, though often required some good insight into the power first. So each negation worked differently but needed to be explained in the fiction at the time.
ie. Fire Suppressant Foam, EMP’s, 3S Glue (Superior SUPER super glue) etc
I suppose reframing Power Negation as ye olde Marvel FASERIP Nemesis would be something that works: aka, the power that manifests in different ways depending on what would be the most useful power to have in the situation. Downside being that the character might not have enough information or practice with how the Nemesis manifests to make the best use of it.
Im always of the belief that any power can manifest in multiple ways, but most seem to assume a set one. For example Impenetrable armor on the transformed ive seen refluffed as high speed regeneration and mixed with Transmuting flesh before.
As with all abilities, it always manifests itself in every Move.
THANK YOU. I think the answer for me is “Internalize the Moves and the Pick Ones from the Moves”.
Luke Green Oooh… Power Negation to Comfort and Support.
I’m now imagining a Delinquent and a Nova scene.
– – – – –
“No. No! He can’t get away. Not now. Not this time!” Sara, the Nova, screams to herself – rushing heedlessly through the wreckage-strewn street. Her team had stayed behind, too tired to move. “I can do this. I CAN do this. I have power beyond his wildest dreams. I can – MUST – stop him!”
Sara reaches insider herself, towards the fire she feels ever-burning. But it seems subdued this time – slow to respond. “No. No! Not now, I NEED this! After all he’s done… after everything… he must be stopped…” her knees give out as fatigue sets in, dropping her to the street.
“NO!” she screams, focusing all the anger, and the rage, and pain, into the fire. It must grow. It must.
And grow it did, as the fire swells into the steady flame she’s used to. But as she reaches out to draw power, it doesn’t stop. The flame grows, and grows, unable to contain itself within her body.
It tears out of her as she’s consumed by a raging inferno. The flames spread, the manifestation of the energy within her, as the buildings and street itself catch fire and disappear beneath the scourge. She screams out again, this time in pain, as the emotions infusing the fire overtake her.
Joel collapses in a heap on the ground as Sara runs off, the fight having taken its toll on him. “She’s got it. She’s strong.” he thinks, as he looks at the rest of his team.
He’d never really fit in. A chronic Delinquent, he’d never cared much for this whole “save the world” and “stop the villain” shtick. He was just assigned here for probation. Apparently power negation can be useful, his probation officer said, but he’d never thought much of it. Good for a few tricks or pranks, nothing more. But as much as he might cause trouble, he always drew a line at outright destruction. That was for villains, and he, at least, was no villain.
But that Event… that one time things went too far, putting him on probation. So he always got along with Sara. She knew the pain of destruction, having done similar before she got her powers under control.
He looks up just in time to see a plume of fire shoot through the sky, consuming everything around it.
And on the backs of flames he hears crying.
The rest of the team stares on, confused and horrified, not knowing what to do.
Joel stands up and runs towards Sara. As he runs, he wills everything around him to be normal. The flames don’t touch him.
He finds Sara curled in a ball, the inferno exploding out of her as she cries. He embraces her, whispering softly “It’s ok. It’s ok. I’m here. It’s ok.” – willing the Normalness surrounding him into her.
Sara can’t think nor act. The power consumes her, overwhelming her with its power and the agony of the emotions she poured into it. She thinks she’s crying, and she thinks she feels someone holding her… but she doesn’t understand how. The fire should have destroyed anyone long before they could reach her.
And then everything stops. The fire inside her seems cut off from everything, and she senses its remnants outside her dying down and disappearing in response. She opens her eyes in shock, trying to figure out what happened, and she sees Joel above her whispering “It’s ok”, over and over.
She rests her head against his chest, smiling softly. It might have happened again. But at least her knight was here.
– – – – –
That’s a bit longer than I was planning, but I’m gonna post it anyway.
If we weren’t all down for fanfic and teenaged supers drama we wouldn’t play this game
In general, you should, as a GM, ask many questions about how the power works specifically.
With power negation? How does it look? What powers does it effect exactly? A few examples from fiction…
Hatchet Face from Worm has a power negation aura ranging a few meters around him. He walks up to people to whack them. (As has been suggested before.) But since it’s an aura, you can evade and shoot him. Also, since it’s an aura, benefical powers won’t work and he surpresses allies as well. Also it won’t hinder folks that are transformed by their power. If you have a body of metal permanently, you keep. If you can assume the form willingly, you will turn back.
Synergy from Wildstorm can switch of Spike Babies, when she touches them skin on skin. The effect is apparently lasting for some time at least. It’s very effective, if she can apply it. A full body suit will block her, she’s as fragile as a normal human, and while Spike Babies are the most common form of parahumans in the world, she won’t affect other power origins.
Or take the Mist Rain technique from Naruto. As long as you concentrate, you summon a heavy rain that washes away power manifestations. Where Hatchet Face’s aura is about power usage (you cannot cast within the aura), Mist Rain is about effects. Fireballs, summonings all vanish. Certain internal techniques work just fine in the rain.
Our GM managed this by asking questions of the Delinquent to understand how his power negation worked. At the start of the game, it required him to touch the person he wanted to negate, which was awesome for putting him in danger and setting up teammates to take bad guys down.
Through play, he worked on doing it from range via Unleash. And later spreading his concentration to suppress multiple guys at once.
My Bull character had gone through a Luke-Cage type origin that turned her skin into unbreakable crystal. Both she and the Transformed were so altered by their powers that they weren’t sure what suppressing them would do. The Transformed, who was in an arranged marriage with the Delinquent, had planned to ask him to suppress her on their wedding night – that would have been tragic. We found out from a villain who could suppress powers that turning ours off was very deadly. The Bull’s molecules were destabilized and she started to die. The Transformed was starting to just… disappear. It was never determined whether the Delinquent’s powers would work the same way on us, but we were too afraid of him after that to find out.