Thank you for the very nice comments, everybody!
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Originally Posted by cybersluagh
A question though. How well do the power rules duplicate power-armor/gadgeteers and magic? From my experience, these two areas can make a break a supers system.
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Hi, Sluagh! I'm sorry I didn't answer sooner (though I see Tim did). My excuse is I was out gaming yesterday.
Gadgeteering,
Super-Gadgeteering,
Sorcery, and
Power Armour can all be treated as Meta-Powers. Meta-Powers allow the character to tie many disparate powers into one penumbra; the example given in
Truth & Justice is Weather Control. Most of the (Something) Control powers in comic books fall under the category of Meta-Powers.
Optionally,
Power Armour can also be treated as a Super-Gadget, or as a series of individual powers with the Limitation:
Requires the special suit. In addition, Power Armour counts as Super Armour (unless that doesn't fit the character concept), which absorbs super-scale damage. Also optionally, other Powers taken in addition to Power Armour can be bound up in the package.
Example: Iron Woman has Expert [+4] Power Armour, Good [+2] Flight and Good [+2] Super-Gadgeteering. The player, Toni, declares that her character's Flight power is part of the armour, but Super-Gadgeteering is intrinsic to Iron Woman. Thus, if someone steals the suit of power armour, they also get Iron Woman's Flight power, but not her Super-Gadgeteering.
Alternately, there is a
Battlesuit power, which is a form of Armour that also has a number of slots for qualities or Quasi-Powers (examples of quasi-powers can be a lot of Batman's gadgets, like the batarang or the glider cape) equal to the Battlesuitʹs Rank Modifier. It's a more gadget-y version than Power Armour.
We have one super-gadgeteer in our game, although she has yet to use it to its full spectacular value (she mostly uses her ready-made gadgets and super-gadgets.) We also have one character with Sorcery. In his case, because it's thematically appropriate, we use the version of Sorcery found in the
Legends Walk! supplement:
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It follows the basic outline of Sorcery in T&J (p.48), functioning as a Meta-Power that has a general description of style and emphasis rather than a defined list of Stunts, and can be used to do almost anything as a Stunt as long as it doesn’t break the theme. Of course, having to Stunt means it’s less effective than someone who has that particular effect as an innate power.
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So with a Master [+6] Sorcery power, the sorcerer can any other power as a Stunt for free at the Good [+2] level*, as long as it doesn't contradict the character concept. That also means that normally, only one power-as-stunt can be used at a time, barring player creativity and/or use of Hero Points.
This is also how I treat other Meta-Powers, such as "Nanite Form", a power created by one of my guest players which was similar to The Engineer in Authority.
*
"Spin-off" or impromptu stunts can be used two levels below the Power they are based on for free; the expenditure of a Hero Point allows the player to raise the level of the spin-off stunt by one; for each additional Upshift, the HP expenditure doubles. So a Sorcerer starting with Expert [+4] Sorcery could use, say, the power of Flight at Average [+0] rank for free, or he could spend 1 HP to raise it to Good [+2], or 2 HPs to use it at Expert [+4] level. (You can't use a stunt at a level above the power it's based on.)