New Salem: Renaissance - and (the end) of EVERYTHING

The third of our three problematic powers is Death Touch. Which is pretty self explanatory in what it does and why it's problematic for a random roll in a supers game. 

The rulebook acknowledges this up front in that superheroes should be allowed to reroll or modify the power as a matter of course. And lots of people do; to the point where it's really "Death Powers" in most of the games I've played in. So much so that the power itself just needs to be rewritten to better fit the rest of the game. 

Lets tackle the basic mechanics of the power as writ, as it's unique in the game. 

1. It requires an "successful Hand-to-Hand" mode attack" where the effect of the hit is the Death Touch potentially activates. This is weird from the jump because some of the defense types are designed like D&D Armor Class: you are still struck, but not well enough to penetrate your passive defense. Robot Body doesn't make you better at evading attacks, just resisting them; Stretching Powers might be evasion or it might be harmlessly absorbing the force of the blow. The other thing here is unless you're a martial artist type, the HTH attack mode sucks, at a 25% chance to hit at all. Now, we can get into this later, but for a lot of people this is just a lousy way to start.
2. "If contact is made (i.e. a hit is scored), the effect is..." OK stop here. This seems to imply that the hit that potentially activates the Death Touch might not also do HTH damage. You have to decide if you're trying to punch or if you're Death Touching. That makes sense in comic books - Instant Death attacks are almost always their own thing, so that the heroes can punch it up with the villain before the baddie opens their extended hand and reaches out to.... But if that's the case, the HTH attack mode makes even less sense as, again, you just need to touch them. Obviously this depends a lot of visuals. 
3. You don't roll damage, the target gets two saves to not die. One can easily see the Agility save being one to minimize the contact ("If he ever really gets his hands on me I'm dead!") and the Endurance to try to fight off the effect for a second to break free. Nicely simulationist. But it kinda neuters the ability. Basically you have a 50/50 chance to incapacitate an average human and a 25% chance to kill them, but much less for other heroes.
   It is fascinating in that it cuts through so much other stuff: a high HP don't help, high Power Score won't let you roll with it, Invulnerability and Armor don't protect you. a Death Touch attack could kill Superman with one hit! Except his Endurance and Agility are at least 15 each, so it has a 6% chance to do that. Or if both are 20+, a 0.25% chance. You're really not likely to kill your opponents, but you COULD. 
4. It only costs you Power when it works. This shows up a couple other places - Emotion Control and Mind Control - and it's an interesting mechanic. The high PR power that completely removes an opponent from play, but you only pay the cost when it works. Oddly, Paralysis Ray also removes an opponent, but that costs 7 per attempt. (Transmutation also costs 8 per attempt, but can have a ton of versatility and do damage, so I see the logic). Given the action economy trying one of these and failing is a bummer, so having the big drain on your power cost would add insult to injury, especially if you can do Death Touch or HTH damage, but not both. 

I'm torn here because in order to keep to the NSR ethos of this project I want character death to be a distinct possibility. Keeping the "this cuts through all your other defenses" rules works for that. But I also don't want to have rules that say "this auto-kills NPCs and Pcs get these saves" because the game as writ is very symmetrical and that injects some narrative asymmetry I'm trying to avoid. 

I've been gnawing on this for the better part of a week, and I think I've landed on:

Death Powers: The character has powers that allow them to directly damage the life force or biological processes of another living being. When struck by Death Powers, the target has to make two saving throws on d20 - one vs Agility to minimize the length of the contact and one vs. Endurance to survive the contact at all. If the target makes both saves they take 2d8 damage as if this were a regular attack and the attacker expends 5 Power. If the target makes one save, they lose all their HP and are immediately incapacitated - this damage is not mitigated by invulnerability, armor, or rolling with the attack - and the attacker expends 10 Power. If the target fails both saves, they lose all HP and Power, and are dead; note that they do not take any damage to Basic Hits, so the corpse is in excellent condition for Revivification or some other medical intervention.

Heroic characters can usually choose to 'pull' their Death Powers attack so that no saves are rolled and it does 2d8 damage; only one save is rolled and it either does 2d8 damage or incapacitates; or the full range of effects are possible. 

Death Powers normally has no range, needing to be delivered by touch or with a Carrier Attack (see 3.4). If it is delivered by touch, it requires an HTH Mode attack to hit, but with a +4 attack modifier as the attacker needs only to touch the target, not strike them hard enough to do damage. (If Death Powers is carried by an HTH attack that also does damage, no modifier is applied to the attack.) If the power does have range, it is the characters (C+Ch) divided by 5 inches. 

I think this improves things quite a bit, while keeping the potential for instant death. It's something a Player Character can have as their primary power as they can usually 'pull it' to just be an attack with a decent chance to hit and solid damage, with the ability to pull out the stops. It's clear that it can be a touch or a carried attack, and also implies that it can be carried by, say, Lightning Control for an electrical attack specialized in causing cardiac arrest. 

The option for short range death powers as death powers design works well for, say, Needle from the Revolution (who also had a Devitalization ray attack and telekinesis) for her biokinetic powers, or for Demise in the Wild Cards books, who could lock eyes with people at short range and psychically kill them.