The second in our trio of powers that need modification, Cosmic Awareness. This one needs tweaking because first of all it's not a great adaptation of how the power appears in the comics, and also because it has a degree of meta play that doesn't let it translate as an NPC ability (which is very unusual for V&V)
Essentially as written the power is useless without some combination of Heightened Intelligence and Heightened Charisma. Worse, it doesn't really match what Cosmic Awareness did in the comics, with the best known practitioner being Captain Marvel, who was literally granted Cosmic Awareness in the run on his series. This provided him with a general sense of oneness with the universe, let him detect and locate cosmic level threats, and acted similar to a 'spider-sense' in terms of predicting physical harm. I don't know that the term existed in comics prior to that, even if there are other people who have displayed some version of it, including Spider-Man, whose spider-sense might as well be a low level Cosmic Awareness.
The problem is that almost any other implementation of Cosmic Awareness is just Heightened Senses. Even this iteration of Cosmic Awareness is just "asking questions of the GM" carved out so it's not taken as a Heightened Sense.
So what do we want Cosmic Awareness to do? I think the general answer is that the character is passively aware of threats to the cosmos and can learn things they would have no way of knowing.
Mechanically this means:
If there is some threat to the cosmos (or the planet, continuity, whatever) the Gm treats it like any other sense: if it's likely big enough for the character to sense it as they would any other stimui, they do. Less obvious cosmic threats, they have a chance equal to their detect danger to sense it. Cosmic Awareness also helps characters using any other senses, letting them re-roll any missed Detect Hidden or Detect Danger checks due to their cosmic senses.
If the player wants to learn something specific, it's a d% save vs. I * 3, and if successful the GM will give them some level of information about it. The character can spend 1 point of power per 1% added to their chance of success, so this can be exhausting. Failure means no meaningful answer, but not incorrect information; the character knows they can't interpret what they are sensing. Failure by more than 20% causes the character to get lost in the universe - treat this as Paralysis Ray with a d% save vs. Charisma to recover themselves - and if they miss the roll by more than 40% they also take 3d10 Power damage as if hit by Devitalization Ray.
I think this is a lot cleaner in the concept of the power being a general information feeder, a double for danger sense, and a way to get something closer to an Augury from D&D as opposed to a set series of Yes/No questions that has to be gamed out.
The thing that strikes me about the massive failure possiblity is that it just doesn't fit the comics at all; in general, if you have a power, you can use it. The exceptions exist, of course -- black bolt, various "powers as dissiabilites", but those are weaknesses added onto a power or a power ramped up at a cost of an embedded weakness, not the way a power sould be by default.
ReplyDeleteAs such, it feels like the various "and now you're franked" options should be a result of pushing the power too far, not a result you can get ouf a a single die roll -- stick with backlash on a 20% failure or more, but on your first question you'll tend to get vague answers and the backlash is moemntary -- stunned for one round, frex, as you peer briefly into the fabric of the universe and find it momentarily absorbing. Looking for more detailed answers--or probing into folloup questions for initial answers (the GM can just flat-out say "that question autmatically st arts at the third level" or whatnot) should risk progressively worse and worse backlash options, as you go from "see if I have a hunch" to "meditate on the nature of the universe" to "merge with the universe and dredge up answers from the depths of the universal ocean".
You're probably right there; I think I was holding too much to the design of the original power. I should probably do away with the backlash entirely and, as with Revivification/Healing, give it a maximum number of questions per day or a prohibitously high power power cost that perhaps you can offset by being zoned out. If the cost is 20 points per question, but you can drop into a trance and recover 2 points per minute, you are either choosing to drain your power (and act/look staggered) or be out of the action completely for 10 minutes per question. At least then it's consistent, with no chance of a fail state.
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