Precognition

[griffinman01]

One of my players asked me how I would build a specific power and I had no clue what the best method would be so I wanted to pose it to the board, since you guys have a wealth of ideas. I'm not sure what the best way to call it but we'll go with Precognition even though that implies long term predictions. For those of you who are familiar with the Marvel Comic Villain, Destiny, I was wondering how to build her abilities. She had extreme precognition where she, in spite of her blindness, could use her precognition to determine what people were doing around her by seeing their actions and reacting to them before they occurred. So she could determine that someone was going to pull a gun and shoot at her before he did so, giving her time to react to it before the guy even got it out of the holster.

 

What he was asking was how you could build a power that would let a character know what kind of attack someone else was planning on using and on whom before it happens.

 

I had told him that stuff like Danger Sense, Combat Luck, Defense Maneuver, and some of the sensory powers (360 degree perception) Man would mimic Destiny's combat potential but I had no idea how to do something like the precognition part. I know that there's Clairsentience and that you could buy precognition through that but that always seemed like it was best suited for fortune telling and other vague visions of the far future rather than 3-4 seconds into the future in the middle of combat.

 

I'd also like to note that this is purely hypothetical and we're more interested in how it would work in theory rather than actually trying to build the power on a PC. This kind of ability would probably irritate a GM to no end and I wouldn't allow it, however the devil inside of me would be interested in trying to get a villain to use this kind of ability. In any case, I'm looking for ideas on what the best way to simulate this ability is.

[Greywind]

Re: Precognition

 

Combat Skill Levels of various flavors. Used to increase DCV (where not to be). Used to increase OCV (when/where to hit).

[psyber624]

Re: Precognition

 

As with every other power build, you need to apply the HEROspeak mantra "What does it do in GAME EFFECTS" and build from there. "I see 3-4 seconds into the future and know what they are going to do before they do it" is a special effect, not a power. The question you have to ask is what does the player want to be the benefits of this power.

 

At the basic level I agree with Greywind, this really sounds like CSL's with all combat. If you want it to be somewhat unpredictable (ie its not perfect knowledge, or sometimes the character can't react to the information fast enough for it to matter) Buy clairsentient precog as normal, with heavy limitations (to represent that its only a few seconds in the future). Another possible way to do it (with a bit of GM Handwavium) would be to define it as "Transdimensional, for Sight Only, One Specific Dimension" and simply define the dimension as "exactly 1 second into the future", that at least gives you a power to base it off of (and that would only cost 5 pts, so A LOT cheaper than standard precog). However as a GM you should be careful of this sort of power, because you don't want to have to have pc's/npc's declaring actions ahead of time for the power to work. (Realistically this power would be nearly useless at over 1 second in the future anyway because a trained fighter will react to whatever you do in response to what you "saw" and change their attack anyway... and yes I realize I just used the word "realistically" in reference to precognition ) As a GM I would personally rule that you get just enough of a benefit that your "reactions" can improve, but you as a player don't get to know what they are actually going to do (you just react slightly better to it.)

 

As a writeup:

 

Destiny Vision: Naked Advantage: Dimensional for Sight Only, (5 AP) Dimension: 1 second into the future, Costs END (-1/2) RC: 3 pts

+4 Combat Skill Levels with all Combat (40 pts), Linked to Destiny Vision (-1/4), Only for attacks the character can perceive (-1/4), Costs END (-1/2) RC: 20 pts

Total Cost: 23 pts (5 End)

 

There are other limitations that you could easily apply: Requires a PER Roll (-1/2) (or -1 if roll required every phase), Limited Power(Does not work vs other time power users; -0 to -1/4), etc.. however I would probably apply them only to the Naked Advantage, and then maybe increase the Linked Limitation to (-1/2) on the CSL's.

 

For this to work exactly like Destiny's power of course you would have to apply it to whatever "sense" she uses to see things in the future, as she doesn't have sight for the Naked advantage to apply to, but that wouldn't change the cost of this power. You could possibly write up her "sight" with the advantage, and simply remove Costs END and add add Blackout (-1/2) and Always On (-1/2) to simulate her blindness (but in that case she could not sell back blindness as normal for 35 points, she can still basically see, but her sight is shifted forward 1 second in time all the time)

 

As you pointed out there are lots of other talents/powers that could be used to simulate other aspects of this power of hers. Particularly Defense Maneuver to represent that she can't really be surprised. Also note that there may be other sense modifiers that are appropriate as well (as written it would not really enhance her sight, I'm not familiar with Destiny myself but if her power works in darkness, against people she can't see, or on attacks from any direction you would need to add other modifiers to simulate those effects as well.)

 

Anything more than this is a true "stop sign" power bought as limited precog as normal. Playing it would get old REALLY fast because both you and all the other PC's would have to declare all your actions ahead of time and then allow her to react to what you "plan" to do, and then have everyone do what they stated earlier. Really overpowered, really annoying, and not likely to be fun for much of anyone.

[griffinman01]

Re: Precognition

 

Anything more than this is a true "stop sign" power bought as limited precog as normal. Playing it would get old REALLY fast because both you and all the other PC's would have to declare all your actions ahead of time and then allow her to react to what you "plan" to do' date=' and then have everyone do what they stated earlier. Really overpowered, really annoying, and not likely to be fun for much of anyone.[/quote']

 

Yeah, I wouldn't allow this kind of ability on a PC simply because of that. I was more curious in building a villain with these abilities and I think your suggestions are probably the best way to go. Thanks for the input!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Precognition

 

The simplest way is with a new sense. She is blind, so give her a physical complication indicating that and replace her sight with an Enhanced Sense with all the advantages of normal sight but based on the Unusual Sense Group, which would then mean she could operate as if she had normal sight, but without being vulnerable to sight attacks. You could base it on the mental sense group - it seems about right that a mental Flash would 'blind' her. Basically you are building DareDevil, but with a mental/time sense rather than 'normal' sight.

 

I would just give her overall levels to simulate her ability to see the future and therefore be better able to react to what happens. Call it Combat Precognition, or something.

 

As has been mentioned, longer term precognition can be a real problem to run for a GM. Either the universe is such that everything is pre-ordained - in which case you actually have to make whatever the PC predicted actually happen, which can be very awkward, or everything is random in the future, in which case precognition would not work anyway. The middle ground, that everything is not fixed but different outcomes have different probabilities is also not that useful, because, well, it is a lot of work for the GM.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Precognition

 

If the precognition was 3-4 minutes or 3-4 hours into the future, you would really need a power write-up (Clairsentience+) to grant her that info. But 3-4 seconds into the future isn't long enough to do much with that knowledge, so it is really just sfx. I would buy it as Overall Levels and Lightning Reflexes.

 

I am only passingly familiar with Destiny, so I don't know quite how her precognition works, but as mentioned already Danger Sense, Defense Manuever, and some kind of Spatial Awareness seem appropriate.

[griffinman01]

Re: Precognition

 

I was mostly using Destiny as an example of the power so I'm not too worried about building her exact skill set. As of right now I think using Overall Levels outlined in Psyber624's post along with a myriad of talents to simulate the effect is best. I agree that a couple of seconds would be the limit to the power's effects, otherwise it would be a nightmare to manage. The idea is that the character would be able to know that one of the PCs is planning on hitting them with an energy blast moments before they can fire it off, giving them enough time to come up with some kind of defense (diving prone, blinding them with an attack, shoving something else in the path, or taking them out before they can fire). I think having it linked to Perception would be a good way to balance it and give it some chance of failure since being able to know every attack would be very powerful and a little frustrating for the players. Plus it would give them some kind of chink in the armor that they could possibly exploit. However I don't think she herself would need to perceive the attack. I see this ability firing off if someone was planning on taking a shot at her from a building a mile away so I'd probably give her Danger Sense linked to the ability as well.