Wild Talents Sample Power Creation

/SAMPLE POWER CREATION

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>Could I ask questions on how to build powers? The whole system is a bit complicated
>so a power i was thinking of is basically a dude that makes these crystals right?
>they're about the size of a baseball, and they draw in water in about a 20 ft radius. they can desiccate living things in about a minute or so.
>At any point he can "detonate" these crystals, creating shrapnel that has a mini version of the water leech. the shrapnel can NOT detonate again.the explosion and amount of shrapnel scales up to a maximum based on the amount of water absorbed.
>after an hour all crystals just become salt, and he can end the effect at any time
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Alright so there are two things you should keep in mind when making powers for Wild Talents. First is to do exactly what you've done: describe the full breadth of the power's effect. Second is that you work backwards: figure out the moving parts that add up to the whole. These moving parts are called "Qualities".

In this case, your power stems from the base ability of "Create Water Crystal." This is a Useful quality, since it does something that's not explicitly an attack or a defense. As a Useful Quality, it has the Mass, Range or Speed capacities as its default. However, since the power affects a mass of water at range, it has both Mass and Range. Each of these Capacities is 2 points.

So here's where we start:

Create Water Crystal (4 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range

Now its effect works at a radius of 20 feet, which means we want to add the Radius Extra for 2 pts. Radius actually works in increments of 15 feet, but precise distances aren't super important in Wild Talents so we'll stretch it and allow it to work at 20 feet. This power is also conditional on there being sufficient water around, so we can add an if/then flaw for -1. Finally, a crystal lasts for 1 hour before turning into salt, so we add Duration+2.

Create Water Crystal (7 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range-- Radius+2, Duration+2, if/then-1(Requires sufficient water supply)

You can choose to specify how much water is needed when you describe its effects, but that won't affect the point cost.

Now there's also another factor in creating Water Crystals, because doing so can also damage living things by draining them of their water. So we add another quality, this time an Attack with the Range capacity (since the fact that it affects an amount of mass in its target is negligable). This allows it to inflict Width in Shock and Killing to its target, a pretty nasty power.


Create Water Crystal (9 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range-- Radius+2, Duration+2, if/then-1(Requires sufficient water supply)
	Attacks Range

Now, what Extras you add to the Attacks Quality depends on how exactly the power works. The way you described it though, I feel that you could add the Engulf Extra (since it would suck water from its target's entire body, not just a specific limb) and the Non-Physical Extra, since it's not like how much armor you have would really affect the power. I'd also add an if/then flaw specifying that it only affects organic targets, so it wouldn't work on a robot that has no water in it.

It also has the same Radius extra as the Useful function, since it covers the same space. It also has the flaws Attached-2 and Automatic-1. Attached means for the power to work you need to roll another thing, in this case the power's Useful Quality, and Automatic means it goes off immediately. So whenever you roll Create Water Crystal, you roll for both its Useful properties and its Attack property.

Here's what it looks like with those Extras and Flaws:

Create Water Crystal (13 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range-- Radius+2, Duration+2, if/then-1(Requires sufficient water supply)
	Attacks Range-- Radius+2, Engulf+2, Non-Physical+2, if/then-1(only works on organic targets), Attached-2(attack goes
                    off when you roll to create a Water Crystal), Automatic-1 (attack ALWAYS goes off).

For the sake of ease of readibility, let's split "Create Water Crystal" and "Desiccate Living Things" into two "sub-powers"

Create Water Crystal (7 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range-- Radius+2, Duration+2, if/then-1(Requires sufficient water supply) Desiccate Living Things (4 pts)
	Attacks Range-- Radius+2, Engulf+2, Non-Physical+2, if/then-1(only works on organic targets), Attached-2(attack goes
                    off when you roll to create a Water Crystal), Automatic-1 (attack ALWAYS goes off).

Constructed this way, you can choose either to have those abilities as a single power with two qualities, or as 2 separate powers. The cost will be the same, it's all about whether you want to have a single dice pool or one for each.

So with the power as it is now, you roll your dice to suck up all the water in a 15 foot radius, and if there are any juicy targets within that space, you can roll to attack them too.

Now for the second part: the detonation. That's pretty clearly an Attack with the Range capacity, and possibly the Mass Capacity too if you want it to throw people back.

Detonate Leech Crystal (2 pts)
	Attack Range

Right off the bat you can give it Radius+2 and some Area dice, let's say Area+3, since that's how Grenades usually work. Let's also give it Depleted-1 since it consumes your supply of Leech Crystals; no crystals, no explosions.

Detonate Leech Crystal (6 pts)
	Attack Range: Radius+2, Area+3, Depleted-1

Now, here's the real tricky part: there are no real clear rules in Wild Talents for powers that inflict varying amounts of damage. Sometimes this is modeled by giving a power multiple Attack qualities with different damage outputs. This is kind of clumsy, however. What I usually do instead is use the Variable Effect extra, which is sort of a catch-all Extra for powers without rigidly defined effects. Variable Effect is expensive, costing +4 points, but we will lower that by hemming in its effects with if/thens. First, we specify that the Variable Effect ONLY affects the amount of damage the attack inflicts, not anything else. Secondly, we specify the effect is based on how much water is absorbed.

Detonate Leech Crystal (8 pts)
	Attack Range: Radius+2, Area+3, Depleted-1, Variable Effect+4, if/then-1(Only for damage levels), if/then-1(damage is
                  based on amount of water absorbed

With this set-up, the maximum damage you can do is Width in Shock and Killing, and the minimum would be Width in Shock.

POWER: LEECH CRYSTAL
Create Leech Crystal (7 pts)
	Useful Mass, Range-- Radius+2, Duration+2, if/then-1(Requires sufficient water supply)
Desiccate Living Things (4 pts)
	Attacks Range-- Radius+2, Engulf+2, Non-Physical+2, if/then-1(only works on organic targets), Attached-2(attack goes
                    off when you roll to create a Water Crystal), Automatic-1 (attack ALWAYS goes off).
Detonate Leech Crystal (8 pts)
	Attack Range: Radius+2, Area+3, Depleted-1, Variable Effect+4, if/then-1(Only for damage levels), if/then-1(damage is
                  based on amount of water absorbed

Like I said, you could clump these into a single mega-power costing 19 pts, or you can make them as individual powers. As individual powers you can have separate dice pools, so you might roll 5d to create a leech crystal but detonate them for 8d. If they were a 19 pt mega power, they'd share a single dice pool. Both options work.
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So here's something I've been speculating on. In this post >>53044400 I outlined how Variable Effect could be used to create Attacks that had highly modular and conditional damage (in this case, the more water is absorbed by the Leech Crystal, the more damage is inflicted by its detonation). However, I don't feel like this a very good way to do it, since you're basically paying more points for the permission to inflict less damage.

Instead, how about this Flaw:

>Conditional Damage (-1 or -2 Points)
This Flaw can only be applied to an Attacks Quality. A miracle with this function will only do its full damage if certain conditions are met; otherwise it deals some lesser amount of damage.

As an example, a Miracle with Attacks+2 and this Flaw attached to it would only be able to inflict Width+2 in Shock and Killing under the right circumstances. Otherwise it might only inflict Width in Shock and Killing, or Width+2 in Shock, or Width+1 in Shock and Killing, etc... The rules for how much damage you get from which circumstances should be listed in the Miracle's effects.

This Flaw is worth -1 Point if it only affects the raw damage output of the Attack. If it also affects offensive Extras like Spray, Burn or Area then it's worth -2 Points.

How's that look? I think this should work nicely as a way to better model powers with highly variable damage output; otherwise you'd have to create a separate Attacks quality for each amount of damage.