Transferable Life Drain Power

[Atadiusti]

I'm building a Hero who through the use of extendable cilia-like tendrils on her fingertips, can transfer life energy (for lack of a better term). I had hoped the Life Powers Power Profile would have helped, but there wasn't anything remotely useful in the pamphlet. I'm just not sure how to build this.
I figured I'd start with a grab-based Weaken Stamina effect and link an Incurable Affliction, make the combination and furthermore an Enhanced trait that was limited to how much she Drains. But the Enhanced Trait effect hard to mathematically represent in power points, not to mention the ability I want her to have in further transference. And it may not be the best way to represent what she can do. Though her basic effect on the offensive target should be something akin to Rogue's touch or Baron Strucker's as seen in the "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" cartoon, essentially, she should be able to play musical chairs with people's constitutions, draining health from one person while healing and gaining vigor in the process, or draining herself to heal another

[Batgirl III]

How about something along the lines of an Affliction with a flawed Healing?

• Life Drain Affliction 10 (Resist: Fortitude; Fatigued, Exhausted, Incapacitated; Extra: Progressive) [ 30 PP ]
• Life Transfer Healing 10 (Extra: Energizing; Flaw: Limited [Only usable after inflicting a Third Degree Affliction on Another Target]) [ 10 PP ]

[Atadiusti]

How about something along the lines of an Affliction with a flawed Healing?

• Life Drain Affliction 10 (Resist: Fortitude; Fatigued, Exhausted, Incapacitated; Extra: Progressive) [ 30 PP ]
• Life Transfer Healing 10 (Extra: Energizing; Flaw: Limited [Only usable after inflicting a Third Degree Affliction on Another Target]) [ 10 PP ]

That's almost there. Honestly I think my focus for detail is too grainy to make the power work exactly the way I want it to, but if I add some more modifiers for flavor, it should be close enough. If I change the flaw to as you have it written *or* as Empathic, that still works, yes? Since they're both -1 per effect rank Flaws, that shouldn't be a problem?

[JDRook]

Batgirl III wrote:
How about something along the lines of an Affliction with a flawed Healing?

• Life Drain Affliction 10 (Resist: Fortitude; Fatigued, Exhausted, Incapacitated; Extra: Progressive) [ 30 PP ]
• Life Transfer Healing 10 (Extra: Energizing; Flaw: Limited [Only usable after inflicting a Third Degree Affliction on Another Target]) [ 10 PP ]

If I change the flaw to as you have it written *or* as Empathic, that still works, yes? Since they're both -1 per effect rank Flaws, that shouldn't be a problem?

It sounds like the power you are describing (or at least one aspect of it) is manipulating Fatigue levels, and M&M has a relatively tight Fatigue economy since Extra Effort is arguably on par with Hero Points in terms of game effect.

One consequence of this is Energizing Healing. Using that as her "draining herself to heal another" is perfectly valid, but Energizing basically has Empathic built into it: healing someone's Fatigue always* causes the healer to take on the Fatigue. Therefore the healer can't use it on herself, and Empathic can't be used as a Flaw in this case.

Conceptually, the reverse should be allowed to work, taking someone else's Fatigue and using it to Energize yourself, which I believe is what BG3 was shooting for. A Fatiguing Affliction linked to Energizing Healing should work, as long as your GM is cool with it, and could conceivably work on two close targets so you could Drain Peter to Energize Paul. I get how Progressive and the Limit are meant to work together to get the Affliction up to a long-lasting effect, otherwise the Drained target could recover the next round, but I'm wondering if Concentration might be both cheaper and closer to concept.

This is all ignoring any other effects of Life Drain you have in mind, like Stamina swapping or Damage Healing or what have you. It's a neat concept, and I recall wanting to build something similar, but it's going to sit a little funny it M&M3e.




*there's one controversial exception that was published in the Electrical Power Profile where the PC could use an electrical source to recover Fatigue. It also defined ranks for sources, so batteries or electrical outlets could be insufficient (low ranks could fail the Healing check) and larger sources like power lines would be more situational.

[Atadiusti]

It sounds like the power you are describing (or at least one aspect of it) is manipulating Fatigue levels, and M&M has a relatively tight Fatigue economy since Extra Effort is arguably on par with Hero Points in terms of game effect.

One consequence of this is Energizing Healing. Using that as her "draining herself to heal another" is perfectly valid, but Energizing basically has Empathic built into it: healing someone's Fatigue always* causes the healer to take on the Fatigue. Therefore the healer can't use it on herself, and Empathic can't be used as a Flaw in this case.

Conceptually, the reverse should be allowed to work, taking someone else's Fatigue and using it to Energize yourself, which I believe is what BG3 was shooting for. A Fatiguing Affliction linked to Energizing Healing should work, as long as your GM is cool with it, and could conceivably work on two close targets so you could Drain Peter to Energize Paul. I get how Progressive and the Limit are meant to work together to get the Affliction up to a long-lasting effect, otherwise the Drained target could recover the next round, but I'm wondering if Concentration might be both cheaper and closer to concept.

This is all ignoring any other effects of Life Drain you have in mind, like Stamina swapping or Damage Healing or what have you. It's a neat concept, and I recall wanting to build something similar, but it's going to sit a little funny it M&M3e.

That is true about Energizing having Empathic built in. I was kind of hoping I could fudge it but I guess the real question I'm asking is: what kind of extra can I put down, because she should have a buffer against the fatigue if she's already drained someone. Idealistically 1 level of buffer for each level afflicted, on each target. Also, incorporating a Stamina swap really hits home to me for the concept like a Weaken Stamina + Enhanced Stamina limited to 2 ranks of Stamina per level of condition and reverse for the Healing? The issue with that is I have no idea how to charge that in power points. It's not worth the aggravation, so if no one else can think of how to cost the swap, I'll scrap the idea and stick with the simple affliction.

[JDRook]

Okay, I can work with that.

So we start with the heal, which is easier. The Energized Healing as before, Linked to:
Enhanced Stamina 6 (12p), Affects Others Only (+0), Quirk: 2 ranks per degree of success on Healing Check (-1), Side Effect: Weaken Stamina equal to gain (-1p/r) = 5p

Then the drain would be the Affliction Linked to:
Weaken Stamina 6 (12p) Linked to Enhanced Stamina 6 (12p), Quirk: 2 ranks per degree of failure on Affliction Check (-1) = 23p

At this point Durations become your big issue as Weaken normally Fades 1p/round.