Tricky Alternate Power question

[Ash Williams]

I've thought of creating a character who can assume a Solid Form, a la Colossus. However, due to injuries incurred in the past, the character has to stay in said Alternate Form. It's not "locked"; they're able to switch back to normal if they choose to do so. It's just that doing so would aggravate their injuries even further, possibly becoming lethal. Any ideas as to how to utilize this idea with the power writeup?

[Narsil]

Alternate Form (Extra: Continuous [+1]; Flaw: Side Effect [weakness if deactivated, -1]; 5pp/rank)

[FuzzyBoots]

Given the normal form is likely to be much less powerful anyhow, I'd probably just go for it as a Complication for the occasional time that it affects things and degrade his "normal" stats so that he's appropriately low on vitality when in that form. Using it as a Side Effect is a bit iffy to me, since that basically saves more points than him having the Weakness on all of the time.

[Narsil]

Given the normal form is likely to be much less powerful anyhow, I'd probably just go for it as a Complication for the occasional time that it affects things and degrade his "normal" stats so that he's appropriately low on vitality when in that form. Using it as a Side Effect is a bit iffy to me, since that basically saves more points than him having the Weakness on all of the time.

My issue is the fact that the power would have to be continuous, and that'd kind of unfairly drive the cost up a wee bit.

[kenseido]

I see both sides of the argument, Narsil.

While it might seem to drive the cost up, making the form Continuous means the Weakness will not activate that often. Even less than a Hard to Remove Device, I think.

[Narsil]

It would, however, have the effect of making him actually pay points for having a weakness that a cheaper made superhero would not, whereas my way of handling it would be at least a net +0.

[FuzzyBoots]

Alternately, he could make his "alternate" form his actual permanent stats. The circumstances where it gets cancelled out will be rare, so there's no real need to build in the mechanics of it (Power Loss could work, I suppose). The Complication would still apply. The only potential issue in this is situations where he chooses to drop his alternate form willingly, but a single (underpowered, with little more than stat reductions and a powerful Morph (single form) to his human appearance) AP could work for that.

[Narsil]

An alternative could be an 'if powers are nullified or drained' weakness.

[Ash Williams]

I've had time to think, and here's another possible arrangement:

Rather than an Alternate Form, just have the powers without the AF setup. And give him/her the Normal Identity Drawback, as well as Weakness (if reverted to Normal Identity; -1 CON per minute, potentially lethal; Uncommon, Major [or whatever]).