Other characters as powersets

[Alric]

I had a couple of questions on how to handle some situations.

Several characters have power sets that represent pets or minions like Shadowcat and Doctor Doom.

How do you handle running the pet separately? For example what would happen if Lockheed went out on his own and got attacked? Would you treat the power set like a specialty character in that case giving him a d8 or d10 or would you roll Shadowcat's affiliations, other power sets, and specialties?

What about damage? Would an attack on Lockheed be treated like an attempt shutdown the powerset, as a complication, or would shadowcat take the stress? For an intelligent pet like Lockheed how would you deal with differing types of stress?

[Thorguild]

If this happened in my group, I would do it all narratively.

Lockheed is not a separate character with his own stats. So unless we decided that he was going to be played by someone, I'd do it this way: Kitty Pride declares that she is going to shut down Lockheed for +1 PP. She then uses the rest of her powers to create a complication "Harassed by itty-bitty murder machine" on Carnage. She uses the PP to step up the complication over D12. Now Carnage and Lockheed are both out of the scene. Kitty's player gets to narrate what happens. She then tells a half-hour story of an epic battle in the sewers where Lockheed battles the monstrous Carnage, finds a dimensional portal, visits Asgard, joins the Warriors Three, discovers a Symbiote-joined Frost Giant King, flees for his life, rescues Sif, rallies the Asgardian Army, is promoted by Odin to High General of all forces, leads the counter-attack, risks everything, sacrifices himself to save the Realm, makes a deal with Hel, is brought back by Valkyrie, is celebrated by a feast, is offered a Hammer by Odin, turns it down politely, is further honored for his humility, is transported back by Heimdal, and then returns to Kitty during the next transition scene. Kitty says "Lockheed! I've been looking all over for you! Don't run off when we need you! Silly Dragon. Who wants a hug?" Lockheed looks at the reader and winks. The table looks at Kitty's player with open mouths, then breaks in to slow applause.

I don't have the Doombots yet, but unless they are full characters and not a powerset, I'd work them the same way.

Thorguild

[MidnightBlue]

If the other character/pet/minion was important enough to the character to be represented by a power set, then I would be very hesitant to ever let them separate.

Now...maybe this would be a great Limit for the power set...Separated/Kidnapped or something. Activate the limit and the power set is shutdown while the separation is handled narratively. It could work just like Exhausted.

As Thorguild said, for the purposes of this datafile, where a Power Set represents another being, he/she/it does not count as a separate character for most purposes.

If you wanted them to be separate, then the player should come up with a different datafile that doesn't include the pet/person as a power set and then the Watcher can stat the pet/person out as its own NPC datafile.

[pksullivan]

Check out Commander Turing, a hero in my campaign. He has two power sets: a personal force field and jetpack, and a small cadre of advanced robot drones (think Iron Man without Tony inside).

[cero]

I'd just do it as setting up a complication. In the example given, Kitty Pryde would make a roll to defend Lockheed and if she failed, she would have a complication like 'Lockheed knocked out' or something similar on her.

[MidnightBlue]

I'd just do it as setting up a complication. In the example given, Kitty Pryde would make a roll to defend Lockheed and if she failed, she would have a complication like 'Lockheed knocked out' or something similar on her.

A very good idea.

[Alric]

Thanks for the ideas, after some thought I have decided on the following.

If the pet and the character are together then they work as one character, the pet being counted as a powerset.

If the pet is used alone then the powerset becomes a specialist character (either expert or master depending) with the same affiliation dice as the character.

The pet, whether acting as a powerset or a specialist character can be shutdown (or stressed out) as if it were a specialist character.