Inventing stuff/"kit bashing"

[konate]

I know a lot of stuff in the "equipment" type category can be handled with assets (lamp post, manhole covers, "look what I had in the quinjet" laser rifle). But, how do you handle mimicking other powers in the game with inventing characters?

Example: I have a player playing Reed Richards and the quinjet just got smashed in the savage land. When the night ended, he asked how he'd go about creating a teleporter to get them out of there. I responded with "assets", but then that didn't sit right.

How do you create inventions that use powers other than damage; say a flying apparatus, etc?

[salsa]

Well, it is an asset. I don't see it differently.

[chaosnet]

I would say that Reed would be able to use his Tech Mastery D10 to create an asset stunt of "Teleportation Device" which would be at D8.

I would probably also rule that it would work once, unless he put a PP into it to have it function multiple times.

I would also add a scene distinction "Cannibalized Quinjet" to indicate that the teleporter's parts came from the QJ.

[chaosnet]

In your "Flying Apparatus" part, he could put together a power pool to create a flying device:

Team D10
Absent Minded Professor D8
Tech Maser D10 (would probably convert to 2D8)
MAYBE try to jive Stretching D10 in (hey, having long arms and stretchiness helps in making this a one man job)

So he would do a 3D8+D10 to create the asset "Flying Platform", spending 1 PP would make it persistent IF the Watcher deemed it necessary, or the Watcher could say it lasts as long as it narratively made sense.

[Newtsy]

I would also add a scene distinction "Cannibalized Quinjet" to indicate that the teleporter's parts came from the QJ.

Why would you do this? I'm not saying you can't, of course. I'm just curious as to what purpose this would fulfill.

[chaosnet]

Just to show that the Quinjet parts got used in creating the device. It would be a D4'able Distinction in the event that anything else tech-wise had to be created.

[Newtsy]

Vey cool, chaos ... I wouldn't have thought to use Scene Distinctions in the creation of an asset/resource. But why not, right? Seems to make sense. Thanks for the response!

[konate]

I dunno. Having Tech master or maybe expert even, can give you access to a lot of things at your fingertips. Create a teleporter at a moments notice? I guess for story, to leave the island would be cool. But, just seems weird; so quickly. I can understand Reed Richards, but would Iron Man or T'Challa be allowed to do this too, create a teleporter?

Some of this stuff will be determined by character comic book specialties, I suppose.

[Newtsy]

But, just seems weird; so quickly. I can understand Reed Richards, but would Iron Man or T'Challa be allowed to do this too, create a teleporter?

I get your trepidation, but of course it depends on how you run your narrative. I can totally see Reed being able to cobble together parts to come up with a teleporter "on the fly". However, perhaps in the case of Tony or T'Challa (given the Savage Land scene distinctions) the resource could be described as finding teleporter schematics amongst the Celestial artifacts caches ... i.e.; something that guides them in the creation of the device.

Remember, if the players can describe it and it makes sense then it should be allowed.

[babel2uk]

As far as the speed of the inventing goes, one panel can be any length of time covering one action. So (to paraphrase the Marvel Universe RPG) where in a fight scene one panel is a single punch or flury of punches/blasts of power, when used for other actions (such as inventing) one panel might conceiveably be a picture of Tony Stark pondering his work bench with the caption '72 sleepless hours later....'.