Copy Ability + Duplicate Self = Broken?

[narrativium]

Greetings all, nice forum you have here (my first post ).

I'm GMing for the first time (ever in any system) tomorrow. My group are building 40 stone characters and I've got plot, challenges, puzzles and enemies to throw at them... but one of the players came up with a character who presents an interesting challenge to probably any GM.

The Copy-copy-copy-copy-cat:
Int 3, Str 1, Agi 1, Spd 1, Dur 1.
General Knowledge 3, No Bonus
Social Skills 1
Copy Ability/Action/Modifier
Duplicate Self
Wealth 0

That's 64 stones, so he's picked out 24 stones worth of challenges, including Mutant, Psychological: Teen Angst, Relatives who don't know he has superpowers, Afraid of the opposite sex, a hefty dose of Stick up for the Underdog...

Even so, with Copy and Duplicate, two 30-stone modifiers, a number of members of the group have deemed this a broken character. Any power or statistic one of the group has, he and his dupes can have too. Since he's only taken two actions, he has seven boxes available for new actions per dupe, which makes ganging up on him impossible. Since Duplicate isn't an Action, he can create any number of new dupes and still use two actions against an enemy, and at Dur 1 (assuming he doesn't copy an enemy Durability) he can't lose stones when a dupe gets killed.

It's also not clear from the Copy rules how you specify powers to copy - can you pick a GM character and copy all their powers, including the ones you don't know about? Our example was this - in close combat with Daredevil, could you also copy his legal skills to solve some other problem you were having?
For that matter, can you steal Actions acquired through experience - Vehicle Ops, General Knowledge, Social Skills (particularly contacts, rather than charm/bluff type specialities), Ninja? So far we're ruling yes.
The limit we've picked out is this: he can't steal the Intelligence-Energy rule, and he can't steal equipment or technology. An enemy with a sword or powered armour still has the advantage.

Our more detailed ruling went like this. They're still 30 stone powers, worth giving the player some latitude, and it's not like the character can't die...
Example One: Two dupes of our CopyCat A1 and A2, and a Companion B, stand in a line, no closer than 8ft to the next guy. So, A2 can copy B's powers, but A1 can't. We rule that A1 can also not steal A2's copy of B's powers. On the other hand A2 could legitimately create another dupe, who, being within 10ft of B, could also become empowered. So, A and B can give B an effective radius of a mile, but they can't cover the world.

Example Two: B has Vehicle Ops 5, enough to fly a plane, but is wounded. Copycat A creates several dupes, all of whom come close enough to B to copy the power, then take places in the cockpit. Let's say for the original A, Vehicle Ops now occupies the ninth Action box, but A doesn't have the Speciality General Knowledge in Geography to know where to fly to. B has this knowledge. A cannot absorb this knowledge and augment his existing General Knowledge; instead he must drop a power and take on a second General Knowledge Action in order to navigate.

Example Three: A bad guy, Villain, appears. The copycat chooses to copy his opponent's powers, not knowing their full extent. We rule that, so long as the copycat has empty Action Boxes, rather than the GM revealing his character's powers the GM can determine which Villain powers are also transferred. The Copycat may accidentally become invisible or set fire to his clothes or something.

Creating Challenges.
Steal Superpower won't restrict this character, unless you get the last and original one. Copycat copies Steal Superpower and as soon as they touch they're both unconscious for a minute. If they fall on each other for long enough they're both comatose... less than ideal.
Suppress Mutant Power will restrict the dupes in range to their original profile, and they can't make new dupes or be re-absorbed until they're out of range.

For one villain, who I wanted to keep superior, I came up with a new Invulnerability. Like Suppress Mutant Power, only personal - no range.

Invulnerability to Power-Stealing, 10 white stones.
Immune to Steal Superpower and Copy Ability/Action/Modifier. Immune to Drain Energy, too, unless it's used at range. It's not a case of you suppress the powers of an individual you touch, so much as they just don't affect you - a character you touch is perfectly capable of making a Power Fist or Stealing Powers, so it'll work against anyone else they're in contact with.
Just to try and equal some odds... though I don't know if it's too cheap or too expensive or about right.

Anyway... what do you think? We'll be letting the character play for at least one session, and we've got some back-up characters in case it gets really stupidly silly, but I like to throw out ideas and get feedback.

[piratespice]

Yeargh...

Here's the problem, in my mind: Duplicate Self = broken. Almost all of the most broken character builds I've ever seen involve this power. I've tried to figure out ways to fix it, but its just too open-ended a power. Combine that with Copy Ability/Action/Modifier, and yeah...you're in for a nightmare. Not only is the character a schtick-thief, robbing other characters of their unique abilities, but he can now do it better than all of them...and ten times more.

I honestly don't have any good advice, other than to talk to your player about playing a different character. Explain to him that he is going to walk all over the game and very likely ruin everyone's fun. The mere fact that you had to custom tailor a power just so he couldn't steal a certain character's abilities (and duplicate them ad infinitum) should tell you that this character build is going to be a headache. Save yourself!

[Scriptus]

Through in a couple of really powerful NPC with sever challenges on their powers. Some guys with area effects out of control without a device(which your player won't have) who aren't immune to their own powers would make things really sticky quick.

Let this guy know that if he wants these powers he isn't going to be able to abuse them. I personally don't like these powers. Both seem pretty unoriginal and require little creative thought to play with.

[narrativium]

Cheers guys. The game was tonight, seemed to go ok I think (I don't have any other GMing experience to compare it to, though)... the Copycat takes a while the battle with because CADs and profiles have to be re-figured out a lot, and I think the other players were a little less than happy with the subsequent speed of fight, but on the plus side they all played their characters well. The copycat had a lot of challenge stones, and the other players enjoyed making fun of him (Challenge: Shunned by Peers). And yeah, one of my characters had Charge Objects 10, out of control without special suit - meaning that Copycat can't touch his own fingers together without jumping in pain (exploding fingernails, bwah-ha-ha-ha!).
And one of him died, too, so there's that...

His speed of CAD allocation should improve, and I'm taking a combination of lack-of-control, ranged powers, special defences (like the aforementioned Immunity) and taking advantage of his challenges. My Copycat is a 16-year-old with teen angst and an intense need to be a hero, who leaves a dupe at school and then plays truant. His family are vulnerable and don't know his powers but are prying relatives.
Lots of challenge stones to make obstacles out of . The trick now is to not ignore the others. Which I don't think I have been, so far.

[Ricochet]

The main book says:
''Watch out for people building unreasonable characters or exploiting the character creation rules for pure power.'' (page 108)

Unless your player has a really cool scientific explanation for having both duplicate self and copy ability/action/modifier he can't have both.

[emerald]

Technically there are no "broken" characters. In this game, as in most pen and paper RPGs, the Game Master's rulings always override the books rules, so "Rules Lawyering" and "Min-Maxing" only happen when the GM allows it. And if, like in this case, the player takes advantage of his seeming over-poweredness, then a good GM will respond in kind. Tell him that someone has just become jealous of his power, give that someone Steal Superpower and run rampant on his @$$. Get a telepath to attack him without warning. Give him both the powers and weaknesses of those he copies. Have someone attack the real him directly. (I bet his 1 Durability can handle it ) With some creativity you can begin to balance the game, and if worse comes to worse, tell him he needs to make another character.

[Whitewing]

24 stones in challenges?!?!

That, to me, seems insane and makes the character almost unplayable.

[GhostKnight]

There was once a player in a campaign that had so many challenges that when other player used his power of fire the challenged one had to beat the crap out of him... and when an Adamantium golem dared him to attack the challenged stood and fought until he died.

Moral: challenges aren't just to get more stones, they can mess horribly with your character.

Duplicate self has a major weakness... all of your dupes has different personalities. So one can be really arrogant, other being a sloth, etc. so a "party" of duplicated ones can get troublesome for anyone including the character himself.

[Beacon]

narrativium said:

(exploding fingernails, bwah-ha-ha-ha!).

Actually there's a character in Joe Casey's Intimates series with just that power.

[thunderball]

I like the character very much ut I agree it can be hard to gm. But from my point of view the more creative the players are durcing charater creation, the more creative th game can be during play.

[Manticore]

One idea I have had is to limit the number of actions/abilities that the character can copy. For example, give this ability an ability number and cost level.

e.g. Copy Ability/Action/Modifier
(+9 to cost level.)
Range: 1
(+1 to cost level for 1# additional range.)
For each stone placed into this ability, this character can copy 1 Ability/Action/Modifier.

eg. Mimic spent 30 stones on this power, so he has an ability number of 3. If in combat he places 3 stones into this ability he can copy 3 of his opponents/teammates' Ability/Action/Modifiers. He would not have to copy all 3 from the same person/creature/thing. Mimic can then keep this ability until the person he stole it from is out of range.

1 problem: If Mimic was fighting Collossus, Mimic would copy his ability to transform himself, and from that he would gain increased durability, strength, toughness and so on. He could then copy from other people and become a threat powerful enough to take out an entire team. It beats me why Mimic never became an awesome threat in his own right, especially when he gained that ability to keep the copied abilities even after the one he'd copied from was out of range.

[blammo]

Five things to put reasonable limits on this character, yet keep it fun:

1) I would consider creating a duplicate an action for the sake of number of action allowed in a panel. I know it is a modifier, but anytime someone is "doing something" when I run a game (other than just talking, looking, strolling, etc) I consider it an action.

2) For the copy ability/action/modifier, I would limit that to having seen that ability/action/modifier in action. In otherwords, just by looking at another character you might not know that they can go invisible and so how would you know to try and copy them?

3) Duplicates do not retain the ability to duplicate (themselves) or to copy different abilities/actions/modifiers. They can, however, have whatever abilities/actions/modifiers the original had at the time the dupe was created.

4) Keep in mind how severely limited this character is in terms of his other abilities. He is fairly smart compared to most people, but in looking at his other abilities he is weak, clumsy, slow and frail. Remember those when this character is adventuring and what impact that has on his duplicate at school.

5) They have 24 stones worth of challenges? I would make sure that is being dealt with and that those challenges carry over to each duplicate.

All in all, I would let them do it and have fun with it, but at the same time I would carefully monitor it and keep reasonable restraints on it to prevent abuse. As someone pointed out: the slight personality difference from original to duplicates could provide all sorts of interesting diversions. But mostly, don't let it seem like you are singling them out. They should not be made to feel that you have a problem with them because they are "too powerful" or to difficult for you to run. Have fun with it!

Cheers!