Power Control

Effect: Mind Control

Action: Standard (active)

Range: Perception

Duration: Sustained (lasting)

Saving Throw: Will

Cost: 2 points per rank

You can exert influence over the powers of others, overriding the victim’s control and controlling when and how their powers operate. Make a Power Control check against the result of your target’s Will saving throw.

If you win, you can make the target’s powers to do anything they normally do, although you do not control the target’s body. So, for example, you could turn on a target’s laser eye-beams, but you can’t direct where the target is looking. At the GM’s discretion, extra effort on your part can grant the target of your Power Control a temporary power feat (including an Alternate Power), pushing their powers beyond their normal limits (see Extra Effort, M&M, page 120, for details).

It takes you the normal action to activate the target’s power, so if the power requires a standard action to use, you must take a standard action to force the target to use it, for example. It requires no action on the target’s part, and the target can act normally within the limits of any active powers.The target cannot activate or deactivate any powers, since you have usurped that ability.

Targets receive another opposed Will save and Power Control check for each interval that passes on the Time Table (so at one minute, five minutes, and so forth), with a cumulative +1 bonus per save. Targets also get a new save when you force them to use a power in strong opposition to the target’s beliefs, such as making a hero’s Burst Area Damage effect go off in the midst of a group of schoolchildren. The GM may grant a bonus of +1 to +4 on the saving throw, depending on the circumstances. A victim of Power Control can also use extra effort to gain a new save at any time. If your target’s saving throw succeeds, there is no effect and you must use extra effort to affect that target with Power Control again in the same scene. This is also true of a target that succeeds on a

later save to break your control.

EXTRAS

• Affects Corporeal: As a mental sensory effect, Power Control works normally on corporeal targets while you are incorporeal without need for this extra. It likewise affects incorporeal targets normally without the need for the Affects Incorporeal power feat.

• Alternate Save: Power Control that’s primarily biological in nature—affecting the target’s body rather than mind—might call for a Fortitude save rather than a Will save.

• Area: Your Power Control affects all targets in a given area. You can influence each target’s powers each round, taking the longest action required. So if you affect the powers of four targets,taking free, free, move, and standard actions, respectively, you can do so with Area Power Control as a standard action. If you can choose to exclude some targets in the affected area from your Power Control (not usurping control of their powers), apply the Selective Attack extra as well.

• Contagious: Contagious Power Control spreads from one victim to another, bringing others under your influence, for as long as the effect lasts (see the Area extra, previously, for guidelines on influencing multiple targets’ powers at once).

• Duration: Continuous Power Control does not allow additional saving throws to break out of the effect over time, although forcing the target to use a power strongly against his will still allows another save as does extra effort by the target. If you stop maintaining your Power Control for any reason, or it is countered or nullified, the effect ends.

FLAWS

• Duration: Concentration Power Control requires you to take a standard action each round to maintain your control and a full-round action when you activate any power(s) taking a move action or longer to use. If you lose concentration for any reason, the power stops working. Instant Power Control allows the target a new saving throw each round the effect lasts, with a cumulative +1 bonus per round.

• Side Effect: Failing to control a target’s powers causes you some harm or inconvenience, ranging from straightforward Damage or Stun effects to whatever power effect you were trying to control affecting you or your target gaining control of your powers!

UNDER THE HOOD: POWER CONTROL

If Power Control lets you turn someone’s powers off and also lets you control those powers, why take Nullify (which only turns off powers)? True, Power Control does let you turn off powers, but it’s not as effective as Nullify for that purpose. Consider the following:

• Power Control only lets you turn a power off if the subject can normally do so; thus it cannot turn off Permanent or Uncontrolled powers, whereas Nullify can.

• Power Control doesn’t let you counter powers, Nullify does. • Power Control’s lasting duration allows additional saves. If Nullify is made sustained or continuous duration, the target gets no additional saves; the power is off as long as the Nullify lasts.

• The save against Power Control is affected by what you’re trying to force the target’s power(s) to do while the save against Nullify isn’t affected by conditions or how the subject feels about the situation.

• Power Control doesn’t work on power effects only power users, whereas Nullify does both. So you can Nullify a created object or a fire, or banish a summoned construct, for example, but Power Control can’t do those things.

• Power Control only works on targets with conscious control over their powers. It doesn’t affect targets immune to mental effects or lacking such control: you can Nullify a machine, but you can’t use Power Control on it unless the machine is conscious (and thus affected by mental effects).