Cursed powers

[Matt]

As some may recall, I'm running a campaign about highschool students, sins of others fuel their powers, excessive use of their powers causes degeneration to insanity and transformation into a monster.

A certain classification of powers I call "Albatrosses" which are supposed to be powers that either accelerate degeneration or are otherwise cursed.

Since degeneration is tied to Basewill decrease any power with a Basewill cost would be an albatross but I'm hoping for powers that conceptually execute the concept, like a monkey's paw or uncontrollable subtle mind control (you never know who's agreeing with you or just being pushed).

Any other ideas for double edged powers?

-Matt Conlon

[Matador]

Hey there i have a couple ideas Any living thing you touch gets rapid cancerous growths. You could use harm and flaw it down with touch only, delayed, and always on. The delay could be anything from a couple minuets to hours to days.  The other idea is a form of regeneration that kicks in after you die, take regeneration with if/than. I actually used this on a character of mine named redshirt, but I also added the extra native power so that it couldnt be supressed ( a couple other flaws and extras too like loopy but I can tremember off the top of my head) It ended up being a form of ressurection, no matter what happened to him once his heart stopped he would come back to life a little later dazed and confused. Hope this helps.

[Daniel Kane]

I'm a big fan of powers with Permanent and Always On, maybe with Full Power Only for extra hijinks.  I ran a short comedic campaign in which the PCs were the only ones in an outbreak of "super" that had complete control of their powers.  NPCs included:

-- a teleporter who exchanges a 2m-ish? 10'? sphere of space centered on him with an identically sized sphere nearby.  This was very very bad for anyone or anything that got caught on the edge.  He couldn't affect the size of the sphere or its affects on things along the border.

-- a guy who's turned into living flame.  He's the center of a constant wildfire, and will die if he's deprived of fuel and oxygen.

-- The Girl Who Cannot Possibly Be Harmed.  She's also The Girl Who Failed to Commit Suicide, The Girl Who Can Never Get a Haircut, The Girl Who Cannot Receive Injections, and The Girl Who Could Accidentally Murder Someone With a Slap.

-- a young man who's a walking EMP.  Anything electrically powered fails entirely within a pretty good-sized radius.

Also fun are the Flaws that give you a stacking "WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?" social penalty every time someone sees you use your powers, and the one that forces Trauma checks when you use it on someone.

~me

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[Matt]

Thanks for the inspiration. I have a girl whose head becomes a sea anemone centered around a sarlaac pit that can swallow whole people (possibly cars and even building with enough willpower spent) traumatic and horrifying. That forces trauma checks, another girl who can cause any skin she's had tattooed to peel off and act like a tentacle, she gets a bunch of spider webs, tentacles, snakes and tribal lines and thorny rose bushes tattooed all over her. Seeing the muscle and sinew beneath is horrifying. 

A guy who raises the dead as complete slaves with intellect sufficiently intact to speak and even teach, but they can only follow explicit orders and become violent if interrupted, any order to "act as if they weren't enslaved" results in a berserk state for a round. 

I'm liking cancer, if you can think of anything that seems more "mystical" or can just reflavor some of those ideas as less "sciencey" I'd appreciate it. Like EMP guy being a human fetish so ghosts are drawn to and into him so they create magnetic disturbance.

Most characters are supposed to get their abilities when under stress, then I ask "what would they want to happen in that moment if it could be anything in the world, anything at all (sans stuff like the world blows up)." then I turn that idea into a power but it's supposed to be expressed a little more magic/horror less experiment gone wrong. Where the abilities meet modern technology can be the source of the "curse" like Medium/EMP guy.  

-Matt Conlon

[Daniel Kane]

A different zombie take from a Progenitor game -- undead that retained their personality and knowledge, but were compelled to obey the PC's direct instructions (conditional hypercommand).  If those direct instructions left loopholes, and they realized it, hijinks could certainly ensue.