How do different systems handle "metapowers"?

[Quertus]

I find myself curious about metapowers, powers that affect other powers. And I'm wondering just how various systems implement such.

I imagine superhero systems will have the most robust implementations, but let's look at D&D as an example.

Probably the most obvious class of metapowers in D&D is Negation. From Dispel Magic to antimagic to Ring of Counterspell to Ring of Spellbattle to Spellblade to Red Saber to Mordenkainen's Disjunction, D&D is chock full of ways to say, "no".

Ring of Spellbattle is an interesting one, because it not only can say "no", it can also redirect a spell to a new target.

There are other forms of redirection and storage, from Ring of Spell Storing to Ioun Stone to Scroll of Spell Catching to (Ring of) Spell Turning to Spell Storing blades to the infamous Contingency (and Continent Teleport, and Chain Contingency, and Elminster's Evasion, and…).

Yet another metapower is the Polymorph line, allowing you to not only Duplicate the powers of others, but technically allowing the Negation of powers as well.

Mirror of Opposition, Simulacrum, and similar "duplication" effects probably *don't* count as metapowers.

Spell Thief and Ur-Priest (and…some monsters, I'm sure…) have the ability to steal powers, and sometimes even to use those stolen powers. Beholder Mages¹ can even use duplicated powers repeatedly.

Rather blatantly on this list is the ability to alter existing manifestations of powers of the… Incantrix, iirc.

Planar traits can influence entire classes of spells, as can things like Hourglass of Fire and Ice, Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer, etc.

There are even abilities to manipulate the *cost* of powers, from Torc of Efficient Psionics to [thing that makes wands use random # of charges] [thing that powers staves]

Perhaps the strangest metapower is Level Drain, which negates a very unusual power source.

And, of course, metamagic rods.

And that's not counting homebrew, for which I personally have abilities to negate powers based on striking/disabling body parts, custom spells to manipulate power manifestations, and the ability to add to powers as they are manifested.

Perhaps at some point I'll remember to explain these various D&D metapowers in more detail in a system-agnostic manner.

But what have other systems got for metapowers? How do they handle the manipulation of powers?

¹ proper 2e ones, not the 3e class with the deceptively identical name

[Lord Raziere]

M&M 3e has tons of ways to manipulate metapowers:
-adapt to other peoples powers to defend against them
-control other peoples powers
-nullify peoples powers
-steal peoples powers
-immunity
-enhance the powers of others
-various methods of power mimicry, skill mimicry
-turn into various super forms with different powers

those are just the ones in power profiles. I could probably make all sorts of metapowers from the core.

Fate would probably handle metapowers the same way it handles everything: aspect to enter in then stunts for what they actually mechanically do.

Anima Beyond Fantasy has this strange metapower called "Nemesis" which is basically ki that comes from the void instead of your own body and acts as anti-magic to psychic, magic and normal martial arts techniques. no one really knows where it comes from.

[Pauly]

I think it has a lot to do with how ‘realistic’ the game setting is.

Phoenix Command had zero metapower, but also had zero powers.

Then you have a game like Honor and Intrigue, based on the 3 musketeers era of superskilled people, not magical/super abilities. It has “powers” or special abilities, which are really highly trained skills, that affect sword dueling and persuasion and they have “metapowers” that allowed counters to your opponent. But in other parts of the system you just had the generic contested skill check.

When you get into a fantastical setting with magic/sci-fi such as DnD or M&M you then need metapowers as a way of defending against powers. So the way the powers are implemented affect how the metapowers are implemented.

[Psyren]

Well, if you're counting things like dispels and shapeshifting as "metapowers," then the variety of metapowers can be as infinite/functionally numerous as the powers themselves. Not saying that's wrong or bad, but it makes this an extremely broad topic, almost as broad as saying "how do different systems handle "magic?""

If you restrict it to not powers exactly, but non-powered techniques that manipulate how someone uses their abilities, e.g. metamagic or elemental substitution, that will narrow it some (but still be pretty vast.)


On the subject of defending against powers, one thing I think most settings should at least consider is how non-powered individuals can interact with, limit, or otherwise affect powered users. If they are unable to do so or it's extremely difficult, that has implications for how the setting should ultimately take shape - I'd expect fewer mundane responses to magic, to result in a more magocratic or caster-centric world.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's how they all work in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG.

Prelude

First, you need to know a little bit about the game system. Every ability score has a number (of course) but also every power and skill has a similar number. So, STR of 5 and Flame Project of 5 are two different ways to do damage, but they would do the same damage since they both are rated at 5.

Second, *every* action that involves rolling dice involves the *same* kind of die roll. Every action has "how good you are at succeeding/hitting", "how good you are at damaging/getting big successes", "how hard it is to hit (or accomplish this task)", and "how hard it is to hurt the opponent or get a big success" as four things that you cross-reference with the die roll on a table. So every dice action involves this table. For example, normal melee combat would involve you using your DEX and STR against someone else's DEX and BODY.

Neutralization

To neutralize someone's powers, you attack their power(s) with your Neutralize power and you do "damage" to that power. For example, if you have Neutralize of 12 and the opponent has Flame Project of 15, you would attack the 15 with your 12 (and you'd use the 12 for both hitting and damaging, while the opponent would use his 15 for both dodging and not getting hurt). Then, the table will tell you how much damage you do. Suppose you manage to get 8 points of damage. That would be applied to the Flame Project power and it would now only be considered to be a Flame Project of 7. If you instead managed to deal 15 or more points of damage to the Flame Project power, the power would be completely neutralized and unusable.

To neutralize more than one power at a time, you would have to do a "multi-attack" against those powers. Fortunately, DCHRPG already has a standard rule for attacking more than one thing at a time, so you just apply those standard penalties. And if you want to neutralize ability scores (like someone's really high STR score), it's treated just like any other power because it is just a number like any other number.

Power Duplication

Okay, it's just like Neutralize except you gain those powers instead of the opponent losing them. In the above example, if you got 8 points of "damage" against someone's Flame Project power, you would now have Flame Project of 8 and the opponent would still have his Flame Project of 15.

Power Drain

Okay, you want to be Rogue of the X-men or Superman's enemy Parasite. Well, it's just like Neutralize except also with the power duplication rules. So, if you steal 8 points of Flame Project, you have Flame Project of 8 and the opponent is down to only 7 points of Flame Project.

Polymorph

Not sure how this is a meta-power but it is a "complicated" power that needs to be handled easily. In DC Heroes, if you have Shape Change of 7, then you can turn into any animal with a BODY of 7 or less. And that's pretty much it. You just take the (physical) ability scores (and "powers") for that animal and those are yours now. There's a little bit of "add up to 7 points to those physical stats" that you could now do as well, but really, it's straightforward like that.

If you want to look like a person, there's a different power for that. If you want to look like a person and have their powers, well take both this power and that power.

If you want to turn into an object (like a helicopter or a giant fan or a crane or a fire hydrant or whatever), there's a power for that. If you have "Self Manipulation" of 15, you can gain 15 points worth of powers and physical stats that the object would possess.

And, if you want to just change your arm into something (which someone like Metamorpho does all the time), there's a power for that as well. If you have Omni-Arm of 8, when you change your arm into a giant hammer or a crab claw or whatever, you can do damage with an 8.

Power Boosting

Yuck. This is easy but overpowered.

If you have Power Reserve of 10, you can split up those 10 points among the powers and stats that you have chosen to be able to boost with this power. So, you could add 10 points to STR or you could instead split up the points and add 5 points to STR and 5 points to Flame Project. This is horribly overpowered in this game system since each point represents an exponential increase. For example, in a game where you're not likely to have any abilities rated higher than 10, you could could have a 10 STR and a Power Reserve of 10; then if you add the 10 points of Power Reserve to your 10 STR, you now have a 20 STR which is about 1000 times more powerful than a 10 STR, but didn't cost you nearly as much as a 20 STR normally would.

[Quertus]

Well, if you're counting things like dispels and shapeshifting as "metapowers," then the variety of metapowers can be as infinite/functionally numerous as the powers themselves. Not saying that's wrong or bad, but it makes this an extremely broad topic, almost as broad as saying "how do different systems handle "magic?""

If you restrict it to not powers exactly, but non-powered techniques that manipulate how someone uses their abilities, e.g. metamagic or elemental substitution, that will narrow it some (but still be pretty vast.)

My thoughts on this topic are… rather superhero system oriented - metapowers are things like Power boosting, power negation, power theft, power duplication. Shapeshifter powers *can* involve power duplication; Dispel effects are definitely power negation (sometimes more normally, when they deactivate a magical item).

So, anything that boosts, weakens, modifiers, copies, transfers, or negates powers is a metapower.

[icefractal]

Some edge cases for metapower discussion -

Sometimes things are metapowers mechanically speaking, but not IC. For example, Hero system: VPP (variable power pool) is mechanically a metapower; it's even labeled as a "Power Framework" rather than a normal "Power".

Rogue's power draining could be modeled with a Drain/Transfer + VPP, and IC it's also a metapower. Batman's utility belt could also be modeled with a VPP, but IC it's not a metapower, he just has a lot of gadgets and very convenient prediction of what he'll need.


What about a power that blocks / copies / enhances powers of a different type only? Is that a metapower?

For example, Imbue with Spell Ability is a metapower, but is Heroics? Or if there were a hypothetical feat which temporarily gave spells, would that be? Would Iron Heart Surge be a metapower if it was unable to negate maneuvers?

At an extreme, I wouldn't call Freedom of Movement a metapower because it negates grappling, or Blur a metapower because it negates Sneak Attack.

[Nifft]

At an extreme, I wouldn't call Freedom of Movement a metapower because it negates grappling, or Blur a metapower because it negates Sneak Attack.

This makes it seem like metapower are effects that don't apply to mundane equivalents.

E.g. if there were a Blur equivalent but it only imposed a miss chance on spell attacks (not mundane attacks), that would be more like a metapower.

[Quertus]

Some edge cases for metapower discussion -

Sometimes things are metapowers mechanically speaking, but not IC. For example, Hero system: VPP (variable power pool) is mechanically a metapower; it's even labeled as a "Power Framework" rather than a normal "Power".

Rogue's power draining could be modeled with a Drain/Transfer + VPP, and IC it's also a metapower. Batman's utility belt could also be modeled with a VPP, but IC it's not a metapower, he just has a lot of gadgets and very convenient prediction of what he'll need.


What about a power that blocks / copies / enhances powers of a different type only? Is that a metapower?

For example, Imbue with Spell Ability is a metapower, but is Heroics? Or if there were a hypothetical feat which temporarily gave spells, would that be? Would Iron Heart Surge be a metapower if it was unable to negate maneuvers?

At an extreme, I wouldn't call Freedom of Movement a metapower because it negates grappling, or Blur a metapower because it negates Sneak Attack.

Dang. If we call Sneak Attack a power, is fortification a metapower just because it "negates" it? No. Because fortification doesn't *negate* Sneak Attack, it only protects from it.

However, if a Bard could sing, and halve or double all Sneak Attack dice in the area, *that* would be a metapower.

One of the… lesser side effects, not really an intended purpose… of this thread was to evaluate muggle "metapower" play in comparison to what we (or at least I) normally think of as metapowers.

Even ignoring that I've never seen anyone attempt to emulate Rogue with s VPP, I'll agree that certain implementation details can change whether certain powers are metapowers or not ("spells" aren't metapowers unless they contain metapower spells, as an example).

[Vahnavoi]

We might as well talk about video games as far as this issue goes, so I'll do just that. It's easy enough to appropriate these for tabletop games:

Shin Megami Tensei series has resistance (anti-), immunity (null), absorption (drain) and reflection (repel) as passive skills for every type of damage (f.ex. physical, gun, fire, ice, wind, lightning, dark, light) save one (all-mighty). These exist to modify characters' inherent weaknesses and resistances, resulting in a multiple level rock-paper-scissors set-up. The most obvious metagame for these is to combine right characters with right passives to create a character who always wins at rock-paper-scissors by being immune to everything. The most obvious anti-meta is to spam the one type of damage that cannot be resisted (and all really difficult enemies will do just that if they notice you have no weak points.)

At the other end, there is pierce, a passive that allows a damage type (often limited to just physical, sometimes existing individually for each damage type) to ignore all forms of resistance save for reflection. Typically, Pierce is so good in the meta that if you can get in on everybody, you get it on everybody.

For active skills, there's Focus and Concentrate, skipping a turn to ensure more damage on the next turn. Typically, the damage increase is slightly more than what you'd get from just attacking twice. Focus and Concentrate are very good in the meta, especially when accompanied with pierce. They aren't no-brainers mainly for two reasons: one, exploiting weaknesses with weaker attacks can net you extra turns; two, if an enemy can act before your next turn, they can throw up an attack reflector.

Attack reflectors are somewhat iffy to classify as metapowers, but I'll note them to emphasize some points brought up in the other categories: they add an additional layer of rock-paper-scissors, where the party using the reflector potentially has advantage of knowing what you will throw beforehand. On the other hand, trying to stack reflectors to ensure a win predictably gets you hit with the one damage type that cannot be reflected.

Then there's buffs and debuffs, which increase or decrease effects of various strategies, and anti-buffs and anti-debuffs, which can wipe the slate clean of several turns of stacking effects at once. Since these kinds of metapowers are vital to achieving advantage (or even just parity), managing turn economy and order to create a window where to strike your opponent when your buffs/debuffs are active and theirs are not is one of the more important aspects of the game.

---

Pokemon also has a wide selection of metapowers: Mimic, Sketch, Transform, Disable, Follow Me, Copycat, Me First and weather come easily to mind for moves affecting other moves. Then there also abilities and moves affecting abilities: Pixilate/Refrigerate/Aerilate/Normalize, Gale Wings, Compound Lenses, Prankster etc. for abilities and Entrain, Gastro Acid, Simple Beam etc. for moves that affect abilities. These are not complete lists, Pokemon has hundreds of moves, I can't recite them all from memory.

Mimic is pretty straight-forward: you mimic one move from your opponent. Typically of little use one-on-one, because often the moves your opponents have are not effective against that opponent. More use two-on-two, because you can use Mimic to temporarily get a move to a Pokemon that has no other legal way of gaining it.

Sketch is Mimic but permanent: learn any move in the game from your opponent. The only way this move can be at all balanced is because it is limited to exactly one Pokemon, which has (ha ha) fairly sketchy stats in other respects. Still, some moves have required patches just so they can't make that one weakling Pokemon broken.

Transform is Mimic but for your opponents entire Pokemon. It was of limited use because the opportunity cost of using a turn to get a copy of your opponent often just meant a free turn to your opponent, aggravated by the fact that the normal user of the move was slow and died to everything. Was made competitive by allowing the user to Transform upon entry. Very useful for stealing all your opponent's hard work for buffing their Pokemon. Often very useful for turning tables on a slightly weakened opponent who is threatening to beat your entire team.

Disable disables last move used by an opponent. Very useful for shutting down predictable opponents.

Follow Me changes targeting of moves, IIRC it forces opponents to target the user. Questionable use on its own, but can be accompanied by attack resistance or immunity to save a weaker team mate from harm.

Copycat, IIRC, randomly copies and uses a move from your entire team once. Typically only useful for novelty. With right team building, can be exploited to predictably use a set of moves not otherwise legal for a Pokemon, even violating normal priority order.

This brings us to Prankster. It increases priority of non-attack moves, allowing a slow user to act before a fast user. Copycat, above, is a non-attack move that can trigger an attack move. Some attack moves are balanced by having negative priority, always happening last. Copycat can hence use some of those moves at normal or increased priority.

Me First uses an attack your opponent has selected before the opponent. Fails if no attack was selected. Typically of niche use, but if you can use it on a team mate, once again you potentially benefit from a move you wouldn't normally be legal, as well as change the turn order.

Pixilate/Refrigerate/Aerilate changes type of a normal attack to something not normal, allowing a non-normal Pokemon to benefit more from normal attacks. Normalize changes type of non-normal attack to normal, allowing a normal Pokemon to befit more from non-normal attacks. Typically, this just means you get to enjoy same type attack bonus with a slightly better attack - other uses are niche.

Gale Wings increases priority of flying type moves. Since flying type moves include hit point recovery, to prevent too easy healing, the ability was modified to only apply when the user is at full health.

Compound Lenses increases accuracy of specific subset of moves, specifically, powder moves. Most powder moves are status effect inducers with low accuracy, so this makes sleep, poison and paralysis more efficient.

Entrain allows transferring the ability of one Pokemon to another. This can be used to get rid of opponent's or a teammates troublesome ability, or to put an ability on something that normally couldn't have it. Gastro Acid suppresses an ability. Simple Beam replaces target's ability with a specific ability, Simple. The most clever uses of all of these involve taking a Pokemon gimped by a poor ability and making it a serious threat by getting rid of that ability, or taking an ability that's fine on a particular Pokemon and transferring it to something that's truly broken or at least obnoxious with it.

Oh yeah, weather. In simple terms, weather changing moves alter the battlefield condition to give a sweeping advantage to some particular set of moves and/or abilities. So you want the weather that enables your strategy while preventing or disabling your opponent's.

[Pauly]

Talking more about game design than specific games. You have 3 basic types of gameplay. PvE (the players against groups of enemies) PvP (the players dueling against a similar number of enemies of similar strength) and PvBoss (the platers have to combine to take down a stronger enemy).

In PvE meta powers are usually unimportant. You launch an AoE spell into a group of monsters and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a fireball, ice storm, poison gas cloud or stone spikes coming from the ground. Sometimes in a D&D type environment it may matter if the enemy goons have specific vulnerabilities, but for most games it isn’t important.

In PvP it depends on how strong the powers are. The stronger the powers the stronger and more useful the meta powers are. This is also the environment where there is most flexibility in meta powers because of the variety of powers each player has.

In PvBoss the enemy usually has several immunities and the players have to find the correct meta powers to take down the boss. Meta powers are important, but only the limited ones for the event.

[icefractal]

This makes it seem like metapower are effects that don't apply to mundane equivalents.

E.g. if there were a Blur equivalent but it only imposed a miss chance on spell attacks (not mundane attacks), that would be more like a metapower.Well I wouldn't call Resist Energy or even Energy Immunity metapowers either. Spell Resistance (the spell)? I don't know, that's a tough one.

That's just my definition, but I think labeling all powers which can interact with other powers as metapowers is too broad to be useful. Perhaps it would be more useful to say powers that specifically modify (including remove) other power instances, and/or prevent them from being created? In which case Spell Resistance wouldn't be one.