Need help with unusual catch for Inhuman Recovery

[Lumnos]

I am going to be running a game in a few weeks and I am currently helping my players with character creation. One of my players has a pretty unusual character concept, and although I really like it, I am having trouble coming up with a satisfying way to design the catch for Inhuman Recovery power he wants to take. Let me give you a little bit of background on the character concept so you can offer suggestions.

His character comes from an old money family with lots of old political ties (think more Bush than Kennedy). He has been in big business since graduating from college, failing upwards as he runs each company into the ground and gets hired on to the next company for more money and a better title, trying to capture some elusive measure of success. Once he realized that he had risen as far as he could go and that he was now essentially radioactive, he started jet setting around the US to posh locations and high dollar hotels, trying to network and carve out something like his former life. He degenerated into drug use and eventually stumbled across a man convulsing in a hotel bathroom, apparently overdosing from something. Next to him was an intricately decorated ceramic jar with a dark liquid inside. For some inscrutable reason, his character decides to try the liquid, and immediately he gets an amazing rush; he feels younger, stronger and more alive than ever. He gets into a fight and realizes he could quickly become used to feeling like this, and becomes a thrill seeker, looking for a reason to use the mysterious liquid as well as looking for answers about where it comes from.

The liquid is actually created by a powerful magic user who has focused all of his magical power in reinforcing his existence and achieving immortality by never aging or changing in any fashion. The person is very powerful but isn't much of a force in the world due to the desire to only amass and use power to stay static and defy death. The jar is a part of the ritual, and the liquid is actually part of the person's essence that is pooling and distilling to then replenish him. By drinking the liquid, my player's character is essentially gaining a measure of his power, but it comes at a cost, as the character is slowly becoming more and more like the person whose essence he is imbibing, and he is having to resist having his thoughts and desires being taken over by this much more powerful entity.

In game terms, the character is an Emissary of Power, albeit in an unusual sense. My player has elected to take Inhuman Recovery as one of his powers, which makes sense to me. The catch as he sees it, is that as he heals damage, the entity gets a stronger mental hold on him and he has to shake off the influence. The problem is how to actually simulate this idea. I proposed allowing him to "heal" the physical consequence by trading it for a mental consequence of equal value. My player didn't think that was much a boon, but I worry that if I allow him to trade it for a lower level mental consequence, it might not be much of a catch. Alternatively he proposed that if the attacker used their "favorite" weapon, spell, or whatever, that it might bypass his ability to heal. I actually think that is too weak, and wouldn't make his power actually be much good to him, and he would quickly be dissatisfied as most enemies would use the their favorite weapon as their default and he would never benefit from the increased healing.

Any suggestions you can recommend are greatly appreciated!

[luminos]

The first suggestion for a catch isn't actual a catch, but something more in line with a feeding dependency.  Even if treated as a catch, it would be a +0 one because no one could actually use it against him. 

The favored weapon catch is more appropriate.  If what counts as a favored weapon is figured out in a hand-wavey fashion (um, yeah, this guy is using a knife, so that must be the favored weapon) the catch would be worth +3 or +4.  Alternatively, the favored weapon catch could require the person using it to have an aspect reflecting the fact that this thing is what he favors.  That would be much more rare, and probably worth +1 or +2 at the very most.

[Becq]

I'd recommend against using the favored weapon catch, for the reasons already stated (the catch would make the power useless).  Instead, think about it in terms of what type of attacks might disrupt or bypass the vitality granted by the potion.  For example, the character might be weak to:
* damage caused by magic (or possibly certain kinds of magic), as that disrupts the enchantment
* attacks that relate to the things that his 'sponsor' fears, such as life-draining or emotion-instilling
* holy attacks, as they represent the natural order and his powers are an aberration

[luminos]

Forgot to mention this, but the broadly interpreted favored weapon catch won't necessarily make his recovery abilities useless.  First, it will give a rather large refresh rebate, allowing him to have a more expensive version of recovery without spending more.  Second, there are still strategies such as disarm maneuvers, or more long term planning, that allow him to avoid his catch. 

Not exactly a painless situation, and sometimes there would just be no way to avoid being attacked by favored weapons, but for what becomes an essentially -1 power, its very very nifty.

[Lumnos]

Thank you both! I really like the ideas you've given me, both for more conventional weaknesses and how to deal with a more generic flavor of his "favorite weapon" suggestion. Although it probably wasn't intentionally suggested, I actually like the idea of him having a feeding dependency of sorts, as it somewhat simulates his addiction to the liquid (probably physical, mental and magical) as well as having to spend time in recovery having to deal with shaking off the influence of his sponsor. I am going over suggestions with my player to see what he thinks and trying to hammer down something concrete. Thanks again!

[babel2uk]

I'd go with a +0 catch of "Self Inflicted Wounds" - basicly his toughness won't work against someone with the same 'essence' as himself - i.e. himself, or the wizard whose essence he's drinking.

Feeding dependancy would work quite well for this power if you need to reduce the refresh cost, but you'll need to work out exactly how much of this stuff is available, and what - if anything - could replace it in a pinch (for example might he discover that blood from a living person will clear the hunger track?).

You could model the take-over like Magical Sponsor Debt. Maybe allow him the opportunity to shrug off an additional mild consequence in combat per scene as the way in which that debt accrues (since normally it's done by allowing a free invocation of an aspect, and I'm not sure that's as clear cut an application in this case. (It also makes it a conscious thing on the players part to allow the wizard more control, rather than an automatic gain every time he uses his toughness).

Trading Physical for Mental Consequences kind of negates the central healing portion of the ability. It could work if you want to allow him to choose on a case by case basis whether to make that switch or to allow the Inhuman Recovery to work as written. I'd look towards making the more powerful use a point of Sponsor debt as well as the mental consequence. It would after all be upping the Fast Recovery aspect of the power up to the level of Mythic Recovery (as far as physical wounds go), and it seems fair to me that the price for that would be significant - but a conscious choice by the player.

Obviously it comes down to whether you think the player would abuse that version of the power.