Eternal Life - New Power; How Does It Look?

[Buscadera]

I'm writing up a character for a Submerged game set in Florida and I was wanted to make a mostly-mortal explorer who had stumbled into the Fountain of Youth. Wizard's Constitution seems to handle some aspects pretty well (long life, eventual wound recovery, etc.) but there are certain things I don't think it covers everything I'm looking for so I created this power. It's mostly a mashup of Living Dead and Wizard's Constitution. Does it look balanced?

Eternal Life [-1]
Total Recovery - You’re able to recover from physical harm that would leave a normal person permanently damaged. You can recover totally from any consequence—excluding extreme physical ones—with no other excuse besides time; simply waiting long enough will eventually heal you completely. (Many wizards use this ability to avoid hospitals, where their tendency to disrupt technology can put others in serious danger.)
Fast Recovery - Out of combat, you may recover from physical consequences as if they were one level lower in severity. So, you recover from moderate consequences as though they were mild, etc. Consequences reduced below mild are always removed by the beginning of a subsequent scene.
Long Life - As a side-effect of your improved ability to recover from injury, your lifespan is significantly extended. In game terms this
will rarely have relevance, but it’s why you can talk at length about the events of the American Civil War and, depending on when you became immortal, you may be able to go back even further than that.
Death is a Nuisance - Unless wholly destroyed or killed by special means, you’ll continue to live on afterwards. No “death” result is ever permanent unless special means are used (usually as determined by your creature type).

Does it need anything else or is it overpowered?

[WillH]

Why not just take inhuman recovery with a +1 catch?

[catsgomoo]

My only thought is that -1 seems rather low for that sort of recovery, and if it's gained from the fountain of youth you may want to use it as a catch of some sort

[Belial666]

That's overpowered.

1) I don't see any catch on the recovery part. While it only is half as effective as inhuman recovery, the fact that it doesn't have a catch would increase its cost. So this is a strong +1, maybea +2 on its own.

2) Living Dead, for a -1 refresh, offers the Death is Nuisance part. However, you are also "unhealable" meaning you can't recover from consequences without supernatural help, and you are obviously dead or repulsive, meaning that you take a -2 to most social skills. And your ability has that without any penalties. This is a strong +2 on its own.


So, +4 refresh for this ability. I mean, barring special circumstances, not only you can't die but you heal faster too.

[MyNinjaH8sU]

Feels overpowered to me, but honestly it would depend on the type of game.

A game that is all about intrigue and espionage, where death is a huge deal and not a casual event? Seems fine to me.

On the other hand, if you are playing a high lethality game designed with victory being simple survival, then I would say it is way under-costed.

[Buscadera]

So if I just ditched the Fast Recovery part, I'd be okay? At that point it's just Wizard's Constitution plus Death is a Nuisance from Living Dead. I assumed the -1 from Living Dead would cover the price of the whole.

Would bumping it up to -2 make it work? It just seems that paying -2 for what is essentially a -0 and a -1 ability feels a bit off.

[Narkaious]

Pretty sure this is one of those cases of something "being greater than the sum of its parts"

[Becq]

Living Dead is tough to decompose.  It basically consists of one "power" ("Death is a Nuisance"), one "catch" ("Corpse Body") and one mixed power/catch ("Dude! You're Dead!").  Together, they have a net cost of [-1].  But you'd like to take just the beneficial part, which means you need to figure out how much that part costs.

Take a look at "Dude! You're Dead!"  You get a +1 to Intimidation, but a -1 to all other social skills (Contacts, Deceit, Empathy, Performance, Presence, and Rapport).  That's the equivalent of at least five (six negative minus one positive) 'negative' stunts, if you treat a "+1 to all uses of a skill" as a reasonable stunt, which is questionable.

"Corpse Body" is also a significant flaw.  Someone kicks your shin and you now have a "Sore Shin" that will last until you find a way to fix it, and short of some sort of magical reconstruction, its not clear how to accomplish that.

Based on the flaws combined into the power, I'd say that "Death is a Nuisance" is much more than a minor ability.

That said, there's a rather cheap way to kinda-sorta get this sort of ability, if your GM is ok with it.  First, take your choice of Wizard's Constitution [-0] or Inhuman Recovery [-2].  Then give yourself an aspect along the lines of "I'm not dead yet!" or "Just a flesh wound!" or, better yet, High Concept that refers to your repeated failure to stay dead.  Then, any time you are taken out by something that should kill you (but could conceivably fail to), you can now invoke your aspect to narrate your way out of dying.  This would require that (a) your GM is ok with that use of an aspect, and (b) that you can come up with a reasonable way to survive.  That means it works well for the times when you are peppered with a hail of gunfire, throwing you over the side of the bridge into the river (luckily the bullets missed vital organs for the most part, and you managed to get caught on a branch further downstream).  It doesn't work so well when the local Warden lops off your head 'on screen'.  Note that Fate points are less of an issue, since you'd generally be gaining a couple just by being taken out.

This is still very powerful, which is why I mention several times that you'd need to get GM buy-in.

[Sanctaphrax]

This sort of thing has been done before. Here's one example: http://www.vinlandsolutions.site11.com/Products/DFRPG/SamplePowers/Deathless.html

[Tbora]

I really think people are overreacting with how supposedly undercosted this is supposed to be.

Its not as good as everyone seems to be thinking imo, and to me its worth -1 refresh easily no more.

[sinker]

This really is a consult your GM power. Were I the GM I think I wouldn't have a single issue with Death is a nuisance but with the recovery I might add a little cost or ask you to work it out a bit. But clearly others would have an issue with it, so it might be an individual thing.

[Belial666]

Question: is it better or worse than inhuman recovery? If it were worse (less useful) then I'd accept the -1 refresh cost.


However, it is significantly more useful. So it should cost more than inhuman recovery.

[WillH]

In what way is this significantly more useful than inhuman recovery?

[Belial666]

In that you can enter a physical fight fight with any opponent, and unless you are disposed off in one specific way -say, sunlight or faith powers if you're undead- you don't really die. And as soon as the fight is "over" and your enemies think they've won, you just rise and shoot/bite them in the back.

In effect, losing a physical fight is not an actual loss for you unless the other guys know that you are immortal and do something to prevent you from attacking again.

[WillH]

In effect, losing a physical fight is not an actual loss for you unless the other guys know that you are immortal and do something to prevent you from attacking again.

I see where you're coming from. However, I don't think that's the case. You could easily have a taken out result that is as good as dead, something like blown into so many pieces it will take 100 years to collect yourself. Death doesn't happen that often. Inhuman recovery's shrug it off would come into play much more often, making it a more powerful power.