[HOE] device problems

["Nick Zachariasen" <zacharin@pluto.dsu.edu>]

O.K., one of my players has decided that he wants to try to create a device
that can clone organic matter.The problem is that we don't know exactly what
powers he'd need to use and/or create for it.  This is a guy who's just
finishing up a new power (called Tractor Beam) just so he can build The Rig
from the Playstation game Wild 9.  What we're currently thinking is that
it'd need a Healing device capable of resurrection just to get a spirit
inside the cloned object and that it would also need Brains (for Aptitudes
like Science: Biochemistry), Sensor (to read the DNA and chemical makeup of
the cloned object), and Commo (simply because the thing is bound to need to
display output).  Do you think he'd need to create a new power?  Basically,
he wants to be able to analyze, for example, a cow and get a second, new,
living cow in the out receptacle.  His thinking is that it could be used as
a food source.  Yeah, I know, it'd be quite powerful, which is why I've told
him that if he did end up having to design the Clone power, it'd probably
have a TN of AT THE VERY LEAST 13, if not 15 simply for game balance
purposes.

I'm also thinking that this power would need SOME way of being able to tell
what kind of spirit to put in something just so you don't put, say, the
spirit of an oak tree inside a cow or a German Shepard in a stalk of corn.
Would that require the Brains of the thing to have an Academia: Occult, some
sort of special Science concentration, or what?  I'd say that it couldn't
rely solely on the resurrection-capable device because, as I put it to him,
my interpretation of that power is more or less to tell a spirit that's just
vacated its body something along the lines of "Hey, come back here!  You,
uh... left the gas on!  Yeah, that's the ticket!"  How would it catch the
spirit to be lured- perhaps using both Spirit Trap and Spirit Weapon in
conjunction somehow?  In any event, we'd both really like to get some
feedback on this, as it is a really cool idea (which I would definitely slap
some heavy chemical component costs on), and while strong, would really be
something to reward him with if he pulled it off.

Nick Zachariasen
Editor Emeritus
Trojan Times