Question Energizers (Absorber variety).

Softdreams wrote: Definitely Gen 2! She's definitely not in Team Kimba's league, any of them could blow her away with the gentlest of slaps.

That will depend on the energy-type your Supergirl knock-off makes use of. *mischievous grin*

Surprisingly her body adapts quite well to all energy types she can make an use of. Only limitations are: overcharging and mixing two different energy types. Recipe for disaster. She's a Dev - 2, so she's working on a device that drains energy away, or helps her absorb it directly from a source; sort of a portable sun panel thingy . I will be going in depth about this in the workshop shortly.

If you can absorb more than one energy type instead of being hurt by it... and mimic power sets (even if you don't get the skill)... the character is definitely in TK's league. Maybe not in a practical sense... because TK is generally written to APPLY their powers effectively without a need for lots of training montages. So you could very easily write a character with absorb and mimic powers that doesn't seem powerful... but that would be an author choice, not a power set choice.

I designed Fling... and Diane wrote Mimeo... to be opponents for the Kimba girls. We took different approaches to it. Diane set up Mimeo to get the better of TK from the start, forcing them to work harder if they want to best him (though not making it easy on him either). I wrote Fling to serve the other side... someone who wasn't (yet) up to the TK power level, but with the potential to beat them (especially if Fling catches the 'right' team members with the right forms, but certain to lose against the full team). The difference between them? Mostly Mimeo has training and experience... Fling has less control but more potential power, and no real training or experience. But neither Fling or Mimeo is powerful independent of being a mimic.

You can 'intend' to write a much less powerful character... but realistically, you've given the character two very powerful traits and not locked them down in any way except 'experience/training'. And any time there's a rational reason why you could use absorb or mimic to overcome an obstacle... you're going to have to resist the urge for the character to figure out that rational answer. The more they learn and experience, the harder you will be able to believably do so.

Is an En 3, De2 'too much'? No. Neither is an En 6, Dev 4. Finding obstacles and challenges for the former is easier than the latter. Writing a 'human' character is easier for the former than the latter. But I'm not entirely sure this is the right question.

I find that putting ranks on power sets should be one of the LAST things to do in developing a character... and ONLY if you intend to write and show their powers testing early in the story. Otherwise, power 'ranks' are only a number that someone quotes when talking about their MID or for theory exposition. Most characters are more likely to talk about what they can DO... not how they were tested. And what most teenage mutants can DO is not the full expression of their power. Yes, it often (in brute force measure) reaches to the peak of their power, if not higher in short painful growing pain bursts... but what a mutant is capable of often greatly expands with experience... as they develop finesse and versatility, creating more ways to use the same power.

What I advice you to do in character development is to decide what the character can DO with their powers. Now and in the peak of their career. Not where the power comes from, but how it is used. In gamer terms... what are the actions/skills/spells that appear on her action bars? Where in the character's plot arc does she acquire these, at what point do the individual abilities evolve (ie PK shield becomes frictionless, or can be extended over a weapon... when does a Energizer with a force beam gain the ability to confine the beam to a micro thin cutting torch... etc).

Once you've decided on THAT... now you can consider what that means for actual power set, and you can easily figure out rank and combination of traits by just finding the ceiling of "what's the minimal rank possible to achieve these things". Just remember that the WU is more limited than many 'super powers' universes, even our magic has science and biological considerations. Mutants CAN have innate resistances or even immunities to their own power... but that has to track with their changes. If normal human biology/cells can't do it, then 'something' has to change to make the mutant capable of it.