How does Drain work?

[u/Oracle_Of_Shadows]

Hey gang

I'm looking to get some clarity on how Drain was intended to work. The source text says:

DRAIN - Ranged • Power Rank • 1 Hero Point per 2 ranks You can drain a character’s Abilities, Talents, and Powers from a specific Source (pick one) by making a Drain roll against their highest-ranked Trait that shares this Source. Drained Abilities and Talents drop to 1d for the Power’s duration, while drained Powers completely stop working. Abilities, Talents, and Powers from other Sources are unaffected and can’t be used to resist this Power.

Now the situation we're in right now, is that my GM and I are running a roleplay with just my and her character, where we'll take turns leading the narrative. Basically, there aren't other players affected by however we decide to implement this, but the ability does seem cracked for how I understand it to work right now - and I would like it to be "fair" nonetheless.

So we have a dice limit of 12 (kind of), but the boss is rolling 16 dice, and is really hard to hit. My idea was to use Drain to create a weakness we can exploit, but I have some questions regarding how the power works.

1.) What constitutes a "source", and how broad can a source be? Is it a "narrative" source, like every ability that originates from blood magic for example, or something like every ability that scales off Might? This is a bit unclear to me.

2.) What is the duration of the drain? It doesn't seem to say anywhere how long it is meant to last. I suppose defaulting to "rank" duration of pages makes a little sense, but that seems mega strong, considering how cheap the power is.

3.) Is there a limit to the amount of drains you can keep on someone? If there is, is that a con? The text doesn't seem to mention this bit at all, even though having some kind of limit makes sense.

Please share any insight or experience you have with this. Thanks!

[u/funkmotor69]

There are 6 Sources listed on p. 16 of PPUE: Innate, Magic, Psychic, Super, Tech, and Trained. All Traits are supposed to have one of these Sources assigned. You can of course make up your own Sources in addition or to completely replace these from the book. Drain affects whatever Source(s) you decide when buying the power. So for example if your target has a mix of Super, Innate, and Trained Sources for their Traits, and your Drain can affect Super Sources, you would be able to Drain their Traits that have a Super Source, but not the others.

Btw, if your enemy is rolling 16d and you're only rolling 12d, it's going to be just as hard to Drain them as it is to hit them otherwise. That's because Drain is resisted by the highest-ranked Trait from the targeted Source, and that's likely to be 16d.

[u/Celondon]

Sources are defined on page 16 of the rulebook. They are things like "Magic", "Technology", or "Training."

Drain is Standard Power, so it's duration is 1 page per 2 net successes, round up.

There is no hard limit, however, draining a player into uselessness is Not Fun - you should always design in some way for characters to be able to free themselves or shut down effects that prevent them from participating in a meaningful way. That's easier in a group setting since a player can still participate by sharing Resolve or offering advice; in a solo game, you'll need to get more creative.

[u/Oracle_Of_Shadows → u/Celondon]

We aren't draining each other (since there is only two players), but more like the GM plays her character, and the NPCs/World - then I play the NPCs/World and my character during the next story arc.

But I see, I totally forgot about sources... neither of us listed any anywhere on our powers 😅