Tl;DR: I'm doing an urban fantasy story with magic/superpowers, and I'm trying to decide a way to keep technology out of my fight scenes without doing away with technology entirely if at all possible. I have one method that I feel works but needlessly overcomplicates worldbuilding, and a fallback that's not ideal and defeats the point of some of the story's themes but is much easier to worldbuild with and could be fun in its own way. I’m wondering if anyone has a way to salvage one of them or has a third to offer.
As a newcomer here, I'd like to apologize and thank you in advance for your patience with the incoming wall of text. I have this recurring and incredibly frustrating problem with my story with regards of handling technology in my urban fantasy, and I could really use some advice.
So I'm writing a story about a world where an unknown entity starts giving the human race superpowers. Basically, in my setting, which is the modern day with a few adjustments, shortly after the story begins, everyone over the age of 13 has a brand on their arm that can hold four (later six) runes, and every week a new rune is added to the brand, representing a new superpower (it's the same rune for everyone per week). When the brand is full, whatever rune is in the last slot (they can be moved around with your mind) is replaced when the next week's rune is added.
In addition to this, there are four more powers that are free and impossible to remove. The first two, which are given to everyone who was old enough to have a brand when all this started, are a healing factor (which doubles as an immunity to disease and aging) and a power that basically puts everyone, man or woman, at about Captain America's level physically, give or take in a few areas. There are two more, and unlike the first two you don't have to have had a brand when they were initially given out; from that point on everyone gets those powers when they get their brand. I'll get to what these next two powers are in a second.
The story initially goes for pseudo-Harry Potter-esque supernatural slice of life plus mystery format for the six months worth of powers in the story, until it becomes obvious that there are certain powers that society as we know it can't survive everyone having, and unfortunately, everyone now has them.
On to the point: technology and this story have a complicated relationship: I want to make it impossible to use in combat so that I don't have to make the powers god-level ridiculous to keep people from still favoring guns and tanks and such in a fight or war (also I think swords and bows are a lot more fun than guns), but I also want there to still be instant worldwide communication so that I can justify everyone having the same name for each power, and I love the idea of modern methods being used to make old-fashioned weapons.
The idea I initially came up with to compromise on this point was having those later-issued permanent powers be a sort of anti-technology power that lets people blast an area the diameter of a two-lane street with an energy that renders electricity, combustion and chemical reactions impossible for an hour (living organisms are immune to this), with the second power being a force field that blocks all small projectiles, rendering guns useless and requiring ranged attacks to come from powers or larger projectiles like arrows.
At first this sounded perfect, a system where for the most part technology works, but only when everyone who can see it wants it to, and a perfect catalyst for making shit hit the fan at the climax of the first book of this story and sending the world into complete chaos (along with a set of powers that facilitate mass prison breakouts). And with a single alt-history invention I could change the way the internet and phones work to make sure they'd be feasible to keep running too. The problem is that the worldbuilding implications are utterly mind-bending, as figuring out what aspects of modern life would and wouldn't be possible would hinge entirely on a thorough understanding of modern infrastructure, sociology, and also one's optimism about the goodness or lack thereof of the human race, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to truly comprehend what would and wouldn't be possible in a world where anyone can at any time make anything they can see not work. It's fascinating to me, but also pretty complicated and terrifyingly easy to get wrong.
And so an alternative idea I had been throwing around was to send the world into full "power-punk" mode after the initial false sense of security of the first six months, and basically have the unknown entity do some sort of Dies The Fire or Revolution-esque change in the laws of physics that render most technology useless, forcing people to use their various powers instead to compensate. While this would make nearly all technology more complicated than fire off limits, I'd be able to create any power I want to replace the more important stuff, as long as I was comfortable limiting the number of hands it could be in since there's a limit to how many powers you can have. While I'd miss the opportunity to see how various powers would interact with our modern world, and I'd have to break the rule I want to follow about everything supernatural coming from these powers and nothing else (to keep with the theme of "Everyone getting superpowers wouldn't exactly be all sunshine and rainbows"), I wouldn't need to study every conceivable facet of human behavior and modern infrastructure and still probably get half of what I say wrong.
Does anyone have any advice in this area? Am I overestimating the difficulty of working out how a world like Idea #1 would work, or am I right in thinking I'm biting off way more than someone can reasonably expect to chew and I'd be better off keeping things simpler and easier to understand and going with Idea #2? And can anyone who recommends going with Idea #1 give me any advice about any less obvious implications I'd need to think about?