Animate Liquids To Animate Lava/Magma?

[malraux]

Glass is a solid.

 

[Celebrim]

This is one of the reasons that I prefer to stick to fantastic sciences. Normally, a character would have a power like 'Shape Water', not 'Shape Liquid', so this wouldn't come up.

But, if they actually had 'Shape Liquid', then you are screwing the player not to give them at least some control over the lava. This is particularly true if you are playing a Supers game or a 'Swords and Supers' game (like high level D&D).

Some considerations:

1) Lava is extremely viscous and heavy. The players may not be able to move very much of it compared to normal liquids, and they may not be able to move it fast.
2) Lava's liquid state requires it to remain in close proximity to an incredible amount of heat. It's reasonable to suggest that if you move it far from a heat resevoir, it solidifies and the character loses his ability to animate it.

 

[Dausuul]

So my players have the ability to animate liquids and they were in a fight near running lava and he wanted to use his ability to animate the lava.

So would you allow this? Is magma a liquid?

For the time being I ruled no, it is not liquid and he couldn't do it for the expediency of the game, but I told him I'd do some research on the matter.

I would allow it. Liquid is liquid and lava qualifies. If you foresee such a ruling being abused, you could give it a feedback effect--some of the heat of the lava feeds back into the character, dealing fire damage.

However, unless another party member is a powerful pyrokinetic, this PC isn't going to have a source of lava handy in most combats. As such, I can't see an easy way to abuse this particular capability. I'd say just give the guy his moment of awesome and don't worry about it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd allow it.

However, since lava tends to cool quickly and solidify in small amounts- especially those portions cut off from the main flow- it may be of only limited usefulness.

 

[coyote6]

If he wants to use lava to do damage, I'd let him; just base the damage on his power, rather than a fixed value for lava. In other words, if he's only got Animate Liquids 2, don't let him do 10 damage with lava; he can do 2 damage.

(Example numbers approximate, because I haven't looked at DC Heroes in probably a decade.)

 

[MatthewJHanson]

DC Heroes 3rd.

I'm not familiar with DC. Is there some kind of "power stunt" system (using powers for things they are not specifically intended for?) it might fall into that category.

 

[Quantum]

No, DC Heroes doesn't have rules for power stunts like classic FASERIP Marvel has.