There has been a change though. There's no progression in 3e. Increased Mass is SIMILAR, but I never thought it could apply to Create. If I can apply it as a progression then I'd cede the point, but that response from kenson seems to be that he's against allowing toughness by thickness because of Progression. He ends by basically saying "if you allow doubling thickness then don't allow progression."
Read it again, please. He's saying, almost word for word: "The rules as written are that a created object has a Toughness equal to its Rank." That directly implies that "Created objects' Toughness is therefore *not* affected by Progression." The first statement is not, IMHO, at all conditionned by the presence or absence of the second. it's simply the basis of his reasoning.
If you're instead suggesting that his later suggestion *in case that group decides to houserule it* is in fact what happened when they created 3rd ed (i.e. "They removed Progression, so that must mean we're now allowed to boost Toughness with thickness, right?")... I think that's a bit of a stretch... And it seems to be contradicted by a lot of other piece of advice in the main 3rd ED forum (see link above).
I was intending to Create mazes, houses, obstacles, bridges, a bunch of types of structures.
Mazes and obstacles are things that slow, immobilize, distract or confuse their targets (Afflictions, mostly). Houses are things that protect you from the cold, wind or the elements (Immunities), or, maybe a bit of a stretch for a Force-based power, give you peaceful rest (Healings). Bridges are... no problem at all with Create, I would think, unless you wanted to ford the Grand Canyon or something? Once you start opening up a closed shape, you can get a lot of surface out of your create.
Except that's not how it works... If we were to follow your ruling on volume and toughness, then the small dome could have walls that are paper thin and the big dome could be several feet thick without affecting the toughness, the only thing that would matter would be the overall volume of the dome. Bigger objects with less toughness.
A flat Create would indeed not care at all about the thickness of it's walls. What you're forgetting, I think, is that with the Toughness ruling above in place, there's really no reason at all to make a 4 feet thick wall: with a bare Create power a wall is a wall and will have the same Toughness no matter how thick or thin you make it. What matters to a wall is its useful surface (and yes, this does mean you have to set an arbitrary Minimum Wall Thickness. We go with 1 foot as it makes sense with most materials and it simplifies calculations). Wall thickness, in this context, is just flavor text. Make it 4 feet or 8, so long as you don't try to gain an advantage from it (stopping opponent's on *that* side, for example (that would require two or more angled walls then)), then it doesn't matter. What then becomes important for a wall is it's surface area, how much ground it can cover.
So, if you add Proportional to the power because you want to simulate objects that *do* care about the thickness of their walls, the IC-logic then becomes that you have a fixed amount of mass to work with, so you can either create a paper-thin wall that covers a lot of area, or shrink down your area so you can have a thick, tough wall. In this version you *can't*, IC, arbitrarely decide to have a big AND thick wall because thickness has now become the IC representation of your Proportional -- though the actual thickness pf the big wall vs the small need only be proportional (i.e. you could say your base thickness at maximum volume is 1 inch, or 3 feet, of whatever).
It's somewhat arbitrary, mostly because of the 1 foot thing, but it works fairly well, is the way it *has* to work if we take the "Toughness fixed by rank" approach and is, I think, balanced: closed shapes are so much better than walls in all respects that I can see justification for them costing a lot more to make.
Note: "Trivial weight" is not the same as "weightless". Created object have enough mass to stay in place provided nobody tries to actively move them.
Movable: You can move your object with a move-object effect at your create rank. This seems to imply to me that you would need a higher rank move object to move a bigger object. If the object is essentially weightless, then this is just a cheap way of gaining Telekinesis (via a platform or grasping object) combined with your create.
We have GM's to interpret exactly this sort of thing: "Moveable only allows you to move the weight of your own created objects, whatever that weight may be.". Voila. If you want to move more weight, you know which power to consult. (Various housrules are also a possibility, of course (TK rank = diff between Object toughness and your rank in the Create power or the like)).
Tether: OK this one's just weird. You have a 'connection' that allows you to exert your strength on your created object... But this just raises questions. What's the range? Is it limitless (in which case its essentially an odd form of cheap telekinesis that uses your strength score instead);
With feedback though, so it's more like a form of Stretching? Plus it uses Two actions to get a TK effect (create object, then Move), which is not very efficient... or precise. Can't really conclude anything based on this one though.
On top of that, the book has a section on using created objects as cover. If they could be just moved out of the way with minimal effort that would be entirely pointless.
Well, there's cover against ranged attacks, and for close and/or TK attacks, did I mention the Stationary extra by any chance?
The main problem in terms of logic seems to be the frankly cludged-on "Dropping Objects" use. We have a specific power designed to do just this and it's called Damage. Every other power *has* to buy an Alternate Power to do what "Dropping Objetcs" describes. Why is Create so special? I say drop that section in the waste bin of inhereted system nonsense and good ridance.
I was just working under a basic assumption of mass = volume rank for simplicity.
Sure, a fixed density could be the way to go. You do realize though that 1. the above formula works out to a density of somewhere between 0.8 to 0.9 depending on the rank you're looking at (i.e. slightly *below* the density of water, which is far from realistic for pretty much all building materials known to man), 2. even then a rank 10 objects weights 25 tons, which, if we go with your proposed version, will be resting on a contact surface 1 inch thick (Can forest ground support that weight, never mind the second floor of the Villains Villa?).
I don't know. I guess for me the whole thickness vs Toughness vs density thing just seems too tied to physical reality (*how* you do the things you do) rather than the beautifully abstracted M&M rule-reality (What *advantage* do you gain by spending this many points on this power). You buy Create? You get to, basically, shape barriers into any shape you wish. You want other people to have problems moving the barriers you've just shaped? You pay a little extra. Makes sense to me.
So, to sum up, we have a series of non-exclusive options that Superzero needs to weight-in on:
1. Fixed Toughness (as, I believe, the rules described, but that doesn't necesseraly mean it's the *right* system for us) vs Thickness-based Toughness (limited by PL, I strongly suggest)
2. Entire volume closed shapes vs wall volume closed shapes
3. Trivial weight with Stationary to keep things in place vs fixed density to keep things in place vs density by descriptor
In all cases, a Minimum Wall Thickness (needed to get your base rank in Toughness) needs to be set (Jemal is suggesting 1 inch, I'm suggesting 1 foot... could easily climb up past 3 feet if we're talking about a free-standing wall without the Stationary add-on, really).
Does that about sum it up, Jemal?
) or make it a Shapeable area right from the get-go for pretty much the same effect.
