Superhero Power: Electrical Control

[Umbran]

Just about any superpower theme - "control of X" or not - can be turned into something ultra-powerful. That's why it's important to keep track of power level; for a RPG, level/CR.

It is also notable that, for most games, the logical extensions of one power are covered by other powers. You want full on blindsight? Get the blindsight power, using your super-hearing as the rationale for you to have that power.

Even the old FASERIP Marvel Superheroes game understood this. Character advancement in terms of just buying up power levels was insanely expensive, because in-genre, characters don't usually just go up in power levels much over time (Spider Man has been around for years and years, but he can still usually only lift small cars, and hasn't moved up to regularly tossing around dump trucks). But, also in-genre, characters did make a habit of making logical extensions of powers - the game called them "Power stunts", and they were far less expensive than flat out new powers. You could even try the stunt (in fact, *had* to try the stunt) several times before you could pay to make it a regular part of your repertoire.

The typical power stunt was weaker than the base power - so, you want to use your magnetism power to mimic a form of Emotion Control (which was an entirely different power)? Well, sure, you can do it, but as several ranks down the ladder, so that if unless you were really, really good with your Magnetism power, the emotion control would be incredibly weak and easy to resist.

So, Magneto, who is super-duper powerful, and been around a long time so that he's developed oodles of these stunts, can pull off things that a new, notably less powerful hero couldn't do effectively.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Killing Jean is like beating up Wolverine, or killing Flynn the Bard from the Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising; it shows you are to be taken seriously but it doesn't mean you're a major threat.

So...what you're saying is...(correct me if I'm wrong)...despite their appearances, Pheonix, Wolverine and this guy Flynn are all Black Guys- there to show the seriousness of the situation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...the game called them "Power stunts", and they were far less expensive than flat out new powers.

You can also find them in M&M (same name) and HERO (in a variety of forms, usually Multipowers).

 

[Jeff Wilder]

You can also find them in M&M (same name) and HERO (in a variety of forms, usually Multipowers).

Stunting in M&M is explicitly different in intention and execution than MPs or ECs in Hero, though. Stunting is specifically intended for those situations in which you have a cool idea for the use of a power, but it's not something that you can or will do routinely. (Stunting costs fatigue, or (in practice) a Hero Point.)

M&M has power structures similar to MPs and ECs in Hero, for alternate power usages that will be used routinely.

 

[Celebrim]

In general, to prevent this sort of thing from happening, most fantasy genera's assume that living creatures and humans in particular have some sort of barrier around them that makes manipulating the internal components of their body at a distance much more difficult than manipulating non-living components of similar mass and strength. Thus, a Super or Wizard with the ability to finely, remotely, accurately, and powerfully manipulate whatever at a distance, will find that doing so when the target is a part of a living body is much more difficult if not impossible. Effectively, living beings mentally or spiritually strongly resist such attacks on them with some inate power akin to that they are attacked with, even if they lack control over substance otherwise. A character's internal body is generally consider invoilate, thus forcing the Super or Wizard to rely on external threats and attacks.

In most cases this will be ignored by the genera or story in hopes that no one notices. When it is lampshaded, it will be explained as requiring special relatively rare circumstances (in Avatar: The Last Airbender, for example, the night of the full moon) and extreme skill and talent. It will generally thereafter only work on mooks, with peer level foes being invulnerable to such attacks for whatever reason.

Most RPGs actually will handle these tropes pretty well. D&D tends to handle it by having supernatural effects not be freeform, and by giving all living objects and any object that they hold a saving throw to resist attacks. This is the essence of the trope - that living matter is treated differently and in a separate special category compared to non-living matter. D&D usually requires 'line of sight' as well, which tends to prevent manipulation of objects that are inside of anything.

Supers games like M&M handle the trope by precisely defining what a power can do. You may have accurate fine senses and accurate fine manipulation at a distance, but if you didn't buy ranks in strike, this can't be used as an attack and if you did by ranks in strike then 'Give opponent an aneurysm by telekineticly shredding blood vessels in their brain' is just a flavorful implementation of the power. You of course in M&M can stunt your fine manipulation as an attack that damages, snares, or dazes an opponent, and this is probably the best way to handle such things in systems that allow for stunts. Treat manipulation of an opponent's internal body as a difficult stunt which cannot be used except as a relatively rare, narratively appropriate manuever.

Where you can run into difficulty is in looser freeform systems, especially if you are trying to be 'gritty' and resolve highly unrealistic you fail physics forever powers as if they were 'realistic'.

 

[jaerdaph]

Jean Grey is dead again? Sheesh.

She dies more than Kenny on South Park

Hey! You killed Jean Grey! You BASTARDS!

 

[Tarek]

Hero System:
Brainlock: 3d6 NND (defense is being in a faraday cage or having Electrical Control powers of your own), Indirect.

Just as one example.

 

[ValhallaGH]

So...what you're saying is...(correct me if I'm wrong)...despite their appearances, Pheonix, Wolverine and this guy Flynn are all Black Guys- there to show the seriousness of the situation.

Yes.

... Almost. Flynn is comic relief, especially his deaths.

 

[pawsplay]

A note (mostly for those who are trying to make sure players don't go farther than you want with powers): While the brain runs on "electrical impulses" that doesn't mean the power works on the nervous system.

When we talk about electricity, in terms of wires and modern electronics, we are talking about electrons moving along the length of a conductor, driven by a potential (an electric field). The electrons move continuously in one direction for Direct Current (DC), and go back and forth over a short distance for Alternating Current (AC).

This is *not* how your neurons do things. To oversimplify - imagine the neuron to be a pipe. The neuron transmits an electrical signal by moving ions (charged atoms) not along the length of the pipe, but through the wall of the pipe. Ions pop out in one place, which causes more to pop out next to them a little way down the pipe, then next to those a little farther down. Each ion moves only a small distance across the cell membrane, and back again, and that produces a wave of ionization to travel along the length of the neuron.

Also, the electrons in the first case are extremely light. The charged ions are a hundred thousand times more massive than electrons.

So, you can imagine it this way - normal electricity is like filling a sports stadium with Capuchin monkeys, and having them run around the rim of the stadium. The electricity in neurons is like filling a stadium with elephants, and having them do "the wave". Not really the same thing at all.

And an electromagnetic pulse is pretty much like running a truck into that pipe.

Now, here's something interesting to think about. The brain and head has its own electrical signature, an EMF "cloud." What would happen if you manipulated that?

 

[Nifft]

Now, here's something interesting to think about. The brain and head has its own electrical signature, an EMF "cloud." What would happen if you manipulated that?

Depends on the transitivity between "cloud" and brain activity. Since the brain tends to be a poor inductor, probably not much would happen.

The body has its own signature, called oily "fingerprints". What would happen if you manipulated that? Answer: you could mess with people looking for that signature, and that's it.

Cheers, -- N