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Battlefield control?


randian

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Would that be viable in a superhero setting? In AD&D, walls, fogs, and suchlike can be effective at channeling the battle in your favor. Fantasy characters don't have nearly the same freedom of movement supers do though, what with flight and teleportation being staple powers. Total damage seems to be a problem too. Things like walls of fire won't deter a superhero, since there will typically be too few dice after the required advantages are added to do significant damage.

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You have lots of options - not just pure damage, which even in D&D, was only a minor player with regard to battlefield control.

 

Barriers still work - yes, teleport, flight and tunneling can sometimes bypass them, but you are still controlling movement. Bricks can smash through them, but a turn where they are getting rid of your barrier, is a turn where they are not hitting you. Exotic attacks (such as movement usable as an attack) can really alter game dynamics - though these are stop-signed and with good reason. Attacks that generate conditions work well - a Flash does not have to be very big to inflict short-term blindness, Darkness works well on many enemies, an Entangle does not have to be very big to slow down opponents for a phase or two, change environment might not stop enemies, but it can slow or debuff them, a SPD drain does not have to have huge active points to be effective ... and so on.

 

Battlefield control is quite feasible and effective - I played a teleporter once who had that as his major shtick in combat, and he was a lot of fun to play. What you don't really have is the equivalent of "save or lose" spells which can trap most opponents or inflict very severe debuffs.

 

cheers, Mark

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i have a character i'm working on called the White feather whose powers where designed for dealing with large groups of agents and individual supers. she can drain presence  and by using acting a psychological skills  boost her ability to scare people so against most normals, she can reduce them to quivering jelly against more fearless supers she might need to focus on one target but maybe she can distract or slow a number of enemies

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The principle works. You just have to accomplish it differently.

 

Drop a gas cloud onto a battlefield (3d6 EB, continuous, AoE, NND). All the agents will spend their next action getting out of it. They'll try to avoid going back in until it's gone. Even more powerful villains will avoid spending more than an extra phase or two inside of it. Unless you use this power in an environment where enemies can't get away, it will function like an area denial power, not a slow-acting damage power.

 

Darkness is also a great area denial power. If you can't perceive through it, you have to move in order to be effective.

 

As Markdoc said, costing an enemy a phase or two is very powerful. A high-power presence attack can be extremely effective in that regard. Even hitting a melee opponent with enough knockback may force them to waste their next phase running back to you.

 

I gave one character missile deflection at range. He could neutralize the attacks of multiple ranged enemies simultaneously.

 

Any power which penalizes your enemies' OCV and/or DCV is extremely powerful (another potential benefit of a powerful presence attack).

 

As in the real world, information (and the denial of information) is the ultimate form of battlefield control. For this reason, images are just as effective as fantasy illusions. If you can figure out what someone wants, fears or hates, you can use the appropriate image to manipulate their behavior.

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