Supreme Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 That's what I'm calling it. I want to make a character with light powers. One of these powers is to change his body into a "photonic analogue" meaning that each atom, molecule, etc. is replaced with a photon (scientists have recently gotten a beam of light to remain "motionless" by bouncing photons off of each other). Anyway, so the main gist of this photonic form is that the character is now moving around at light speed, meaning time for him has stopped. I know that one of the uses for EDM is to change the character's state of being into one that no longer interacts with the physical world. No problem there. I can simply state that the character's photonic analogue cannot interact physically with the rest of the world. So the "dimension" that he "travels" to is the real world, but one where he's moving so fast that time has stopped. Here are the rubs: 1. I want him to still be able to perceive the normal world, but technically he's in another dimension. Is that clairsentience? 2. He should only be able to beam back into our world an instant (or so) after he's left. This would also allow him to effectively teleport to anywhere in the world, having seen anything he wants to in the normal world (that's visible). Are there special EDM considerations there? Is this unbalancing? 3. Should the character be able to cross physical barriers, or do I need to get desolidification too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
levi Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Re: Photonic Analogue Originally posted by Supreme 1. I want him to still be able to perceive the normal world, but technically he's in another dimension. Is that clairsentience? 2. He should only be able to beam back into our world an instant (or so) after he's left. This would also allow him to effectively teleport to anywhere in the world, having seen anything he wants to in the normal world (that's visible). Are there special EDM considerations there? Is this unbalancing? 3. Should the character be able to cross physical barriers, or do I need to get desolidification too? 1) Clarsentience is fine here, define it as only to see the normal, time-stopped world. 2) The first question I have is...Are there any other uses for this power other than Teleportation? It seems like there is from the other two questions, but this rub makes it seem like T-port is all you can do with this power. If so, it all depends on whether you want to use this power in combat or not. If you do it will be expensive as you will not be able to use the megascale advantage. 3) As far as special EDM considerations or Desolidification go, the USPD talks about time travel teleportation and states that the character would not need to buy any additional modifiers or advantages to move through the time stopped world and would not need to take the "must move through intervening space" limitation because the character would have as much time as needed to get around or through any obstacles. I personally have never understood the use of desolidification to represent light-body powers as light is easily contained by a sheet rock wall, but that is just me. You have given us the opposite of what most players give...a lengthy SFX explanation without a clear definition of what you want the power to do. Knowing what you want to do with this power will help us advise you in putting it in Champions terms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Re: Re: Photonic Analogue Originally posted by levi 1) Clarsentience is fine here, define it as only to see the normal, time-stopped world. 2) The first question I have is...Are there any other uses for this power other than Teleportation? It seems like there is from the other two questions, but this rub makes it seem like T-port is all you can do with this power. If so, it all depends on whether you want to use this power in combat or not. If you do it will be expensive as you will not be able to use the megascale advantage. 3) As far as special EDM considerations or Desolidification go, the USPD talks about time travel teleportation and states that the character would not need to buy any additional modifiers or advantages to move through the time stopped world and would not need to take the "must move through intervening space" limitation because the character would have as much time as needed to get around or through any obstacles. I personally have never understood the use of desolidification to represent light-body powers as light is easily contained by a sheet rock wall, but that is just me. You have given us the opposite of what most players give...a lengthy SFX explanation without a clear definition of what you want the power to do. Knowing what you want to do with this power will help us advise you in putting it in Champions terms. I want the character to move around at light speed thus "freezing" everyone else in time, allowing him to see everything that is happening in that moment, and then "re-enter" the normal world at any point in space, but only the next instant in time (as close to a half-phase action as possible). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farik Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 It doesn't sound like you need EDM it sounds like you need a massive level of speed reading, a huge amount of clairsentience, and vast amounts of teleport. While your concept is cool it is very powerful with vast ramifications both in and out of combat. By limiting the power like requiring extra time to "accelerate" to photonic state that would help but you're character is still going to be very pricey. Possible cost savings might result from purchasing huge amounts of N-Ray vision (can't see within enclosed areas) instead of clairsentience and a very large perception modifier. A GM might let you take the N-Ray vision with costs endurance and endurance cost multipliers to represent the energy you spend scouring the area at lightspeed. my $0.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Buy megascale sufficent to cover the globe for all your normal senses, plus N-Ray w/ the "Cant See Thru" clause being Any Area That Blocks Light Transmission. Consider applying the Rapid modifier to whatever level you think appropriate. Buy megascale T-Port of a range equal to megascale senses. That should cover it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Sounds like I'm not getting this character in under 500 points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Originally posted by Supreme Sounds like I'm not getting this character in under 500 points. My method would. Megascaled senses is pretty cheap, bcs you just buy it as a Naked Advantage several times, once for each sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farik Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Probably not. Even with limitations to lower real costs the active points will probably be strong red flags to the GM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farik Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Originally posted by Killer Shrike My method would. Megascaled senses is pretty cheap, bcs you just buy it as a Naked Advantage several times, once for each sense. But if you buy just megascaled (instead of megascaled along with smaller ranges) The you have wierd things happen like "I'll search New York and Las Vegas but one of you will need to check the room next door..and the rest of the state for that matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Originally posted by farik But if you buy just megascaled (instead of megascaled along with smaller ranges) The you have wierd things happen like "I'll search New York and Las Vegas but one of you will need to check the room next door..and the rest of the state for that matter. Depends on how you structure it. First off you apply the option to scale the Mega-scale down to 1km. Secondly you do the N-Ray as a seperate set of Naked Advantages able to cover each sense up to the AP limit with the Megascale turned on. You dont have to use Naked Advantages if you dont want to (unlike Advantages bought on a Power directly). Thus you can see into the next room or way off in the distance. I dont know many GMs that would quibble over the "grey area" in the middle. If you can see 1km away, you should be able to see something .5 km away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farik Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 I would quibble on the grounds that "When you can see so much how do you focus on something so small" think of it like a camera with an attachable zoom lens. If the lens is on everything close is out of focus if the lense is off you aren't really zooming in. It may not make sense but it's the same sort of reasonable balance issue as Player: "Why can't my megascale laser blast the guy standing in front of it?" GM: "mechanical reason, Megascale is cheap to allow large scale powers not to pump up powers cheaply. in game reason; the particles require a miniumum field distance to reach destructive levels of cohesiveness." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Maybe I could add in some kind of EGO roll-based limitation. After all, this guy has to actually run around and check 1000s of locations if he wants to search the whole state for something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 20, 2003 Report Share Posted December 20, 2003 Originally posted by farik I would quibble on the grounds that "When you can see so much how do you focus on something so small" think of it like a camera with an attachable zoom lens. If the lens is on everything close is out of focus if the lense is off you aren't really zooming in. It may not make sense but it's the same sort of reasonable balance issue as Player: "Why can't my megascale laser blast the guy standing in front of it?" GM: "mechanical reason, Megascale is cheap to allow large scale powers not to pump up powers cheaply. in game reason; the particles require a miniumum field distance to reach destructive levels of cohesiveness." What Im saying is that with the megascale off the character can see a fair distance. With the megascale on he switches to km based range increments. Theres a buffer in the middle between the non-megascaled eye and the megascaled eye which technically would not be visible to the megascale eye (too short) and suffers too many range penalties for the non-megascaled eye. However thats just a metagame consideration. Conceptually the character is moving to the location directly and looking at it and then coming back. I personally wouldnt fuss over the buffer area. If it were an issue for some reason, the character could just take enough levels of Telescopic to close the gap between the non-megascale sense and the 1km point for the megascaled. Still, pretty cheap. Easily doable for less than 500 pts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farik Posted December 20, 2003 Report Share Posted December 20, 2003 Originally posted by Killer Shrike What Im saying is that with the megascale off the character can see a fair distance. With the megascale on he switches to km based range increments. Theres a buffer in the middle between the non-megascaled eye and the megascaled eye which technically would not be visible to the megascale eye (too short) and suffers too many range penalties for the non-megascaled eye. However thats just a metagame consideration. Conceptually the character is moving to the location directly and looking at it and then coming back. I personally wouldnt fuss over the buffer area. If it were an issue for some reason, the character could just take enough levels of Telescopic to close the gap between the non-megascale sense and the 1km point for the megascaled. I understand your point and your arguement I'm just saying that as a GM I would consider that an abuse of the Megascale Advanatge but generally I'm not a fan of any "naked" advantages [self edit lewd comment about strippers here]. So what I'm really saying is Killer Shrike has a good idea to lower the cost but not every GM is going to be open to accepting it because...(repeat my earlier example about the detachable zoom lens.. etc.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.