Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

[Dust Raven]

I've been working on this concept for a while, and now I'm looking for ideas on how to write him up. For lack of a better name, I'm calling him Sphereman.

 

He has a number of metallic spheres he can mentally control, that fly around and do things for him. What kind of things? Well, for starters, they can fly into things like large bullets. Another trick is that if he can get enough of them together, they can for a wall of sorts (they fly back and forth at high speed and block anything that tries to pass). One of his favorite tactics is to create a wall like this around himself, then allow the spheres to smash into anything that gets too close in addition to protecting him from harm.

 

Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Not so, at least so far. I'm looking for ideas for writing him up. I've got a number of ideas, but not many have panned out. Those that have seem unbalanced (but maybe that's just me).

 

Some ideas that I have so far include just writing the above up as an EB with a FF and Damage Shield, and toss in a FW for other things, putting everything into an EC. The trouble with this is that his Damage Shield is either pitifully weak, or prohibitively expensive. Another idea I had was to make all of his Spheres Automata with Mind Link to him. The problem there is writing up the FW like abilities that require more than one to be present to accomplish it.

 

So any ideas on how I can make this guy work and actually be playable? He might end up being a PC, so I want to keep his cost down, but still be able to pull off a number of tricks with his spheres that are actually useful. What can I do?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

Well, on the surface the spheres sound a lot like a physical manifestation of class of material control like Terra from Teen Titans or an early Magneto from X-Men. Force Wall is not the only way to describe such an effect. An Uncontrolled Missle Deflect could work. The 'damage field' like attack doesn't have to be a damage field. Using the field defensively only should be easier than using it as a bowling ball. You could just make it an Indirect (*not necessary with uncontrolled MD) attack with No Range and Linked to the FW. Since the spheres sound unique to the character and not dependant on material on hand like Terra or Magneto I would try modelling the major powers with an extra large Multipower (x2 the standard slot size) and design multiple 2 power combos that would fit his special effect (this is how I designed my namesake character linked in my sig below). This lets you have almost as much power as the EC with a much simpler method for growth in variety AND power.

 

Hope these ideas help.

 

HM

[Sean Waters]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

Weird, I was thinking about using a metal ball this morning for a sort of power (or more accurately a way of stopping a power!)...more on that in a moment.

 

Had you considered building your 'damage shield' as one hex AE continuous EB or RKA with personal immunity? You can make it no range to make it cheaper (unlike damage shield) or keep the range and use it an as attack.

 

The cost difference is not that great, but the utility is higher, and you can use it as an attack directly, so you don't need to spring for two powers.

 

I was thinking this morning about using a metal ball to prevent shrinking from working: basically you teleport a metal ball into someone's mouth. They casn't talk, and if they shrink, it ripps their jaw off (I know: yeuch!).

 

Problem is if you shrink, the ball will shrink with you, assuming it is of relatively minor mass, so you'd need to have some way of building it thatcircumvented this. I thought of:

 

1. 'self only supress' on the ball: it doesn't prevent you from shrinking, but it won't shrink with you (or at least not as fast).

2. Building it as a shrink supress, only useable when not shrunk, but this doesn't work too well as you could still shrink if you didn't mind your jaw exploding.

3. (probably the best) a triggered RKA/transform: shrink and take damage to your jaw and be unable to talk/chew until it is fixed.

 

What do you think would be the best approach?

 

I'm sure you could do something similar if you were minded to.

 

Other interesting uses for metal balls: running with position change UAA (they get under the feet of your opponent and make them fall over and move them out of your way).

 

You may want an ablative force wall (assuming the balls can be damaged and not just re-formed).

 

You could manage personal flight (standing on the sphere) and even a rough form of TK, possibly an entangle with (whatever the advantage that damages you when you attack the entangle is called: backlash?)

 

You could manage a darkness field with an activation roll (balls orbit opponent's head: he can see through sometimes).

 

You could even do a form of absorbtion: attacks that hit the balls heat them up, boosting your own EB with extra energy damage.

 

Sounds like one of those characters you'll probably never quite finish, but, on a personal note, please don't cave in and just buy a VPP!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself...

 

...not pain, not failure, not fatal tragedy?

What of the faulty units in this mad machinery?

And the broken contacts in emotional chemistry?

 

Have you considered all that?

 

With thanks to Mr Peart & Co.

[MitchellS]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

Somethings in 5E are just too expensive, and damage shield is one of them. Some examples for this smashing wall might be to create several triggered energy blasts on the wall which go off when the wall is hit. The problem here is that it takes time to create all those triggered attacks. Another example might just be to build it as an indirect energy blast and just assume the "smashing" is a conscious attack from the character which uses up his phase. At times when he wants to do something else in the same phase you can just consider the smashing and his other attack to be an MPA of sorts.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

What do you think of the idea of making all of Sphereman's spheres as Automaton Followers?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

What do you think of the idea of making all of Sphereman's spheres as Automaton Followers?

Well it certainly bears futher investigation as it would solve some of the problems. You could even build the Force Wall power through them requiring minimum number to work properly. Deciding how tough they are is the big question. If the Forcewall is taken down does that mean a sphere is actually damaged or just disoriented out of its normal flight patern for a moment? Can they be damaged? Can they be captured? All fun questions to ponder.

 

HM

[Sean Waters]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

What, and have then form a union?

[Dust Raven]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

What' date=' and have then form a union?[/quote']

That's his other special power....

[Dust Raven]

Re: Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself

 

Well it certainly bears futher investigation as it would solve some of the problems. You could even build the Force Wall power through them requiring minimum number to work properly. Deciding how tough they are is the big question. If the Forcewall is taken down does that mean a sphere is actually damaged or just disoriented out of its normal flight patern for a moment? Can they be damaged? Can they be captured? All fun questions to ponder.

 

HM

Little details like that aren't important to me at this point. If I can make it so they are completly invulnerable and can't be captured, then yippie! If I can't, big deal... I just want to make sure he can do the tricks I'm imagining.

 

For the FW circumstance you mentioned... I'm figuring it would just disorient the spheres involed for a moment while they reset their pattern to make the wall again. None would actually be damaged (though if damagable, one could simply target a sphere instead of the wall).