Freezing Water and Raining Hail

[Susano]

I have a character concept. She can create cold (i.e. snow, ice, frost, and so on). Two questions:

 

1) She can freeze a body of water with a touch. Is this: A: CE, B: Entangle, C: Transform, D: Something else?

 

2) She can produce hail storms (that can do damage to things, just like real hail). Is this A: CE, B: EB, C: RKA, D: Something else?

 

All suggestions welcome.

[MitchellS]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

I would do the freezing water as a change environment temperature decrease myself. Freezing water is just the by-product of making it cold just. Using change environment also gives you other effects/benefits so that you're not buying needless duplicate powers. Of course I'd allow it as a special effect with a power skill roll on an energy blast or entangle too.

 

I don't like to use change environment to do damage. It just seems wrong to me but it's probably the correct way to do it in this case if you're just making standard hale with a small amount of impact damage. If you're wanting to do large amounts of damage I'd go with the area effect energy blast.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

I'd go for transform as entangle is going to be so limited in application as to be practically useless (unless you have a pretty exotic game setting). Also transform has a way of measuring how much you can freeze: not sure what the body of a hex of water is, but make the power cumulative and eventually the whole lake will be solid. You could treat the lake as a wall, which would allow you to in effect freeze it quicker after a slow start...In effect you'd be getting entangle and CE for free, but given that it is not a killer power and not real cheap I wouldn't be feeling bad aout that.

 

As for the hail I like CE. Mind you it depends how effective you want it to be as a combat tool. Real hail is not often effective in damaging normal humans - it'll sting but it is unlikely to render you unconscious, so I'd be inclined to build it as a distraction rather than a tool for doing damage: minuses to skill rolls and combat values, for instance. Even the golf ball sized stuff won't really hurt a super, and will only cause relatively minor damage. You could also build in a flash or darkness type effect - it can be hard to keep your eyes open when shards of ice keep finding their way in...

 

I'd see the hail storm not as a way of ending the fight but as a way of softening the opposition up beforehand.

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

1. CE with Gradual Effect. Otherwise if it's insta freeze... Entangle, OIF: Body of Water of Opportunity, perhaps with AE & Gradual Effect (the Gradual Effect is the Area not the power of the Entangle). The gradual effect would allow targets to swim away.

 

2. CE doing 1d6N of damage plus a PER-2 modifier... essentially minor damaging rain. Otherwise, for more damage, EB AE plus CE PER-2.

[gojira]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

On number 2 I'd go for EB w/ explosive effect unless the damage was very minor or only a side effect. Ie., what does the player actually want to do with it? Is it primarily for damage or is it for changing the weather?

[Doppler]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

#1: A, B, C in a Multipower.

 

#2: A, B in a Multipower.

 

 

Or, all of them with a large enough reserve to run two simultaneously.

Or a VPP with a fairly high limitation (perhaps -1/2 to -1): Only to make things colder or produce cold-weather-effect CEs, Transforms, AoE EBs and Entangles.

Or an EC with a fairly broad CE and the other powers.

Really they are all aspects of the same power, and it makes sense that they should be in a framework of some variety.

[Basil]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

{snip}Also transform has a way of measuring how much you can freeze: not sure what the body of a hex of water is' date=' but make the power cumulative and eventually the whole lake will be solid.[/quote']

 

Water is a megagram ("metric tonne") per cubic meter. 8 cubic meters is, therefore, 13 BODY (using the "Unliving" column of the chart on page 304 of 5th Ed.).

 

A pond, in the form of a spherical segment, 50m in radius and 10m deep, has a volume of ~59,690 cubic meters, masses ~59,690 Mg, and has 23 BODY. A 13d6 Minor Transform average 45.5 points, nearly the 46 points needed to Transform that pond in one roll. Naturally, a fewer dice will take longer.

 

BTW, Cumulative would not be needed; Transform "damage" remains until it is "healed". OTOH, Partial Transform (+1/2) might be used, to reflect the gradual freezing (though this is not the usual method for Partial Transform, and would need GM's permission).

[Dust Raven]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

I'd probably go with CE for the freezing water, though with a MPed Entangle if it's used to trap people often enough (say, by dumping water on them first).

 

If you want to simulate the giant, baseball sized hail that kills small animals, it's best to go with an AE EB. Use enough dice to kill a small animal on an above average roll (6d6 should do it).

[Sean Waters]

Re: Freezing Water and Raining Hail

 

Water is a megagram ("metric tonne") per cubic meter. 8 cubic meters is, therefore, 13 BODY (using the "Unliving" column of the chart on page 304 of 5th Ed.).

 

A pond, in the form of a spherical segment, 50m in radius and 10m deep, has a volume of ~59,690 cubic meters, masses ~59,690 Mg, and has 23 BODY. A 13d6 Minor Transform average 45.5 points, nearly the 46 points needed to Transform that pond in one roll. Naturally, a fewer dice will take longer.

 

BTW, Cumulative would not be needed; Transform "damage" remains until it is "healed". OTOH, Partial Transform (+1/2) might be used, to reflect the gradual freezing (though this is not the usual method for Partial Transform, and would need GM's permission).

 

You are quite right: I'm still living in 4th ed.!

 

The only reason I'm not keen on using entangle is because you may want to use the ice for something other than trapping someone which goes beyond the application of sfx.

 

As a transform I'd be inclined to make it a minor transform - as cosmetic transforms can not usually be used to add penalties, or even a major transform to add the entangle effect. Entangle requires a pretty large AE if you want to freeze a reasonably sized body of water.

 

CE is a good option but the mechanics are more 'realistic' to my mind, and the effect far more limited in scope: I wouldn't allow instant freezing of a large body of water - that would take turns at least, and you couldn't really entangle someone - that is too powerful an effect for CE to emulate.

 

Also even though it was not mentioned: transform to same thing but colder could be used on other things too including, for example the air, to make the ambient temperate lower - you really couldn't do that with entangle.