Calm the Storm

[BobGreenwade]

A storm is raging -- a completely natural one with wind and rain and all that -- and a character steps up and stops it.

 

Regardless of the modifiers for how he does it, what base power would you use? I'm kind of torn between Dispel and Change Environment, though I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities.

[Tech]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I'm inclined to go with Change Environment. Since it's a regular storm, I wouldn't want to have to think of the points needed to Dispel it. It's not someone's power so I'm not for using Dispel. One of our players used Change Environment for a pc to create rain or something similar.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I'll cast my vote (as well) for Change Environment.

 

Dispel might be a better fit for getting rid of un-natural (spell created) weather effects.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I'm a little torn here. My incination is to go for Change Environment, but I'm not so sure, for two reasons:

 

1. I'm not sure that there should be any difference in practice between a 'natural' storm and an unnatural one.

 

2. I'm not sure what change environment actually does in that situation

 

 

First point: natural v manufactured storms. Why should the system treat these differently? Well, it surely is a pain in the neck working out what the active points of a natural storm would be BUT, you only really have to do it once (and publish it) and then we know, for various intensities and sizes of storm what they 'cost'. Once we have that we know once and for all what we need to roll.

 

Second point: what does CE do? We know how to build CE so that it CREATES a storm but surely we need to do something similar to uncreate one - build the ability to neutralise a storms powers - which is just as complicated as working out a storm's active point cost - and I'm not completely sure that CE works that way anyway - you can't use it to, for instance, remove Perception penalties - can you?

 

Of course another point is this: what do you want the effect to be: do you create an eye in the storm or actually 'kill' it: dispel is all or nothing, CE could create a quiet haven - mind you so could a suppress field.

 

So, no help at all, as usual, from Sean, but plenty to talk about

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

...

1. I'm not sure that there should be any difference in practice between a 'natural' storm and an unnatural one.

 

...

 

Well, there is a rules precedence for allowing Dispel to work against a creature that is Summoned to an area but not against a creature in their natural setting. Weather should be treated no differently.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

If change environment can create a storm (make rain, fog, etc.) it seems that CE "make sunny weather" would be just as legit.

[CTaylor]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Change environment seems like the obvious choice for weather manipulation. If you use dispel, what would you be dispelling? Change Environment would seem to be the power you'd dispel, but what happens when you dispel weather? Do you get... no weather? Is a sunny day really the default, or is storm, or is just cloudy rain, what would be defined as the state when you turn weather off?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Fire vs. Magical Fire

 

Fire is considered an environmental effect in HERO.

It's like the spoon we fight the urge to build. We know what it does in the 'real world' but do we need to actually give it stats?

 

Yes, sometimes a character will have the ability to 'Dispel Fire' (superbreath, vortex vacuum, douse with water, etc..) and it's a straight compare roll X to value Y (Y representing either a particular item on fire OR the entire fire itself).

 

What about a character who creates 'Magical Fire' (it doesn't necessarily need a fuel source to continue burning)?

 

A 'Dispel Magic' might actually be more effective than a 'Dispel Fire' in this case as it arguably can be compared to just the initial power build of Magical Fire (as opposed to the larger effect it may have over time via the effects of Advantages like Sticky and Uncontrolled). If this 'Dispel Magic' is successful then ALL the magical fire is extinguished.

 

A 'Dispel Fire' would arguably need to use brute force to fight each individual instance of 'flame' instead of just the source of the effect.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Well' date=' there is a rules precedence for allowing Dispel to work against a creature that is [u']Summoned[/u] to an area but not against a creature in their natural setting. Weather should be treated no differently.

 

You are right, although I woud suggest that the reason for that rule is that the summoned creature would be based on up to 5 times the points in the summon that created it. Of course if you allowed dispel to work against the active point sof anything you could dispel hormal humans and such, which might get a bit odd (although even an '8 across the board normal' is based on at least 102 active points, so you'd need a pretty hefty dispel...).

 

You could easily treat even a 'natural' storm as a form of created weather (one of the powers of Gaia, perhaps?) built either as a CE or from bits - with EB/TK/Images etc etc.

 

If you don't do that you wind up with the potentially odd situation that someone can calm storms that are natural but not ones that have been created by powers (and vice versa). It is simply easier to get your head round the game if a storm is a storm, not matter how it came to be.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Fire vs. Magical Fire

 

Fire is considered an environmental effect in HERO.

It's like the spoon we fight the urge to build. We know what it does in the 'real world' but do we need to actually give it stats?

 

Yes, sometimes a character will have the ability to 'Dispel Fire' (superbreath, vortex vacuum, douse with water, etc..) and it's a straight compare roll X to value Y (Y representing either a particular item on fire OR the entire fire itself).

 

What about a character who creates 'Magical Fire' (it doesn't necessarily need a fuel source to continue burning)?

 

A 'Dispel Magic' might actually be more effective than a 'Dispel Fire' in this case as it arguably can be compared to just the initial power build of Magical Fire (as opposed to the larger effect it may have over time via the effects of Advantages like Sticky and Uncontrolled). If this 'Dispel Magic' is successful then ALL the magical fire is extinguished.

 

A 'Dispel Fire' would arguably need to use brute force to fight each individual instance of 'flame' instead of just the source of the effect.

 

This is a good example of something I struggle with - how is the environment and the powers of a character a 'different case'?

 

For example if a character has a flamethrower, bought as a power (some sort of continuous AoE RKA) and he sprays it at Dampener, who can dispel (or supress) fire, the flame goes out. Now if later on Dampener is near to a barrel of napalm that is part of the scenery that gets hit and explodes, shouldn't she also be able to dampen that?

 

As with all adjustment powers it is a very good idea to carefully define the sfx of how they work, and that then allows the GM to rule whether it is effective in a given situation, but I can see no good reason for differentiating between environmental effects and powers.

[CTaylor]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

even an '8 across the board normal' is based on at least 102 active points

 

I see what you mean, but the rules give you the base character with 10s in every stat as a freebie.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I'd go with CE. This kind of change is really what the power is designed for IMO. Probably with MegaScale unless you are just going to create a small temporary sheltered spot.

[Vulcan]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

On the other hand, the Weather God in our old campaign bought AEH Radius Megascale Transform to change the weather. Just to get one up on all the 'mortal' weather controllers with CE.

 

Yeah, it was really expensive, and sometimes took a while to overwhelm the CE effects (the GM ruled he had to exceed the AP of the opposing CE), but once it worked, nothing short of another Transform (or a natural weather change) would do.

[eightiesboi]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I am going for the role of Devil's Advocate today...

 

I can see where CE makes good sense, but if you wanted to make a Dispel Storm, it wouldn't be *too* difficult to decide how many points it would take. Let's assume that by "calming the storm", we mean that the storm completely dissipates. Let's also assume at most our storm-calmer can affect the area over a city. To figure out how big we want our dispel to be, we simply have to figure out how big the CE necessary to create the storm in the first place would be. (The following all comes from 5ER, mostly pages 135ish and 440ish)

 

 

Here's my take. Let's go with a practically worst-case scenario (in other words, not Day After Tomorrow-ish, but relatively close). (Disclaimer: I am at work right now and don't have access to Hero Designer, so this is being done by hand and my results may be off.)

• Temperature: Let's bop it down one category, although we could probably leave this off due to wind chill. We get this free for the base 5 points.
  
• Rain: Driving, pounding rain. Since "pea soup fog" is listed as a -3 PER for sight and hearing, I think we can reasonaly call this the equivalent, especially since normal rain is a -1 to PER rolls. This will cost us a total of 18 points, 9 for each sense group.
  
• Wind: Wind speeds of 75 mph (yes, we could go higher). That equals a -3 to hearing and a -3 to OCV. This comes to 24 points, 9 for the loss to hearing PER, and 15 for the OCV.
  

Now, tack on +5 for Multiple Combat Effects, and another +10 for Varying Combat Effects (to allow for gusts of wind that act as TK STR, etc), and give it a +1/4 MegaArea, and I get 288 AP.

 

To dispel this doozy of a storm, and without being entirely cost efficient, I find I need a minimum of 48 dice of effect, for 144 AP. Add in citywide MegaArea (+1/4) and cumulative (to make sure I get to 288 points of effect) (+1/2) and I get 252 AP. Or something like that.

 

Or you could just buy images of nice weather megascaled...

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

For those of us without the Grimoire, what do skeletons, zombies, and aqueducts have to do with building "Calm the Storm" as a power that actually calms a storm, say, over a city, without building a plateau in the center of it and having undead run around? Would this work for any genre other than fantasy? Most GMs in a Champions game probably wouldn't give Storm of the X-Men a x1/3 cost break, or allow her to control the undead. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm very confused...

[eightiesboi]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Most GMs in a Champions game probably wouldn't give Storm of the X-Men a x1/3 cost break' date=' or allow her to control the undead. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm very confused...[/quote']

 

I would, as long as Halle Berry wasn't playing her...

 

As for the OP, here is a munchkin, slow, but powerful, storm-calming power:

 

Calm the Storm: Dispel Storms 1 1/2d6, MegaScale (1" = 1 km; +1/4), Cumulative (288 points; +1 3/4) (13 Active Points)

[ayinde]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

id use tranform mabey with mega scale

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I also would favor Change Environment, but I'm going to propose a different mechanical tack. Following are links to three category scales commonly used to classify the severity of wind speed and its related effects, with descriptions of those effects: the Beaufort Scale, commonly applied to winds below hurricane strength; the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes; and the Fujita Scale for tornadoes. The descriptions of environmental disturbance and damage would make it easy for an observer to recognize the severity of a given storm.

 

I propose combining these into a unified scale of "Storm Levels" analogous to the existing Temperature Levels for Change Environment, starting with the Beaufort Scale and extending into the Saffir-Simpson and/or Fujita Scales; and then purchase the ability for Change Environment to increase or decrease each of these Storm Levels in the same way it can increase or decrease Temperature Levels. If you want the Power to only function to calm storms, that would probably count as a -1 Limitation.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I also would favor Change Environment' date=' but I'm going to propose a different mechanical tack. Following are links to three category scales commonly used to classify the severity of wind speed and its related effects, with descriptions of those effects: the Beaufort Scale, commonly applied to winds below hurricane strength; the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes; and the Fujita Scale for tornadoes. The descriptions of environmental disturbance and damage would make it easy for an observer to recognize the severity of a given storm.

 

I propose combining these into a unified scale of "Storm Levels" analogous to the existing Temperature Levels for Change Environment, starting with the Beaufort Scale and extending into the Saffir-Simpson and/or Fujita Scales; and then purchase the ability for Change Environment to increase or decrease each of these Storm Levels in the same way it can increase or decrease Temperature Levels. If you want the Power to only function to calm storms, that would probably count as a -1 Limitation.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to cross-post this information to the Environment thread in the 6E forum.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

If you haven't already done so' date=' you might want to cross-post this information to the Environment thread in the 6E forum.[/quote']

 

Done.

[薔薇語]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

Has anyone thought about buying a Megascale suppress against "stormy weather." It is naturally cumulative and you can just buy a range of dice to influence the spead at which you do it. Also Autofire (although this gets expensive quick) would also work to circumvent the time requirement.

 

Just my 2 cents

 

La Rose

[CTaylor]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

The only problem again is the question: what are you suppressing? You have to have a "target" power to act against.

[tarragon]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

The Until Superpowers Database covers Weather Control as a power on on p. 251. It even gives an example of canceling a storm. It's written up as a Mega area CE using the Varying Combat Effects and Multiple COmbat Effects adders and a couple of minor rulings about how to use it.

[薔薇語]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

The only problem again is the question: what are you suppressing? You have to have a "target" power to act against.

 

I would take the the example above of what it would cost to mimic the effects in a CE. The CE equivalent is what you are suppressing. It may be a natural things but that doesn't mean you couldn't map it like a power and effect it as such.

 

So suppress 288pts of the environment and viola!

 

La Rose

[prestidigitator]

Re: Calm the Storm

 

I would take the the example above of what it would cost to mimic the effects in a CE. The CE equivalent is what you are suppressing. It may be a natural things but that doesn't mean you couldn't map it like a power and effect it as such.

 

So suppress 288pts of the environment and viola!

 

La Rose

 

Wait. How do you know that creating a storm doesn't require Suppressing a calm-weather CE instead?

 

IOW, why do these with different powers? The symmetrical approach seems reasonable.