Teleporting

[Pyronide]

I am putting the final touches on a character of mine who can teleport as their main power and project an energy blast of sorts as their secondary. I am trying to come up with a more solid definition of how his powers can work, but don't know for sure if they are possible ideas or not. The way he uses portals will be that he BAMFS like nightcrawler or can create portals for other uses. I am trying to get a build down for the portals, using the basics for gates, but still slightly different. Has anybody else created a character like this?

 

Ideas:

1. Redirection via portal

2. Portal jumping for team

3. Teleport UAA

4. Thrown objects being teleported immediately in front of the enemy to possibly surprise.

 

I would love to hear how people would go about building these or other ideas I may have overlooked, thanks!

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Be warned that teleport UAA is probably going to get nixed; it can very easily be a 'sudden kill' thing.  However, everything you want could (possibly) be explained by way of teleportation, which would enable you to drop the apparently-vaguely-flavored 'energy beam' attack.

 

• RKA: you 'splice' them, just for a fraction of a second (because you can't do it for longer, too much <insert technobabble here>)
• EB: An instantaneous 'UAA' teleport of them, from where they are to ... where they are.  Thing is, it can be very jarring ...
• Stretching: open portal, punch/grab, withdraw, close portal.  Add increased levels of Indirect for best use.

Really, anything you ever wanted to do in the game Portal ...

[Pyronide]

The energy blast is just missing the flavour here to show it's a blast, I will be more specific next time sorry. Splicing sounds cool, never thought of doing something like that. Most of his attack Teleporting will be touch based. I also never would have thought to use stretching like that... still new to the system, thanks!

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Remember that Nightcrawler's teleport had a stun effect on other people.  Also, an AoE Selective EB or something - indicating you teleporting to each person, punching them, and teleporting to the next, and the next, and the next ... until the last teleport is to where you started.  (Or if a move, to where you are half-moving to.)

 

The other thing is that, in order to make a good character, to try to keep your SF/X all within a narrow / singular range if possible, or else have one of them self-powered and one of them tech or training.  Wolverine?  Adamantium claws, sure, but mostly regeneration.  Storm?  Weather.  Iron Man?  Power Armor.  Invisible Woman?  Force Fields.  Mr. Fantastic was lots of stretching, but he's one of those who has the tech secondary.  If you can do that, do so - it'll make things easier.

[Pyronide]

I like all of these ideas, his abilities for both the teleportation and his EBs come from a Quantum Energy... But making him mostly teleportation attacks may be a better way to go about it, thanks!

[薔薇語]

If you are looking to build some Teleporting powers, here are some rough suggestions:

 

 

Bamf : Simple Teleport for one's self. 

Bamf w/ me : Increase the weight allowance so that you can bring extra items or people

Bamf away : Teleport with Usable as an Attack - this will let you send a person (friend or foe) somewhere

 

Rapid Forced Bamfing : The character buys an attack power to simulate forcibly teleporting someone and that act causing damage to the target. Such attacks could be anything: Simple no-range Blasts, no-range RKA, adding on Increased Stun, Penetrating, Area of Effect (striking everyone in an area quickly), etc.

 

I got the moves like Bamf! : Various Martial arts representing the inability to hit or block someone with teleportation

 

Side option: build your own Martial arts like "Flying Strike" or "Flying Knockdown" so that the Bamfer can move but remove the "velocity based damage" mechanic assuming you have "No relative Velocity". 

 

Side option 2: If you want to simulate throwing stuff at a target but having it teleport in the intervening space, you could do this as a Blast / RKA with "Obvious Inaccessible Focus: Objects of opportunity" or as Ranged Martial Arts maneuvers.

 

 

If you want a character who creates actual gates, then you can simulate that with the Gate style Teleportation builds. But something that is worth keeping in mind is that while that lets you move things from point A to point B, it really isn't needed unless you want there to be lingering 'gateway'. If your special effect simply starts and ends with the controlling character's turn, then there is little need to actually build things as gates - even if that is their general special effect. 

 

Other things you didn't bring up / ask for:

 

Bonuses to DcV if the character can do constant micro teleportations or is slightly out of phase, maybe things that would barely graze him actually miss. LIkewise, this could be simulated with higher PD / ED / PwrD, Damage Negation, Damage Reduction, etc. 

 

Enhances sense: maybe the character is slightly out of phase with the normal world but in that state of existence there are ways to perceive people or things that are not available to normal humans. Thus the character has some kind of strange Detect. 

Flash: depending on Special Fx, maybe the character can do two micro teleportations but when both go off at the same time, it causes some kind of feed back. That feedback gives off some bright light / sound / smell, etc. 

Healing / Regen: Maybe his body is actually altering matter when it teleports and thus can bring in organic matter to aid in his recovery. 

Invis and Desolid: the character is able to 'maintain his teleportation' and thus go out of sync with normal reality. 

 

Enhanced Stats because his body is dealing with such awkward physics. 

 

Foreign Orchid. 

[Pyronide]

These are all amazing ideas and very helpful for me to flesh things out. Thanks!

 

EDIT: I was wondering how much Increased Mass I would need to purchase in order to Teleport a car and drop it on somebody?

[Doc Democracy]

Pyronide

 

One of the things that many people find when playing the game is that there are some things that are cool to do exactly as it seems on the box - such as teleporting a car to a precise point and seeing if you can drop it on someone - and finding that it is not as cool in game as all the mechanics etc seem fixed to stop you doing it.  Or that it is so much less effective and so you never actually do it.

 

It is often much better to work out what you want to achieve in terms of game effect (I want to crush the bloke! or I want to pin him to the ground!).

 

Once you have that in mind you look for the power that is best in terms of what you want to achieve (blast or entangle from examples above) and then describe the special effect (I teleport a car above his head and it drops on him).

 

As far as this goes you are more likely to get the play effect that you want - you get the cool effect of dropping the car (or other object) and the game effect (crush, pin etc) without all of the exotic rules that might otherwise come into play.

 

The thing about this is that you get to think about the advantages and limitations that come into play.  If you limit those powers with "requires a reasonably large object within range of teleport" then the GM can sometimes prevent you from using it by putting you in a location where there are no such objects.  

 

Doc

 

"Just thinking of how all the cool attacks I wanted to do that were kiboshed by GMs playing by the rules could have been replicated by a straight Blast on the character sheet..."

[massey]

I agree with Doc Democracy.  One useful power that may fit with your teleportation gate setup would be Energy Blast, with the Variable Special Effects Advantage.  Take a +1/4 level and call it "stuff I can teleport".  This would let you make a physical attack (I drop a car on him).  It would let you make an electricity attack (I teleport the end of one of those power lines into him).  It would let you make a fire attack (molten metal from the nearby steel mill), or anything else your environment allows.  The Indirect Advantage can also be useful for that.

 

I'm playing a character with "city control" powers right now, and have been thinking of a lot of ways to use the environment against an opponent.  One move that ended a fight immediately (and not through damage -- I rolled really poorly):  I made a hole open up in the ground and a sewage line burst.  The villain got drenched in... yucky.  He threw his weapons down and gave up, as long as we'd get him a shower soon.  You could do the same thing with a teleportation portal.

[Pyronide]

I agree that making powers simplistic is better, but I also enjoy looking at how to fine tune a power to be as close to what I want, even if a GM doesn't let me use it because I am not in a parking lot (using car reference) It is a way for me to learn the advantages and limitations as well and it feels good to see just how low of a point cost I can get for a rather expensive active cost... just something about crunching the numbers is all

[bluesguy]

A teleporter in an old Superhero game of mine had the special effect that his teleport opened a portal into hell.  When he took someone with him they were 'attacked by a EGO blast'.  Since most people did not have mental defense it was a pretty nasty attack.  He could also 'open a portal of hell' that would just blast people w/ an ego blast (I think or it might have been fire in that case)...

[Beast]

my character Blip

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/12-blip-6th-ed-400p-pts-w-vpp/

[Beast]

Stretching does not cross intervening space, is a way to do Teleport vs others that does not do the instant kill stuff

[Pyronide]

This was very interesting to see, thanks for sharing... I was going to use a Multipower, but seeing how you used your VPP I may switch it now Thanks

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Well, Blip started out with a MPow, but switched to a VPP when Beast saw what Allan and I could do with a VPP. 

[Pyronide]

so then let me ask this here, although it's a separate question really... when should you use an MPow and when should you use a VPP? VPPs just sound like more options to a pool... is there something I am missing?

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

There's a couple reasons - and traditions.  One, an MPow can be sort of a practice run for a VPP - you build and buy all your critical powers, test them out, that sort of thing.  Two, in the short run, an MPow can be cheaper, especially if your GM has restrictions on what can and cannot be in the VPP - certain (or many, or most, or any at all) Power Disadvantages,   Third, an MPow in the hands of a competent player can be very, very powerful - which means some GMs will ban them entirely, because it requires a snap judgement on a power built there at the table.  Other GMs will require the player to have certain disadvantages (can only be changed in a lab, for example), or that a character cannot build any power at the table, that they have to be pre-approved.

 

Is a VPP more powerful?  In 6E, it can depend on the construction chocies, pool points vs. control points; in previous editions, the two were linked.  However, because of its flexibility, a VPP is generally considered more powerful, yes.

[Christopher]

I am putting the final touches on a character of mine who can teleport as their main power and project an energy blast of sorts as their secondary. I am trying to come up with a more solid definition of how his powers can work, but don't know for sure if they are possible ideas or not. The way he uses portals will be that he BAMFS like nightcrawler or can create portals for other uses. I am trying to get a build down for the portals, using the basics for gates, but still slightly different. Has anybody else created a character like this?

 

Ideas:

1. Redirection via portal

2. Portal jumping for team

3. Teleport UAA

4. Thrown objects being teleported immediately in front of the enemy to possibly surprise.

 

I would love to hear how people would go about building these or other ideas I may have overlooked, thanks!

A big disclaimer ahead of time:

There is a difference between Teleportation the Power, and Teleportation the special effect. Infact they have nothing to do with one another!

Teleportation (the power) has been used for Speedster movement, for example.

 

1. It is possible to have Reflection (the power) with a portal special effect. I think it is even explicitly mentioned in the rules.

Keep in mind however that you can only Reflect attacks targetting you directly, there is a serious AP cap and you can't Reflect if you Block vs Ranged via Abort. You have to actively choose to use Block to get Reflection to work.

 

2. Usable by nearby. Useable by others. Increased mass. See point 3

 

3. You can always telport somebody along you touch (inlcuding someone unwilling you grab!), as long as those person(s) is inside your mass cap. Think of the Mass Cap as the STR you have to carry someone via Teleportation, same way you could carry someone with normal STR while walking or flying.

UAA is only needed if you want to teleport an unwilling target and not want to go along. Like teleporting him into a Volcano. Movement UAA is a tricky beas to balance. More so with teleportation, UAA. Chances are very unlikely the GM will allow that.

 

4. Be carefull with stretching. It opens you to attacks until your next phase! That is the tradeoff for being able to use your Strenght/Attack as if you were on HTH Range.

You might instead want to use indirect on a normal ranged attack.

How much surprise effect that is, it up to the GM. An undoubtable use however is getting past barriers.

 

 

EDIT: I was wondering how much Increased Mass I would need to purchase in order to Teleport a car and drop it on somebody?

The game effect is not teleporting a car. It is attacking someone by tele-dropping a car onto them!

So just built it as an attack, possibly Area of Effect. Of course AoE are mostly usefull agaisnt Martial Artists and Mooks, wich might have pretty low defenses.

 

 

One extra issue with Nightcrawler:

The way I see him - especially his recent X-Men incarnations - he is a teleporting martial artist. Teleportation is the Special Effect for his high OCV/DCV, the same way just being "that skilled" is a special effect for high OCV/DCV with Batman.

 

HSMA even contains a "Speedsters" and "Shape Shifter" example martial arts.

 

Beating up a room full of Secret Service agents + 1 president is a AoE or Multiple Attack. Maybe a Spread attac.

It could also be the entire horde of SS-agents was written up as 1-2 Hero characters (that still were only about mook level), so he was actually just knocking out two Chracters then. The special effect of the character was being "a bunch of low level, low threat normals that would not mater on thier own".

[Ninja-Bear]

Pyronide i have been playing Hero for many years and i'm constantly surprised how creative people can build powers. May I suggest getting Conquers Killers and Crooks? The versatilty of some of the power build are great. Shrinker for example on how she is inside your body and still affect you is a neat look. (P.s. I know that this is 5th ed. But considering trying to collect all three of 6th might be a bit of a problem and any conversion should be relativly easy.)

[Pyronide]

@Christopher: Thanks for all the input, it helps a lot to see other people who know the rules helping our a Noob like me

 

@Ninja-Bear: Shrinker is in "Champions Complete" (The PDF I have) she is interesting, I also like Black Harlequin and her dolls haha, thanks for the book recommendation though, I will look into this.

 

Now, I have been looking into some Bamfers and see that some of them have teleport with armour piercing as an addon, how does this work or what does it translate to ingame?

[pinecone]

One power that is super useful for teleported is "X Ray" vision. Maybe the quantum mechanics allow the photons to be both in his eyes, and inside that room?

[massey]

One power that is super useful for teleported is "X Ray" vision. Maybe the quantum mechanics allow the photons to be both in his eyes, and inside that room?

 

Maybe put "visible" on it, and the effect is that you open a small teleportation portal in front of you that you can look through.

[pinecone]

That works too. Just depends on the concept. :-)

[pinecone]

Some less often seen to trick. I had tunneling at range, the Clair sense, and a fan.

 

One I've seen is a NND, for a micro second trip to a bad place. Despite can work. A d my dude was Blood, so he had a set of powers, one was that Blood don't fall...it varies, some have gliding, I had always on flight equal to my walk/ run so I treated the air as " ground" ( including taking damage from KB ...

[IndianaJoe3]

The game effect is not teleporting a car. It is attacking someone by tele-dropping a car onto them!

 

If one of the PCs fails an Unluck roll, it's their car.