Extra-Dimensional Movement

[Doc Democracy]

This is one of the funky powers that I pretend does not exist in most of the builds for most of my games but I have a character in my upcoming Golden Age game where Ithink it is necessary.

 

The Preacher walks through the battlefield dispensing aid and help, where required.  If someone is desperate he may offer them Sanctuary where they go to the Healing Halls from where the only exit is a small church in the fens of England. 

 

I can can see that “offering Sanctuary” might be XDM, usable on others (only on willing or unconscious recipient).  My question is that once someone has been transported to the Healing Halls, can the XDM be used to transport someone else, even if no adder has been bought to increase the mass that can be affected.

 

I can see the argument for there being no need, those transported are now “at rest”, though I can also see the argument for paying more to have five people in the Healing Halls than to have one.

 

I lean towards there being no need for the adder but I thought I would canvas the InterBrain...

 

Doc

[Grailknight]

It shouldn't cost more for the XDM. XDM is just a movement power in this case(the best and truest use of it). Think of it this way, would you charge more for teleport if you moved one person on phase 12 and then another on your next phase?

 

If any extra points are needed, it should be to define " the healing halls". This sounds like a base  or at least a friendly contact.

[Doc Democracy]

It is essentially heaven, or his specific vision of that, a micro-dimension with almost noting there except beds and folk to make you feel comfortable...

[Lucius]

29 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

It is essentially heaven, or his specific vision of that, a micro-dimension with almost noting there except beds and folk to make you feel comfortable...

 

1 hour ago, Grailknight said:

This sounds like a base  or at least a friendly contact.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

This sounds like a palindromedary tagline

[Christopher]

17 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

This is one of the funky powers that I pretend does not exist in most of the builds for most of my games but I have a character in my upcoming Golden Age game where Ithink it is necessary.

That is both a wise decision and a unfortunate Circumstance

 

17 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

If someone is desperate he may offer them Sanctuary where they go to the Healing Halls from where the only exit is a small church in the fens of England. 

This could also fall under Teleport. It is hard to figure out the difference between a really long range teleport and a EDM.

 

 

The first question I usually ask is:
"Is this really a power the character should spend points on? Or is it a plot device for the GM, to use or ignore as he sees fit?"

UBO by nature does not allow the effect to be forced on a target. And you explicitly mentioned that the target of the power must be willing.

For most characters it will not mater if they are here or there. NPC #1277 being 1 km away with the field medics, 100 km away in the field lazarett or somewhere in the house of healing makes no real difference gameplay wise. He is out of the story one way or the other.

 

Only with Quest relevant persons does this power mater. Only with them is the Position relevant. And here the GM can simply say "he is not willing to go", for one reason or another. Think "Saving Private Ryan" - the perfect example of where the Quest was to get him out. But he was not willing to move, in part because of what would happen if they left that position. So the quest mutated into a "hold the line" as the GM had inteded for the start of this session.

 

So there is a decent argument for this being something "Not to spend points on". And at least for me, those unpaid powers have one huge advantage: The GM can just declare them being offline.

You did not pay points for your JLU Communicators or Smartphones? Guess what, the villains took out or are jamming the network. Nope, disabling the jamming is not really possible. To maybe small disrupters or they just killed all the cellphone towers for a few kilometers.

So if you can not think of a reason the target would want to stay, you can just declare the power is not working. To much uses lately, fate/god still requires him there, atmospheric interference or whatever.

 

I guess the only question is: Is this power supposed to work on fellow Player Characters? Generally players should be averse to being moved out of hte adventure zone (because usually the GM has nothing to do for them there). But it might still be useable to secure a McGuffin away from the villain.

[Duke Bushido]

I can't believe I'm doing this, given my history of "Keep it simple" preferences, 

 

 

_But......

 

A movement power moves a person somewhere.  You buy 40" of running and use it, when you stop using it, you're 40" away.

 

When you move extra-dimensionally, you move through whatever tickles your fancy for dimensional barriers, and when you stop using it-- you're in Dimension X.

 

 

To leave Dimension X, you have to use it again.

 

 

Sure; that can be hand-waved, at least as far as I would worry about it, since it has no real impact on the game (unless you now have to travel to England to retrieve a healed-up teammate).

 

 

At any rate, I am just throwing that out there....

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

Duke

 

[Doc Democracy]

well, travelling to England should, in most circumstances be a minor inconvenience as that is where the game is set.

 

the comparison with travel is what makes me uneasy actually, if I pick someone up and move them a distance, in most circumstances they can move back.  In this case they cannot.

 

Oh! I think I have it. Anyone in the Healing Halls that makes an aggressive action will be cast out. I am thinking this will be to a random wasteland on Earth with a small chance of being somewhere entirely different (planet or dimension). If that does not open up the potential for nazi alien reinforcements or alien-tech equipped samurai, I fear for my campaign...

 

Thanks Duke, sometimes just talking something out helps...

 

Doc

[Duke Bushido]

Don't know what help I was, or why you want to send more violent people to Detroit, but I'm certainly glad something there helped.  

 

[massey]

Extra Dimensional Movement is one of those catch-all powers that requires discussion between players and GM.  There are a lot of things it potentially could do.  How you define the dimension will determine how balanced or unbalanced it is.  It can be extremely useful for story purposes, and it can help you accomplish certain goals more easily than a more convoluted power construct.

 

For instance, one aspect of speedsters in comics is that they can be anywhere on the planet in the blink of an eye.  Gotta go to China?  Boom, you're in China.  With XD Movement, you can do this easily (5th edition costs here).  Base level XD Movement is 20 points, single location in a single dimension.  +5 points for any location in that dimension.  The destination dimension is this dimension.  Maybe a -1/4 limitation for only places you could normally travel (so restricted to this planet, not inside a stronghold you can't get inside).  25 Active Points, 20 Real Cost to appear anywhere on the planet in one action.  Considering it's basically a "scene change" power, that's not too bad, and it's way easier than jacking around with lots of Megascale movement.

 

The other day I was fooling around with an idea for a mystic character.  A guy draws mystic symbols on the ground in a circle.  If he tricks somebody into stepping inside, he says the magic words and now they're trapped.  Is that a huge Force Wall?  Or could you use XD Movement, Usable Against Others, Area Effect (radius or hex, depending on the size of the circle), immobile fragile focus (the circle you drew ahead of time).  The fact that they can see out of it, and can talk to people outside the circle, is just a feature of the dimension you stuck them in.  The key is they can't leave until the circle is broken (and it's in our world, not theirs, so they can't do it without a transdimensional attack).  It's easy enough for a knucklehead assistant on this side to destroy the circle on this end, but unless the person trapped has XD Movement of their own, they're stuck.  Baseline XDM, Usable Against Others, Area Effect Radius, 60 Active Points.  Immobile Fragile OAF (-2 1/4), 18 points Real Cost.  This would allow a relatively novice sorcerer to hold very powerful enemies under the right circumstances, which fits with some types of stories.

 

I wouldn't have any problem with the sanctuary in England being a place you could leave voluntarily.  You could just get up and walk out if you wanted.  It might be really hard to find again, on your own (perhaps impossible).  But it doesn't have to be hard to leave.  Think about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  You can wander out of Narnia and into our world, if you go to the right places.  As I recall, in Marvel and DC comics there's a town in Vermont maybe, where you can cross over to the other company's universe.  Just because you don't have the XD Movement power doesn't mean that the rules of that dimension prohibit you from leaving.  They might, but they might not.

[Doc Democracy]

Again, thank you, I had not considered that.  If you walk out you find yourself outside a tumbledown ancient church.  When you walk back through the door, you are still in that tumbledown church, looking through the rafters at the sky.  No way back to the Healing Halls.  I am planning on giving the Preacher a very low level area effect healing style power that only works in the Healing Halls.  He normally does not enter the halls himself as it is inconvenient to go back to the fens each time he does, but if there are a lot of people that are very sick he will go to the Healing Halls to tend to them.

 

The specs from the player were VERY narrative (as he is much more of a FATE style player) and this is going to be a challenge to build a playable HERO character.  I am determined to provide him with something that will be just as cool and playable as he thinks he would have in FATE.

[massey]

Maybe the Healing Halls have a dreamlike quality to them?  The injured guy is losing consciousness, and he sees the Preacher above him just as everything goes dark.  He wakes up (?) in a beautiful countryside that's half rural England, and half people wearing togas and eating fruit.  There's a babbling brook, and rolling hills, and you fall asleep on bales of hay.  Pretty ladies tend your wounds (which are still there but don't seem to hurt nearly as much).  You can't quite remember how you got there or where exactly this is (or how long you've been there), but you don't seem to care that much either.  Characters have to make an Ego roll if they want to remember any details beyond the present -- it just doesn't seem that important.  Maybe they take a penalty to the Ego roll equal to however much Body they are down (a guy reduced from 10 Body to -2 gets a -12 to his roll, as he heals up the penalty drops).  There's a church there, and people are encouraged to pray and reflect.  If you consciously search for a way out, maybe there's a door in the church that you never noticed before.  It goes outside, to the real outside.  Whenever you finally leave, you wake up outside that church, now old and abandoned.  Your memory of where you were before is hazy and dreamlike.  How did you get here?  You aren't sure.  Inside the church it kinda looks like your dream, but not exactly.

[Duke Bushido]

I think your close right now.  The thing you have to decide is do you somehow impart a second one-time use of EDM to those in the Healing dimension, or is it the nature of the zone itself to "discharge" its patients when they are no longer in whatever need qualified them for admittance? 

 

Sure; it's something of a hand-wave, but so long as the narrative is compelling, I suspect your Fate player will go for it.