X-Mastery enlighten me!!

bigsteveuk · Post by **bigsteveuk** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:59 pm

Hi Guys,

Can someone enlighten me as to what X-Mastery actually does as you seem to need to buy other powers to actually make it do anything. So do I need it?

My example is for a Iceman (ice lady in this case) that I am building for a player.

Cheers,

Steve

MrJupiter · Post by **MrJupiter** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:28 pm

Here are some Ice-Themed X-Mastery ideas:

Cosmetically
At low levels, Ice Mastery could be used to create ice sculptures (the quality might depend upon your Craftsmanship skill). At greater levels (ranks 3+) you could freeze over a lake, or create a postcard-worthy scene with all tree branches and structures covered in beautiful ice.

Power Trick
Improvise an icy patch of ground under a villain for the Slow power for 1Hero point (assuming you didn't already buy that for your ice-themed character). Maybe power trick a short circuit in the villain's master computer with some convenient frost inside its components.

Dampen Damage
Put out a raging fire in a building with your powers by judicious amounts of ice.

Counter/Weaken/Turn-Off
As above, but to a villain.

I’m sure there are other ideas that might suggest themselves during play. Restraining ice sprays, ice blasts, protective coating of ice, or Iceman-like slides would need to be bought with regular powers (Immobilization, Special Attack, Armor, and Hovering as possibilities).

Dustland · Post by **Dustland** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:02 pm

If all you want to do with a power is blast people and defend yourself with it, x-mastery isn't a very good choice. It's designed to do a bunch of cool stuff outside of combat.

Also, if you're wondering, the power Trick option is from a BAM article.

Baelor · Post by **Baelor** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:13 pm

Other cool things:

- If your ice lady is ticked off, the area around her gets unnaturally cold to reflect her mood.

- Make it hail or snow in an area, size of area depends on ranks in Mastery. A hero point to make this so heavy as to count as Slow/ Confusion.

- Spend a hero point to cause a group of minions guns to become so cold that they drop them or otherwise are unable to shoot for a round.

- Spend time to change the environment in some tactical way. Cause enough snow or ice to change line of sight, or create barriers, or ambush sites, or just to weird out the opposition.

- Spend a hero point to use Ice mastery to create a group super- running effect to move your team quickly from one location to another under your control.

- Spend time to make an area so cold that it is uncomfortable or even harmful to normals or some minions [ala the old TV trope of people stuck in a meat locker].

Post by **BASHMAN** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 4:17 pm

Steve, do you have the most recent printing? If you got the PDF, you should be able to download the updated version of it.

This printing has numerous examples (almost a page worth) that explain things you can do with X-Mastery, including "Power Tricks" and countering other powers.

bigsteveuk · Post by **bigsteveuk** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:28 pm

rtfm then.. and thanks for the replies, love the area getting cold if she is in a bad mood.

Glad my wife dosen't have that power my house would always be freezing...

MrJupiter · Post by **MrJupiter** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 9:58 pm

bigsteveuk wrote:rtfm then.. and thanks for the replies, love the area getting cold if she is in a bad mood.

Glad my wife dosen't have that power my house would always be freezing...

I'm not up on my internet acronyms/initialisms so I looked up RTFM on google: "Read The F______ Manual". LOL.