Gravity Mastery 5

[AslanC]

We are having a hard time figuring this out. Can you guys give me ideas of what we can do with this?

For example, say the Brick was about to punch someone, could the Gravity guy use his Gravity Mastery to increase the DM by applying an increase of gravity to the punch?

Etc...

Help?

[Lindharin]

I've been giving this some thought already, since it has come up in one of Shennaqua's character concepts. Here is my understanding, with twice my normal caveats about how this could all be wrong...

I believe the Mastery power isn't intended to be a combat power.

** EDIT: I misread your example - see my next post. My incorrect reading, where I thought you wanted to weaken the punch, is what I talk about below... Sorry! **

Your example of using gravity to make an enemy's punch more difficult is something that could be represented already by other existing powers, like Weaken Agility due to the high gravity, or a ranged Deflect usable on others.

So letting a blanket power like Gravity Mastery effectively do the job of those existing powers (plus anything else we can come up with) triggers warning bells for me as a GM. At most, I might treat it as a limited form of Omnipotence, so using Mastery 5 that way might gives the character the equivalent of 1 rank of any appropriate combat power (or add an appropriate enhancement, etc.) Using an alternate example, like Omniscience, where there is a more limited selection of powers that can be emulated, maybe the max rank would be 2 for 5 points of Mastery. Certainly no more than that, and even then I'm a little dubious about allowing it.

I believe the intent of the Mastery power is primarily to provide non-combat environmental / situational benefits that don't really fit any of the "normal" powers. It lets you make some loose (comic-book style) justifications to achieve some goal and affect the environment around you.

Some examples for gravity mastery might include:

An empty building is on fire; use anti-gravity to make the air weigh less and flow upwards. Either it evacuates the oxygen, starving the fire and putting it out, or it causes surrounding air to rush in and possibly blowing out the fire. Extinguishing the fire is something that might take a group of firefighters several hours, so according to the Mastery chart that would be maybe a difficulty 15? A 10 would be something one person could do in a few hours, 20 is something it would takes weeks for, so 15 sounds about right.

A large occupied building is damaged in a super brawl and is going to collapse. Use gravity mastery to reduce the load on the weakened building so it doesn't collapse until you are able to rescue all the people! Reinforcing a big building is a superhuman feat, so maybe difficulty 30 from the chart would be appropriate? As a nifty side effect, anyone falling from upper stories might land without serious damage in the low-G field!

The villain has been defeated, but his underground lair is filled with dangerous devices that must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. A gravity master could cause the entire complex to collapse on itself with a difficulty 30 check (which can affect up to 1 mile area, like months of work with heavy equipment). I can picture it in a comic book now - one majestic page, or more likely a two-page spread, looks over his shoulder as he dramatically gestures and the vista before him implodes in a cloud of dust!).

And that is kind of how I plan to make my judgment calls about the Mastery power. We've all seen the comic books where the characters with Mastery (like Magneto, Storm, Thor, etc.) stop doing small-scale tactical things (like combat powers) and instead get shown in a two-page spread doing something really dramatic to their environment, like calming or creating a hurricane, or moving the entire Golden Gate Bridge (much larger than even Telekinesis 5 could support), etc.

In my opinion, the change to the environment might be dramatic, but it should generally provide strategic benefits rather than tactical one-on-one combat benefits. And if it does affect one-on-one combat, it generally should affect everyone in the area, so maybe creating a hurricane would cause the same game effect as the Confusion power, but it applies to both heroes and villains and any poor civilians within a few miles. That means it should only be used that way if there is a strategic goal that requires it and outweighs the cost to the heroes and the general populace.

And more than most powers, I think there needs to be some restraint on the player's part. Just because you have enough Gravity Mastery to make the villain's headquarters implode doesn't mean you should do it on page 3 of the issue! On the other hand, it does become dramatically appropriate on page 26 or so, after you've accomplished your main goal and want to have a dramatic final statement. Hopefully most heroes will be too concerned about possible loss of life to do it on page 3, but even anti-heroes hopefully won't do it off-the-bat either. Depending on your players you might need to have a plot reason why they shouldn't do it right away, but in many cases the player will avoid such anti-climatic choices on their own.

Does that help?

[Lindharin]

Err, just realized I misread your example - I thought you were trying to stop the villain's punch, not enhance your ally.

There are existing rules for teamwork in BASH that work really well for that type of combo action. I would use those rules, and allow Mastery (or other powers) to be used in that specific case. The players are giving up two panels to make one combo action, so I'm much more lenient then.

[BASHMAN]

Lindarin is right on both counts. Mastery powers are not meant to take the place of other powers, especially combat powers. You can use Animal mastery to call animals to fight for you, but they won't be nearly as effective as those brought by the Summoning power. Instead, Mastery is intended to do "Useful" things with the power.

So Gravity Mastery 5 would mean that you could alter the gravity a G or two for miles around, even make a localized area Zero-G or extremely high G. In combat however, typically mastery powers usually only give a Hinderance or Bonus.

However, Lindharin was also right on using powers creatively while doing Team-Work.

I will also add, that Mastery is an excellent power to use to fuel a Power Stunt, and that characters with Mastery Powers are recommended to take Versatile advantage so that they can make the most of it.

I once ran an Earth Controlling character who used her Earth Mastery 4 and Versatile to say that she animated the rock in the cavern, turning it into a Rock Golem to fight for her! I was so impressed with the creativity, I tossed her a hero point!

So as far as *power stunts* go, you can use gravity for a lot of things such as Immobilize (so.. heavy... can't move a muscle...), Continual Damage (Darth Vader choke w/ gravity), Super Jump, Flight, Hovering, Glide, all usable on others (reverse gravity), Special Attack (this penny I threw is gonna hit you like a ton of bricks... at a fraction of the cost). The list goes on.

Now as for the "useful" regular uses of Gravity Mastery, they are meant to do "work". A 1 lets you do about an hour's work in a few seconds, and a 5 lets you do ridiculously amazing things:
I make this room/house/building be Zero-G so we can all float around.
I make this spaceship have artificial gravity
My friends are buried in rubble: I lift it all off them.
I want gravity to be on the cieling instead of on the floor here.
I reverse gravity so that people who are flying get disoriented (-2 Hinderance)
I increase the gravity of this boulder so that it can drill a hole towards the center of the earth. (everybody stand back first)
I increase the gravity of the Moon so it doesn't fly out of earth's orbit

[MrJupiter]

I've been giving this some thought already, since it has come up in one of Shennaqua's character concepts. Here is my understanding, with twice my normal caveats about how this could all be wrong...

I believe the Mastery power isn't intended to be a combat power.

** EDIT: I misread your example - see my next post. My incorrect reading, where I thought you wanted to weaken the punch, is what I talk about below... Sorry! **

Your example of using gravity to make an enemy's punch more difficult is something that could be represented already by other existing powers, like Weaken Agility due to the high gravity, or a ranged Deflect usable on others.

So letting a blanket power like Gravity Mastery effectively do the job of those existing powers (plus anything else we can come up with) triggers warning bells for me as a GM. At most, I might treat it as a limited form of Omnipotence, so using Mastery 5 that way might gives the character the equivalent of 1 rank of any appropriate combat power (or add an appropriate enhancement, etc.) Using an alternate example, like Omniscience, where there is a more limited selection of powers that can be emulated, maybe the max rank would be 2 for 5 points of Mastery. Certainly no more than that, and even then I'm a little dubious about allowing it.

I believe the intent of the Mastery power is primarily to provide non-combat environmental / situational benefits that don't really fit any of the "normal" powers. It lets you make some loose (comic-book style) justifications to achieve some goal and affect the environment around you.

Some examples for gravity mastery might include:

An empty building is on fire; use anti-gravity to make the air weigh less and flow upwards. Either it evacuates the oxygen, starving the fire and putting it out, or it causes surrounding air to rush in and possibly blowing out the fire. Extinguishing the fire is something that might take a group of firefighters several hours, so according to the Mastery chart that would be maybe a difficulty 15? A 10 would be something one person could do in a few hours, 20 is something it would takes weeks for, so 15 sounds about right.

A large occupied building is damaged in a super brawl and is going to collapse. Use gravity mastery to reduce the load on the weakened building so it doesn't collapse until you are able to rescue all the people! Reinforcing a big building is a superhuman feat, so maybe difficulty 30 from the chart would be appropriate? As a nifty side effect, anyone falling from upper stories might land without serious damage in the low-G field!

The villain has been defeated, but his underground lair is filled with dangerous devices that must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. A gravity master could cause the entire complex to collapse on itself with a difficulty 30 check (which can affect up to 1 mile area, like months of work with heavy equipment). I can picture it in a comic book now - one majestic page, or more likely a two-page spread, looks over his shoulder as he dramatically gestures and the vista before him implodes in a cloud of dust!).

And that is kind of how I plan to make my judgment calls about the Mastery power. We've all seen the comic books where the characters with Mastery (like Magneto, Storm, Thor, etc.) stop doing small-scale tactical things (like combat powers) and instead get shown in a two-page spread doing something really dramatic to their environment, like calming or creating a hurricane, or moving the entire Golden Gate Bridge (much larger than even Telekinesis 5 could support), etc.

In my opinion, the change to the environment might be dramatic, but it should generally provide strategic benefits rather than tactical one-on-one combat benefits. And if it does affect one-on-one combat, it generally should affect everyone in the area, so maybe creating a hurricane would cause the same game effect as the Confusion power, but it applies to both heroes and villains and any poor civilians within a few miles. That means it should only be used that way if there is a strategic goal that requires it and outweighs the cost to the heroes and the general populace.

And more than most powers, I think there needs to be some restraint on the player's part. Just because you have enough Gravity Mastery to make the villain's headquarters implode doesn't mean you should do it on page 3 of the issue! On the other hand, it does become dramatically appropriate on page 26 or so, after you've accomplished your main goal and want to have a dramatic final statement. Hopefully most heroes will be too concerned about possible loss of life to do it on page 3, but even anti-heroes hopefully won't do it off-the-bat either. Depending on your players you might need to have a plot reason why they shouldn't do it right away, but in many cases the player will avoid such anti-climatic choices on their own.

Does that help?

Very insightful post. You’ve given this very deep thought, and have articulated your answer very well.

Lindarin is right on both counts. Mastery powers are not meant to take the place of other powers, especially combat powers. You can use Animal mastery to call animals to fight for you, but they won't be nearly as effective as those brought by the Summoning power. Instead, Mastery is intended to do "Useful" things with the power.

So Gravity Mastery 5 would mean that you could alter the gravity a G or two for miles around, even make a localized area Zero-G or extremely high G. In combat however, typically mastery powers usually only give a Hinderance or Bonus.

However, Lindharin was also right on using powers creatively while doing Team-Work.

I will also add, that Mastery is an excellent power to use to fuel a Power Stunt, and that characters with Mastery Powers are recommended to take Versatile advantage so that they can make the most of it.

I once ran an Earth Controlling character who used her Earth Mastery 4 and Versatile to say that she animated the rock in the cavern, turning it into a Rock Golem to fight for her! I was so impressed with the creativity, I tossed her a hero point!

So as far as *power stunts* go, you can use gravity for a lot of things such as Immobilize (so.. heavy... can't move a muscle...), Continual Damage (Darth Vader choke w/ gravity), Super Jump, Flight, Hovering, Glide, all usable on others (reverse gravity), Special Attack (this penny I threw is gonna hit you like a ton of bricks... at a fraction of the cost). The list goes on.

Now as for the "useful" regular uses of Gravity Mastery, they are meant to do "work". A 1 lets you do about an hour's work in a few seconds, and a 5 lets you do ridiculously amazing things:
I make this room/house/building be Zero-G so we can all float around.
I make this spaceship have artificial gravity
My friends are buried in rubble: I lift it all off them.
I want gravity to be on the ceiling instead of on the floor here.
I reverse gravity so that people who are flying get disoriented (-2 Hinderance)
I increase the gravity of this boulder so that it can drill a hole towards the center of the earth. (everybody stand back first)
I increase the gravity of the Moon so it doesn't fly out of earth's orbit

Thanks BASHMAN! This information is very helpful with regards to this power. This “Gravity” example of “X Mastery” makes the potential of this power so much more clear than the animal example provided in the rulebook. Thanks to yours and Lindarin’s posts, I’m starting to get a real good sense of the depth and usefulness of this power.

[BASHMAN]

In a nutshell, what the power does is let you change the environment.

[AslanC]

So say he wanted to decrease the gravity on a target to send them up and then increase it to slam them down?

Would that be a special attack or gravity mastery?

This is the way the player thinks and then gets frustrated when he can't do something like that.

Help?

[BASHMAN]

That would be Telekinesis, which I think he already has...

[AslanC]

Can TK be used to attack?

[AslanC]

Never mind... I reread it

[Lindharin]

EDIT: Whoops, took me too long to write this...

That's either Special Attack or Telekinesis to me. In either case, it is a targeted affect on enemy combatants that can be represented by another power (and a power I think he already has, if you just go with Telekinesis). If that is the type of thing he wants to be able to do, and he doesn't have the appropriate power now, then I'd recommend adding it as an option to his gravity multipower. If he has the right power for the job, then the issue might go away.

A good analogy might be the concept of altering someone's memories. Why can't you use Mind Control, or even Telepathy, to alter the memories of people? In comics, all the telepaths seem to have that power, even if they choose not to use it for ethical reasons. So if someone has the "core" telepathic power, Telepathy, can they automatically alter memories? In BASH, the answer is no, because there is another power that does that specific thing, Memory Tampering. However, having Telepathy is a great justification for someone to make a power stunt to alter memories, or they could put it in a multipower and get Memory Tampering as an alternate power.

In the same way, Weather Mastery, Earth Mastery, Water Mastery, etc. are good "core" powers for elemental characters. But someone with Weather Mastery can't just call down targeted lightning bolts unless they want to take Special Attack to represent it. In my opinion, Mastery is specifically for making broad environmental changes, so targeted attacks aren't its purview.

And following that through, then Gravity Mastery shouldn't be used to make targeted attacks, unless it is by taking Special Attack (or Telekinesis) as a power stunt or multipower.

[Kinetic]

So here's a question... how would you model Terra's Earth Mastery from DC Comics? She limits herself in the damage she can cause, but things like shifting tectonic plates to cause earthquakes, making volcanoes erupt and such seem to be well within her grasp. Now, normally she uses her powers to do pretty harmless stuff, like pull a chunk of rock out of the ground and use it to fly around, creating a wall of rock to block an attack and stuff like that.

Does she have a multipower or does she just have Earth Mastery maxed with Versatile?

[BASHMAN]

She would have a multi power AND Versatile.

I will say this though, whenever making a character with Mastery, I 99% give them Telekinesis [Limit: only affects X]. In her case, it'd be Terrakinesis: Telekinesis 5 Limit: Only Affects Rock

So a character with Water Mastery would also get Hydrokinesis, etc.

[Kinetic]

She would have a multi power AND Versatile.

I will say this though, whenever making a character with Mastery, I 99% give them Telekinesis [Limit: only affects X]. In her case, it'd be Terrakinesis: Telekinesis 5 Limit: Only Affects Rock

So a character with Water Mastery would also get Hydrokinesis, etc.

Huh.

That sums it up nicely, and in about 1/100 of the text it took in Hero.

[AslanC]

Starting to get it. Most everything I would think of in a comic as a gravity power is either tk, immobilize, weaken, push or force field.

So with that, can someone give me more examples of what is and isn't fair ball for Gravity Mastery?