Aberrant RPG - Level Three Calibre Suite Techniques

[metaphysician]

Okay, the idea goes around, that generally speaking, the powers in a suite are equivalent to level 2 powers, if often weakened. However, this is not *always* the case: within each suite, is generally one or two tricks that would be Level 3 powers entirely on their own right.

Thinking about this, I decided to go through the suites and see what I found. . .

Elemental Anima: The Enhance/Diminish technique is more potent than it looks. Granted, its dependent on exactly what element you are enhancing/diminishing, but it has area equivalent to Area x2, which is quite potent. In addition, if your element is damaging, you can increase or decrease the damage by up to 20 dice either way ( Int 5, Mega Int 5, EA 5 ), over the entire area. In particular, EA: Fire is thus heinously potent. Start an ordinary fire, Enhance it, and pretty soon your going to have a 20+ lethal firestorm going.

Elemental Mastery: The Storm technique is the obvious one. Area, duration damage, with added penalties. Sure, the raw damage is only about a third of a Q-Bolt ( Area ), but the penalties and the duration make up for that. The fact that the GM has discretion to add extra effects beyond the basic, is extra potency. I can't really think of any power more efficient for screwing over baseline armies.

Entropy Control: Bio-Entropy Storm. Area resisted damage, that's almost as hard to resist as Agg. Not quite as potent as Disintegrate ( Area ), but then, that's a Level 4 power.

Gravity Control: Gravity Field. Some of the exact mechanical effects are a little sketchy, but any power that, at Q5, can inflict as much as 50 lethal damage (!), to everyone in an area (!!), that *halves soak* (!!!) is a keeper.

Magnetic Mastery: This one is a little iffier. Magnetic Storm is a little weaker than the other Storm techniques, though still potent at hosing baselines. However, there's also EMP ( which amounts to "Shut down one machine, no save" ), and Magnetic Field ( which amounts to "hose every electronic device in an area" ) have potential. Still, I would argue that Magnetic Mastery has less raw potency than the other Elemental Mastery's, perhaps to make up for the fact that metal and electronics are so uniquitous.

Molecular Manipulation: Two potential ones here. Molecular Alteration, by my reading, is basically "Matter Creation except requiring solid or liquid starting material." That's a limit, but not a huge one. Shape Alteration, by contrast, doesn't have the same raw scale, but has the advantage of being permanent. Thus, with the right available raw materials, you can make, *permanently*, stuff of varying degrees of complexity.

Temporal Manipulation: This one is easy. First, Accelerate Time. Persistent extra actions. Even a single dot is twice as cost effective as Quickness; at the 5 dot level, your talking "3 quantum buys you 50 extra actions." Second, Stop Time. Yes, it doesn't allow you to harm your victim, unlike Immolate. This really doesn't matter, compared with *them not being able to do anything while so frozen.* And even with the difficulty penalty, its resisted by willpower, with no common defense. This isn't even touching the defensive uses ( time freeze someone about to be splattered ).

Weather Manipulation: First, Alter Weather. I actually went bug-eyed when rereading this. Sure, mastery-scale area, I knew that. Mastery scale area *on a Storm effect, complete with damage*? I needn't say more. Alter Temperature is lower key, but I'd argue still potent, as a shift of 50 degrees Celsius up or down over an area of dozens of kilometers is the kind of thing that can screw over small countries.

Of the core book suite powers, only Cyberkinesis lacked any techniques that screamed out to me "awesomely powerful."

So, thoughts?

[Alex Green]

Many of the Elemental Suites have "hit below the belt" techniques specific for their element.

EA/EM: Air: Enhance/Reduce Air to *nothing*.

EA/EM: Earth: Movement lets you create tunnels and/or move through the ground.

EA/EM: Electricity: Reduce hoses lots of technology, probably with one sux.

EA/EM: "Rare Element" (Gold, Diamonds, etc) lets you hose one industry and get rich.

I have a character who has "EM: Radioactives". He *can* use all the various techniques but doing so would create large amounts of radioactive substances (thus making the general area highly radioactive). At the moment he's trying to going into the nuclear waste disposal business.

EA/EM: Steel: Decrease would let you evaporate buildings... or at least the part that makes them stand. Ditto EM:Wood.

[BlueNinja]

Of course powers are devastating against baselines. That's part of their appeal. ::rolleyes

As for the suite powers, most of them do have one little thing that makes it special. Cyberkinesis' special ability - you want to take out NORAD from your living room? No problem. Re-program the Federal Treasury? Awesome. And it can't be traced, because you have no data trail.

Gravity field - how are you getting up to 50 dice? ::confused The biggest advantage with it IMO is drop multiple gravity - neutralize Flight, weaken Mega-Strength, and turn baselines into instant pancakes.

Shape alteration - have to re-read the rules to be sure, but I don't think it lets you change, say, steel bar into top-line sword, or 9mm handgun.

Accelerate time - the effect should wear off, and there's no way as a GM I'd allow anything to give you 50 extra actions in a round. Stop time is a lovely capture-the-guy power though, far better than Stun, Immobilize, or Precision.

[Alex Green]

Accelerate time - the effect should wear off, and there's no way as a GM I'd allow anything to give you 50 extra actions in a round.

Sure you would. ::sly

Say I have TM 5 and we have 10 party members. I won't have the juice to do it more than once but it's a maint effect so it will last 10 rounds.

Of course it assumes we have enough people (me + 9) and enough time to zap everyone (2 full rounds) and we have a very high end TM... but it's probably decisive in situations less extreme than this.

[metaphysician]

Actually, I meant 50 actions *over* ten turns. IOW, 5/turn for 10 turns. Its just, your only paying 2-3 quantum for that, so. . .

As for the gravity damage? At the 5 dot 5 Quantum level, Gravity Field has an area of 30 meter radius, so with reverse gravity, you can easily send your victim 30 meters or higher into the air. That's high enough to count as terminal velocity, when you flip gravity back. So, 10 lethal, and as per falling damage, it halves soak. At the same level, you can get about 10 sux or so, which if you assume you lose 2 due to WP resistance, means you can up gravity for someone to about 5 G. By the rules, that means you multiple falling damage by 5. . . or 50 lethal.

[Alex Green]

By the rules, that means you multiple falling damage by 5. . . or 50 lethal.

I looked this up last night and they gave an example to show what they meant by "multiply".

It's not the damage that gets multiplied, it's the distance. So a 30m fall with a 5x field would do damage like a 150m fall under normal gravity does.

[BlueNinja]

I looked this up last night and they gave an example to show what they meant by "multiply".

It's not the damage that gets multiplied, it's the distance. So a 30m fall with a 5x field would do damage like a 150m fall under normal gravity does.

Which would still max out at 10L right?

Falling damage is trivially laughable to most novas, especially the combat junkies.

[metaphysician]

Which is where the rules make little sense, as if the gravity is five times greater, terminal velocity *won't occur* at 30 meters. . .

That said, I'd be entirely fine with rewriting the exact mechanics to prevent such, in exchange for slightly clearer and more logical rules on how it effects people within a high gravity zone on the ground.

[Alex Green]

Falling damage is already the odd duck out in this system. I seem to remember Pots saying you couldn't apply Puny Human to it either.

But given the exponential increased in energy needed to increase damage I'd rather have a fall under punch than over punch. I.e. 50 dice in damage is getting up into effects that normally require Mastery or Nukes.