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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 19, 2013 8:40:36 GMT -5
Hey everyone. I'm new to the forum and very glad to have found it. It's an awesome place for ideas/material/clarifications on MURPG.
A friend of mine is starting a campaign in a couple of weeks. Now being the overeager beaver that I am, I've already built and dismantled 4 characters already. I'm now on my 5th one and I'm positive this will be the one I'll play. Here's a quick rundown. First, we're from another dimension. We look human but we're not. On our homeworld, technology is much more advanced. To a point where my character, an astronaut, was the pilot for a mission to get inside the event horizon of a black hole. The ship having experimental shielding tech could survive the pressure and keep the time dilation from happening... or so we thought. The shield failed because of a miscalculation on my part (or so I believe), and everyone but me died (we didn't all get to earth the same way, that's just my personal experience). I got thrown to earth, somehow, and developed gravity themed powers. Flight, force blast, telekinesis, energy absorption (representing the black hole absorbs everything theme) and of course Mastery of Gravity. They're all fairly low at the moment since the GM is giving us only 30 stones and a max of 5 from challenges to start with. The other 10 + 5 more from challenges he will decide before we begin, giving him some control on our chars. This also explains why I didn't just build myself a mastery with it's own force blast and other cool options. It was cheaper this way.
Now I'm not quite sure about Mastery of Gravity simply because I'm not convinced I even know what the heck I'm doing when building a mastery. And therein lies my first question: What exactly does manipulation from the creation/manipulation option represent for gravity? Would it be akin to some form of telekinesis, rendering that power unnecessary, or more like I could affect the amount of gravity a given area has, or do something else I'm not thinking of? The only example of a mastery of gravity I've found is Xorn and since it's not broken down like magneto's or iceman's or the others, I'm not sure what costs what and such and what it does exactly. So I basically tried to build it from the ground up. All it does for now is Create/manipulate and immunity to gravity.
My 2nd question is: How does combining action work exactly? For example, I have technology and Vehicle operation and would like to combine them into one action. What happens to the specialties from vehicle operation and the bonus from int that technology gets? Do I lose them? Do i keep the int bonus? Do i keep the specialties? Do I keep both?
Thanks in advance to all answers and suggestions that you guys might have on this. Peace out!
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Post by Gris on Nov 19, 2013 8:57:38 GMT -5
Welcome to the board, sadly I tend to be wrong on rules matters, so take anything I say with a pinch of salt. Manipulate Gravity should make things lighter or heavier, but maybe it doesn't allow for moving at your will. I know, Dionon made a Master of Gravity not long ago here, maybe you can look at it for some ideas. As for combining actions... I think that the main purpose is to blend two similar actions (Tech/Inventing for example) since you can only have 9 actions. In my own experience (and being lazy, and bad at rules), it tends to be better left to the GM to rule.
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Post by takewithfood on Nov 19, 2013 11:05:11 GMT -5
Hey everyone. I'm new to the forum and very glad to have found it. It's an awesome place for ideas/material/clarifications on MURPG. Welcome! It's always good to see people playing the system, not to mention new members here. ^__^ Before I get into rules stuff, a quick foreward: MURPG is a pretty vague system with many gaps in the rules that cause questions such as yours. Ultimately, it's up to the GM to decide on answers to these questions, but it's always useful to come up with our own suggestions. A friend of mine is starting a campaign in a couple of weeks. Now being the overeager beaver that I am, I've already built and dismantled 4 characters already. I'm now on my 5th one and I'm positive this will be the one I'll play. Here's a quick rundown. First, we're from another dimension. We look human but we're not. On our homeworld, technology is much more advanced. To a point where my character, an astronaut, was the pilot for a mission to get inside the event horizon of a black hole. The ship having experimental shielding tech could survive the pressure and keep the time dilation from happening... or so we thought. The shield failed because of a miscalculation on my part (or so I believe), and everyone but me died (we didn't all get to earth the same way, that's just my personal experience). I got thrown to earth, somehow, and developed gravity themed powers. Flight, force blast, telekinesis, energy absorption (representing the black hole absorbs everything theme) and of course Mastery of Gravity. They're all fairly low at the moment since the GM is giving us only 30 stones and a max of 5 from challenges to start with. The other 10 + 5 more from challenges he will decide before we begin, giving him some control on our chars. This also explains why I didn't just build myself a mastery with it's own force blast and other cool options. It was cheaper this way. Now I'm not quite sure about Mastery of Gravity simply because I'm not convinced I even know what the heck I'm doing when building a mastery. And therein lies my first question: What exactly does manipulation from the creation/manipulation option represent for gravity? Would it be akin to some form of telekinesis, rendering that power unnecessary, or more like I could affect the amount of gravity a given area has, or do something else I'm not thinking of? The only example of a mastery of gravity I've found is Xorn and since it's not broken down like magneto's or iceman's or the others, I'm not sure what costs what and such and what it does exactly. So I basically tried to build it from the ground up. All it does for now is Create/manipulate and immunity to gravity. My answer is pretty much the same as Gris': Mastery of Gravity would probably work a bit like a limited Telekinesis in a lot of ways: you could move things up and down by increasing/decreasing gravity, and possibly in other directions by creating "gravity wells" that draw things towards them. It's a little more clumsy than outright telekinesis, but as a baseline action it's also a bit cheaper and allows for other tricks. I've always loved the idea of pinning people to the ground by ramping up the local gravitational pull of the earth, or making a melee character float helplessly in the air, left to regret not taking even a little Ranged Combat. ^__^ When shifting stones to defense, you could be making ranged objects veer dramatically off-course, or screwing with the weight of people's weapons mid-swing. In theory you might also be able to travel in great leaps by reducing your own weight, or help or hinder a vehicle in the same manner. My 2nd question is: How does combining action work exactly? For example, I have technology and Vehicle operation and would like to combine them into one action. What happens to the specialties from vehicle operation and the bonus from int that technology gets? Do I lose them? Do i keep the int bonus? Do i keep the specialties? Do I keep both? The rules are a little shaky on this, but the idea is that you essentially delete two actions and entirely replace them with another. Why you would want to do this, I don't quite know, as it sounds like a bad tradeoff; however, I suppose you may happen to regret purchasing two actions and need a third, or maybe you're bumping up against the "9 Action Limit" and want to take a 10th action. Anyway, the idea is that you take something like Social Skills 4 and Business Skills 6, remove them both, and put maybe Statecraft 5 on your CAD instead. Your Social Skills specialties would go away, but you would gain new Statecraft specialties, and it would be wise/make sense to choose ones that are similar to what you had before. I hope that helps! Good luck! ~TWF
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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 19, 2013 11:37:59 GMT -5
Thanks for the input. I'm understanding the act of combining actions more now. And for my mastery of gravity, I think you're both right. So how bout this... add a +2 (to represent the +2 of telekinesis) to my mastery cost in order to have a telekinetic "sub-power", like one would pay to have force blast into one's mastery. Or maybe because I already have create/manipulate, that cost could be reduced to +1? What do you guys think? Thanks.
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Post by takewithfood on Nov 19, 2013 11:42:06 GMT -5
Yeah, that would work. Or you could just drop create/manipulate and just buy Telekinesis for +2 CL. It's sort of a suped-up version of create/manipulate. Same diff in the end, though I suppose having both options on your CAD covers your butt a little more. ^__^
~TWF
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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 19, 2013 23:09:18 GMT -5
Awesome. Thanks a bunch. I'll think about that and discuss it with my GM. Peace
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2013 22:57:42 GMT -5
My character Trent over in the Next game has gravity control as part of his powers. Functionally Create/Manipulate in that case allows for altering environmental gravitational forces, I personally picture it working to create small gravity anomalies that can be used to move objects in a fairly clumsy way (making a gravitational well centred above and object that's powerful enough to counteract its weight would naturally draw it towards the gravity well. By moving that well you can 'drag' the object. At least that's my thinking.). Flight is a general extension out of that. You could also use them to defend against objects the same way TWF was talking about.
Your other options could also all be added in as options to your mastery. Force Blast as a +1, Energy Absorption at AN for a +4 or +5, (You could instead opt to start with 'absorb element' for a +1), Force Field could in theory be considered as part of your create/manipulate (in the form of densely formed gravitational 'waves' or some other comic physics explanation), Flight could either be taken separately or you could pass on it for now and use your mastery for getting around by the same means as moving other objects (or just for getting around by jumping with your weight nearly at 0).
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Post by Manah on Nov 22, 2013 2:26:51 GMT -5
I'd just like to both welcome you to the board, and point out that several GMs, myself included, see the rule of 9 action limits as useless, pointless and unnecessary (as far as I'm concerned, it merely exists because the creators of the game only put 9 action boxes on the sheet and wanted to sound like there was actually a good reason for that, and that's the best they could or cared to come up with, lol), and therefore the combining of actions in those cases is usually simply ignored, except for simplicity's sake in some cases (not opening that debate again, but I still believe that the only reason it usually is enough for most characters is because they willingly ignore some actions to 'make it fit the limit', and that some characters simply can't be done with merely 9 actions and still be well done in my eyes. Additionally, I always like to point out how the Official books themselves don't even follow their own so-called rule, as a handful of characters some characters have more than 9 actions*... so much for their own limit. Sorry for the rant, it's a pet peeve of mine). In other words, yeah, it depends on the GM. I hope you have fun around here! ^_^ *: Sorry, only Apocalypse has over 9 actions. But there's like two dozen characters with all 9 action boxes filled, with many of them having mixed two actions together to fit... and many more I could easily name two or three more actions which they happen not to have. Funny how some skills are forgotten to allow this rule to seem to be respected. Sigh. XD
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Post by Brainstem on Nov 24, 2013 11:11:42 GMT -5
For some of the other powers, you should purchase them outside your Mastery. It depends on what your GM allows (as it isn't RAW), but I've seen people use a Mastery to grant discounts to other Actions (following after the Flight discount). So you could purchase, for example, Energy Absorption at a -1 CL because it's tied to your element. Looking at your power set, you would likely have a Mastery of Gravity that looks something like this:
Mastery of Gravity (+6 CL) Extreme Scope (+3 CL) Create/Manipulate (+1 CL) Substitute Mastery AN for Strength (+1 CL) Force Blast (+1 CL)
Create/Manipulate hits the general "changing gravitational force" aspect whereas you would use your Mastery AN in place of Strength to represent more fine-tuned Telekinetic abilities. Flight and Energy Absorption should be purchased as independent Actions, rather than as a part of the Mastery.
It's a bit sparse for a mastery, but it gets everything you want done. As your character grows, you could add more Advantages to soup up the Mastery (Free Force Field, Accumulate Energy, etc.) and give it a broader scope but, to start, something smaller is fine.
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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 25, 2013 8:50:08 GMT -5
For some of the other powers, you should purchase them outside your Mastery. It depends on what your GM allows (as it isn't RAW), but I've seen people use a Mastery to grant discounts to other Actions (following after the Flight discount). So you could purchase, for example, Energy Absorption at a -1 CL because it's tied to your element. Looking at your power set, you would likely have a Mastery of Gravity that looks something like this: Mastery of Gravity (+6 CL)Extreme Scope (+3 CL) Create/Manipulate (+1 CL) Substitute Mastery AN for Strength (+1 CL) Force Blast (+1 CL) Create/Manipulate hits the general "changing gravitational force" aspect whereas you would use your Mastery AN in place of Strength to represent more fine-tuned Telekinetic abilities. Flight and Energy Absorption should be purchased as independent Actions, rather than as a part of the Mastery. It's a bit sparse for a mastery, but it gets everything you want done. As your character grows, you could add more Advantages to soup up the Mastery (Free Force Field, Accumulate Energy, etc.) and give it a broader scope but, to start, something smaller is fine. Yeah this is similar to what I had in mind, minus the strength thing (I might add that). The thing about force blast tho is, I want to take the x2 damage option but that would raise up the price of the mastery a lot. Having Force blast separated is cheaper. Considering I only have 30 stones + 5 from flaws to work with, cheap is necessary in many things. I could work towards getting it later tho, and having only one power to lvl up instead of two would be better in the long run.... gah. So many things to think about There are a few things I'm unclear about. The modifiers like reflexive dodge, toughness, targeting, can I get those after creation with lines? If so, it would help me in choosing what I start with and what I want to get later on. Oh and if I want to learn a new ability/modifier after creation that has a +3 to cost for example, do I need 30 lines for the 1st lvl? Or do I need only 10? I only played once a long time ago so I'm quite unsure as to how this works. P.S: Thanks to everyone who answered. You guys are awesome
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Post by Brainstem on Nov 25, 2013 10:49:53 GMT -5
When you take the Force Blast Option for a Mastery, you can freely add Advantages/Disadvantages to the Blast without increasing the price (limited by common sense/a GM calling you out for abusing the privilege).
Modifiers can only be added by taking on new Challenges, but you could probably convince your GM to allow new Modifiers (if caused by training, not powers) at 40 LoE for the first bonus and 10 for each subsequent bonus (40 LoE because 10 for +1 and 30 for +3 CL for Action-To-Modifier).
I don't know about adding new Actions off the top of my head, but I can check the book later tonight.
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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 26, 2013 9:19:12 GMT -5
When you take the Force Blast Option for a Mastery, you can freely add Advantages/Disadvantages to the Blast without increasing the price (limited by common sense/a GM calling you out for abusing the privilege). Say what now? Where is that written? I have all the pdf's and I don't remember seeing that anywhere. It sounds too good to be true, no offence
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Post by takewithfood on Nov 26, 2013 9:26:22 GMT -5
When you take the Force Blast Option for a Mastery, you can freely add Advantages/Disadvantages to the Blast without increasing the price (limited by common sense/a GM calling you out for abusing the privilege). Say what now? Where is that written? I have all the pdf's and I don't remember seeing that anywhere. It sounds too good to be true, no offence On page 54, in the entry for Mastery of Elements, it says "Get a force blast with appropriate effect (+1 to Cost Level)". Then, in the examples on the next page, you have a list of suggested force blasts with things like x2 damage, or attack vs Durability to freeze, etc. For the record, I think this is a stupid rule, as it makes a Mastery waaaay better than a regular Force Blast. It's cheaper, does more things, allows for more options, gives you discounts to flight (or other movement actions), and still does everything that a force blast does. The book has a lot of problems like this. T__T ~TWF
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Post by Brainstem on Nov 26, 2013 11:14:04 GMT -5
I'm actually okay with that aspect of the Force Blast. As the book points out, if you're just getting a Mastery for the cheap Force Blast, the GM should say no. If all you do is shoot ice and slide around like Ice Man, you don't have a Mastery, you have a Force Blast and Flight. Also consider that, when your Blast is in your Mastery, you can't do other things that you would be able to do if the Actions were separated out.
But yes, the book does still have a lot of problems like that.
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Post by gryphonheart on Nov 26, 2013 23:28:39 GMT -5
Hmm. To me "Get a force blast with appropriate effect (+1 to Cost Level)" reads as get a force blast of, say ice if you have an ice mastery, or plasma if you have a plasma mastery, etc. As in the effect means a force blast that has the element of your mastery, not that it has free advantages or disadvantages. But either way, the GM will decide. Just think you may be wrong in your interpretation of it. Just my 2 cents Peace.
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