Elemental Powers

[Omni]

So Elemental Powers. Elements are cool, super cool, we all know it, but right now all the Elemental Powers do is add flavor. I actually made a fair attempt to give them a 'use' in this system compared to AD (saying how fire is more offensive in nature, air is quicker, etc), but at the end of the day they don't let you do anything you can't without the powers, unless you outright want to say "this effect is caused by fire/lightning/wind." It's iffy, because some folks will just say "it's dark energy but appears in the shape of a flame" and it's essentially the same thing but without the requirements. We can debate what should and shouldn't count until the end of the day, or we can remove the powers and just let people decide whether their move is made of super-lowfat-genetically-engineered-mayonnaise or water.

What say ye's, o people of the Omniverse?

[Eighteen]

So if I were, say, Sub Zero and I wanted an ice attack, I could just make a move for it if there are no elemental powers?

[Omni]

You'd still need proficiencies (for example ranged attack and debilitate) but yeah. The fact that we have those proficiencies is another reason I'm feeling the elemental powers are redundant.

[Nanoha Takamachi]

That point is pretty much why I'd agree with removing them. Everything unusual about elemental powers over some form of raw energy is just going to be defined under the existing proficiencies, making them just an OM cost to make your energy beams fire beams instead which is... Sort of underwhelming from a game perspective.

[Omni]

Yeah. Fire and poison users will probably want DoT Prof. Electricity, poison and ice's typical RPG effects come under Debilitate. Elemental kinesis powers come under Remote Control.

I basically just wanted to make sure there were no objections before I did it. I have thought of many cool concepts for how to use elements without them being part of powers, but making them into a kind of 'core' system is annoying for people who already have a clear concept of their character which doesn't involve elements, and I think the game has enough stuff already. This is one of those cases where I think less is better.

[Ganondorf]

Sounds good to me, bro.

[PepsiWhirda]

I did think the idea of needing ranged, air, and disable proficiencies to make one minor move seemed a little wonky, but it makes enough sense to keep it the way it is, I think. My moves specifically harness the wind, and conjure wind when there isn't any, so I could see them needing something more than the opaque "ranged" and "disable" tags, if that's how you like it.

Conversely, I would never argue with a refund of 600 OM.

[Nanoha Takamachi]

I will admit it is a bit odd to have one of my moves go from needing one proficiency to two, and at an apparent drop in power due to the nature of how it works. And I won't be able to have both proficiencies because each was combined with another, bringing my OM spent to higher than what my earned is, in order to keep it.

But thems the ropes. I'll sort it out once I'm home from work.

[Omni]

No drop in power, I just decided to make it explicit in the proficiency's description while I was adding examples to some of others. I included it in the Move Page on the last update. You're actually the only one to have an "instantly hits opponent" attack right now besides Nyx's stuff which she didn't end up taking - for that I put some pretty severe downsides on it as well, as you can see from the thread. I think anything which has no travel time and which doesn't need to be aimed is automatically a massive in-character advantage over projectiles which need to be aimed and can be dodged. Thinking about it, I eventually decided that a "lock-on" type ability like that really merited a category of its own, and it was similar enough to homing that I decided to roll them together. I was also going to roll reflector in with homing because it just sends the projectile back to the target, and that's essentially homing.

But this has nothing to do with elemental powers, so I don't know why we're posting about that here :fry:

[Nanoha Takamachi]

Ahh I'm at work and just couldn't be arsed thinking where to post it brah. Seemed mildly topical I guess since we were talking about adjusting or combining proficiencies.