Matter-eater

[pookaking]

Surfing the net, it looks as if there is a power called "Matter-eating" quite possibly from the Ultimate Powers book. I've been wanting to make a chacter called Dragonfly for awhile now, and that just so happens to be one of his abilities. I imagine the power is fairly similar to Corrosion. If anyone has the book with this power in it, could you please type it up for me and post it here. Much appreciated!

[Heridfel]

Matter Eater X appears to be:

Drain Toughness X (Extra: Affects Objects; Flaw: Objects Only); Immunity 5 (Swallowed Things). Therefore, it costs (X + 5) pp for Matter Eater X.

There's also the complication that you can only take bite-sized chunks of items, but you can also bite through anything (eventually).

[pookaking]

Thanks you're the bomb!

And for the sake of the others I must diffuse you now.

2 more questions:

Apparantly you can only take away a device that is hard to lose if your opponent is helpless, but wouldn't corrosion effectively negate a device (at least until repaired)?

How would I create a bio-armor? I want Dragonfly to be able to "ooze" out a hard chitin insect-like armor. Protection is permenant, so how would I mod that?

[Heridfel]

A Drain which affects objects, such as Corrosion, can damage Devices. The Device gets a save, unlike normal objects, equal to the user's Reflex save as he pulls it out of the way. It's considered to have a Toughness of 10+rank for anything that would be affected by such calculations (such as Corrosion and Matter Eater).

[Dr Archeville]

How would I create a bio-armor? I want Dragonfly to be able to "ooze" out a hard chitin insect-like armor. Protection is permenant, so how would I mod that?

Do it as a Force Field, possibly with the Duration bought up to Continuous (so it'll stay up even if he's KO'd). Force fields aren't necessarily fields of force, they're just a non-Permanent form of Protection.

[Heridfel]

Do it as a Force Field, possibly with the Duration bought up to Continuous (so it'll stay up even if he's KO'd). Force fields aren't necessarily fields of force, they're just a non-Permanent form of Protection.

Yep, that's exactly right. One character here had a Force Field with the descriptor that he was pulling up earth in front of him to block attacks. Physical protection, but he needed to be able to take free actions in order to keep it up.

[pookaking]

I must have read the rules for Dynamic Powers a dozen times and it still doesn't make ANY sense to me. I do know that the power I'm wanting requires it however. Please see what you can do with this:

The heroine is able to "ooze" an insect like carapace, complete with hard chiin armor, dragonfly wings, and bulbous optical enhancers.

Dragonfly Symbiote

Enhance Ability: Strength 20

Alt. Flight (Power Loss [-1] when wings are bound)

Alt. Force Field

Alt. Sensory Shield (all)

Alt. Enhanced Senses: Bug Eyes (Ultravision, Infravision, Microscopic vision 1, Tracking (Infra) - Radius (all vision)

[Dr Archeville]

With regular APs on a power, you can only ever have 1 AP on at a time. So if you've got

Example #1

Air Control 10 (PFs: 3 Alternate Powers)

AP: Blast 10

AP: Flight 10

AP: Force Field 10 (Extra: Impervious)

Each power, the Base and each of the APs, are worth 20pp. In any given round, you can use that to blow over foes (Air Control 10), or blast them with intense winds (Blast 10), or fly (Flight 10), or create a protective shield (Impervious Force Field 10). But you can only have one at a time up. You don't have to have the full amount active -- you could just leisurely soar through the air at Fly 1 -- but because they're APs, you can only have one 'slot' active at a time.

Dynamic APs let you mix and match, as long as the total cost of the active powers doesn't exceed the total cost of the base power.

Example #2

Air Control 10 (PFs: Dynamic, 3 Dynamic Alternate Powers)

DAP: Blast 10

DAP: Flight 10

DAP: Force Field 10 (Extra: Impervious)

Each power, the Base and each of the APs, are worth 20pp.

In any given round, you can use that to blow over foes (Air Control), or blast them with intense winds, or fly, or create a protective shield, just like above. However, you can also mix and match, as long as the total points don't exceed that of the base power. So with this build, you could have Flight 10, then shift to Flight 1 & Force Field 9 the next round, then shift to Blast 5 & Force Field 5 the round after that, then shift to Blast 10 the round after that.

For your example

Dragonfly Symbiote

Enhance Ability: Strength 20

Alt. Flight (Power Loss [-1] when wings are bound)

Alt. Force Field

Alt. Sensory Shield (all)

Alt. Enhanced Senses: Bug Eyes (Ultravision, Infravision, Microscopic vision 1, Tracking (Infra) - Radius (all vision)

You can only have one thing active at a time. So in any round, you could have Enhanced Str, or Flight, or Protection. With DAPs you can mix and match, but I'd just go with having them be separate powers, like what's seen in the Battlesuit archetype (thought since it's oozing out of the char, it's not a Device, though it is a Container, like Alternate Form).

[Heridfel]

One other thing to keep in mind which applies to all arrays of alternate powers, dynamic or not, is that you generally want your defensive powers separate from your offensive and movement powers. That way, they can apply all the time and you don't have to lower your guard to attack. There are some exceptions (Super-Strength as an AP of Flight, for example), but generally, offensive, defensive, and movement powers are in different arrays if there are any arrays at all.

[pookaking]

Hmm, I'm definately having trouble with getting the character I imagine out of my head and onto paper. Perhaps the suggestion of having an Alternate Form is what I need to look into. Thanks for all your help.

[pookaking]

I've also been intrigued with making a color manipulator.

Would this be how it's made? Since I want it to be a real change I went with Transform rather than Illusion.

TRANSFORM (3 /rank)

extra: Duration-Continuous

flaws: Colors only

feats: Accurate, Precise

alt power: Concealment (visual, affects others)

alt power: Dazzle (visual) - turn corneas opaque