Description
Your very being is in a volatile state. The residual potential energy from aeons past stored within chemicals and reactors has seeped into your body and imparted a reservoir of explosive power into you. As you experiment with extending this energy, applying it, and harnessing it, you find an unnerving irony to your situation: there is no controlling complete destruction.
Details
GM Intrusion: A ticking time bomb can be a useful tool for clearing a path, but unwary innocent people are everywhere and sometimes end up in the way.
- Connection:
Another PC has had enough exposure to you that they are capable of exploding you remotely as an action of their own once every 28 hours. They must be within a short distance of you and can only force you to use Explode.
- Additional Equipment:
You have a numenera device that allows you to integrate your body’s fundamental particles over your equipment, allowing it to explode when you explode and reform when you reform. Equipment you affect in this way must be in your possession for at least 10 minutes.
- Minor Effect Suggestions:
- Your body instantly reforms after exploding without taking the normal time to do so.
- Major Effect Suggestions:
- All creatures hit or missed in the area of your explosion are knocked prone.
- Tier 1:
Short Fuse: Whenever you take damage you deal 2 additional damage with physical attacks on your following turn. Enabler.
Hot Head: You are trained in intimidation.
- Tier 2:
Explode (4+ Might points): You explode and deal 4 points of damage to all creatures within an immediate distance of you. If you apply Effort to increase the damage rather than to decrease the difficulty, you deal 2 additional points of damage per level of Effort (instead of 3 points); however, targets in the area take 1 point of damage even if you fail the attack roll. After the explosion you are, for all purposes, obliterated. On the round after you explode you reform without spending an action, collecting all of your atoms and particles back to their original state. Action.
- Tier 3:
Propulsion: You create a focused explosion to launch yourself into the air making all jump tasks 2 steps less difficult. Enabler.
Demolitionist: You deal double damage to objects when you explode.
- Tier 4:
Pressure: You build up volatile particles in your body. When you have completed this action you gain +1 to armor until you use Explode, and the next time you use Explode you increase the damage by 3. After building up pressure in this way, you must use Explode within the next minute or you Explode automatically. Action.
- Tier 5:
Rearrange (3 Intellect points): When you reform after using Explode, you can choose to reappear within a long distance from where you detonated. Enabler.
- Tier 6:
Self-Destruct (8+ Might points): You detonate yourself in a fiery explosion of glory. All creatures level 3 or lower within short distance of you die, and all other creatures take 12 points of damage and are pushed a short distance away from you. If you apply Effort to increase the damage rather than to decrease the difficulty, you deal 2 additional points of damage per level of Effort (instead of 3 points); however, targets in the area take 1 point of damage even if you fail the attack roll. You can use Pressure and Rearrange with this power as if it were Explode. After the explosion you are, for all purposes, obliterated. Three rounds after you self-destruct you reform without spending an action, collecting all of your atoms and particles back to their original state. Action.
I like this a lot, though I feel perhaps some of the pool costs could be adjusted. Also, it seems like Pressure should have a cost, unless you mean for it to replace/augment Explode, in which case that could probably be made a little clearer.
Nice work!
Pressure and Propulsion need a pool cost and short fuse probably needs a bit more flavor just for thematic reasons. Short Fuse makes it sound like you are raging which seems different then the explosion theme used. Maybe something where you can create micro-explosions on your weapon when it strikes something as a result of your molecular structure being destabilized from the blow you took.
The rest is great though. The power of this doesn’t seem overwhelming or broken and adds a lot of interesting options. I like the teleportation after explosion, cool and extremely useful (but no more so than rides the lightning).
Well done.
Hi, thanks for the comments. I was really hoping that the second tier ability becomes the bread and butter feature and thus I gave it a steep cost by low tier standards and a manageable cost by high tier standards. Also, because it is so fundamental, Pressure then needs no cost as it consumes an entire action and lights a fuse for Explode whether you use it or not (thereby forcing you to use the 4+ Might).
As for Propulsion, no, I really think this is a limited ability that adds flare and versatility to the focus. I just don’t see it needing a cost, and if it were I would imagine it being 1 or 2 Might, most likely something edge is already taking care of by a player taking this focus. Even if they didn’t have edge for it, jumping great heights is really feeble compared to some of the easy ways to traverse space in other foci, artifacts, etc.
re: Short Fuse, I really think it’s all in the name, and I can already tell folks who play this game can (and in my opinion, should) be painting their own picture for how you gain training in intimidation. Personally I imagine this like The Key Master from Ghostbusters when he stands down the horse cab driver by making his inner demon come through for a second. If someone for any reason felt you were capable of literally detonating, you might have an edge over them by way of threat. However I can see someone taking this anyway they want and I think leaving it open is just as good as putting down too many details that make a focus like this too much of a cookie-cutter.
Thanks for all the comments and likes! I play this focus this weekend and hope to report back with good results! Let me know if anyone else out there bites into it and gives it a go, I would love to hear game play experiences!