Environmental Control
From D20advanced
| ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL | ||
| Type: General | Action: One (active) | |
| Range: Ranged | Duration: Sustained | |
| Resistance: See description | Cost: 1-2 points per rank | |
You can change the environmental conditions in an area: altering the temperature, creating light, causing rain, and so forth.
Each of the following is a separate Environmental Control FX. If you have one you can acquire others as Alternate FX in an Array, but you can then only use and maintain one at a time. To use or maintain multiple Environmental Control FX simultaneously, add their costs together for the FX’s total cost per rank (or see the Mix-and-Match Environments option, following).
- Cold: You can lower the temperature in the area. For 1 point per rank, you create intense cold; for 2 points per rank, you create extreme cold.
- Distraction: You can create conditions to distract anyone attempting to concentrate with an Expertise check, such as driving rain, hail, dust storms, and so forth. For 1 point per rank the distraction is DC 5, for 2 points per rank it’s DC 10, and for 3 points per rank it’s DC 15.
- Gravity: For 2 points per rank, you can create a low-gravity or high-gravity environment. You can acquire the other effect as an Alternate FX. The attack roll penalty for low-gravity does not affect characters with a three-dimensional movement effect like Enhanced Movement (air walking, wall-crawling, etc.). The attack penalty for high-gravity does not affect characters with effective Strength scores greater than 10.
- Hamper Movement: You can hamper movement through the area with high winds, icy or wet surfaces, or similar effects. For 1 point per rank, you halve movement speed through the area; for 2 points per rank, you reduce it to one-quarter.
- Heat: You can raise the temperature in the area. For 1 point per rank, you create intense heat, for 2 points per rank; you create extreme heat.
- Light: You can raise the light level in the area, countering the concealment of darkness, but not other forms of concealment. For 1 point per rank, you can shed enough light to reduce total concealment to partial and partial concealment to none. For 2 points per rank, you can shed light as bright as a sunlit day, eliminating all concealment provided by natural darkness. Obscure effects with the darkness descriptor may be countered with a successful power check.
- Radiation: You can irradiate the area, exposing everyone to a harmful level of radiation. For 1 point per rank you can lightly irradiate. For 2 points per rank, you can moderately irradiate an area.
- Visibility: You can reduce visibility in the affected area, imposing a –5 modifier on Perception checks. For more significant obscuring of senses (via darkness, fog, etc.) use the Obscure effect. Your Environmental Control has a 5-foot radius at rank 1. Each additional rank moves the maximum radius one step up the Progression Table (with a radius of approximately 2,000 miles at rank 20, sufficient to alter the environment of an entire continent!).
FX Feats
- Slow Fade: Environmental Control with the Fades modifier (see the following) may have this FX feat to extend the time interval before the FX fades, although the GM should carefully consider any such extensions.
Extras
- Area: As Environmental Control already affects an area, it cannot have (nor does it require) this extra.
- Independent: Environmental Control can use this modifier where the FX’s area diminishes once it is established, the FX no longer under the control of the user. So, for example, a character might have Environmental Control where a change is made and then diminishes over time until it is gone or the effect is countered (by the original user or someone else).
- Selective Attack: Since hostile environments may provoke saving throws or otherwise hinder targets, Environmental Control is considered an “attack” for purposes of modifiers. With this extra you can vary the environment within your affected area, affecting some while not affecting others, or even mixing and matching different environments (making part of the area cold and another hot, for example).
Option: Mix-and-Match Environments
For especially broad Environmental Control FX, like the power to command the weather, the GM may wish to apply the following optional rule. Rather than having a set list of FX the user can create, Environmental Control divides its cost for any given use among FX with appropriate descriptors, making it a limited sort of Variable structure.
So, for example, an Environmental Control FX costing 4 points per rank can distribute those 4 points among different FX as the user sees fit. So one use it might be intense cold (1 point), a DC 10 distraction (2 points), and hamper movement to one-half speed (1 point) for a blizzard. The next use could be extreme heat (2 points) and hampering movement to one-quarter (2 points) for desert-like heat, and so forth.
