How does TK: Attraction work?

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

IDHMBWM, so I can't run the numbers, but I wonder how the pricing compares to Innate Attack with Emanation and damage limited to knockback only. Presumably you could pair this as an AA with an matching inverted (i.e. toward yourself) knockback attack.

Brilliant!! I'll compare them at 20 and 200 points.

TK: Increased Range (x10) [+30%], Reduced Time [+20%], Attraction/Repulsion [-60%]
3*pts/level

Crushing IA: Double Knockback [+20%], Increased Range (1/2D x10) [+15%], No Blunt Trauma [-20%], No Wounding [-50%]
Crushing IA AA: same, with "knockback toward user" +0%
2.835**pts/level

So, at the 20 point level, it's 6 levels of TK vs. 7 levels of IA. I'm still not confident in my understanding of how the TK is intended to work against active opponents, but I suppose I'm trying to hit them with a grappling attack (easy, since it has no signature) and then carry them around? Well, with a BL of 7.2, this TK is clearly for summoning handheld items from across the room. The IA, on the other hand, compares 14d (avg: 49) to the target's ST-2 (avg: 8), and so should knock an opponent who can't dodge about eight yards in the desired direction (as long as it's either directly toward or away from the user). So, I'm not trying to dump on the ability to summon an SMG to your hand from 100 yards away at 6 yds/sec, but one of them repels people and the other frankly doesn't.

TK with 66 levels and BL 871, on the other hand, has no such hesitations. One maneuver snatches the target, the next attracts or repels them as far as you want, up to 100 yards.*** Even a sedan, at ~3,600 pounds, is under 4xBL, so with a three consecutive Attack maneuvers, that can be moved too. Neat. But could the IA move it too? 70 levels for 140d averages 490 "damage," compared to ST 53, is probably 9 yards of knockback. So neither are going to stop a speeding car from running over the user (unless knocking a car back 9 yards arrests its forward momentum or causes a control roll... but now we're venturing into murky waters), but both scale up to considerable utility. I mean, if the IA knocks one ST 10 person into someone else, they're both taking about 6d damage (10hp x 60yds / 100), so you don't get to treat opponents as human yo-yos, but human bowling balls are fun too.

So my conclusion is that they're both useful in slightly different ways: the IA is faster, but the TK holds an attracted object in place for you, so it won't launch an SMG at your face at 20mph, which is a real danger for the IA.

I'm a bit closer to considering the TK pricing reasonable, but no closer to having a detailed, book-based, roll-by-roll and second-by-second breakdown of what using TK: Attraction/Repulsion on a resisting human looks like.

*Multiplicative modifiers

**This is using's PK's recommendation that AAs with no Ready action to switch between are 0.4, rather than 0.2. So this is 2.025 points for the one IA, and an additional 0.81 for the other.

***So TK: Repulsion says "Repulsion shoves objects away from you until they reach the maximum range of your ability." Does that really mean that if I have a baseball held with my TK, which has a range of 10 yds, and someone is 11 yards away blowing a raspberry at me, I can't use my TK to throw it at them? Really? Are you sure? Because I'd hate that.

[sir_pudding]

You can't just willy-nilly use Multiplicative Modifiers without rethinking the value of nearly every modifier (I discovered this when I tried to convert Psionic Powers to multiplicative) there's a thread about this. Kromm also mentions this in "Ten for Ten".

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You can't just willy-nilly use Multiplicative Modifiers without rethinking the value of nearly every modifier (I discovered this when I tried to convert Psionic Powers to multiplicative) there's a thread about this. Kromm also mentions this in "Ten for Ten".

Well, on a rather small scale, this has occurred to me. Dissipation (-50%) and Cone (1 yard; +50%) cancel out, and this is actually a big deal! For one thing, it's probably easier to hit distant targets with a cone targeted at a point nearby than it is to shoot them normally, and for another, this makes your attack pass through enemies of a given SM automatically! Which is an issue on its own, but if Dissipation also halves the cost of any enhancements, well, that doesn't make a lick of sense, since it's essentially only a limitation on Cone.

But in my examples, Attraction/Repulsion does limit the utility of Increased Range and Reduced Time, and nothing jumps out at me as being an issue with the IA. Are you saying these are problematic, or just that there are modifiers that are?