Adjudicating Control Metal

[Outtotheblack]

How would you adjudicate Control: Metal with Ranged and Collective if a player wanted to use it to rip all the sodium out of a human body? Or dislocate a spine (as Ca counts as metal)?

I would do an opposed health check, but even so, but it does seem like a pretty much one round kill or incapacitate.

I suppose the same goes for any control power whose sphere of influence includes bodily functions, like using control electricity to shut down someone's brain.

[benz72]

Personally, I'd rule that "Metal" can be metallic alloys but not compounds or individual ions. I'd probably set a macroscopic floor on it especially if they didn't take something like microscopic vision and assess a penalty unless they have some kind of scanning sense to work with things they can't see.

Just drawing from the hip, chunks of metal less than a milligram are impossible to manipulate accurately without enhanced sense/control and anything less than a microgram is small enough that it no longer acts like a metal for the purposes of the power.

[Nereidalbel]

HT roll to resist, and you can do dice of damage equal to your level of Control.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Outtotheblack

How would you adjudicate Control: Metal with Ranged and Collective if a player wanted to use it to rip all the sodium out of a human body? Or dislocate a spine (as Ca counts as metal)?

Humans are not made out of sodium or calcium. We're made out of compounds that include these atoms that in their solitary state are metals, but e.g. sodium chloride is not a metal. Calcium carbonate is not a metal. Haemoglobin is not a metal.

The ability to control molecules that include metal atoms is a much more expensive category, because it includes a crapton of non-metals. But I would definitely rule it doesn't involve ripping the sodium out of someones sodium chloride.
And it still only does the kind of damage associated with Control IE not much. Make a Toxic Attack alternate attack if you want to do Mad Damage.

[Outtotheblack]

Sodium chloride is not a metal, but sodium is, and it certainly exists separate from chloride, as it dissociates from chloride in solution. It is used in sodium transport mechanisms (and just sodium ions, not sodium chloride) for a wide variety cellular mechanisms. Regardless, let's say a player has control:sodium. Removing all sodium from a human body is deadly. At a minimum, cells would conceivably go hypotonic and explode.

Total amount of sodium in a human body is well within the limits of the weight allowed by the control power.

Sure, switching over to 1 die of damage per control level is balanced, but runs up against reality when a player can easily argue that since sodium is 0.2% of the mass the human body, assuming a 180 lb human, that's .36 lbs. One level of Control metal (ranged, collective) will rip all that out.

How would you price controlling molecules of a substance, then, and what size limitations?

[zoncxs]

From Powers p91:

"...Finally, Control over matter doesn’t
work on complex, manufactured artifacts
unless they’re made almost
entirely of your element. Control
(Metal) could affect a sword or a
revolver, but not a ray gun with only a
few metallic parts...."

So anything that is not made almost entirely out of Sodium is out of question, its too different for them to affect.

[Outtotheblack]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

From Powers p91:

"...Finally, Control over matter doesn’t
work on complex, manufactured artifacts
unless they’re made almost
entirely of your element. Control
(Metal) could affect a sword or a
revolver, but not a ray gun with only a
few metallic parts...."

So anything that is not made almost entirely out of Sodium is out of question, its too different for them to affect.

Boom, there it is. Thanks. I thought I missed something.

[sir_pudding]

If you want to simulate Magneto occasionally being able to manipulate hemoglobin, this is probably where using abilities at default, spending character points on a one use ability and similar rules can be used.

Obviously most molecular attacks on biological organisms are toxic attacks that ignore DR, possibly with Symptoms like Paralysis (for sodium ions) or Suffocation (for hemoglobin).

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If you want to simulate Magneto occasionally being able to manipulate hemoglobin, this is probably where using abilities at default, spending character points on a one use ability and similar rules can be used.

Obviously most molecular attacks on biological organisms are toxic attacks that ignore DR, possibly with Symptoms like Paralysis (for sodium ions) or Suffocation (for hemoglobin).

Yeah, the comics and cartoons used too many Destiny points, I do like how they did it in the movie with Mystique injecting the guy with like 1 lbs worth of iron which was enough for Magneto to sense and pull out since it didn't bond with anything inside the guard.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Outtotheblack

How would you adjudicate Control: Metal with Ranged and Collective if a player wanted to use it to rip all the sodium out of a human body? Or dislocate a spine (as Ca counts as metal)?

To me, "metal" is bulk metal, or as a chemist would put it, metal in molar quantities. I wouldn't let you treat single metal atoms that were bonded to other atoms as "metal." For example, I would count calcium carbonate (chalk, chemical formula CaCO3) as "earth" or "rock" rather than metal.

Chemically, bulk sodium is Na, but the sodium in the human bloodstream is Na+, an ion. It's not the same substance; it has one less electron. You can't assemble it into bulk matter—all those positively charged ions repel each other—and it doesn't react chemically the same way.

If you want to change Na+ into Na, I'd require Create (Transmute) to cause a chemical change. And probably Cosmic, because I think it violates some of the usual strictures for Create.