[Basic] Skill of the week: Body Control

[johndallman]

Body Control: An cinematic martial arts skill, with prerequisites of Trained by a Master, Breath Control and Meditation. This gives you control over your body at a deep level, allowing you to feign death convincingly, to flush poisons from your metabolism, and to use the skill in place of HT to resist afflictions, magic and psionics (note that getting +1 from this requires spending 12 points on Body Control, which is more than a point of HT, although it gets better as you buy more Body Control). It's not exactly a compelling buy at this price. Having it in a talent or wildcard skill could help with that.

Looking up the skill is slightly complicated by the existence of the magical College of Body Control, and the Body Control chi power in Martial Arts and Powers.

Martial Arts clarifies the skill's use in resistance and offers simplifying options, some of which I've assumed above. It also offers the option of using Body Control in place of First Aid and Physician for treating one's own injuries. The skill also appears in several styles, talents, and so on. Technical Grappling suggests that trying to use Body Control instantly for resistance is at -10 in a realistic campaign, but I'm rather doubtful about the skill being available at all in a realistic campaign; Martial Arts p57 has some realistic feats that can look like Body Control, when done right.

Chinese Elemental Powers has some abilities that work well with Body Control and Thaumatology offers it as a way of resisting misapplied elixirs and a replacement core skill for body-centred ritual magic; Ritual Path Magic does the same for "inner alchemy". Bio-Tech doesn't mention the skill, although it touches on the magical college. Powers points out that another resistance use for the skill is avoiding crippling of chi powers, and Mysteries suggests it for use in judicial ordeals. The Attribute Substitution perk (Power-Ups 2: Perks) to base Body Control on Will can sometimes be very appropriate.

I wonder if Body Control could be useful in misleading users of Body Language skill, by avoiding or faking "tells" and, by extension, in making Feints that are harder to resist, given that reading body language there is a normal part of combat skills.

What have you done with Body Control in a campaign? Have you ever used it as a base for magic, or frustrated a poisoner? What else can it do?

[Refplace]

Yeah this one is a vry rare used skill in my experaince.
We have used it as a Control skill for a Super or two and I allow Metabolisim Control to add to most uses as if it were a Talent.
However both tend to be taken for color and background then actual use.

[Mailanka]

Hugely popular in Cherry Blossom Rain.

First, all ninjas used poison on their shuriken, and a few other, less honorable opponents also favored poison. Body Control became the ticket to putting an end to that. I also allowed Body Control to act as First Aid (on yourself), which is an optional rule, thus was useful for taking care of your own wounds.

But I also made it the controlling skill to quite a few chi powers. Thus, it could trigger things like regeneration. It also resisted quite a few enemy chi powers.

It started as one of the core skills of our chi-master, Daisuke, and made him something of a weird tank, because he has a mystical defense (body control protected his body, and mental strength protected his mind). So some other players began to follow suit and studied Daisuke's patient ways.

[Flyndaran]

It should be possible to use it for real world "tricks" like raising or lowering your body temperature.
With concentration, I made myself get a fever to get out of going to school. (Yeah, it never occurred to me to just lie.)
But that can be dangerous as I once raised it to 103.

Overall, the skill does need some creative GM-ing to make useful.

[vicky_molokh]

Not much use by PCs seen.

However, right now I have a major NPC antagonist who used to cause a medical alert by inducing extreme bradycardia (he's a captive in their base). If the need arises, he will also use it to fool a polygraph (though the PCs are disinclined to use one, believing them to be too unreliable), and if things got to the worst stuff, perhaps even commit suicide with it (besides, he believes he'll reincarnate eventually, so getting set free is nice, but if not possible, death is merely a setback).

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It should be possible to use it for real world "tricks" like raising or lowering your body temperature.
With concentration, I made myself get a fever to get out of going to school. (Yeah, it never occurred to me to just lie.)
But that can be dangerous as I once raised it to 103.

Overall, the skill does need some creative GM-ing to make useful.

In reality that would likely be a technique of Meditation or Autohypnosis. If you can do it without training, it may be a quirk (or Perk, in GURPS terms) of your physiology.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

In reality that would likely be a technique of Meditation or Autohypnosis. If you can do it without training, it may be a quirk (or Perk, in GURPS terms) of your physiology.

Or Temperature Tolerance: takes time, effectiveness based on margin of success. It has potential to have more usefulness than a perk.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Not much use by PCs seen.

However, right now I have a major NPC antagonist who used to cause a medical alert by inducing extreme bradycardia (he's a captive in their base). If the need arises, he will also use it to fool a polygraph (though the PCs are disinclined to use one, believing them to be too unreliable), and if things got to the worst stuff, perhaps even commit suicide with it (besides, he believes he'll reincarnate eventually, so getting set free is nice, but if not possible, death is merely a setback).

Obviously not a fully realistic setting. But under optimal conditions and skilled use, polygraphs are at best 70% accurate.

Facial recognition software for identifying emotions and pain especially are getting creepy accurate. You skill use idea might help with hypothetical acting penalties against such programs.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Obviously not a fully realistic setting. But under optimal conditions and skilled use, polygraphs are at best 70% accurate.

Facial recognition software for identifying emotions and pain especially are getting creepy accurate. You skill use idea might help with hypothetical acting penalties against such programs.

Software is probably best represented as having a Body Language score, as this is precisely what it is doing. Even though it's probably doing it in a more inhuman way. And maybe has a Technique or two for specific subsets of Body Language. Either way, it is normally resisted with Acting.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Software is probably best represented as having a Body Language score, as this is precisely what it is doing. Even though it's probably doing it in a more inhuman way. And maybe has a Technique or two for specific subsets of Body Language. Either way, it is normally resisted with Acting.

But controlling micro-expressions is not realistic. So I would prefer some use of a cinematic skill to overcome it rather than just allowing mundane skills to have cinematic effect.
I suppose that's just my preference.