Environmental Control

Type: General

Action: Standard (active)

Range: Ranged

Duration: Sustained

Saving Throw: 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 (see The Environment, M&M, Beginning on page 167, for the effects of different environmental conditions).

Each of the following is a separate Environmental Control effect. If you have one you can acquire others as Alternate Powers in an Array (see the Array power structure), but you can then only use and maintain one at a time. To use or maintain multiple Environmental Control effects simultaneously, add their costs

together for the effect’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, 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 (see the Concentration skill description, M&M, page 44, for details).

• 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 Power. The attack roll

penalty for low-gravity does not affect characters with a three-dimensional movement effect like Flight, Swimming, or Super-Movement (air walking, wallcrawling, etc.). The attack penalty for high-gravity does not affect characters with effective Strength scores greater than 30 (including SuperStrength

bonuses).

• 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 For 1 point per rank you can lightly irradiate. For 2 points per rank, you can moderately irradiate an area. (See the Mastermind’s Manual, page 125, for details on radiation levels and exposure.)

• Visibility: You can reduce visibility in the affected area, imposing a –4 modifier on Notice and Search 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!).

POWER FEATS

• Slow Fade: Environmental Control with the Fades modifier (see the following) may have this power feat to extend the time interval before the effect 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 effect’s area diminishes once it is established, the effect 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 effects, like the power to command the weather, the GM may wish to apply the following optional rule. Rather than having a set list of effects the user can create, Environmental Control divides its cost for any given use among effects with appropriate descriptors, making it a limited sort of Variable structure (see Variable later in this chapter). So, for example, an Environmental Control effect costing 4 points per rank can distribute those 4 points among different effects 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.