I found another hero that used shadow or darkness powers: Darksheer from the PC game “Noctropolis.” It was originally published in 1994 by Electronic Arts, and I believe you can still download it.
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Out of curiosity, what is your take on gravity manipulation?
My first thought was to either put it close to magnetism (which is, essentially, Metal-bending) or Telekinesis depending on how it is used.
Come to think of it, Density control and Flying are not totally off the list either.
So that makes for another nice set of Powers assembled around a shared concept, and begging to be shifted around for various alternate iterations of the hero, right?
For me it’s just one of many possible flavors of Cosmic. You could take other powers (TK, Flying, etc.) to represent reliable uses of it beyond “mangle things with gravitic force” but the main reason for doing so mechanically would be to access different Red abilities and to limit your vulnerability to having your Cosmic die stepped down or removed by twists.
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I think that Telekinesis covers the majority of the potential applications of a “Gravity Manipulation” power.
I would ask the GM before the game starts if they’ll let you use Telekinesis to create “pure force” that directly “crushes”/“smashes”/etc. your target. If the GM says “No, you can only use Telekinesis to move/throw/lift/drop stuff”, then I would take another power for those direct applications of “pure gravitic force”, most likely Cosmic.
Either way, supplementing Telekinesis with Metal or with any other Materials power seems redundant to me.
For gravity-powered personal movement, I would take Flying, Leaping, and/or Wall-Crawling. Those are all easy to justify with “Gravity Manipulation” as a descriptor.
Either Density Control or a combination of Strength and Vitality would work if you want the character to use the same pseudo-scientific explanation of “accustomed to higher gravity” for enhanced durability and strength as characters like John Carter of Mars or Superman.
Sidebar: I once created a character for a superhero RPG who was basically a mash-up of the titular characters from Doctor Who and House, MD, a cranky super-intelligent alien from a “low-gravity” world. They were physically disabled while on Earth, suffering the same mechanical penalties that Earth’s natives would suffer on “high-gravity” worlds, so they had a debilitating addiction to painkillers, and they walked with a cane that they had souped-up into a sci-fi multi-tool and arsenal, like a sonic screwdriver crossed with a Star Trek phaser.
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Shadow Lass, AKA “Umbra”, depending on the era.
Minor Nitpick: James Robinson’s (excellent) 1990s Starman series and subsequent The Shade miniseries changed The Shade into more of an antihero type.
Cloak absolutely qualifies. He’s directly connected to the DarkForce Dimension.
TV Tropes is useful for finding stuff like this:
Casting A Shadow
Most darkness/shadow controllers in superhero comics draw their power from a single extraplanar source. In the DCU, it’s the Shadowlands, and in the Marvel Universe, it’s the DarkForce Dimension.
In most Dungeons & Dragons cosmologies, The Negative Energy Plane and The Shadowfel are similarly described and utilized.
Characters who haven’t been mentioned yet include:
The Darkness (Image Comics)
Grue (Worm)
The King In Black (Marvel Comics)
Kirigan (Shadow & Bone)
Clan Lasombra (Vampire: The Masquerade)
Nightshade (DC Comics)
Raven (Teen Titans cartoon adaptation, not the original comics version)
I played a darkness/shadow controller in my first Sentinel Comics campaign. I took Telekinesis so that I could create mobile force constructs out of darkness the same way that Green Lantern rings create them out of light. I took Infernal to represent attacking people with dark “anti-life, anti-light” energy in a more “direct” way, though I seriously considered using Cold for that instead. Teleportation was my travel power, jumping in and out of shadows and using a “darkness dimension” as a shortcut through space. I took Invisibility to vanish into shadows and to extend shadows to obscure myself. I couldn’t actually become a shadow, or else I would’ve taken Intangibility, and I would’ve considered Wall-Crawling. One could also justify creating ropes/chains from the shadows for Swinging. I know that I at least considered Imposing + Presence to represent intimidating people by making the darkness show them their worst fears, but I don’t remember if I actually wound up doing that or not. I know that I didn’t wind up taking Remote Viewing to represent spying on people through shadows, but I did consider that option as well.
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Welcome aboard. Nice to see a new account that’s definitively a human being and not some weird AI thing or simple-minded spambot.
Sure, but the bulk of his career (and it’s a long one) has cast him as a villain pure and simple, and even as an antihero he’s still on the (ahem) shady side by comic book hero standards. He didn’t start out as a shadow-wielding hero, or even antihero.
Similarly, while Cloak is clearly a shadow user (which I wasn’t questioning), his status as a hero was pretty shaky early on. I haven’t read much of him (or Dagger) since the first year or two of their existence and they’ve probably changed a lot since, but both were more on the “fairly ruthless vigilantes hunting drug dealers” side of things in their origin than squeaky clean moral paragons.
Still the only shadow-wielding hero-from-day-one I’ve read (The Darkness from Image definitely does not qualify as a hero, and only one iteration of Raven really leans that way over “dark magic user”), but I think it’s worth noting that her shadow powers are just that - she makes darkness. Unlike the majority of “shadow supers” her power isn’t generally associated with things beyond darkness, no cold or life draining or necromancy or other dark magic stuff, and certainly no portals to other dimensions or teleporting or any of the other tricks that are often part of a package “shadow powers” deal. It’s a pretty notable difference between her and the rest.
Whether that’s solely due to many LoSH members having rather narrow, specialized power sets is debatable, but it does keep her from having the kind of creep factor many shadow supers do. Most of the time she’s clearly heroic without the baggage of (say) Raven or Cloak and his fellow DarkForce users. The couple of times I’ve seen writers try to tie some dubious mystical stuff to her it hasn’t worked well or stuck around long.
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Sidebar: I once created a character for a superhero RPG who was basically a mash-up of the titular characters from Doctor Who and House, MD , a cranky super-intelligent alien from a “low-gravity” world. They were physically disabled while on Earth, suffering the same mechanical penalties that Earth’s natives would suffer on “high-gravity” worlds, so they had a debilitating addiction to painkillers, and they walked with a cane that they had souped-up into a sci-fi multi-tool and arsenal, like a sonic screwdriver crossed with a Star Trek phaser.
you might want to look for Witch Doctor a US comic book created by writer Brandon Seifert and artist Lukas Ketner.
House as Dr. Strange = analytical diagnosis to find a good way to remove a curse and a metric ton of sarcastic world-weary cynicism
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This thread got me to thinking about Doctor Demiurge, an experiment in fitting some seemingly far-out character concepts another player had into the game mechanics. Fun opportunity to flex some creative and system mastery muscles for me, and the player really seemed to like it. My commentary throughout the post might be of some help when it comes to helping a new player craft a PC that fits their personal vision.
The campaign he was for also included the significantly less imaginative Phade as my PC. FrivYeti was playing as Charlie-Foxtrot as well but I don’t have a copy of his character - although you can see everyone’s over here:
The game met a sudden and untimely end due to GM health issues, but it was a fun time while it lasted. AFAIK Gruagach (said GM) hasn’t been heard from since last June, hopefully he’s recovering okay.
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