Superhero

If you want to play Cole McDickbutt as a character, just come out and say it.

In the modern world? Very.

You have plenty of electricity around you as long as you stay near the sort of places humans live anyway. Just try to not go out into rural areas.

So not only can you draw power from wall sockets, but you can basically instantly fry or shut down any electronic device at will. Again, that's a LOT of important stuff these days.

If you study up on some of the weirder Tesla experiments, you can even pull off some crazy shit. For example, you can actually store a powerful electric charge on the surface of your skin. Normally doing so gives you a bad full body sunburn if you do it too hard/long, but if you have control over the electricity you can probably avoid that and store a lot more power. This, used intelligently, will let you 'sneak' electricity into confrontation where the enemy has taken steps to deny you access to power if you prepare ahead of time.

Likewise, and this is going to catch a lot of motherfuckers by surprise, you can use the ground itself as a conductor. Tesla did it during his infamous "light up lightbulbs planted in the ground miles away" wireless power experiments, but if you can control the path of electricity you can obviously ignore path of least resistance. If that's true, you can shoot lightning into the ground and have it come up anywhere you want within range of your control. It doesn't have to disperse and ground out like normal.

Have fun creating a powerful positive charge on a person, and a powerful negative charge on an object, and letting the person zap himself to death when he comes close enough to it with a delayed action static shock powerful enough to stop his heart.

Also, if they try to shut down the reactor, just tell them you're gonna blow that nuclear reactor the fuck up by overloading the powerlines

This is a terrible plan with no fucking step 2.

"I have a fuckton of electricity and I have control of this nuclear reactor!"

"Okay, now what?"

"...someone send me food so I don't die in here."

"In return for what?"

"...fuck"

in return for not blowing up the reactor ?
you could also just leave after accumulating enough power.
If you weren't dumb enough to go in without a mask or w/e

Depends on the time period. If it's modern day, you've got powerlines and electrical devices everywhere unless you're out in bumfuck nowhere.

The moment you leave the safety of the reactor, you are dead. The walls protect you from snipers, and there is a huge number of weapons that electricity cannot save you from that WILL be brought against you because you are already established as a superpowered nuclear terrorist.

You can't blow up a reactor with JUST electricity, and even if you did you wouldn't create a massive meltdown (which is what people actually care about, no one cares if you break the reactor so long as it doesn't irradiate the fuck out of the surrounding county). Electricity control doesn't magically remove the tonnes of concrete designed to keep critical reactor failure from turning into a disaster.

Disabling all of the safeguards throughout the plant to cause a meltdown on purpose also requires you to do a lot of foot traffic yourself, and know in detail both the layout and the procedures for bringing down such a plant.

Its a bad plan, and one that can be foiled by something as simple as them activating the emergency barriers for sealing off irradiated sections, trapping you. You won't be able to get the doors open, because your ability is t control electricity, not electronics. Trying to using electricy manipulation to do more than simply providing or denying power to a device is just going to fry the shit out of it. Just like you can't use fire control to drive a truck remotely even though it burns gasoline to move.

Why doesn't he just make electricity that ISN'T like Pikachu?

Like, grass/flying-type electricity. That's not like Pikachu at all.

So you're saying it would be helpful to have more superpowered friends along with?

Dynamo on fidget spinner, piezo-electric inserts in footwear, "solar panel"clothing, etc.

His armour includes an induction pickup, like the way fluorescent tubes can take power from overhead power lines without touching them.
Once he has power, he can use his powers to manipulate that power to gain more electricity from the cables all around him.
His powers activate by touching the terminals of a capacitor he carries around with him, along with spares for a quick topup. In an emergency, he can draw power from a vehicle, using jump leads attached to his armour or to his body.

He gained his powers through a freak drunken stun, attempting to start an engine by taking insane amounts of drugs while jump leads were attached to his nipples.
If asked, he simply claims he was struck by magical lightning during an eclipse.

>if people start shooting you, make arcs in the air that bends around you

I'm not sure how this'd help.

I'm assuming you want to create some sort of electro magnet shield thing? Would the arcing electricity not suffocate you by creating a fuckton of O3 anyway?

IT's not inherently broken as long as there are limits to how much power thry can use at one time, it's just not much of a drawback. In the Hero system it would be a -1/4 limitation at most.

Wouldn't this kill you? Unless you carried a Battery backpack around using your bio electricity in enough quantities to do harm would use up the stored up energy primed to fire your neurons your mind is stored on.

Ok a little lesson on Nuclear power plant basics. You have 5 major components of the nuclear power plant. 1) the reactor 2) the Steam generators 3) the Turbine 4) the power generator 5) and the cooling stack

The reactor is make of nuclear material which is fissionable but not explosive causing an overload here will destroy the reactor and get contained in the concrete bunker surrounding this section. The steam generators can be made to explode by creating over-pressure from a run away nuclear reaction but the resulting explosion would also be contained in the concrete bunker. Next is the Turbine which can technically explode but it eill just cause severe damage to the turbine and a small area surrounding the area and possibly the generator depending on how close it is to the turbine. The Generator would be most susceptible to electrical attacks but destroying it would either cause a burn out or cause it to run itself into pieces. Finally there's the cooling tower it is a huge concrete structure made to cool down the water that was heated up in the steam chamber before returning it to the chamber, technically it could also blow up but only a steam explosion which wouldn't significantly damage the tower.

None of these explosions would result in a nuclear explosion and most of the explosions would only cause superficial damage that would be repairable withing 6 month of downtime.

You would be better off just short circuiting the computer control systems after setting the reactor on a runaway reaction as the threat.

>On death all stored energy is released.
Congrats on letting off the Tzar Bomba in a populated area.

That is assuming it doesn't have fail safes that don't rely on computer controls.

>implying that wasn't my plan all along

>Would the arcing electricity not suffocate you by creating a fuckton of O3 anyway?
I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure "O3 suffocation" would occur before "some sort of electro magnet shield thing".

Protip: Don't try to stop bullets with simple electricity.

>can't create electricity
He'd be dead.

>Wouldn't this kill you?
I believe that this is where "control and manipulate" comes into play.
You don't hold your breath till you die.
That said...

>>On death all stored energy is released.
This would totally happen.
Possibly upon becoming knocked unconscious too.

>go to a nuclear reactor
>get shot
Fixed that for you. Nuclear reactors tend to have pretty good security, and you're certainly not going to be able to just walk in there.

>not blowing up the reactor

...Right, is there an alternative that doesn't involve killing yourself?

>Possibly upon becoming knocked unconscious too.
That's a net idea. Could make for some great tension with your teammates as you're a danger to them.

>>can't create electricity
>He'd be dead.
Good point and technically correct.
If this was this case, the powered individual would have to have gained his powers rather than be born with them and afterwards function like a parasite that needs to feed to live.
Which is neat.

Otherwise, they could always slowly build up electricity naturally.
Very slowly.

I think they meant that he can't just produce a fuck ton of energy out of the ether like Electro or Pikachu can. The production of ATP can still happen and synapses still fire.

Is that more or less interesting, though?

My point is that, given enough time, they could (useful for when you're taken prisoner)
Or they're a parasite.
But yeah, for regular Super antics, he'd need access to an outside souce.

>How useful would that be?
In a post-Tesla world, extremely useful.
In a pre-Tesla world, moderately useful with parasite ability and occasional Dr. Frankenstein style charge-ups.

Have you seen electromancy? Bullets ain't touching ya senpai

i have to say McGrath was a pretty cool character. the games were meh at best but at least shit got real by the end of the second game

The amount of energy needed to melt a bullet out of the air is such that you are going to to burn through your reserves VERY quickly. Unless you have already found a source of power that makes the whole nuclear power plant thing a waste of your time, you would be lucky to stop 2 or 3 bullets before you run out of juice.

They can simply just keep shooting you until one of them gets through, and that will work. If you could become invulnerable to bullets using just the electricity from a wall socket, trust me we would have electrical shields by now.

>gets shot with rubber bullets

Bet you didn1t expect that.

>The amount of energy needed to melt a bullet out of the air
Melting bullet wouldn't do you much good anyway, since it would hit you all the same

You don't have to control and manipulate your own.

You could basically paralyse someone at whim. At best.

Why would you electrocute people to death? If you can control all electricity you just stop your target's vital processes from happening.

Okay, I have read the thread, and there don't seem to be any people asking the obvious question, so forgive me if I just managed to skim over it.

When you say 'control and manipulate electricity' what is the means of this control? Electricity is what we sometimes call the set of phenomena that affect charged particles. If I could control the phenomenon of electrical repulsion, for example, I could cut somebody in half through field collapse, incinerate them via gamma ray emission, collapse them completely into a short-lived singularity (which, due to the low mass, will almost instantly convert their entire mass into multispectral light, neutrinos and beta radiation), disintegrate them into their component atoms, or even just cause their body to become a large, exploded diagram of the human form, floating in mid air (and very dead). I could go on, but you get the point; 'Control of electricity' is the same as saying 'control over three quarters of all physical phenomena humans have discovered yet'.

Where are the limits?

>Be evil electro-man
>Immune to pathetic bullets
>Get breached and cleared by the FBI
>They fracture your smug little jawline with their beanbags

"Electricity" is kind of nebulous and includes magnetism as well. There's electrical potential that exists when you have two opposing charged particles and then electrical current when that charge moves. The later will produce a magnetic field.

A charge/potential exists in all matter (at least as far as I know with my very limited understanding on the topic), so, to what extent does 'control electricity' apply?

I was hoping someone would point this out. Thank you.

>If this was this case, the powered individual would have to have gained his powers rather than be born with them and afterwards function like a parasite that needs to feed to live.
That IS pretty neat, so he'd need to spend time hanging out under power lines holding a conductor, or always have a power bank on him so he can charge up. Maybe he'd have fashioned something that has a USB port at one end and a pair of bare contacts at the other so he can suck power from things that way.

This is why Magneto is so fucking overpowered, depending on how much science the writer knows. He's been known to use his powers to create a maser, for example.

The human body doesn't require electricity
It requires electro-chemical potentials.

"Electricity" is typically referred to the phenomenon at a scale above the subatomic, despite the reality of what is going on.
I think it's safe to assume that.

If a Super could "control and manipulate" heat, I would not expect them to be able to vibrate subatomic particles out of phase with reality, or whatever would be equivalent here.

Now if it were possible in the system to gain absurd levels of power, that would certainly be a possibility in the future.
Like Superman throwing planets around or Batman taking control of the author's pen.

>vibrate subatomic particles out of phase with reality
That's not something you can do with vibration. That comes from a flaw in writers' understanding of the analogies usually used to describe energy levels in a system.

Regardless, if we're to assume that only macro-atomic tricks are possible that still leaves

>cut somebody in half through field collapse
>incinerate them via gamma ray emission
>disintegrate them into their component atoms
>cause their body to become a large, exploded diagram of the human form, floating in mid air (and very dead)

As points out, you can use control of electricity (and therefore magnetism, and vice versa) to create a free-electron laser, which will lase at any frequency you want.

If I restrict myself to 'stuff you could do with a high enough voltage and appropriate equipment available to humans today' you can still do the lasers, disintegration and exploded diagram. You can also force chemical reactions to occur against the normal reaction potentials, so you can convert somebody's skin into boiling hydrochloric acid and soap.

Messing around with nothing but electrical potentials is still enough to acquire world-altering powers unless you put some restrictions on it.

>unless you put some restrictions on it.
He was studying electrical engineering in college before he got electrical superpowers in the 'human battery' stunt, and was due to only just scrape a passing grade.

Player knowledge vs character knowledge.

>Not immediately experimenting with your superpower and reading up on anything remotely relevant to the subject
>Not having a buddy or adoptive family member who helps you figure stuff out

This is why people don't deserve to be buddies with Superman.