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This question has come up on a recent discussion regarding the Greek "Fates" that manipulate threads on a loom that represent people's lives. One of them seemingly splits a thread to cause twins to be born, and the question is whether this should be used as a justification for "biological manipulation." My purpose in making the staff thread is to address the broader implication that has been discussed which is: If an ability can accomplish many effects which themselves can be characterized as several different abilities, should we give that character each of those abilities?
I want to make it clear that I am not referring to something like a water-user being given both "Water Manip, Ice Manip, and Snow Manip." This is more with regard to extremely broad abilities that could accomplish 10 or more abilities, even. For example, if someone has Telekinesis and can pick up and throw any physical object with their mind, would we give them an individual ability for each type of object? Metal Manipulation, Flesh Manipulation, Water Manipulation, Cloth Manipulation, etc?
What about more broadly like Plot Manipuation, Fate Manipulation or Probability Manipulation? If someone uses probability manip to cause an avalanche, do they get Snow Manipulation or Earth Manipulation? If someone writes that two people to fall in love do we give them Empathetic Manipulation?
As I see it, there are three possible permutations of how we handle very flexible abilities that overlap with many other abilities.
1) We only index the root ability, not each ability it overlaps with.
2) We only index the root ability, and the overlapping abilities that actually happened in the series
3) We index the root ability and all possible permutations or applications where they overlap with other abilities.
I think (2) is, at first glance, an attractive compromise but I think it's ripe with its own problems such as in the telekinesis examples. If someone can pick up any object with their mind and we just happen to index new abilities for each object they pick up, but not the ones they did not pick up that they definitely could, it seems inconsistent and would still result in an excess of redundant abilities.
I think the best option for abilities that are so broad that they can overlap with an extremely high amount of abilities is to just index the root ability and give some of the more prominent examples in the justification section. I wouldn't agree with giving Earth Manip to a probability manip user because they (usually) can't just do that anywhere at any time. Same thing with Fate Manip and something like "Empathetic Manip." They (usually) cannot simply will someone to any specific emotion they want like someone who actually has that ability can, they can just accomplish some of the same things as a side effect of their main ability.
IMO (1) is the best option here, and given the lack of clarity on this matter once we come to a vote -- regardless of the result -- we should make a note somewhere about how to handle such abilities.
I want to make it clear that I am not referring to something like a water-user being given both "Water Manip, Ice Manip, and Snow Manip." This is more with regard to extremely broad abilities that could accomplish 10 or more abilities, even. For example, if someone has Telekinesis and can pick up and throw any physical object with their mind, would we give them an individual ability for each type of object? Metal Manipulation, Flesh Manipulation, Water Manipulation, Cloth Manipulation, etc?
What about more broadly like Plot Manipuation, Fate Manipulation or Probability Manipulation? If someone uses probability manip to cause an avalanche, do they get Snow Manipulation or Earth Manipulation? If someone writes that two people to fall in love do we give them Empathetic Manipulation?
As I see it, there are three possible permutations of how we handle very flexible abilities that overlap with many other abilities.
1) We only index the root ability, not each ability it overlaps with.
2) We only index the root ability, and the overlapping abilities that actually happened in the series
3) We index the root ability and all possible permutations or applications where they overlap with other abilities.
I think (2) is, at first glance, an attractive compromise but I think it's ripe with its own problems such as in the telekinesis examples. If someone can pick up any object with their mind and we just happen to index new abilities for each object they pick up, but not the ones they did not pick up that they definitely could, it seems inconsistent and would still result in an excess of redundant abilities.
I think the best option for abilities that are so broad that they can overlap with an extremely high amount of abilities is to just index the root ability and give some of the more prominent examples in the justification section. I wouldn't agree with giving Earth Manip to a probability manip user because they (usually) can't just do that anywhere at any time. Same thing with Fate Manip and something like "Empathetic Manip." They (usually) cannot simply will someone to any specific emotion they want like someone who actually has that ability can, they can just accomplish some of the same things as a side effect of their main ability.
IMO (1) is the best option here, and given the lack of clarity on this matter once we come to a vote -- regardless of the result -- we should make a note somewhere about how to handle such abilities.