Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2221250-20140822020300/@comment-1942179-20140822154314

(Warning, wall of text ahead.) I'm perfectly fine with using Chaos Emeralds, so long as it's not once-per-episode or so. Only 8 out of my 30+ characters have super forms though, and one's form requires extra power to allow him to transform while another requires a different energy source entirely. (meaning Chaos Emeralds won't work.) So that's about 6 people who can use the Chaos Emeralds regularly.

I don't use them much, and when I do, they're usually somewhere near the end of the story unless they have a bigger purpose than just being there for the characters to power up on. If there is a bigger reason behind using them, such as a villain collecting them, I will gladly accept the use of the Chaos Emeralds. After all, if the villain gets all 7, it would make for an exciting showdown in theory. If the emeralds just show up out of nowhere for no other reason than convenience, then it probably wasn't my idea.

I like to have my characters do everything they can without some convenient external super power first and foremost. And in cases like Smash, (and more recently, Pearl,) who can use High Tension, I find it more interesting to write around a form that uses one's own energy as there are more visible limits to them, thus requiring a bit more strategy behind the use of it. (Seeing as how people rarely involve the use of the 50 Rings game mechanic in stories and roleplays, Super Transformations generally tend to last entire battles, sometimes even longer than that.)

Another noteworthy subtopic is the use of Chaos Emeralds as power-sources for machines. Like large batteries of sorts. While I'm generally fine with this in some cases, there are some things I feel need to be said about this. One, it's a pretty generic choice. I've been trying to think up other useful resources in place of Chaos Emeralds. (My most successful one has been Elemental Rings.)

Two, just remember that these are Chaos Emeralds we're talking about here. How do you know your machine can handle them? Going by Tails' logic in Sonic X, There will be a lot of excess energy in lesser-powerful machines/engines; With no place to go, that excess energy will result in a fatal explosion. Thus is why a Chaos Emerald could not be used in the Tornado, and why they needed a second engine to process the extra Chaos Energy. So just remember that you can't shove a Chaos Emerald into any old gadget and expect it to work without a hitch.

And Three, There are only 7 emeralds. Unless in your series there are 8 or even a multitude of Chaos Emeralds, I would limit the use of them for these reasons:
 * If there are only 7 in the entire world, that would make them extremely rare and hard to find without a device to track them.
 * A character really should not always have a Chaos Emerald in possession by default. If the Chaos Emeralds are needed elsewhere in a plot, it would be a problem. (A simple one that can be talked over between users, but still.) Let's also remember that the Chaos Emeralds tend to scatter. But I believe that only happens after the 7 have been gathered together, but it's worth noting.
 * I put this third bullet here in hopes of coming up with a third reason.
 * ...I didn't.

So yeah, that's my say on them. However...

HS664 wrote:

Now, in addition to what we know or may find out from Sonic News Network/Retro, I've also read that the Chaos Emeralds do not grant new powers, but modify old ones... meaning its probable that Chaos Control is a heavily modified version of Sonic/Shadow/Metal Sonic's super speed and Silver/Black Doom's Teleporting Abilities.

Now that is a very interesting theory. To be able to move so fast that everyone and everything else appears to be frozen in time. In a way, that's kinda what stopping time is like for the one doing it.

This theory might also help explain something I was thinking about. While I was going over some revisions in my series, I couldn't help but try to find a way to properly introduce Light Smash, as the original debut of this super form was lost in time. (heh) Light Smash is essentially the super version of his High Tension state; meaning it's closer to an actual super form than a simply powered-up state. But since it uses his own energy instead of the Chaos Emeralds, he's left unconscious after reverting back to normal.

And then I began thinking; Is it really right for Smash to have a powerful form like that from the get-go? Considering Light Smash showed up before High Tension, (learned the latter because of the former,) this would mean that Smash has always been really powerful, deep down. Unnaturally powerful even, before he even learned that he could go super in the first place. Naturally, this bothered me a bit, so I tried to find an explanation for it.

Basically, I had Smash's Light transformation stem from coming in contact with the Chaos Emeralds, (which would unlock that hidden potential,) as well as the regular requirements for it. If the Chaos Emeralds greatly modified his latent High Tension, that would give way to Light Smash, correct?

Still, I feel that logic is flawed, in that simply coming in contact with an emerald shouldn't release his potential. I could probably work around it, but I also feel like I'm missing something else. I also had the idea of scrapping Light Smash entirely, buuut then that would mean Smash would never learn High Tension.