I think it makes sense to fuse Stone and Earth together, making…Earth. Most shows that focus on Elements, Represent Earth as having abilities of both Soil and Stone. This would means we could have both Jungle and Air represented in the series rather than just one or the other. It’s a simple change, but it works better than what G2 did.
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All of the other Psionics powers affect the mind – Mind control, Telepathy, Mental Attacks, mental shielding (which s essentially using your powers on your own mind) Telekinesis, on the other hand, affects something physical, and doesn’t fall under mental powers any more than a Toa of Stone moving water would.
~W12~
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Then we scrap Plasma as its own element. Problem solved.
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what’s with you and removing elements?
Fewer elements makes the lore simpler and easier to process, which is especially beneficial when we’re talking about a line that’s supposed to be aimed at kids. If one element makes more sense if combined with another, or if we run into the conundrum of Earth vs. Stone where they’re either separate or Earth is basically just dirt, which is lame, then it is beneficial to merge one element with another. I don’t have anything against lots of elements, I just don’t see the point in having different elements if they overlap and, thus, are basically just magic.
I think any modifications to the main six elements is a mistake. The first Toa team needs to be the Toa Mata if for no other reason than for name recognition. One of the only reasons G2 was able to do as well as it did was because of that name recognition, introducing us to a team of ramdom Toa we’ve never met, or even other canon Toa, is a recipe for disaster. I know that the Toa Mata have a gender diversity issue, but that can be solved through gender diversity amongst the matoran as well as other Toa that could be introduced later. In this topic:
I formulated a pitch based 90% on the ideas discussed on the podcast just reorganized into a coherent story. Part of it involves introducing a large number of new Toa in the second year which could be easily used to increase gender diversity amongst the Toa, and later on in the topic I explored how one could incorporate the less common elements into them.
Changing elements does not change the main cast. If Stone is cut, Pohatu can still be Pohatu; and he should, because he’s always been a lot of fun. Nobody is suggesting to can the OG Toa Mata; I would be very disheartened if Bionicle came back and it wasn’t about them. But changing their powers in ways that don’t break the plot or characters will not harm anything; only good can come of it unless there’s not a real, solid justification for it, like with Lewa’s Air-to-Jungle change.
The powers whose existences are entailed by certain elements do not have to go, either. Throwing rocks at peeps is cool, and that can stay; I’m just saying Onua can have that power for the sake of improving upon the lore, while Pohatu gets something else that’s cool.
say, what do you think of my choises for the six toa mata elements?
That’s exactly what it means, if there are only five elements then there are only five Toa. And every element has it’s own sort of personality, if you were to substitute another element in to replace stone it would completely change the character. Can you imagine Tahu without fire? How bout Kopaka without ice? That’s insanity, and you can no more have Pohatu without stone.[quote=“SirKeksalot, post:37, topic:33898”]
But changing their powers in ways that don’t break the plot or characters will not harm anything; only good can come of it unless there’s not a real, solid justification for it, like with Lewa’s Air-to-Jungle change.
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I personally believe that that change was a mistake and, judging from the polls above, people agree. By changing Lewa from air to jungle they went from a very clear element to one that was poorly defined and was never actually shown to be used to any real affect in the story.
Once again, you cannot change the element without changing the character. Throwing rocks at people is Pohatu’s shtick, not Onua’s. Onua’s all earthquakes and sinkholes. That’s his fighting style, to change it changes the character on a fundamental level. Imagine if we took all of the Toa Mata’s weapons an d randomly redistributed them. Can you imagine Kopaka fighting with Onua’s claws? How about Gali with a sword and shield? Or perhaps Tahu with Gali’s hooks? It doesn’t make any sense and the elements are no different. When the Toa Mata were designed their personalities were based off of their elements, changing that changes them.
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Initially I said four, but I’m kinda regretting that now. Logically it makes sense, but… I just can’t do it. I can’t justify in my head removing any of the Toa. I really can’t.
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Then we give Pohatu a new element; something that is conceivable for him to use. Problem solved.
How exactly does Stone fit Pohatu more than, say, Iron? What inherent quality is there in rocks which we can relate to Pohatu’s friendliness or upbeat personality? They’re rocks, they do little more than move with the planet’s geography and erode. They’re tough, hardened, often coarse, and sometimes have dead things inside them; so shouldn’t Pohatu be as salty as he is in G2 if elements reflect character?
And powers are a very shallow trait. What matters most is his character. This is where G2 failed with its Toa–they didn’t act like the characters we were told they were. If the Toa lose their powers entirely (which shouldn’t happen, this is just an example), but still act and look like their G1 counterparts, they are still those characters on an actually important level.
Nobody said Onua doesn’t keep his fighting style. He just has the option to fling rocks now. This is not a tremendous change; he can still fight exactly as he did before, just with another option. The same can be done with Pohatu if he loses Stone. Kicking around his element is still an option where something like Iron is concerned; he can tear metal ore from the ground and chuck it, and the flexibility of metal would work well with his high-mobility traits that he displays using his Kakama.
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That’s not how it works. If you give a character a new fighting option it fundamentally changes their fighting style. Otherwise the new option never gets used and may as well not exist. Similarly, giving Pohotu an element like iron would completely change the way he would fight. In a world were people are made of metal, using the power to control metal only to throw chunks of metal at people is the least imaginative way of using that power. And before you say that they’re made of protodermis not iron, they’re weapons armor must be made of iron, otherwise, what is iron used for In this world? And why specifically iron?
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Not really. Onua could still have just thrown chunks of the ground at people; now, it’s just straight-up rocks. This doesn’t change his fighting style.
[quote=“Matanui606, post:42, topic:33898”]
Similarly, giving Pohotu an element like iron would completely change the way he would fight. In a world were people are made of metal, using the power to control metal only to throw chunks of metal at people is the least imaginative way of using that power.[/quote]
I didn’t say it was the ONLY way to use that power; just a way that enables him to continue fighting like he did in G1, except now he can also stab people with metal and make constructions out of metal where they’d have been rock before.
Metal can form weapons and tools, it can comprise walls, it can just straight-up stab people–heck, the Avatar franchise has some really creative uses of metalbending. Saying that, if Matoran aren’t made of metal, then Iron is a useless element is like saying any other element is useless if Matoran aren’t made of it.
I don’t remember if it just came into my head when I tried to conceive an alternative, or if I tried to specifically pull out an element that made sense for someone who lives in a desert (where the sands could be partially comprised of Iron and rusted over like the surface of Mars, thus keeping Pohatu’s sand powers from G2) and has Pohatu’s fighting style (which I’ve long imagined as being more hand-to-hand-ish since his G1 climbing claws always looked like brass knuckle-type weapons to me, but I don’t remember the G1 fight scenes too well, so I can’t properly back that up).
I never said that, I was heading off the argument that matoran aren’t made of metal in an attempt to save time. I actually mentioned the use of metal as armor and weapons and was saying that if it’s not used for those uses what is the point of it. And saying that they will use these new abilities is the definition of changing their fighting style.
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Also I’d like to say that if you change pohatu’s element you might as well change his name since it translates to stone in Maori.
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I didn’t see that part at the time I wrote that post.
Only if those are his go-to maneuvers. Stone could theoretically be used in a lot of the same ways, save for anything relying on metal’s relative flexibility; nothing’s stopping him from primarily chucking the metal around, and secondarily using it for other things.
“Gali” and “onua” are literally meaningless in Maori. Should we change Gali and Onua’s names, then? No, because it has no importance. Pohatu is no different.
I would direct you to your own topic made to debate this exact thing, as we are massively off topic here.
I get what you mean, they would appear to have similar effects, however they wouldn’t actually be all that similar in concept - it wouldn’t be the same as stone and earth, which control the same thing.
So at which temperature would this change?
Why is the colour scheme a main argument for merging? Surely just ■■■■■ the colour scheme for one!
I like this idea, perhaps make it metallics as a whole, with it only affecting magnetic metals? I mean, would the tohunga be able to tell the difference between the different metals that are and aren’t affected?
How is Kinetics an element? Movement? Really? If anything, it should be merged with Fire/Plasma/Heat.
Haven’t we already ascertained that fire is plasma?[quote=“Matanui606, post:39, topic:33898”]
I personally believe that that change was a mistake and, judging from the polls above, people agree. By changing Lewa from air to jungle they went from a very clear element to one that was poorly defined and was never actually shown to be used to any real affect in the story.
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Exactly! The plantlife change was pointless - I think he moved some tree leaves at some point? And how do you define his control of plantlife? Can he grow more indefinitely, or only use what’s there? Can he shape it completely, or must it flow with it’s own design? Can he physically uproot and move trees and such?
I read that as creating a magnetic field which placed a downward force on his armour, made of metal, as opposed to his protodermis body.
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Um… 50 degrees Fahrenheit? I don’t know, what do you think makes sense? 50 to me is where things go from warm to cold. I think I prefer the seperate energies thing. It could explain how a toa of fire can suck the heat out of a room (Vakama did this), and the opposite for a toa of ice. Like, maybe in Bionicle temperature is actually the sum amount of hot and cold energy in an area. Heat is positive, cold is negative.
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When your Pohatu love is too stronk and you vote for stone even though earth is a way more logical element.
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