To Cybertronians, they're tech, but to us, they're magic. Those abilities are meant to impress us, to make the characters who use them more special and appealing. Bruticus spinning a rotor or shooting a cannon is no more impressive than Springer spinning his own rotor or anyone with a cannon shooting their cannon. But no one else can make holograms but Hound. No one else can immobilize but Wheeljack. No one else can insta-heal but Ratchet. These abilities are uncommon and extraordinary. Rotors and cannons are ubiquitous and ordinary.Cyberpath wrote:Sabrblade wrote:But the Immobilizer, Force Fields, Holograms, and Healing are all supernatural magic abilities that no real world weapons can actually do. Rotor blades and cannons are ordinary technology common to the natural world. If Vortex's rotor could generation a giant energy shield via spinning, that would be a magic power. But his rotor is instead an ordinary rotor. What kinds of unique magic powers can any of the Combaticons do and that Bruticus can, in turn, use as well?Cyberpath wrote:..and immobilizer guns doing what immobilizer guns do; hologram-guns doing what hologram-guns do..
The guns that they use for their special abilities become Lynxmaster's hands and feet. Which is where the special rays are shown to come from. So it's the same thing to me.. Lynxmaster using Ratchet's repair gun and Bruticus using Vortex's blades.
Ah, but they aren't "really" magical or supernatural, in the contex of the fiction these special-abilities are technology, derived from the components that they carry on them.
Just as Onslaught's guns still work in Bruticus form, Wheeljack's gun still work in Lynxmaster mode.
Again, if Vortex's rotor had the unique ability of spinning to generate an energy shield, or if is spun to shoot lightning bolts, or spun to create tornadoes, THAT would count as a superpower since no ordinary rotor can do that. But spinning his rotor just to spin it for general melee purposes is not special. Nor is shooting a pair of normal cannons.