Clinging plasma?

[Schwarzwald]

In gurps they have a centaur robot with a plasma cone attack that clings to targets and does damage on sebsequent rounds.

In spacemaster: privateers plasma weapons inflict damage, and then the plasma clings to the target burning it over several rounds.

I was wondering where the idea of 'clinging plasma" came from and was it very realistic. I know there is the kind of plasma that clings to various things, like ship masts and such called "St. Elmo's fire", but it doesn't seem to do damage.

Is it possible to have a damaging, hot plasma cling to a target and damage it for a while before disipating?

[Nevenall]

Man I hope you meant to type cone.

Damage over a period of time sounds like a good use for Gradual Effect.

or Continuous and Uncontrolled. For lots of damage.

[TheRavenIs]

Well the first time I read anything like that was "Starship Tropers." The Mobile Infintry (MI), used a plasma type weapon that did just as you said, damage in more than one round.

[Curufea]

Not really. St Elmos is a low temperature plasma which therefore has a less energetic brownian motion and holds a charge longer. Hot plasmas would disipate much faster. Also it's the ships masts that are actually generating the plasma - it isn't clinging but radiating.

That being said - if you had some kind of device that could maintain the energy fields required for the plasma, it could become clinging (say a plasma bullet or shell housing).

[David Johnston]

I'm thinking the inspiration comes from napalm. Real plasma would probably disperse quickly.

[Schwarzwald]

Thanks for the answers. I had the same thought, that high energy plasma would burn out quickly.

[Matt Frisbee]

Interesting idea here, though I don't know if it is accurate...

What if the plasma had the residual effect of making molecular bonds break down in materials which had been exposed to its energy? That would simulate the "burning napalm" effect, to my mind.

Matt "The-fuzzy-scientist" Frisbee

[Curufea]

It could set fire to things and consume them - flame is a form of plasma. However it would be a much lower temperature plasma than the original hit.

[Jaxom]

Looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29#Ranges_of_plasma_parameters has a reasonably accurate description of plasmas (it is not the top page for plasma, it's a subpage).

Generally, the only reason a plasma would do damage is if it is particularly hot or had particularly nasty ions (not generally the case) in it. The hotter the plasma is, though, the less likely it is to stay localized and clingy unless you had some kind of bottle around it. Because of its charged nature you can bottle pretty easily with a magnetic bottle although using that as a weapon could be hard.

I'd be pretty careful with the comment about "flame" though. What is meant there is literally the bright stuff that we think of as the flame which is not required for combustion (the damaging stuff). It is a side effect of heat in the gaseous medium.

By all means, build a power if you like... There are a number of viable ways to build the effects you want. They just don't really model the behavior of real plasmas.

[Thia Halmades]

Napalm is sticky - so clinging plasma is just a fancy name for name, AFAICT. And that's usually done as Gradual Effect/Continuous combo - until removed, etc. Oh, and Sticky. :D Thanks to Ghost Angel (who I know full well I can't rep) for the GE/CE combo he pointed out a while back.