Vantablack

[g3taso]

For those of you who don't know, VantaBlack is "real black", the blackest black we can make. It can be applied as a paint for as a finish.   I can't think of any direct game mechanics at the moment aside from nice bonuses to hide in shadow, but it's cool. My take on it (as a finish, perhaps on armor or on a spaceship hull) is as follows:

 

Vantablack Finish:  Darkness to Sight Group 1" radius, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (20 Active Points); No Range (-1/2), Always On (-1/2)

 

I can see the argument for Invisibility instead of Darkness, but it just doesn't seem right as the object or individual in question is still "there"

 

Thoughts? Uses?

[Surrealone]

2 hours ago, g3taso said:

Vantablack Finish:  Darkness to Sight Group 1" radius, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (20 Active Points); No Range (-1/2), Always On (-1/2)

...

Thoughts? Uses?

So this is a 2m radius (i.e. sphere) of really dark black?  That won't attract any attention at all in broad daylight on the street, at a football game, or in the park.  /sarcasm off

 

Currently, as written, its best use is to make the person using the power completely unable to see anything using the sight group ... since it wasn't bought with Personal Immunity.  

[DasBroot]

It's always fun to find a way to PAY for a disadvantage instead instead of receive points for one. 

 

You were on the right track with bonuses to Stealth in low light environments, I think.

 

I see a Red (Car) Door and I want to Paint it (Vanta)Black: +2 with Stealth, Persistent (+1/4) (5 Active Points); Always On (-1/2), Conditional Power Power Only Works In Low Light Situations (-1/4) (3 RC)

[g3taso]

45 minutes ago, Surrealone said:

So this is a 2m radius (i.e. sphere) of really dark black?  That won't attract any attention at all in broad daylight on the street, at a football game, or in the park.  /sarcasm off

 

Currently, as written, its best use is to make the person using the power completely unable to see anything using the sight group ... since it wasn't bought with Personal Immunity.  

Vantablack can be thought of as black paint. Super black paint. So black that if I painted your face with it and you turned your head, you could not see anything, no telltale shine. So it doesn't make the area black, it makes the object black.

 

Aside from some version of Darkness, the only thing I can think of that might work to model this power would be Images. I'm all ears if ya got some ideas. 

 

Check this out 

 

[Surrealone]

10 minutes ago, g3taso said:

Vantablack can be thought of as black paint. Super black paint. So black that if I painted your face with it and you turned your head, you could not see anything, no telltale shine. So it doesn't make the area black, it makes the object black. I just haven't figured out if there really is a way to model it. I'm all ears if ya got some ideas.

In 6e this would be modeled by changing the AoE Radius to AoE Surface ... which gets you an outline of the surface of an object instead of a radius.  In 5er there's no equivalent -- which is one more example of why 6e's got improved flexibility.  In 5er one thing you could probably do (subject to GM approval) is take a self-only limitation so that the power only affects the character who is using it ... and not things within the 1" around him/her.  (And you'd still need Personal Immunity, btw ... or the character couldn't see ... unless s/he uses some other sense for targeting and the like.)

 

However, I think DasBroot has the right idea -- model it with a stealth bonus and call the look a SFX of it.  And, of course, take a distinctive feature to match (which covers your original 'Always On' approach).  Less filling, tastes great.

 

[g3taso]

I like it. DasBroot has it. I was modeling SFX and not the actual effect.

[mrinku]

Using Darkness (Surface) also has the nice effect that if the ship is flying around on a planet in daytime it'll stand out like dog's balls, just like a Darkness field does.

 

One potential issue here... how's it managing excess heat?

[zslane]

The only problem with DasBroot’s solution is that it is way too simple and straightforward for a 6E ability write-up. It would be perfectly suitable for 4E, however.

[Andrew Cermak]

This would actually be very poor for stealth purposes. There's a reason soldiers don't trade their camo for black for night operations; solid colors stand out against the background and draw the eye, even if the color in question is a dark black. A Vantablack coated object would probably be more visible in shadow than most dark colors. 

 

What it arguably would be good for is Concealment; the elimination of detail would make it harder to spot hidden pockets or suspicious bulges. I could also see an argument for Disguise, provided it's limited to a nonspecific "I can't tell who/what that is" effect.

[dsatow]

Personally, when I first read this thread, I thought, Vantablack would be a great name for a supervillain with darkness powers.  Vanna Black, hit with the ultimate darkness ray turned into Vantablack, evil supervillainess.

[mrinku]

7 hours ago, Andrew Cermak said:

This would actually be very poor for stealth purposes. There's a reason soldiers don't trade their camo for black for night operations; solid colors stand out against the background and draw the eye, even if the color in question is a dark black. A Vantablack coated object would probably be more visible in shadow than most dark colors. 

 

What it arguably would be good for is Concealment; the elimination of detail would make it harder to spot hidden pockets or suspicious bulges. I could also see an argument for Disguise, provided it's limited to a nonspecific "I can't tell who/what that is" effect.

 

Correct for groundhuggers (and also those vantablack fatigues are going to get REAL hot REALLY quickly...). It could have some practical use for spacecraft, though again the heat management issues are potentially huge.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, mrinku said:

 

Correct for groundhuggers (and also those vantablack fatigues are going to get REAL hot REALLY quickly...). It could have some practical use for spacecraft, though again the heat management issues are potentially huge.

No more of an issue than any other super power.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 12/22/2017 at 4:40 PM, zslane said:

The only problem with DasBroot’s solution is that it is way too simple and straightforward for a 6E ability write-up. It would be perfectly suitable for 4E, however.

<head scratching> Uh?

[mrinku]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

<head scratching> Uh?

 

I think his sarcasm mode was on

[DasBroot]

On 23/12/2017 at 11:40 PM, dsatow said:

Personally, when I first read this thread, I thought, Vantablack would be a great name for a supervillain with darkness powers.  Vanna Black, hit with the ultimate darkness ray turned into Vantablack, evil supervillainess.

 

That's exactly where my mind went as well... so much so that my players faces off against Vantablack as a member of a supervillain mercenary group that attacked them in my last session.  It looked (and acted) a lot like the antagonist that killed Tasha Yar in TNG "Skin of Evil".

 

(The blaster was not at all happy  with Darkness - Area Effect Surface, for the record. )

[g3taso]

That's an interesting thought. A 5pt Darkness could block a 20d6 laser blast. That would be awesome!!

[DasBroot]

Depriving people of their targeting sense is really cheap (both in cost and as a tactic) and shouldn't be done often in the name of fairness - but occasionally *should* be done (especially if other players have invested points into secondary targeting senses or flash defenses).

 

I wouldn't take either a Darkness or Flash that hits targeting senses on any character I'd play (though I do take them occasionally for non-targeting senses to hamper an enemy without crippling them).

 

As for using it to 'block' a laser - well, only by limiting the targeting sense. It stops senses and that's it: a laser fired into a field of Darkness to Sight would rip through one side and out the other unimpeded (unless something weird was taken on the laser blast).

 

That's actually why I made it surface - so the villains could keep targeting her (by targeting the surface darkness - technically a handwave but a little common sense - if you shoot at the woman shaped shadow with an arrow you hit the woman inside, even if you didn't 'target' her because your targeting sense is blocked by a surface darkness...) without guessing where in the darkness field she was (cheap shots forcing her team-mates to both defend for her and deal with Vantablack in a hurry).

 

 

[Surrealone]

45 minutes ago, DasBroot said:

Depriving people of their targeting sense is really cheap (both in cost and as a tactic) and shouldn't be done often in the name of fairness - but occasionally *should* be done (especially if other players have invested points into secondary targeting senses or flash defenses).

Why do you feel this way?  I ask because surely your players have AoE's they can use to target the spaces around them ... or the spaces near/around someone at range within a Darkness field?

 

i.e. A Common and sound tactic when one can't see ... is to use AoE.  This is especially true of AoEs the characters have with Personal Immunity -- you know, the Ice Guy who isn't affected by his own AoE Radius Cold Snap power ... or the Plant Dude with a nasty area-affecting plant-based Entangle and/or Barrier that doesn't affect him?

 

Heck, depriving a mentalist of LOS is a key and oft-used way of dealing with one ... so I'm forced to ask what's so sacred about every other archetypes' targeting senses in your games? Do your players simply not follow the same route other players usually do to handle the need to attack what they can't perceive?  If not, how the heck do they deal with invisible, Predator-like opponents -- or fight within Darkness fields? Do you simply not challenge them in this way???

[DasBroot]

A few reasons.

 

1) Partly it's to keep the tactic rare and challenging when actually fielded.  If being deprived of their targeting sense came up more often then more players would build around the 'certainty' instead of the 'possibility'.

 

10 points for a second targeting sense or 10 points of flash defense for your targeting sense (less point effective than buying a second one) in 400 point game isn't heavy, certainly, but it puts a GM in a position where they can either a) throw 'challenges' knowing that the players are immune to it to justify the points they expended or b ) not bother using said powers ... thus boiling down to a 'point tax' on characters because they took a power in anticipation of a situation which doesn't occur.

 

For example one of our players, when he gets a chance to GM, is incredibly fond of hammering power defense with exotics attacks - so in his games everyone has 20 to 30 points of power defense (and all life support because he'll use AVAD to hammer that instead if enough people do this).  He sulks about this and to get his revenge doesn't attack power defense - so those points are just sitting on sheets waiting for a day that doesn't come.  Unless you build a character without it - because the second you do you can expect to be hit by a cumulative autofire transform and turned into a tree or something. Sometimes I'll make the sacrificial goat without any so that the other players can get away with less (15 ... just in case) and spend most fights totally incapacitated in new and exciting ways (like drained to speed 0 for an hour, etc).

 

By keeping situations that would be trivially resolved by having 'x power' truly rare it lessens the chance that the players will be able to respond to the threat with impunity and that they'll have to think about what to do when it happens (and *then* load up on OAF continuing charge items to make sure it never happens again). 

 

2  ) Related to part one - yes, my group (like many?) certainly follows a checklist when buying offensive capabilities.  Every multi-power attack pool must have a single target maximum dice attack, an aoe without either selective or non-selective (so the targets personal DCV is ignored), and (usually) a Killing Attack to deal with automatons or scenery.  Everything else is just gravy and thrown in there to flavor: A target hiding in a 'globe of darkness' is indeed just going to get 'fireballed'.

 

In a way it's a repeat of the non-challenging challenge above but with a twist - the AoE them All and let the GM Sort It Out only works if you don't care about what else might be in the field WITH the foe.  Captain Novabeam isn't going to (or at least shouldn't) fire his Cone Of Justice into Vantablack's darkness area - there could be hostages or explosives in there with them.  That's why the sense option is superior but more niche - you're going to get mileage out of that AoE whenever you can hit more than one target with it at once which will *probably* happen more often than having to use Targeting Smell because you were Flashed or put in Darkness to sight.

[Surrealone]

Eeeew to the GM who hammers exotic defenses.  Ideally team/party balance has one hero who is the exotic attack/defense specialist (who is also typically weak when it comes to standard attacks/defenses ... as a tradeoff) -- specifically so that the team/party has someone to deal with GM baddies that deal in exotic attacks/defenses.  However, the moment exotic attacks/defenses become the norm due to GM overdependence ... they kind of cease to be exotic ... and a GM should adjust his exotic attack/defense costs accordingly, I'd think.  If that GM's players haven't brought their torches and pitchforks to a gaming session to force a union-like discussion on that topic, someone ought to suggest it. 

 

Regarding AoE -- I'd be surprised if your team's checklist doesn't include a non-damaging (e.g. Entangle; Barrier used to Englobe, etc.) AoE attack -- since it's usually quite heroic to capture the opposition without beating it completely into unconsciousness or burning/blowing up the world around it to make the capture.

 

[DasBroot]

While it is heroic to capture the enemies those powers tend to fall into the 'non-proliferation' side of the fence as well, in general.  A result of the same GM, actually - megascale x 10 armor piercing teleports in multipowers for everyone!  

 

No Body blasts / AoE, however, are a popular in slot 4 (though extravagant - *everyone* pulls their Body regardless with pull punch, which I do not penalize with an OCV penalty)

 

 

[Surrealone]

19 minutes ago, DasBroot said:

A result of the same GM, actually - megascale x 10 armor piercing teleports in multipowers for everyone!  

And people play in his games, why, exactly?

[dsatow]

42 minutes ago, Surrealone said:

And people play in his games, why, exactly?

For their character's to get a free trip to Tahiti!

 

[Surrealone]

Heh!