HA, DC, and END

[BNakagawa]

It takes, what 6 points to have enough of a barrier to completely enclose a hex. Another 4 points increases the depth to the point where you would need to double the body to break through it.

 

So a 60 active point barrier can double bag a human sized opponent with 100 body worth of barrier.

 

Sounds balanced, right?

[Christopher R Taylor]

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So a 60 active point barrier can double bag a human sized opponent with 100 body worth of barrier.

 

Englobing someone takes 8 points (it has to be 2m tall and 6m long, it automatically caps)

Then you have 52 points left to buy body with; or 52 Body.

 

That's a lot, but since it has zero defenses, even a child can bust out of it eventually.  And, again, they can use their foci and can see and hear everything around them, it doesn't block power or flash attacks so they can attack out of it with some abilities.  I mean, if he has a 12d6 blast on average that's gonna take just over 4 phases to break out of.  Less, if he does a multiple attack on something he literally cannot miss.

[unclevlad]

That's just inviting a little work to maximize the duration.  12d6?  8 DEF would be 12, leaving 40 BODY.  10 phases.  14 DEF would be 21, leaving 31 BODY...and will likely hold for a couple *minutes* if the englobed person

a)  doesn't have a 4d6 KA (I know the DEF is resistant, but 15+ BODY from 4D K is much more likely than from 12D normal)

b)  doesn't have an attack against the 0 DEF part, because the 21 points buys 14 PD or ED only.

 

The variance for BODY, on 1d6, is 2/5.  The variance for 12d6 is then 24/5, or 4.8.  The standard deviation is the square root, or about 2.2.  To get ANY BODY through that 14 DEF, you need 3 BODY above...that's about 1.4 standard deviations.  This only happens around 9% of the time.  Rolled 15 BODY only removes 1 BODY from the barrier, too...and there's 31 BODY.

 

Did a quick Monte Carlo sim in Java.  50 trials.  Number of phases to break out:

147, 257, 181, 149, 320, 270, 275, 150, 186, 158, 
223, 189, 273, 223, 182, 310, 170, 189, 195, 135, 
293, 179, 240, 150, 315, 203, 238, 211, 170, 144, 
193, 139, 207, 169, 293, 217, 189, 194, 149, 160, 
151, 159, 229, 214, 139, 324, 133, 159, 202, 232, 

 

At SPD 5, 25 actions per minute, the fastest is over 5 minutes.  I think the shortest I saw while checking the code was still over 80, so 3 minutes.  

 

With a killing attack, now, the mean BODY on 4d6 is 14.  Run that 50 times:

23, 16, 30, 35, 17, 28, 23, 31, 23, 13, 
28, 25, 20, 15, 22, 18, 16, 18, 34, 29, 
24, 29, 23, 25, 29, 27, 41, 28, 30, 13, 
21, 25, 22, 14, 15, 12, 30, 29, 25, 34, 
27, 21, 26, 30, 21, 16, 27, 21, 23, 25, 
 

So fastest is still more than 2 turns.

 

Now, obviously, if this is a PD barrier, and the trapped guy has an ED attack, it'll fall fast.  So...let's try...10 PD and ED.  30 points so 22 BODY.  12d6 normal:

12, 9, 8, 8, 8, 10, 9, 13, 8, 12, 
12, 14, 9, 8, 15, 13, 10, 11, 10, 8, 
11, 10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 12, 6, 8, 7, 
11, 15, 17, 14, 11, 10, 15, 10, 9, 11, 
7, 8, 9, 8, 10, 13, 17, 6, 12, 11, 
 

So, 1 turn is a near-certainty;  2 turns, or at least close, is very likely.  If the trapped guy has a 4d6 K, well, that barrier will go down decently quickly...but still should last 2-3 phases.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

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Now, obviously, if this is a PD barrier, and the trapped guy has an ED attack, it'll fall fast.  So...let's try...10 PD and ED.  30 points so 22 BODY.

 

But is that such an outrageous power level?  Yeah its powerful but that's the maximum point value in the standard Champions game. And all it does is make a very small barrier, you could close a door or englobe one normal sized target.  Is it a pretty effective device, for that one purpose, but a 60 active point power ought to be, right?

[unclevlad]

Why is that the only use?  Yeah, sure, if it's a standalone power, it's not great, but how about a Barrier ONLY VPP, with a 60 point control cost?  Block a hall...3m wide, 2 high will usually be enough.  (It'd probably be easier to go through the walls, but that creates significant collateral damage, to the wall itself and plausibly to many other things as power, plumbing, or ventilation get severed.)  

 

Also, compare it to a 60 point entangle.  Options...6 dice gets you 6 PD, 6 ED and 6 BODY.  4 dice would get you 4 BODY (40 points) and +4 PD/ED for another 20.  You don't have the option of doing a PD or ED heavy Entangle;  additional PD or ED is limited.  Barrier can mostly act like an Entangle...but Entangle can't affordably act like a larger-area Barrier.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, entangle has benefits that barrier does not so that accounts for some of the discrepancy in cost

[unclevlad]

That's not a discrepancy in effectiveness, it's a chasm.

[Hugh Neilson]

14 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Now, obviously, if this is a PD barrier, and the trapped guy has an ED attack, it'll fall fast.  So...let's try...10 PD and ED.  30 points so 22 BODY.  12d6 normal:

 

First off, by the book, a Barrier need only be 4 meters in one dimension to englobe.  While I prefer Christopher Taylor's 6 meters wide (to cover 6 hex faces) and 2 meters tall (to match the average target's height), the issue is the RAW, so sticking to that, the base cost is 6 CP for a barrier 4m x 1m x 0.5m.

 

We're investing 30 points for 10 rPD, 10rED leaving 24 for BOD, a bit more than the example.

 

We're eliminating any use of the barrier for anything but englobing and assuming the GM absolutely must allow 60 AP of this defensive power when the intent is to use it offensively instead of defensively. 

 

The ability to move the globe (whether by the englobed character or someone outside) is not well defined. That indicates, to me, that englobing was not intended to be the main effect of Barrier, mandating some GM judgment.  By contrast to the Globe, it is clear that an entangled character cannot move without breaking out.

 

The Entangled character will break out with only a half phase available.  RAW says he can use the same attack, but does not state whether he could use a different attack (6e v2 p124).  With equal attacks, however, the Entangle will fall much faster, although the Entangle will prevent use of Accessible foci.

 

No question that this very specialized englobing barrier will take a long time to break. At the same time, the englobed target is protected from any other attacks.  If the barrier user just wants to escape, great way to do so, although I can think of a lot of other 60 AP powers to create a frustrating opponent who always gets away.

 

He cannot englobe anyone who can fly, as barriers can't be created in mid-air without a +10 point Adder. That would drop the BOD to 14, still quite a while to escape.

 

Contrasted to an Entangle, a group of opponents coordinating on an Entangled target will have little difficulty hitting (by contrast, Englobed characters maintain full DCV) and the Entangle will provide far less protection than the Barrier does.

 

13 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Why is that the only use?  Yeah, sure, if it's a standalone power, it's not great, but how about a Barrier ONLY VPP, with a 60 point control cost?  Block a hall...3m wide, 2 high will usually be enough.  (It'd probably be easier to go through the walls, but that creates significant collateral damage, to the wall itself and plausibly to many other things as power, plumbing, or ventilation get severed.)  

 

Also, compare it to a 60 point entangle.  Options...6 dice gets you 6 PD, 6 ED and 6 BODY.  4 dice would get you 4 BODY (40 points) and +4 PD/ED for another 20.  You don't have the option of doing a PD or ED heavy Entangle;  additional PD or ED is limited.  Barrier can mostly act like an Entangle...but Entangle can't affordably act like a larger-area Barrier.  

 

That barrier only VPP will be considerably pricier to get the same 60 AP Barrier, especially if you want it to be easy to change on the fly. In addition, that is a very extreme build, and I will suggest the problem is at least as much in the VPP than in the Barrier. Would you allow a "defenses only" VPP allowing a character to allocate 60 AP to defenses their discretion? 

 

So where does that leave us?  Conceptually, I like Barrier as a replacement for Force Wall.  The ability to create a wall of earth or of iron was lacking in past editions, and now we have a mechanic for such abilities.  Does it need some fine-tuning beyond simple GM oversight?  At a minimum, the need for GM oversight could be more clear.

 

What should change?  Some possibilities:

 

 - price BOD for the barrier higher.  At 2 points, our 24 BOD globe, above, falls to 12.  That will still require several 12d6 hits to break.  The book examples would have their BOD halved - that Energy Barrier still seems pretty impressive with 12 Defenses and 6 BOD, but a 112 point power is kind of over the top anyway, although it's only 63 (15 for size + 36 for defenses +12 for BOD) if we get rid of adders and advantages.  The 66 AP Wall of Iron (15 for size + 24 for defenses + 17 for BOD + 10 for opaque) still seems pretty beefy with 8 defenses and 8 BOD.

 

 - Remove englobing as a standard option?  That begs the question of when we're "englobing" and when we're just making a barrier - a larger barrier could still pen in one or more characters.  Maybe we just remove the automatic "closes off the top and the bottom" and require enough extra meters to cover all those areas.  That would mean we need 6 meters to encircle a 1 meter hex, plus 2 meters height, plus about 3 meters for each of the top and the bottom. Now that Wall of Iron remains a wall, even if constructed as a ring.  Figuring those areas out on the fly could be a pain - maybe make this an advantage instead? It's 9 points for 6 meters long and 2 meters high; 6 more is 2/3 of that.  It won't always be useful and it will increase the cost of  DEF and BOD as well - maybe +1/2?

 

That would allow a one-target globe (9 point) with 8 defenses (24 points) and 7 BOD (7 points), Globe (+1/2) for 60 points.  That 12d6 Blast will break through with 2 hits on average.  Make it 6 defenses (18 points) and 13 BOD (13 points) and it should weather one more attack.  Not a great power - especially when it can only target characters on the ground - but the mechanic is for creating real  barriers, not replacing Entangle.

 

Other thoughts?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think part of the reason for the pricing of barrier right now is an attempt to make it useful and functional at lower power levels.  Its barely useful, but can work for a 30 point magical spell, for instance.

 

Another reason I think is that they wanted barrier to function well for a barrier-based character like the Invisible Woman.  If you cost it too much the concept cannot work.

[BNakagawa]

I don't see why you should unbalance the game system for the sake of an unbalanced character concept.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Sure, its worth considering that under the Byrne run at least, Sue was considered the most powerful member of the team (and she really was) so she should be difficult to build with base points.

[BNakagawa]

The other complaint against Barrier's implementation is that it is the replacement for Force Wall. You could never build a 60 active point Force wall that was as unreasonable as a bog standard Barrier.