Affect Desolid and Touching...

[Foxiekins]

I have an NPC with Affects Desolid for his STR.  I had been assuming that included the ability to touch things that are desolid, but now I'm not sure...  However, page 209 of 6th edition, volume 1, states that a character cannot buy Advantages or take Limitations for their standard Senses.  Am I overthinking this?  How would you suggest creating the ability, if so?

[LoneWolf]

Being able to touch something does not necessarily mean you can feel what you touch.   For example, someone wearing heavy gloves cannot feel the texture of what they are handling.  A lot of it will depend on the special effect of the power.  If the special effect of the affects desolid is surrounding yourself with an energy field that allows you to affect the spirit world, it will probably not allow you to feel anything.  If the special effects is that you exist in multiple dimensions at the same time it probably will.  In either case you are not applying the advantage to a sense, you are applying it to STR.   

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I have an NPC with Affects Desolid for his STR.  I had been assuming that included the ability to touch things that are desolid, but now I'm not sure

 

Yes, you can touch and affect things that are desolidified with that.  What they feel like is up to you as a GM, is it just pressure?  Does it feel like cold and misty pressure?  Special effects have to play into it: if the desolidified is a ghost, it should feel ghostly.

[unclevlad]

The impact on his sense of touch is indirect.  Touch requires physical interaction, it's not normally possible when someone's desolid.  When you have Affects Desolid on your STR, now you can.  If you can physically interact, you can punch...or touch, which is no different.  What CRT points out is answering a related question:  what would your sense of touch register in this case?

 

Also, the reason behind "no advantages or limitations on base senses" is because they're complex powers that don't necessarily fit well structurally into the standard pattern.  (Clairsentience is a great example of the problems that'd arise by trying to add advantages to the base senses.  When the central functions are tied to extensive, and sometimes expensive, adders, advantages become *insanely* expensive very quickly.)  They'd tend to either cost far too much or give too large a break (promoting abusiveness).  It's also a matter of notional and bookkeeping convenience;  the baseline for everyone is not the null and void.  Everyone starts with a standardized set of characteristics, and that includes senses.  

 

 

[LoneWolf]

Another reason you are not allowed to use advantages on senses is that there is already a method to increase the versatility of your senses.  Enhanced Senses already allows you to modify any sense including your normal senses.  If you want to use touch at range, you don’t apply the advantage at range you purchase the ranged modifier for the touch group.   

[Wyrmy]

Indirect and/or perceive into another dimension...is what I use. 

[Tech]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:01 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Yes, you can touch and affect things that are desolidified with that.  What they feel like is up to you as a GM, is it just pressure?  Does it feel like cold and misty pressure?  Special effects have to play into it: if the desolidified is a ghost, it should feel ghostly.

 

Get the idea of what you want to do with the power, then discuss with the GM. In something trivial like this, I would hope the GM doesn't make a fuss.

 

"If the desolidifed is a ghost, etc.. feel ghostly"   Not necessarily. I can easily think of reasons why it wouldn't. One such example would be a heat elemental. It's invisible to normal sight, desolid and if it touched something, it'd feel hot.  But your point was not missed by me.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

One such example would be a heat elemental. It's invisible to normal sight, desolid and if it touched something, it'd feel hot

 

Which was my entire point.  The special effects of the feel of something determines how it works in the game and interacts with characters.

[Duke Bushido]

On 1/27/2023 at 4:47 AM, Foxiekins said:

  However, page 209 of 6th edition, volume 1, states that a character cannot buy Advantages or take Limitations for their standard Senses.  Am I overthinking this? 

 

Not even a little bit.

 

On 1/27/2023 at 4:47 AM, Foxiekins said:

How would you suggest creating the ability, if so?

 

My own personal favorite is ignoring rules that don't work.  I am sort od know for it.  I would typically "ignore any rules that doesn't work," but I fear that this might be construed as insult or denigfation to the author, since most of what I ignore comes from the newest editions.  I dont want amyone,thinking I am doing that, because it is not my intention.

 

From where I stand, some rules are objectively bad.  That applies to any game, even well beyond RPGs.  In the vaae of HERO, with its generations-long stress on separation of SFX and mechanics, I believe that any rule mandating a particular SFX is objectively bad and discard it immediately.

 

To change the example, let's look at one from 5e (because I dont remember if it made it into 6e):  Growth Momentum.  This _requires_ a particular Special Effect: the character must physically grow- that is incrementally gain mass the tiniest possible bit at a time, increasing his size, passing in order from one end to the other through each conceivable size until he eeaches the largest size he wishes to be.

 

I have had two growth characters over the years, and niether did this.  The first one was an homage to the Thing (though everyone thought he was an homage to Swamp Thing because of the plant connection).  He was a man / tree hybrid, bur to "grow," he would summon shrubs and,roots and saplings, etc, and,they would intertwine around him as his consciousness spread throughout the collected biomass making it all a part of him.   On occasion, when such was available, he would simply walk _into_ a tree and a vaguely man-shaped but larger chunk of the tree walked back out.  No growth momentum either way, because he didnt actually do the "all of adolescence and its growth spurts in half a second" thing.

 

Another had energy manipulation type powers (specifically a force field).  He could create a large him-shaped forcefield bubble about himself that mimicked his actions as he did them giant-robot style.

 

Actually, as I think about it, I have had several Growth characters-- PCs and NPCs-- none of whom used the Mega growth spurt model.

 

I have had exactly three shrinking characters (well, a handful, but only three of them actually changed their physical size), and only _one_ of them did the "grow, but very quickly" thing.  My personal favorite (SFX-wise) was the one who determined what size she wanted to be (down to about an inch) and stepped out of her body in a that-aized version of herself while the rest of the body died, rotted to dust, and blew away on the breeze in a matter of seconds.

 

She could continue to get smaller, but had to "grow" back at a rate of no faster than double her current mass per day.  She litterally had to forcibly ingest  enough nutrients to regrow herself.  But enough about Tumor-

 

The point was that I believe the "can't put modifiers on senses" thing is objectively a bad rule, because, as someone else points out, "there are diggerent rules for modifying senses," _but_-- well, we will get there in a minute. 

 

 

On 1/27/2023 at 12:36 PM, unclevlad said:

The impact on his sense of touch is indirect.  Touch requires physical interaction, it's not normally possible when someone's desolid.  When you have Affects Desolid on your STR, now you can.  If you can physically interact, you can punch...or touch, which is no different. 

 

Vlad is, as is often the case, extremely correct.  As STR is the default root of touch, and your STR affects Desolid, you can feel them.

 

Christopher makes a valid point with the glove analogy as well.

 

However--

 

Nah.  We need to give that  a moment, still.

 

 

 

On 1/27/2023 at 12:36 PM, unclevlad said:

Also, the reason behind "no advantages or limitations on base senses" is because they're complex powers that don't necessarily fit well structurally into the standard pattern. 

 

Also valid.  They are complex and not like anything else. At least, nit until they are.

 

That is, not until you find a reasonable justification for using a not-normally-for-senses modifier on a sense.  This, to me, would be any modifier that cannot be simulated with Tele, Micro, parabolic (Tele for the ears), Ultraviolet, infra, N-Ray, radio, discriminatory, targeting, Extradimensional, or any of the other things that can be bought for senses with no eyebrows raised.

 

However, given what we know about the tongue / scent receptor connection, there is a rock-solid case that bloodhounds do, in, fact, posess ranged taste.

 

 

On 2/11/2023 at 11:29 PM, Wyrmy said:

Indirect and/or perceive into another dimension...is what I use. 

 

I would totally allow this.  To be fair, I do not think it is even remotely necessary, but I have come to understand that some people are not comfortable without charging additional costs for a perxieved potential to possibly be advantageous at some later unforeseeable moment.  In those cases, even though it uses Indirect which, unless things under 6e are not as I remember (to be fair, I only read it once and decided I wasnt moving to it, so I may be remembering horribly incorrectly; never avcept anything I say about 6e at face value.  Consult it or someone who uses it), is not a senses-approved modifier.  Still, if someone felt that they should pay for the ability to feel the thing they arw grabbing or pummeling, this would be fine for me.  It does (if I am xorrect about Indirect) go against the current "no non-senses modifiers on senses" rule, but hey- I am already ignoring that one.

 

By the same token, I would allow Discriminatory to work as well.

 

6 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Which was my entire point.  The special effects of the feel of something determines how it works in the game and interacts with characters.

 

 

And there is the prize winner, right there.

 

I sont know how much of the board you have read, but I would like to point out that this gentleman and I disagree more than we agree.  It seems significant to me that we agree on this:

 

If you have the abikity to _touch_ it (via Affects Desolid on your STR, it should really be a matter of the two SFX involved (those odbthe target _and those od your affects Desolid_) and their interaction that determines if or how you can feel said target.

 

Blessed by a priest and charged by a god to vanquish the ghosts of the unholy?  Sure; you should be able to feel them.

 

Got a set of special gloves that lets your interact with extradimensional energy beings?  No; you probably aren't going to to know the texture of their outer electron shells, I am afraid.

 

Here is the thing:

 

Over the years there have been thousands- hundreds of thousands-- millions, perhaps?-- of words posted on this board about "the meta."  The horrors of the meta.  How wrong it is to play the meta.

 

And very little acknowledgement of the fact that from first edition to the current one, "Affects Desolid" is the single most meta rule there is.  Its absolute _only_ purpose is to ensure that Desolidification is _not_ "immune to damage" (in spite od the hundreds of 4e-era builds that used it in limited cases exactly as "immune to X kind of damage").

 

That's it.  Since 1980, Desolidification has changed a lot  (it used to be a movement power), but _always_ has there been Affects Desolid to make sure we could poke those pesky intangibles right in the nose.

 

It is meta because it exists _completely outside_ of SFX.  It is not separated from SFX as the other powers are (or should be, growth momentum).  It works _regardless_ of SFX.  I have a pair of Holy Bracers that let me grab vampires even when in mist form.  I can also grab ghosts, fire creatures, electrical forms, lightwave teleporters, astral projections, beings of pure thought, and the Flash.  Neat!

 

It doesnt get talked about much, and honestly, I am not sure why.  Its kind of a touchy subject for some folks, I suppose, but let's look at this:

 

I decide that I want do build a,ninja so fast that he can Dodge bullets, even automatic weapon fire.  I decide to build this as Desolidification, x2 END, maybe even requires a half move or a DEX roll, does not actually desolidify (no going through fences or walls), only versus projectile and thrown weapons.  (Yes; I chose this example because it has been done before, though I do not think officially).

 

My ninja is now bullet proof.  Neat!  Along comes Joey Neanderthall with his beer can of ghost slaying.  I can "dodge" spray fire from seven gunmen simultaneously, but Joey takes one drunken toss of his beer can to knock me flat.

 

A dunny thing happens when you suggest this:

 

People get mad.  No; I do not know why.  "It shouldnt work like that" or "but you have to mind the special effects--" and here is the good part '-- how can you justify having Affects Desolid on a beer can?"

 

Because "HERO is a points-buy system, meaning that you can build exactly what you envision" suddenly isn't valid anymore.  There are great lengths gone to to avoid the "ADO is pure meta" conversation.

 

ADO _is_ pure meta.  It is also _completely necessary_ that it be pure meta.  However, to me, that means that the SFX for it are _more important than for any other oart od the game_.  It must work the way that you need it to work, and it must be different for each character, and it must be a malleable modifier that blends seamlessly into the power to which you wish to affix it.

 

All that being said, I have _zero_ problems with someone putting it on their STR and being able to feel and touch the Desolid thing just as if they were two fully.... Tangible?  Objects interacting.

 

I mean, having to buy your STR twice seems like punitive spending enough, doesn"t it?

 

 

[Foxiekins]

On 3/15/2023 at 10:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

If you have the ability to _touch_ it (via Affects Desolid on your STR, it should really be a matter of the two SFX involved (those of the target _and those of your affects Desolid_) and their interaction that determines if or how you can feel said target.

 

Blessed by a priest and charged by a god to vanquish the ghosts of the unholy?  Sure; you should be able to feel them.

 

Got a set of special gloves that lets your interact with extradimensional energy beings?  No; you probably aren't going to to know the texture of their outer electron shells, I am afraid.

 

Here is the thing:

 

Over the years there have been thousands- hundreds of thousands-- millions, perhaps?-- of words posted on this board about "the meta."  The horrors of the meta.  How wrong it is to play the meta.

 

And very little acknowledgement of the fact that from first edition to the current one, "Affects Desolid" is the single most meta rule there is.  Its absolute _only_ purpose is to ensure that Desolidification is _not_ "immune to damage" (in spite of the hundreds of 4e-era builds that used it in limited cases exactly as "immune to X kind of damage").

 

That's it.  Since 1980, Desolidification has changed a lot  (it used to be a movement power), but _always_ has there been Affects Desolid to make sure we could poke those pesky intangibles right in the nose.

 

It is meta because it exists _completely outside_ of SFX.  It is not separated from SFX as the other powers are (or should be, growth momentum).  It works _regardless_ of SFX.  I have a pair of Holy Bracers that let me grab vampires even when in mist form.  I can also grab ghosts, fire creatures, electrical forms, lightwave teleporters, astral projections, beings of pure thought, and the Flash.  Neat!

 

It doesnt get talked about much, and honestly, I am not sure why.  Its kind of a touchy subject for some folks, I suppose, but let's look at this:

 

I decide that I want to build a ninja so fast that he can Dodge bullets, even automatic weapon fire.  I decide to build this as Desolidification, x2 END, maybe even requires a half move or a DEX roll, does not actually desolidify (no going through fences or walls), only versus projectile and thrown weapons.  (Yes; I chose this example because it has been done before, though I do not think officially).

 

My ninja is now bullet proof.  Neat!  Along comes Joey Neanderthall with his beer can of ghost slaying.  I can "dodge" spray fire from seven gunmen simultaneously, but Joey takes one drunken toss of his beer can to knock me flat.

 

A funny thing happens when you suggest this:

 

People get mad.  No; I do not know why.  "It shouldnt work like that" or "but you have to mind the special effects--" and here is the good part '-- how can you justify having Affects Desolid on a beer can?"

 

Because "HERO is a points-buy system, meaning that you can build exactly what you envision" suddenly isn't valid anymore.  There are great lengths gone to to avoid the "ADO is pure meta" conversation.

 

ADO _is_ pure meta.  It is also _completely necessary_ that it be pure meta.  However, to me, that means that the SFX for it are _more important than for any other part of the game_.  It must work the way that you need it to work, and it must be different for each character, and it must be a malleable modifier that blends seamlessly into the power to which you wish to affix it.

 

All that being said, I have _zero_ problems with someone putting it on their STR and being able to feel and touch the Desolid thing just as if they were two fully.... Tangible?  Objects interacting.

 

I mean, having to buy your STR twice seems like punitive spending enough, doesn"t it?

Thank you...  That pretty much lays it all to rest...  Based on the SFX I envisioned, his Chi would be interacting with the Chi of his target, and rendering them Tangible to him...  The only thing the power wouldn't affect is something without Chi, i. e. a non-living machine with Desolid...  I suppose I *should* add that to the build as a -0 Limitation, just for clarity...  You know, someone tried to criticize the power once by claiming Desolid is like being air, and this power would let me touch air...  Then I asked him how fans worked, if you couldn't touch air...  I think the question broke his brain...  Anyway, thanks again...

[Foxiekins]

For those curious, the character that prompted all this can be found here...

 

[Duke Bushido]

17 hours ago, Foxiekins said:

Thank you...  That pretty much lays it all to rest... 

 

You are quite welcome, Sir (I assume.  If I am wrong, all apologies are made).

 

If it helped, you are welcome, if it entertained but didn't actually help, well, you're welcome for the chuckle. 

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Foxiekins said:

 

Based on the SFX I envisioned, his Chi would be interacting with the Chi of his target, and rendering them Tangible to him... 

 

And thank you this time, for the insight into the character.

 

I would like to take a moment to go slightly deeper on something:

 

Because I understand the need for this completely meta construct, and,because I believe that mechanics will _never_ be of greater importance than SFX (ideally, they are equally-important, but there are individual builds that will necessarily tip the scales one way or the other, such as ADO), I take SFX very easily, and I _require_ anyone taking desolid to declare at least 3 SFX that will affect them in some way: one at full damage, one at half damage, and one at half damage: STUN only.

 

I require characters with ADO to declare at least 3 SFX they cannot fully-interact with: one is STUN only, and two they cannot affect at all.

 

Either player May take limitations by wxceeding these requirements,  ut these requirements are mandatory, without cost-adjustment.  I would also like to point out that it is not as draconian as it sounds to those who out more stock in mechanics over SFX: SFX are nigh-unlimited.  Affects Desolid, but not ghosts or electrical constructs, for example.

 

Not only does this provide a slightly (_slightly_) more level playing field, but I find it encourages players to more fully flesh out the extent and limit of their powers.

 

 

_Further_, I will rule on SFX v Desolid on a case by case basis.  A being composed of pure electricity _may_ be affected by an electrical attack.  Does he have energy absorption: electricity?  No?  So maybe he can't absorb or dissipate additional electricity effectively?  Yes; Killer Watt'w electroblast _will_ do damage to him, but it will be normal and not Killing.

 

That kind of thing.

 

Spider-Man does _not_ have Affects Desolid.  

 

Newspapers do _not_ have Affects Desolid.

 

Spiderman defeated (destryloyed?) Morrie Bench- the Hydro-Man- by luring him to a rooftop and bashing him with bundles of newspapers, which caused bits of him to splash out and be absorbed by the newspapers.

 

It was slow-going; it was exhausting; it was one of like eight superhero comics I have read in my entire life, and it is totally relevant.

 

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Foxiekins said:

The only thing the power wouldn't affect is something without Chi, i. e. a non-living machine with Desolid...  I suppose I *should* add that to the build as a -0 Limitation, just for clarity... 

 

Agreed.  As demonstrated above, that is the sort of thing I mandate up front.

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Foxiekins said:

You know, someone tried to criticize the power once by claiming Desolid is like being air, and this power would let me touch air...  Then I asked him how fans worked, if you couldn't touch air...

 

While I one-hundred-percent agree with you and your logic here, I caution you to be careful with the application of science, of you soon end up proving that all attacks are PD attacks; what we call ED are actually PD attacks with special additional effects.

 

Anyway, it sound like you have a pretty solid grasp of what you want from the character.  You dont need our interfence in it.