Special effect or something else? Power Question.

[Ragdoll]

Hi. [smiles] I was looking to design a character that has 'armour'. The armour is when she's hit, it protects her from damage, but doesn't 'look' like it does.

 

For instance, if she's struck in the shoulder her shoulder would bruise. If she's cut by a sword, the wound would be open and bleed. It 'hurts', but she's not harmed by it stat wise (the armour protects vs. body and stun).

 

Is that simply a special effect or do I need some sort of advantage? [asks]

 

Any help is appreciated. [smiles]

 

Thanks for your time. [smiles, waves]

 

Ragdoll.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

Since it sounds like you're trying to conceal the fact this character is not actually being injured, I'd suggest Armor with the Invisible Effects Advantage. [answers]

[Mentor]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

I am a bit unclear on the effect you are trying to achieve.

 

Buying Invisible Power Effect can prevent an opponent from recognizing that you are protected, but they will be aware that you are not taking damage from the attack.

 

Creating the appearance of bullets or beams striking the PCs body would be tougher. An illusion power would have to be well within concept to be acceptable.

 

SFX can only do so much.

[Sean]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

I believe that as a persistant power, Armor starts off as being intrinsically invisible. I've seen a bunch of uses of the Visibility (-1/4) disadvantage on it at any rate. [Just checked and yes, Armor is listed under the Visibility disadv. on pg. 202 of FREd.]

 

In FREd on P169 under the description of Invisible Power Effects, it talks about "While the source and the special effects of a Power may not be visible, its effects on a target will be. ... At the GM's discretion, the effects (as well as the source and special effects) of a power can be made Invisible if the value of the advantage is doubled. The victim still feels the effects of the Power, but other characters will not perceive them."

 

So, given that it doesn't strike me as a hugely unbalancing application, if I were your GM I'd simply charge you the base cost of IPE (without the 2x thing since the power starts off with invisible source and special effects).

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

 

I'm with Sean on this. "Armor" is just PD/ED and damage resistance - it doesn't need to be a separate power anyway.

 

The only advantage is that someone may keep hitting, thinking it is having an effect. Ultimately, though, what happens to the wounds? If they quickly close up, it's not even invisible, just a special effect.

 

If not, after defending against 80 BOD, what does the character look like? How long does it take appearance to revert to normal.

 

For a devil's advocate approach, isn't "I keep hacking and hacking, but she never falls down" a "visible" effect?

[Blue]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

I'm thinking that while you could go way out of your way and link some kind of images with a trigger to look like damage when you get hit, if I were the GM I'd just make a new advantage for the situation.

 

If you wanted to save a few points on that cost and make it even more interesting, take however much this version of IPE winds up costing you and apply an "requires skill roll": acting roll. The bruises would show up regardless, but if you fail the acting roll nobody will believe they're real. Just a thought.

[pinecone]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

I've just treated this as "Invisable armor" Armor is inherently invisable so you just pay to conceal the effect of the armor....I can't see a huge benefit for this so it shouldn't cost much i.e.; its a "cool power" YMMV....

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

I've just treated this as "Invisable armor" Armor is inherently invisable so you just pay to conceal the effect of the armor....I can't see a huge benefit for this so it shouldn't cost much i.e.; its a "cool power" YMMV....

 

I wouldn't be inclined to charge more than +1/4. There is an advantage in that the opponent may well keep hitting when he ought to change tactics, but unlike regular IPE, it won';t be too long before the attacker realizes it's just not working, whatever it looks like.

[Ragdoll]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

Wow guys, thanks for all the quick responses. Maybe I should elaborate a bit to help further.

 

The character is someone I kind of invented, and I'm sort of reinventing her to give her a bit more flavor. She 'used' to be an Kinetic energy absorber. She had an 'invisible' field around her that would cushion and absorb incoming kinetic attack, and store the energy away. She could later release it as a destructive blast of energy. She used to power up by 'encouraging' the people she was fighting to strike her. She even had acting skills to make it look like she was just really clumsy and bad at fighting, she'd literally 'fall' into blows, and make it look like she tripped with her acting so her assailants wouldn't catch on.

 

Never the less some of the criminals and underworld element started circulating the rumor that she was a masochistic vigilante. A reputation she 'loathed'.

 

I thought about making her just more then an 'invulnerable' type girl, though. Her name was Ragdoll. Since to use her powers she had to lets herself get knocked about to absorb kinetic energy. But I started thinking about 'building' on her name a bit more. So I came up with the idea of her more 'displaying' the wounds she took as she was fighting.

 

They're painful in a 'cursory way', but not enought to effect the game mechanic. My intention wasn't to trick the enemy, really. It was merely to show a neat special effect of her absorbtion power/armour field, really. [smiles] That and I gave her takes 2's knockback from all kinetic attacks. So she 'really' can go flying about. Gets up a few rounds later, and 'blasts' them. [grins]

 

As for the 'wounds' healing over and such and how long. I'm not 'really' sure, to be honest. I don't want to just 'seal' right over, but I don't want them to hang about for months and months either. Somewhere in between I guess.

 

I'd heard that this type of special effect is usually assigned something like a 'zero' point lim: "Visible when Struck?" (-0).

 

Would this be correct? I don't need to save the points or anything, the build works remarkably well on 350 points. She's got competant powers, kind of normal stats, and about 100 point in skills and perks so I'm pretty happy with her, I was just stumped on this one part. Kind of wanted to personalize her. [smiles]

 

Ragdoll.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

 

Ok, how about this...

 

Physical Limitation: Takes 1/2D6 COM Drain when take non-trivial damage.

(0 points, special effects)

 

She would recover 5 points (10 COM) every turn (minute?), but right after combat, she wouldn't look pretty. Literally. Normally, this would be a disadvantage, but she could play off being victimized by the villian and it's not like she's losing a combat ability. After losing 20 COM in this fashion, it reflects having taken frightful amounts of apparent damage.

 

She appeared from the combat like the poster child for abused spouses. Her costume torned and bloodied, a large black eye and her lip swollen it was difficult to speak. Her left arm bent in a strange direction, so she held it close to her body with her right. "No questions, please."