I am confused by the language concerning Shrinking and Perception in 5ER. I know the book says that Shrinking is not a limited form of invisibility, but it does affect PER. In this regard, it's a limited form of Change Environment.
So how does a character with 5 levels of Shrinking not hide, except by whacking away at you? As a quick test of Shrinking, I took a film canister (remember film?) and placed it 20m away in bright sunlight. With a hi-contrast background, it was possible to pick out as an indistinct black blob. A human at the same distance still appeared to be a human. At 40m, the human still looked human, but the cannister was pretty hard to spot, and I knew where it was. Since I can still make out baseball players as human from the nosebleed seats at Camden Yards, but not the splat of tobacco juice next to the pitcher, I'm assuming that at 200m the human would still be human, but the cannister would fade into the background.
I'm looking for intent here. What did you (plural) envisage when you wrote up Shrinking? Does it have a human sized fringe that needs to be gotten rid of with IPE? Is there just a qualitative difference between 1 level and 10? Are Growth and Shrinking visible by three sense groups regardless of their PER modifiers? Does a successful Stealth or Concealment roll somehow negate the 'fringe' of visibility around a Shrunken character?
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Jeghis
I am confused by the language concerning Shrinking and Perception in 5ER. I know the book says that Shrinking is not a limited form of invisibility, but it does affect PER. In this regard, it's a limited form of Change Environment.
So how does a character with 5 levels of Shrinking not hide, except by whacking away at you? As a quick test of Shrinking, I took a film canister (remember film?) and placed it 20m away in bright sunlight. With a hi-contrast background, it was possible to pick out as an indistinct black blob. A human at the same distance still appeared to be a human. At 40m, the human still looked human, but the cannister was pretty hard to spot, and I knew where it was. Since I can still make out baseball players as human from the nosebleed seats at Camden Yards, but not the splat of tobacco juice next to the pitcher, I'm assuming that at 200m the human would still be human, but the cannister would fade into the background.
I'm looking for intent here. What did you (plural) envisage when you wrote up Shrinking? Does it have a human sized fringe that needs to be gotten rid of with IPE? Is there just a qualitative difference between 1 level and 10? Are Growth and Shrinking visible by three sense groups regardless of their PER modifiers? Does a successful Stealth or Concealment roll somehow negate the 'fringe' of visibility around a Shrunken character?
Munchkins everywhere want to know. Thanks.
chester
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