Sooo... Immunity to magic

[feralucce]

I am building the Flesh golem from a specific book of a specific gaming system with an open liscense...

 

it is immune to magic... so... and I am stumped... *I know... BIG SURPRISE* sooo... help me?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

I am building the Flesh golem from a specific book of a specific gaming system with an open liscense...

 

it is immune to magic... so... and I am stumped... *I know... BIG SURPRISE* sooo... help me?

 

Immunity or absolute defense in HERO only exists when a GM houserules it.

 

The typical method for costing the ability is to add cost of 3/4 Damage Reduction to 1/4 DR to get 100 % DR vs. a particular sfx.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Desolid, only vs Magic (-1 or so).

 

Effectively, the Flesh Golem doesn't exist as far as magic is concerned.

[Outsider]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

The problem with that method is that the flesh golem then has to buy all of his other powers "effects solid world" (+2)

 

My house rule for 100% Damage Reduction was to continue the chart

15 points = 25%

30 points = 50%

60 points = 75%

120 points = 100%

 

Then you throw a limitation on the 120 point power depending on how common the thing you're immune to is. depending on how common magic is, and how extensively you apply the immunity, I'd call it a -1 to -2. So 40 to 60 points.

[Gadodel]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Desolid, only vs Magic (-1 or so).

 

Effectively, the Flesh Golem doesn't exist as far as magic is concerned.

Very interesting build.

[GAZZA]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

There's another solution - you come at it from the other direction.

 

That is, all magic in your world has the limitation "Does not affect golems". This can be a -0 limitation assuming golems are reasonably rare.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

What you have to understand about this problem is that you are building a character for a world in which 'immunity to magic' exists.

 

You can certainly use the desolid approach, and the 'don't need to worry about the +2 on all your attack powers' is now an official handwave (not one I like, but htere you go) - immunity is suggested as going this way in the book - but it doesn't quite do what you want - you are still vulnerable to magic that is bought with the 'Affects Desolid'.

 

The extended damage reduction table is also a good approach, but I don't think that the table extends like that: I'd suggest that for 120 points you got 87.5% damage reduction.

 

Still, that's up to you.

 

The other way to do it, and for 120 points you can get most of the way there, is to buy 50/50 armour plus 25 power defence, 30 mental defence, 10 points Lack of Weakness, 15 points of flash defence...LS: poison, all 'only v magic -1' and that will also cost you 120 points.

 

I come back to my intial point though - you can't build a specific campaign in a generic world. You are building a golem in a world where golems can be immune to magic, so you need to design the world too. Specifically you need to have a camapaign rule that all magic has a -0 limitation 'No effect on target with LS: Magic'. Then you introduce a new category of Life Support: Magic for 10 points, only let golems buy it, and you are golden. You could even have different levels of it, for different creatures:

 

1 point: Earcth magic

1 point: Water magic

1 point: Fire magic

1 point: Air magic

1 point: Each school of magic

4 points: Mind affecting magics

2 points: Death magic

6 points: Physical damage from magic

 

Bear in mind you are not integrating Hero and OGL (at least I assume you are not) so these new abilities are not going to be taken by players. I know that there are those who do not favour this approach (I'm looking at YOU, Halmades), but I think it is justified when you are dealing with a whole new game background.

 

You can use a similar approach to make Efreet immune to fire, and Demons immune to...whatever demons are immune to.

 

To a large extent I already do this in 'normal' Hero - with poisons and diseases - I always purchase poisons so that they don't work if the target has 'LS (relevant) poison'. I don;t carry this right through - LS Fire does not make you immune to fire....but if it cost mroe it might.

 

In fact, here's a thought....maybe LS ought o be looked at again, especially in the light of The Ultimate Blaster, and more expensive versions of some of the existing LS should be created, so LS Heat and fire could look like this:

 

LS Fire, 1 point allows you to ignore the effects of 1 temperature level higher than your normal environmental temperature, and each extra point DOUBLES the temperature level you can withstand:

 

1 point: 1 TL

2 points: 2 TLs

3 points: 4 TLs...

10 points: 512 TLs (1500 to 2500 degrees Celsius)

 

You would then assume that all heat attacks (fire blast etc) had a temperature of less than 2500 Celcius (not unreasonable - Titanium melts at 1660 Celsius) and that 10 points gives you immunity to fire attacks - unless they are bought with an 'ultrahot' advantage. We can work that out in another thread if anyone likes the idea....

[GAZZA]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

And for what it's worth: as a long time player of "holes and scaly lizards" 3rd edition, we found that the global immunities of the aforesaid game were problematic, especially at high levels (where elemental magic becomes virtually useless) - even in "basements and flying reptiles" we were wont to use house rules that changed this to things like "Fire Resistance 100" instead of "Fire Immunity"; "Spell Resistance 50" instead of "Immune to Magic", and so on.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Damage Reduction is a way to do it, Desolid is a way to do it - though you have to handwave the residual requirement of the user to have affect solid world on their strength and other attacks for it to be cost effective.

 

Another way is to create a perk of immune to magic - costed at whatever you think you want PCs to consider the power at in your world - and then all spellcasters buy their powers with not versus Magic Immunity (-1/4).

 

If you, as a GM, want absolutes in your game then you can do that in the creation of the world. You set up the fundamental precepts of the world and ensure everything else is built accordingly.

 

Magic especially so.

 

You should think hard about the things you want with respect to magic. Do you want anti-magic areas or spells? Do you want creatures immune to fire magic etc? All of that can be built into the setting and all magic be subject to those limitations rather than trying to individually trying to buy classes of creatures particular powers...

 

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

If you buy it with LS (or a perk, as Doc sugegsts) then you could tie in the cost to the level of immunity: 1 point for immunity to LVL 1 Arcane, 1 point for LVL 1 Clerical, etc, so full magic immunity would cost 18 points (LVL 9 Arcane + Divine), or more if you are using Epic Characters.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

In my FH game, I do the following. I use magic as a type of defense - power, ego PD, ED but only vs magic. This is a +0 Advantage.

Then I buy 10 or 15 pts magic armor, and 3/4 r Damage reduction.

 

While not complete and total immunity, an extra 15 D plus 3/4 is going to stop just about any spell cold. A maxed out 6d6 killing attack (all sixes on body and stun mult) is still only going to do stun in the 30s. Not bad for a maxed out 90 pt power. Any normal attack (say an average 4d kill) will do something like 5 stun. Raise the base D, or Magic D and you have effective invlunerabilty.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

In my FH game, I do the following. I use magic as a type of defense - power, ego PD, ED but only vs magic. This is a +0 Advantage.

Then I buy 10 or 15 pts magic armor, and 3/4 r Damage reduction.

 

While not complete and total immunity, an extra 15 D plus 3/4 is going to stop just about any spell cold. A maxed out 6d6 killing attack (all sixes on body and stun mult) is still only going to do stun in the 30s. Not bad for a maxed out 90 pt power. Any normal attack (say an average 4d kill) will do something like 5 stun. Raise the base D, or Magic D and you have effective invlunerabilty.

 

This works well for most damage causing powers, but Hero is so very flexible in the way it can cause damage and other effects that 'true' magic immunity built through defences is astonishingly hard to do, or at least astonishingly expensive to do.

 

Mind you, in a genre game, I assume that people are not deliberately building characters to circumvent the intention, so it should all work out well.

[Rapier]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

The problem with that method is that the flesh golem then has to buy all of his other powers "effects solid world" (+2)

 

Now, I could be wrong. But I was under the rather strong impression that a Desol, limited in this fashion, did not require Affects Physical World.

 

I can't find anything in the FAQ, nor in a couple of the published material that I've checked.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Now, I could be wrong. But I was under the rather strong impression that a Desol, limited in this fashion, did not require Affects Physical World.

 

I can't find anything in the FAQ, nor in a couple of the published material that I've checked.

 

The optional exemption from buying Affects Physical World in this case is in the rulebook description for Desolidification itself, under the Limitation, Only To Protect Against Limited Type Of Attack (FREd pp. 99/5ER p. 149), which describes using Desolid for immunity.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

You can certainly use the desolid approach' date=' and the 'don't need to worry about the +2 on all your attack powers' is now an official handwave (not one I like, but htere you go) - immunity is suggested as going this way in the book - but it doesn't quite do what you want - you are still vulnerable to magic that is bought with the 'Affects Desolid'.[/quote']

 

I figure that if you can exempt your powers from buying Affects Physical World when using this type of Desolidification, it would also be reasonable to exempt your Desolid character from being affected by Powers bought with Affects Desolidified. After all, there would still be plenty of attack forms that can hurt the character.

[feralucce]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

I know immunities are GM approval... *wink* that is why I am asking... I am the GM...

 

all kinds of things to consider... that is why I didn't propose any ideas... I wanted to see what you guys would come up with... *girns*

 

 

Though... not ALL golems are immune, just the flesh golem... sooo... I wasn't gonna limit magics, but advantage this specific critter...

 

I have thought, recently about a perk, talent, etc... I dunno yet...

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

I posted some time ago about how to do invulnerability and immunity.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

My house rule for 100% Damage Reduction was to continue the chart

15 points = 25%

30 points = 50%

60 points = 75%

120 points = 100%

 

Then you throw a limitation on the 120 point power depending on how common the thing you're immune to is. depending on how common magic is, and how extensively you apply the immunity, I'd call it a -1 to -2. So 40 to 60 points.

This is the method I use as well. You don't have to worry about whether you need to buy Affects Solid World, and you're still immune to powers with Affects Desolid on them.

 

The extended damage reduction table is also a good approach' date=' but I don't think that the table extends like that: I'd suggest that for 120 points you got 87.5% damage reduction.[/quote']

If the table extended that way, then 15 points would get you 0% Reduction. The above extention is "double the cost for each additional 25% reduction."

 

And while we're on the subject, I also like to allow

66.667% DR (2/3) for 45 points

83.333% DR (5/6) for 75 points

90% DR (9/10) for 90 points and

95% DR (19/20) for 105 points.

 

Although above the 75% level, it's reserved for NPCs, or must have a specific SFX limitation, or both.

[Rapier]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

The optional exemption from buying Affects Physical World in this case is in the rulebook description for Desolidification itself' date=' under the Limitation, [i']Only To Protect Against Limited Type Of Attack[/i] (FREd pp. 99/5ER p. 149), which describes using Desolid for immunity.

 

LOL! Of course, I was looking for published character examples and neglected to check the RULEBOOK! DOH!

[Manic Typist]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

I figure that if you can exempt your powers from buying Affects Physical World when using this type of Desolidification' date=' it would also be reasonable to exempt your Desolid character from being affected by Powers bought with [i']Affects Desolidified[/i]. After all, there would still be plenty of attack forms that can hurt the character.

 

Wait, I'm sorry, can you run that by me again?

[Sketchpad]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Why not just create a new power called Immunity and model it after Life Support? I know in my campaign, I've taken the idea from M&M and it fits fairly seemless into the game with a slight multiple.

[The Monster]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Here's a warped idea: how about a big Suppress (all magic) effect, limited to self only, always on, etc.? You could even make it "no range" instead of self only, so that if you're Grabbed by the critter, you lose the benefit of magic? Not 3.5 canon, sure, but could be amusing...

[GAZZA]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Though... not ALL golems are immune' date=' just the flesh golem... sooo... I wasn't gonna limit magics, but advantage this specific critter...[/quote']

Err, if you're converting "Underground And Flying Firebreathers", all golems are immune to magic (it's a defining characteristic; even the epic variants and colossi are immune), with of course exceptions for specific spells.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

Here's a warped idea: how about a big Suppress (all magic) effect' date=' limited to self only, always on, etc.? You could even make it "no range" instead of self only, so that if you're Grabbed by the critter, you lose the benefit of magic? Not 3.5 canon, sure, but could be amusing...[/quote']

 

That's more of less how I used to do it.

IIRC, an always on Suppress vs magic damage sheild was the model I ended up using.

[feralucce]

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

 

well... *lol* after reviwing all the MMs... you are right... but I, HONESTLY disagree with that... Other sources do not state that... I am going to make it a flesh golem only thing... cause that makes golems all too powerfuk