Armor Destruction

[Snarf]

How would you build a power that destroys armor? Maybe some sort of dispel? What about a power that could make a hole, but not completely destroy an armor?

[GamePhil]

Dispel is the by-the-book example of how to destroy any Focus, including armor (little "a" to differentiate it from the Power, Armor).

 

I personally prefer using Killing Attacks and simply destroying the armor, for reasons that would probably take up too much space to explain.

 

To get the hole-in-armor, the only thing I can think of that is technically correct would be to use a Transform to give the target's armor an Activation Roll, or to lower one it already has. There is an Advantage that allows the Transform to have a partial effect (it may even be called Partial Effect) before it is complete, which would probably be appropriate (it initially gives it a 15- Activation, then when it is completed it drops to 14-, or something like that).

 

I would give a more complete write up, but I'm expecting company any time now.

[Killer Shrike]

To make holes in defenses reason from effect.

 

The effect is they take more damage because thier defenses are reduced in effectiveness.

 

So, buy a Drain vs Armor, DEF, PD/ED, Damage Reduction any 1 at a time, only vs Items (-1), and MPA it with your primary attack power. By default the Drain will apply after the primary attack, which is exactly the effect we are looking for here.

 

Buy the Drain Recovery down to Fade 5/Century with a -1 reduction on the Fade rate advantage "Repair drops Fade to 5/Hour"

 

Thus, as you shoot up opponents you knock "chinks" in thier artifical "armor" which includes cybernetics, dermal plating, flak jackets, power armor, bullet-proof tights, and so on regardless of whether they are actually taken thru a Focus, but not armor skin, true invulnerability, and similar "natural" protection.

 

And it works on vehicles and walls too.

[Snarf]

Thanks for all the great suggestions

 

Drains would work for ordinary armor destruction, but I don't think it would normally make a hole. Wouldn't a drain vs. armor just lower the overall protective value across the whole surface, rather than creating a gap of no protection? The trouble is there's no existing rules for targetting drains and dispels.

 

I can see a how transform could work, since a partial effect could be defined as a hole that keeps growing until the armor is scrap.

 

I think I might just use the killing attack method. Since this was mostly going to be for cutting through starship hulls, I could just treat the hull as a wall and use a huge bomb to blow through it's defense and body.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Snarf

Thanks for all the great suggestions

 

Wouldn't a drain vs. armor just lower the overall protective value across the whole surface, rather than creating a gap of no protection? The trouble is there's no existing rules for targetting drains and dispels. I can see a that a transform could work, since a partial effect could be defined as a hole that keeps growing until the armor is scrap.

 

I think I might just use the killing attack method. Since this was mostly going to be for cutting through starship hulls, I could just treat the hull as a wall and use a huge bomb to blow through it's defense and body.

Um...do you mean to indicate you are using Hit Locations? If yes, it works, draining the protection from a specific Hit Location. If no, you are using Generalized damage it works, lowering thier defenses generally.

 

If what you really want to do is go thru a wall, just buy 1" Tunneling, with a high DEF (like vs DEF 16 or so). Bizzap, nice hole in the wall (bank vault, whatever) -- easy.

[Snarf]

I kind of wanted something like the activation rolls for armor rules. Sometimes it protects but if the attack happens to hit a gap then there's no defense.

 

I love the tunneling idea. I'll research it..

[Snarf]

Plasma Torch: 1" Tunneling through 20 DEF (AP 65); OAF Bulky (-1 1/2), (RC 26).

 

It seems to work kind of fast for something that's supposed to be an ordinary heat-based armor melting weapon. Maybe I could put extra time on it or something. There's also a problem if the user runs into a wall with more than 20 DEF.

 

These are the by the book versions I've been messing with.

By The Book Plasma Torch 1: Dispel Armor 20d6 (AP 60); OAF Bulky (-1 1/2), (RC 24).

 

By The Book Plasma Torch 2: Dispel Armor 5d6, Cumulative (8x, +1) (AP 30); OAF Bulky (-1 1/2), (RC 12).

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Snarf

I kind of wanted something like the activation rolls for armor rules. Sometimes it protects but if the attack happens to hit a gap then there's no defense.

Reason from effect. Giving them an Activation Roll is horribly complicated and expensive, and much less effective than simply draining their defences. The end result is the same -- they take more damage. Alternately, you could even just buy more dice of effect limited to "must follow attack that does BODY" or something similar with an Activation Roll to indicate hitting them where they are vulnerable.

 

You could even buy Find Weakness, only usable after an attack does BODY to opponent.

 

If you want to totally ignore thier defenses then you could take an attack and then buy a NPA Indirect, Activation X- must follow attack that does BODY. I suppose you could apply something like a Reverse Ablative to the Indirect, so that the first use is 8-, and each additional succesful hit ups it to 9-,10-,11- until thier defense is practically gone (15-). The problem with that is Hardened defenses might foil that outright.

 

Basically what Im gettin at is that the SFX is "theyve got holes in thier defenses", but the game effect is that they take more damage in the long run. So any way that inflicts equivalent damage over the long run can be used and explained away by the SFX.

[Snarf]

Reason from effect. Giving them an Activation Roll is horribly complicated and expensive, and much less effective than simply draining their defences. The end result is the same -- they take more damage. Alternately, you could even just buy more dice of effect limited to "must follow attack that does BODY" or something similar with an Activation Roll to indicate hitting them where they are invulnerable.

Normally, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. It would certaintly keep things simpler. Except this time the effect I'm trying for is to literally destroy armor, or possibly destroy walls. Doing greater damage is more like an incidental perk.

 

At any rate, armor drain is more effective in combat than dispel. They'll actually feel something from the partial effect.

 

Plasma Torch: Drain Armor 2d6, Delayed Return Rate (5 per Century, +3 1/4), (AP 65); OAF Bulky (-1 1/2), (RC 26).

 

Buy the Drain Recovery down to Fade 5/Century with a -1 reduction on the Fade rate advantage "Repair drops Fade to 5/Hour"

I don't get this part. How did you figure the value at -1? You applied it to just the fade rate portion of the power?

[VictorVonDoom]

For example if your armor is damaged then it will loose some of his effect (defense...); If it is a powerarmor/battlearmor/bodyarmor then you should check for parts to be damaged like weaponsystems: happens to IM all the time

[GamePhil]

All right, a few possibilities:

 

If you're going with the idea of literally reducing the Activation Roll:

 

3d6 Major Transform: Target to Target Without Armor, Partial Transform (Target's appropriate Defenses will be have an Activation roll 2 steps below what it started at), Limited Target: Target must have some form of "breakable" armor (it is through a Focus, it is an armored coating, and so on) (-1/4)

 

Real Cost: 67 points, Active Cost: 45 points

 

This will strip the defenses from a subject with 10 Body in 2 hits, the first hit leaving a 14- Activation, the second destroying it. Higher Body scores require more hits, but it is a powerful effect, after all, and shouldn't be too easy.

 

If the Powers you want to remove (mainly Armor) are going to be through a Focus, you could simply use Dispel, which destroys the Focus entirely. Now, "where is that Activation Roll", you might ask. The Power I just described is less effective than just using a Dispel, so it is worth a Limitation, so you get, say:

 

20d6 Dispel: Armor Systems (+1/4), Only Reduces The Activation Roll One Level (-1/2)

 

Real Cost: 75 points, Active Cost: 50 points

 

You can Drain the armor, and just call it a wash: yes, there is no Activation applied, but it can be considered to average out to the same effect. (This is a summary of the previously posted idea)

 

You can change the assumption for the world: rather than coming up with the attack, design the defenses so that they work this way. For example, buy the defenses normally for what you want, and then also throw in a bit of Body. Then take the Side Effect Limitation on the defense that, when this extra Body is lost, the Activation for the defenses go down a bit. Then anyone can blow holes in this armor simply by doing enough damage.

 

eg. Powered Armor Suit: Armor +20 PD +20 ED, OIF (-1/2), Side Effect (described above) (-1/4)

and

+10 Body, OIF (-1/2), Does Not Add To Figured Characteristics (-1/2)

 

The Limitation Value for the Side Effect should be reduced if attacks that will get through that admittedly hideous defense are rare. This will not, precisely, work by the rules, because the Body increase won't stop the armor from losing the Armor function. But I thought it was cute.

 

Another possibility along these lines is to buy up the Body score and buy the Armor Linked to it. heh heh heh.

 

Both of these are probably a bit esoteric, though. Sorry. But I'm on a roll.

 

Of course, you can always hand waive it and just say it works the way you want it to, but I generally find something unsatisfying about doing this.

[Snarf]

Maybe I could just put the real weapon limitation on the drain/dispel/killing attack, to represent the fact that although you could utterly destroy a small piece of armor, the most you could realistically do in one destroying hit to a whole starship would be to punch a hole in the defense.

 

I wouldn't want to rework the whole world for this one ability, because it will be pretty rare. Definitely an interesting thought though.

 

The tunneling would probably be the closest fit to this specific special effect, but it doesn't fit in how someone can stroll through a certain amount of DEF but is completely stopped by more. I thought it might make sense to apply cumulative, so that someone could take extra time to move through greater DEF material, but I'm almost certain it's illegal:

 

Plasma Torch: 1" Tunneling through 8 DEF, Cumulative (8x, +1), (AP 58); OIF Bulky (-1 1/2), (RC 23).

 

In other words, the user could move through up to 64 DEF but it would take 8 phases to move 1". Does this power make sense to anyone?

 

Another issue is that this is for a player who is just learning hero, so it might be better to do this as "by the book" as possible.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by Snarf

Maybe I could just put the real weapon limitation on the drain/dispel/killing attack, to represent the fact that although you could utterly destroy a small piece of armor, the most you could realistically do in one destroying hit to a whole starship would be to punch a hole in the defense.

 

I wouldn't want to rework the whole world for this one ability, because it will be pretty rare. Definitely an interesting thought though.

 

Or there's that.

 

That's the trouble with Hero: So many possibilities!

[VictorVonDoom]

remember those acid arrows Hawkeye uses. Maybe acid can ruin the fun for having powered armo(u)r. remember D&D rustmonster : many GM put that little crawly thing in some dungeons to destroy powerfull items . The easiest way to destroy something is steal it from the person and use it in a better form against the user >> "IRON WARS"

Other ways of obtaining this tech (spying) is loosing it (in D1D campaign i met a guy GM who let his people go over a river in a boat and have an accident: all the magical items and weapons were gone

 

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Snarf

I don't get this part. How did you figure the value at -1? You applied it to just the fade rate portion of the power?

 

Some modifiers have mitigating circumstances which reduce the value of the modifer, like Non Selective reduces the value of an AoE by -1/4 (from 1 to 3/4 usually), etc.

 

Its easier than doing a partially limited advantage.

 

In this case, Fade per Century would normally be +3 1/4 and serves to effectively make a Drain permanent within the confines of most games. However in this case someone should logically be able to repair the defense and return it to usefulness (nullifying the Drain in the process). So, it seems reasonable that the Fade per Century should be reduced in its value, keeping the Active Points of the Power under control and more accurately identifying its actual value. -1 seems reasonable to me. Thus the first bracket of Fade rate increases that would still yield an actual advantage is Fade per 6 hours. Just a judgement call; YMMV.

[Fireg0lem]

If you really, really want an activation roll you might consider allowing somebody to buy a Useable As Attack "naked limitation" power. For example

 

Apply 11- Activation roll to up to 30 AP of Armor, Useable as Attack (+1), + probably some more advantages depending on exactly what the SFX is. AP 30 RP 30