Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

[Sean Waters]

Can I just apologise for my excessive verbosity, in advance? I’ve just had a bath (you’ll be relieved to hear) and I thought I’d read the ‘Spacer’s Toolkit’ while I ablute. It’s my life.

Anyway, the very first item got me thinking, and you all know by now that is never a good thing. I know, I KNOW, that a number of you are going to be sub-vocalising ‘sfx, for pity’s sakes, haven’t you GOT it yet?’ in an almost prescient manner even now, but bear with me.

The first item is an electric whip. It is built as a limited range EB, real weapon. So, here’s me thinking:

“What about rubber armour?” I was in the bath, OK? I was probably thinking about diving suits. Probably.

You see, it makes a difference. Well, I assume it does. If you are wearing metal armour with an ED of 5, or plastic armour with an ED of 5, is it going to have the same effect? To be honest I don’t actually know BUT I’d assume that the armour that conducts electricity is not going to be overly useful as protection.

That’s the ‘problem’ with a generic system – the build for an electric whip is going to look a bit complicated and there will always be argument over the various power modifier values, or even whether we should apply them to the attack or the defence. Without some sort of structure, we are all doing our own thing here.

Now you can argue that that sfx make the difference here, or that the ‘real weapon’ limitation makes all the difference, or that it should have been built as a NND or AVLD or something. Who knows?

It particularly becomes a problem (well, in my strange little world) when, for instance you DO build a NND that doesn’t work against insulators, how do you know if the person you hit is wearing an insulator? How do you know if one superhero’s costume insulates and another superhero’s doesn’t? Do you rely on description? That’s just asking for it tough, isn’t it?

There you have it though: we have no consensus reality. Maybe consensus reality is a tall order for a single thread, but here’s a thought: a mechanism exists in Hero – pretty much – to allow us to take into consideration stuff like insulators; it’s just that we do not use it.

I’m talking Life Support.

It is time we explored the envelope.

LS: Electricity

1 point: you do not take direct damage from electrical sources

2 points: you do not take any effect from electrical sources

OK?

If that was all I was on about then I should probably have stopped long ago, but there is a bit more general applicability. Running the same basic idea, we could apply it to anything: vibration, negative energy, orgones. Whatever.

Then, right, THEN, you’ve got two interesting mechanisms: an easily defined NND defence OR an interesting limitation for attacks: 8d6 EB, half damage against insulators (1pt LS), 0 damage against perfect insulators (2 pt LS): -1/4, maybe -1/2. Who knows? Not I. I’m just, you know, suggesting a starting point.

[tesuji]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Well perhaps life support should be broken down into a generic power called "immunity" with a point cost determined for a give3n sfx and frequency...

 

1 pt for partiqal immunity

3 pts for total immunity

 

1 pt for rarely a factor

3 pts for occasionally a factor

5 pts for common

 

Immunity to "lack of sleep" 3 for total and 3 for occasional makes it 6 cp for never having to sleep.

 

immunity to age - 3 for total and 1 for rarely a factor

 

sure the numbers need tweaking but most of the current costs can fit in with a little tweaking.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Well, the only problem I would have with LS: Electricity is that it's rarely an ambient environmental phenomenon for people to deal with, unlike heat, cold, radiation, noxious fumes, diseases, unbreathable fluids, and so on. Unless you spend a lot of time around power lines, and/or many of the electrical attacks in your game are built as NND, it's not going to come up as a practical defense very often, beyond what can be adjudicated through SFX.

 

Yes, I know that most poisons/toxins in HERO are built to be defended against by the appropriate LS: Immunity. However, IMO if there was ever a case for an energy attack to do the whole package of Stun, Body, and Knockback, and be defended against by basic Energy Defense, it could be made for electicity.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Well perhaps life support should be broken down into a generic power called "immunity" with a point cost determined for a give3n sfx and frequency...

 

1 pt for partiqal immunity

3 pts for total immunity

 

1 pt for rarely a factor

3 pts for occasionally a factor

5 pts for common

 

Immunity to "lack of sleep" 3 for total and 3 for occasional makes it 6 cp for never having to sleep.

 

immunity to age - 3 for total and 1 for rarely a factor

 

sure the numbers need tweaking but most of the current costs can fit in with a little tweaking.

 

I like that

[ghost-angel]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

RE: Electricity Interaction - as with all SFX Interactions, you can either try and prepare for every known contingency in existence and go insane; use Chapter 2 of the Ultimate Energy Projector; or Wing It.

 

LS: Electricity - like LS: Heat I'm assuming won't protect you from damage attacks that aren't specifically blocked by it via NND.

 

I personally don't actually see any issues with adding Life Support for all the defined Environmental Effects described in Chapter 3 p444-446.

We have most of them already (Radiation, Heat, Cold). Add Electricity to round it out. It makes sense.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Well, the only problem I would have with LS: Electricity is that it's rarely an ambient environmental phenomenon for people to deal with, unlike heat, cold, radiation, noxious fumes, diseases, unbreathable fluids, and so on. Unless you spend a lot of time around power lines, and/or many of the electrical attacks in your game are built as NND, it's not going to come up as a practical defense very often, beyond what can be adjudicated through SFX.

 

Yes, I know that most poisons/toxins in HERO are built to be defended against by the appropriate LS: Immunity. However, IMO if there was ever a case for an energy attack to do the whole package of Stun, Body, and Knockback, and be defended against by basic Energy Defense, it could be made for electicity.

 

Electricity is at least as common as cold damage, moreso in modern games, and probably far more common than food or sleep deprivation.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Electricity is at least as common as cold damage' date=' moreso in modern games, and probably far more common than food or sleep deprivation.[/quote']

 

Um, how often do you walk on electrified street pavement?

 

For supers ripping up lamp posts, I could see the argument; for other settings, not so much.

 

But of course YMMV.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

Um, how often do you walk on electrified street pavement?

 

For supers ripping up lamp posts, I could see the argument; for other settings, not so much.

 

Well, LS is not that often used outside supers games anyway, or games where magic is an issue.

 

Anyway, the idea is to enable definition: it doesn't matter that much if it deos not come up much in Modern Hero: people won't buy it much in Modern Hero.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

I won't go so far as to say it would be a common construct.

 

But if Hero is supposed to provide lots of options - why not add it? I could think of lots of uses for it, in and out of Supers games.

[Markdoc]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

You see' date=' it makes a difference. Well, I assume it does. If you are wearing metal armour with an ED of 5, or plastic armour with an ED of 5, is it going to have the same effect? To be honest I don’t actually know BUT I’d assume that the armour that conducts electricity is not going to be overly useful as protection.[/quote']

 

I hate to put some physics out there, but armour that conducts would be most excellent indeed against electrical attacks (as long as you were grounded) since the electrical attack would ground through the armour instead of through you.

 

It's the reason that tall buildings have lightning rods. If the lightning hits the building and is grounded through it, then it's the building that is damaged as the charge races through it burning and melthing stuff on the way. If it has a lightning rod, the charge grounds rapidly and with much much less transmission of energy (ie: burning) through the conductor.

 

Having said that, if a character wanted LS: electricity to be immune to environmentally-derived electrical attacks, I'd be happy with that.

 

cheers, Mark

[Sean Waters]

Re: Worrying unnecessarily (as usual)

 

I hate to put some physics out there, but armour that conducts would be most excellent indeed against electrical attacks (as long as you were grounded) since the electrical attack would ground through the armour instead of through you.

 

It's the reason that tall buildings have lightning rods. If the lightning hits the building and is grounded through it, then it's the building that is damaged as the charge races through it burning and melthing stuff on the way. If it has a lightning rod, the charge grounds rapidly and with much much less transmission of energy (ie: burning) through the conductor.

 

Having said that, if a character wanted LS: electricity to be immune to environmentally-derived electrical attacks, I'd be happy with that.

 

cheers, Mark

 

I did acknowledge that I did not know the actual effect, but if you have a metal breastplate on, but it isn't plugged into the ground, you might well avoid the heart attack but wind up with crispy-fried legs (or more likely ONE crispy fried leg). I also have no real idea how rubber armour would work, but I assume that if the rubber is thick enough, you simply couldn't be affected by the attack. The point I am stabbing for (should that be 'with'?) is more generic.

 

Hero does assume that all energy is homogenous though: that 8ED armour stops 8 points of electrical, heat or cold damage equally. You could build more complicated armour to show that, whatever the effect on electricity, metal armour is not that great against cold damage, but the problem is twofold. First of all the system defines a NND taser as not working against 'resistant ED or insulators', and whilst we can define resistant ED in game, we can not define insulators at present AND no matter how cunningly you define what your armour works against and in what proportion, the choice of energy types is really unlimited. For the vast majority of games we simply do not need the amount of choice we have.