dive for cover and mental attacks

[secretID]

So...

1) Does DFC work against mental attacks? The rules don't say otherwise, though they do talk about the attacker getting +2 OCV if the DFC doesn't work.

2) If so, does it only work if the target can dive out of LOS?

 

Thanks in advance.

[ghost-angel]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

I would say... yes, if condition 2 is met.

[prestidigitator]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

Also, Mental Powers can certainly also be bought with Area of Effect, in which case DFC would certainly work.

[Sean Waters]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

I'd say DFC should be caught and shot, but that just wouldn't be painful enough.

[Fearghus]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

I'd say DFC should be caught and shot' date=' but that just wouldn't be painful enough.[/quote']

 

I tend to agree with this line of thinking. The Block and Dodge maneuvers and other such active defenses (defenses that require you to use an action) have never really sat well with me. The way I see it dodging is already wrapped up in your DCV.

 

Dive for cover is a tricky one though. It is the one and only check against AOE attacks. I know I put my players through no end of frustration when I put them up against villains that do AOE attacks. Because with AOE attacks your personal DCV doesn't matter for squat. You could have a DCV of 10,000 and he still just has to hit your hex. Diving for cover allows you to blow an action to attempt to avoid it. The only other option is to suck it up.

[prestidigitator]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

Oh. Hmm. Mind Scan is actually an area of effect power in a sense. The attacker has to define the area he is scanning, and takes penalties based on how many minds are in that area. So if a defender is alerted to the attack and can DFC out of the area he thinks is being scanned, or into an area where he thinks will cause the attacker enough of a penalty to the attack roll.... (Yes, that might take one hell of a DFC, but it's fun to ponder. Heh heh.)

[Bloodstone]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

(Yes' date=' that might take one [i']hell[/i] of a DFC, but it's fun to ponder. Heh heh.)

 

MegaScale DFC FTW!

[gojira]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

MegaScale DFC FTW!

 

Until you dive beyond the planet's atmosphere, and realize you don't have any form of Life Support.

[Sean Waters]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

So...

1) Does DFC work against mental attacks? The rules don't say otherwise, though they do talk about the attacker getting +2 OCV if the DFC doesn't work.

2) If so, does it only work if the target can dive out of LOS?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Technically you can hit with a mental power even if you do not have LOS so long as you are aiming at the right place, so breaking LOS might not be enough.

 

Personally I would not allow DFC to work against mental attacks, and I would not allow dodge or block either. I might be persuaded to come up with mental equivalents of dodge and block, but I would not come up with a mental equivalent of DFC.

 

If I was going to do that sort of thing though, I'd probably, for flavour, come up with different mechanics to differentiate physical and mental combat further. Say - off the top of my head - you can push your EGO (+5 points for 5 END, if you can make an INT roll (INT being speed of thought as much as anything) +1 EGO (and 1 END) for every 1 the roll is made by (max +10). Pushing wouldn't break previously established mental powers (or affect the breakout roll, ever), but would allow you to overcome mental powers for that phase and would be effective in stopping a mental power hitting or taking a given effect level on that phase.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

See I think it all depends on how mental combat is handled in the game. Generally I can't see a Dive for Cover for mental attacks, except in the case of a physical DFC to get out of an Area Affect attack. In most cases a mental Block or Dodge seems reasonable to me (the hero is just concentrating on defense), but DFC doesn't have a intuitive mental analog.

 

That said, I think there are some situations in which it would work, such as instances where mental combat takes place on the astral plane. To the casual bystander it looks like the two mentalists are just staring intently at one another, but on the astral plane it resembles physical combat. The same could be said for a cyberkinesis type of character interacting in a William Gibson-type cyberspace.

[Sean Waters]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

You DFC, physically, and it has no effect at all on your mental combat abilities. If you can DFC, mentally, would it affect your physical abilities? or are we talking about a physical DFC that puts you somewhere you simply can not be hit? Theoretically ANY movement (if the attack is not AoE) moves you from the aim point. Confused...

[secretID]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

or are we talking about a physical DFC that puts you somewhere you simply can not be hit? Theoretically ANY movement (if the attack is not AoE) moves you from the aim point. Confused...

I don't think you necessarily move to somewhere from which you cannot be hit - the DFC interrupts the mental attack and causes a miss, just as it would with a bullet or, for that matter, a laser. There's really no reason to distinguish between a mental attack and laser beams from the eyes. There's no reason to think that the mental attack moves at greater than the speed of light (which in game terms is the same as the speed of a bullet, arrow, or thrown car for these purposes anyway), and neither requires anything more than eye movement for targeting.

 

The problem is just DFC, period. I like this solution:

1) DFC works against AoE as normal;

2) DFC only works against non-AoE to the degree that the move messes up targeting (e.g., by breaking LoS, in most cases);

3) DFC works no differently for mental and physical attacks except as it relates to #2.

 

I'm not about to house rule it, though - I have enough of those. In the end, in this case I went with allowing the DFC to apply, since the rules don't say otherwise. I like to default to that to minimize the griping.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

I don't think you necessarily move to somewhere from which you cannot be hit - the DFC interrupts the mental attack and causes a miss, just as it would with a bullet or, for that matter, a laser. There's really no reason to distinguish between a mental attack and laser beams from the eyes. There's no reason to think that the mental attack moves at greater than the speed of light (which in game terms is the same as the speed of a bullet, arrow, or thrown car for these purposes anyway), and neither requires anything more than eye movement for targeting.

 

The problem is just DFC, period. I like this solution:

1) DFC works against AoE as normal;

2) DFC only works against non-AoE to the degree that the move messes up targeting (e.g., by breaking LoS, in most cases);

3) DFC works no differently for mental and physical attacks except as it relates to #2.

 

I'm not about to house rule it, though - I have enough of those. In the end, in this case I went with allowing the DFC to apply, since the rules don't say otherwise. I like to default to that to minimize the griping.

 

Yeah, what SecretID said so concisely.

 

For AoE attacks, DFC works just because it gets you physically out of the area being affected. Movement powers could work too, but DFC is almost always Abort-type action in my experience.

[ghost-angel]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

It's not the effect on Mental Combat that you're looking at with a DFC.

 

It's breaking LOS.

 

As Sean points out the Mental Attack can still attempt to target you - but now at significant penalties.

 

I see no reason why a DFC to gain physical cover and break LOS would somehow be disallowed. If the Mental Attacker has to "see me", and a I suddenly dive away so they can't see me anymore. . . . . Completely useless if the mentalist is using a different sense from Normal Sight to track me though... kind of hard to gain cover from "Detect Sapient Being" no matter where you're standing.

 

but whatever, YMMV and all that.

[secretID]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

It's not the effect on Mental Combat that you're looking at with a DFC.

Why not? The rules (5e, anyway) don't indicate that DFC is only for physical attacks, and I don't see a good reason for distinguishing, though it does seem intuitively funny. There's also nothing saying or suggesting that DFC only affects mental attacks if it breaks LOS.

 

As Sean points out the Mental Attack can still attempt to target you - but now at significant penalties.

Right, but that's a different issue. DFC causes the attacker to waste the attack action. The semi-targeting wouldn't be an issue until the attacker's next phase.

 

I see no reason why a DFC to gain physical cover and break LOS would somehow be disallowed.

I'm not sure if anyone was saying that; I wasn't. My question was whether it's necessary to break LOS for the DFC to work on a mental attack. I concluded that it's not, under the RAW.

[ghost-angel]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

DFC against a Physical Attack - specifically an Area Of Effect is to get you out of the area.

 

per 5ER p394 Non-Area Attacks it specifies that a character must move far enough to get out of the way of the effect of the attack.

 

Mental Powers have an effective area of "Where the Mentalist can Target" - unlike a sword which is arms reach; or in the case of a gun a GM could assume "where the character was standing instead of where they're trying to land."

 

Given the area of a Mental Power - personally, just moving 1+ inches away isn't going to do the trick IMO.

[secretID]

Re: dive for cover and mental attacks

 

per 5ER p394 Non-Area Attacks it specifies that a character must move far enough to get out of the way of the effect of the attack.

Grr...that line isn't in the unrevised...

 

Sounds like it works like I was saying it should - if the DFC interferes with the ability to hit, then it works against a non-AOE. Thanks.