Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

[IKerensky]

Hi,

 

the focus limitation tell that the focus have PD and ED equal to Active Points /5.

 

My question is : when is a Focus hit ? I suppose if it is into a Area of Effect or specifically targeted.

 

But what for Power Armor ? did they take hits with the PC ? Did they take hit before/after him ?

 

Thanks.

[sobran]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Generally speaking, a Focus should only be subjected to damage when it is specifically targeted or the PC is hit with an AoE. In the latter case, SFX are worth considering. A flamethrower may damage Foci, while a spell that drains life energy from the living may not... unless it is a living Focus (a mage familiar, for example).

 

As for Power Armor, I would consider letting the Armor that the Power Armor grants the character also apply to the Power Armor Focus itself. Between the Armor and the PD/ED it will get from the multiple powers most PAs have, the Focus defenses should be high enough that you shouldn't have to worry about it. If you're curious, compare the Standard Effect and/or Maximum Damage of a few attacks to the total defense of the Power Armor. In most cases, damaging the Power Armor would be more difficult than killing the squishy human wearing it.

 

In which case, don't bother worrying about damage to Power Armor except in exceptional cases. Checking damage to the PA every time a character got hit would get old really quick.

[tesuji]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

"Any Focus that provides defenses to a character

is automatically hit by any attack that hits

the character based on a successful Attack Roll"

pg 379 hero 6e1

 

Normally an OAF is hit when specifically targetted, taking iirc a -2 to hit against the characters dcv.

 

Normally OIF and such are not subject to attacks except when out of combat etc. GM discretion applies of course, but the reason oif is less than OAF is the "not targettable in combat" usually.

 

But the huge exception is for focus which provide defenses and they get a huge whammy because they are always hit when their defenses apply. They lose powers every time they take body bamage past their defenses.

 

so a powered armor suit with a lot of built in functions can lose one power from any attack that gets body past its defense.

(past just that fosu not the total defenses)

 

in the past there was an option, perhaps house rule, that had the focus lose 5 ap worth instead of "a power" every time it was breached. this helps the glass armor problem where for instance a bullet proof vest 6 rpd 6red dies as soon as it takes one 7 body hit.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

If any Body damage gets through your armour, you don't have armour any more (unless it has other powers too, in which case it might survive the hit). Not a lot of people know that.

[Tom Carman]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

If any Body damage gets through your armour' date=' you don't have armour any more (unless it has other powers too, in which case it might survive the hit). Not a lot of people know that.[/quote']

 

Which is, of course, such a ridiculous situation that no game that I have ever played in, in any genre or era of the rule set, has operated that way.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Which is' date=' of course, such a ridiculous situation that no game that I have ever played in, in any genre or era of the rule set, has operated that way.[/quote']

 

 

Thems the rules. Are you dissing the rules?

 

Gloriana: Well I was fighting Mechanon and he hit me with a Stinger. Hardly felt it to be honest, but all my armour fell off. Terribly embarrassing...

[Tom Carman]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Thems the rules. Are you dissing the rules?

 

Gloriana: Well I was fighting Mechanon and he hit me with a Stinger. Hardly felt it to be honest, but all my armour fell off. Terribly embarrassing...

 

"The GM may prevent absurdities."

[ghost-angel]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

I'll be ignoring that one with great gusto. Makes moderate sense if your Defense is Powered ARmor. Makes no sense if your Defense is a small magic charm I keep in my pocket. . .

 

If I want my armor to start degrading I'll add Ablative or something.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

I'd guess most defensive foci are built as Durable (double PD/ED) or Unbreakable. I'd think you could also consider an object used as a focus as Breakable for some powers and Unbreakable for others without much headache. It would also stand to reason that you could provide some of the drawbacks of a Breakable focus to an Unbreakable one if it has a Real Armor Limitation or something.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

My cunning purpose in pointing that one out is that it is an absurd rule, fullstop.

 

The inexplicably continued existence of 'Penetrating' makes it doubly so. The existence of Unbreakable foci for no additional cost make it triply so.

[tesuji]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

the catch with unbreakable is while it doesn't go away routinely from damage when it does go away its gone for a long time.

 

breakable = easily lost but quickly replaced

unbreakable = rarely lost but hard to replace

 

so to me those are reasonable trade offs tho imx players hate having unbreakable foci gone for "a long time" so i tend to discourage them.

 

imo there has been a problem with this since 4e at least, at least thats when i started griping, and repeated cries of "well the gm can ignore ir" leads to just what we have now... the rule still in place unchanged decades later.

 

so lets fix the damn thing and see if we can get it into 7e

 

first thing first...

 

the rule which says the focus is hit by any attack that hits the defense... THATS NOT A BREAKABILITY rule but is actually an ACCESSIBILITY rule.

 

INACCESSIBLE - not touched in combat

ACCESSIBLE - can be targetted at -2 in combat

UNAVOIDABLE - is hit automatically by any attacks blah blah

 

UNAVOIDABLE should be an additional +1/2 lim at least.

 

Breakability

 

I think the default for breakability should be either:

Lose 5 ap per attack that gets past body def with additional bonus if you want 10 ap per or 20 ap per

 

or

 

Activation rolls...

 

first attack that gets thru causes activation roll 15- for any powers.

next attack drops it to 14-

then 13-

etc.

[Nevenall]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

"Any Focus that provides defenses to a character

is automatically hit by any attack that hits

the character based on a successful Attack Roll"

pg 379 hero 6e1

 

Just for the record, the rest of that paragraph says "To speed game play, and avoid breaking Foci on a regular basis, GMs may choose to ignore this rule. In such a case, Foci are only hit and damaged by attacks that specifcally target them."

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Unbreakable: it goes away for a long time. Riiiiight....realistically that isn't going to happen though, except, maybe, in downtime, or a solo campaign, so it is meaningless as an additional limitation balancing the unbreakability.

 

As for the accessibility/damage conundrum, so what? I aim for the armour you are wearing and destroy it with my 1Kpip Penetrating attack. Now you're naked.

 

Silliness. We seriously need to look at what 'focus' actually does. We've lived with it for so long we assume it is fine because we accomodate its foibles, but it is evil, I tell you, EVIL!

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

There used to be a rule that an Accessible Focus was automatically outside of any DEF it didn't provide. Does anyone know if that rule is still in effect?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

There used to be a rule that an Accessible Focus was automatically outside of any DEF it didn't provide. Does anyone know if that rule is still in effect?

 

Yes

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Does anyone know if that rule is still in effect?

 

Yes

 

Yes someone knows, or yes you know, or yes it is?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Yes someone knows' date=' or yes you know, or yes it is? [/quote']

 

Yes

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Given that we have Obvious, Inobvious, and Invisible for Powers, why don't we remove that part from Focus entirely? We don't need to explain those parts twice, and an Obvious Power bought through a Focus should give us an Obvious Focus. An Invisible Power bought through a Focus is Invisible, unless you buy it Inobvious or Obvious. (In fact, I think I'm going to house rule it from here on out. Why didn't we have this discussion a year ago? )

 

What that leaves us with is Accessible or Inaccessible. I'm okay with an additional modifier, though I'm not sure what to call it. Tesuji's suggestion of Unavoidable is good, but I'd something that can be applied to other Powers besides defenses. For instance, a magical stick (Accessible) that magically makes your right hand as hard as a brick (+2d6 HA) versus an ordinary stick (Accessible) that you bash someone with (+2d6 HA). Or some kind of weird blaster that refuels from dirt, rocks, junk, etc. but only holds enough for one shot (Blast, 1 Recoverable Charge) versus Captain America's shield (Blast, 1 Recoverable Charge) that must be thrown.

 

The existence of armor that is difficult to remove (Inaccessible) but otherwise acts in this way (is damaged during use) means that that last quality is not specific to Accessible Foci.

[Ice9]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Not sure unifying focus and power obviousness makes sense. I can easily think of an inobvious focus (amulet), which creates an obvious effect (blazing aura of fire). And while it's less common, there's also the obvious focus (neutron rifle) which creates an invisible effect (neutron beam) - primarily useful for stealthy characters.

 

Adding an "Unavoidable" category sounds like a good idea. I presume an Unavoidable Focus for an attack power would take damage from Damage Shields? I'm not sure of the limitation value, however. A sword (OAUF) would only occasionally be worse than a staff-of-fist-hardening (OAF) - unless you're facing someone with a powerful damage shield, there's no difference. On the other hand, armor which takes damage from every attack (OIUF) is much worse than a protection amulet (OIF) - maybe as much as -1 worse, depending on how much DEF is has.

 

 

For that reason, maybe it should be two separate limitations:

Direct Attack (-1/4?) - Focus of attack power takes damage from defender's damage shield, or any damaging areas in its path (throwing something through a wall of fire, for instance).

Unavoidable (-1?) - Whenever character is physically attacked, focus is also attacked. NOTE: Not just for defense powers, could also apply to an invisibility cloak or diving suit.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Not sure unifying focus and power obviousness makes sense. I can easily think of an inobvious focus (amulet)' date=' which creates an obvious effect (blazing aura of fire).[/quote']

 

Unpossible. From the book:

 

If a Focus is Obvious, it’s clear to anyone looking at the character that the power comes from the Focus — no PER Roll is necessary.

 

That's from 6E, but the wording is identical in 5ER. (And 4E -- and 3E, except in the latter two they spell out Perception.)

 

6E1 126 has a great discussion on the perceivability of Powers. Now that I think about it, it makes way too much sense to do away with Obvious/Inobvious classifications on Foci, especially when you get into questions like "What happens if I buy an Obvious Power with an Inobvious Focus?" IMO, it would be best all around to assume that, if you buy a Power on a Focus, the cost of the Limitation should be based on how Accessible it is, but that by default it is as Obvious as the original Power, and to change that you just buy Invisible Power Effects or Visible. I think it would simplify things greatly, and we wouldn't lose anything.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

I'll be ignoring that one with great gusto. Makes moderate sense if your Defense is Powered ARmor. Makes no sense if your Defense is a small magic charm I keep in my pocket. . .

 

If I want my armor to start degrading I'll add Ablative or something.

 

I'm with you.

 

At first I thought "well, that should effectively end the 'is Iron Man OIF or "Only in Hero ID?' debate," and I was totally cool with it.

 

Then I thought about a supers character from a fellow player who has a Force Field generated from a belt-mounted gizmo,

 

and a Fantasy Character who has an FF generated by an enchanted stone in her necklace.

 

Nope; this rule isn't going to work for us, and will be ignored with extreme prejudice, I think.

[phookz]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Unpossible. From the book:

 

The section you quote doesn't apply to his example. His example was for an inobvious focus and an obvious effect. Your quote was for an obvious focus.

 

I could imagine a situation where a character has an Obvious focus with an Inobvious effect: Magic wand with a force field. It's clear the wand is there, and maybe even doing other obvious effects, but the force field is not obvious, it's hidden. This wouldn't work if the focus obviousness derived from the force field.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

The section you quote doesn't apply to his example. His example was for an inobvious focus and an obvious effect. Your quote was for an obvious focus.

 

I could imagine a situation where a character has an Obvious focus with an Inobvious effect: Magic wand with a force field. It's clear the wand is there, and maybe even doing other obvious effects, but the force field is not obvious, it's hidden. This wouldn't work if the focus obviousness derived from the force field.

 

Again, not possible. Obvious Focus means it's obvious the Power comes from the Focus. (The term Obvious applies to the Power, not the Focus.) In your example, the force field with the Inobvious effect would be bought IAF (or IIF), even though other Powers might use the same Focus as an OAF (or OIF).

[phookz]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

Again' date=' not possible. Obvious Focus means it's obvious the Power comes from the Focus. (The term Obvious applies to the [i']Power[/i], not the Focus.) In your example, the force field with the Inobvious effect would be bought IAF (or IIF), even though other Powers might use the same Focus as an OAF (or OIF).

 

That may be true, but I'm not convinced. Maybe the wand glows, so it's clear that it's doing something, but what that something is is not obvious.

 

The inverse is certainly possible, but wouldn't fit the model you're proposing. As Ice9 suggested, an inobvious amulet that created an obvious effect. Take it a step further, a magic amulet or ring that is not obvious, but allows the character to shoot lasers (friggin' lasers, man) from their eyes. The power is obvious, the focus is not.

[Jhamin]

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor

 

I'm with you.

 

At first I thought "well, that should effectively end the 'is Iron Man OIF or "Only in Hero ID?' debate," and I was totally cool with it.

 

Then I thought about a supers character from a fellow player who has a Force Field generated from a belt-mounted gizmo,

 

and a Fantasy Character who has an FF generated by an enchanted stone in her necklace.

 

Nope; this rule isn't going to work for us, and will be ignored with extreme prejudice, I think.

 

....Or the Fantasy Hero Knight that has actually paid points for his plate mail for some reason. One crossbow bolt later & his armor no longer protects him from *anything*

 

I don't know that we need to fix this. Or more precisely, I question if any fix we come up with will justify the increase in rules complication. As far as I can tell this is a debate of rules minutia that will require a fix that is likely to get in the way of most players that use the Focus rules quite happily now & never care about the chink in the purity of Hero Logic.

 

If we have all used the "GM can ignore it" happily for decades, it doesn't generate play issues, and is *isn't* a constant lightning rod of debate, then does it really need fixing?