Phaser Disintegration in 6E

[ImperialOne]

How would modeling the disintegration effects of a Star Trek phaser be done in 6E? Yes, its a RKA with an AVLD/NND (force fields). However, in 6E, NND is all or nothing... how does one recreate the effects of ablation to the strength of a forcefield/screen (i.e. shields weaken in Star Trek and eventually drop; though they do not "leak" per se at least for Body type damage),

 

Any creative discussion leading to consensus would be welcomed.

[Panpiper]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

A 'shield' in Star Trek is actually a force 'wall', in that it has resistance and body. A weakening shield is a shield that is loosing body.

 

As for how a phaser disintegrates, this is how I would write it up:

 

Cost Power

33 Phaser: Multipower, 90-point reserve, all slots 16 Charges (-0) (90 Active Points); all slots OAF (-1), Variable Limitations (requires -1 worth of Limitations; -1/2), No Knockback (-1/4)

3f 1) Does no body unless it kills the target with one shot, Special effect: Disintegration. -1: Killing Attack - Ranged 6d6 (90 Active Points); OAF (-1), Variable Limitations (requires -1 worth of Limitations; -1/2), No Knockback (-1/4)

3f 2) "Phasers on Stun" - Killing attack does no body. -1: Killing Attack - Ranged 6d6 (90 Active Points); OAF (-1), Variable Limitations (requires -1 worth of Limitations; -1/2), No Knockback (-1/4)

Powers Cost: 39

 

I uploaded it as a package deal: http://www.herogames.com/hdPackageDeals.htm?genre=Star+Hero&ruleset=

 

Look for "Phaser"

[torchwolf]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Why not build the force field with the Ablative Limitation? That would seem to simulate the effect best.

In that case, NND might not be best for the phaser, just a big RKA (20-25 DC for a hand-held phaser), Does Not Cause Damage Through Active Force Fields (-1/4 to -1/2).

 

If a phaser on disintegration should be NND, another approach is required though.

 

 

EDIT: Panpiper's solution (posted while I wrote this) might be better, and would use Barrier for the 'force shield' or 'force wall', but would probably have the Mobile Adder (+5).

[Beast]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I'm not sure NND is needed as in ST nobody wore any type of armor execpt in 1 movie

[ImperialOne]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I think the point of phasers set at the highest levels (disintegrate) were meant to overcome any armor except for force fields. And in the case of canon, such as it is in Star Trek, force fields can be degraded and brought down after a period of time...

 

Hence the belief in NND but the need to have some sort of rule to ablate/degrade barrier/forcefield.

[Beast]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

it should be using boostable charges to get more damage out of it(as all the info I have seen on phasers is the more powerful the bolt the more energy it used

having to have a FF/Barrier degrade vs an NND is silly

in 6th you could just have a level of negation to exceed the DCs of the Phaser's DC's

of course more powerful phasers can over come the negation

the negation could have a limitation of not working if exceeded

in this manner a mk2 phaser just needs to be say 3 DCs more than a mk1 phaser and still kill without having to have the mk 2 having twice the DC's of a mk 1

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I think the point of phasers set at the highest levels (disintegrate) were meant to overcome any armor except for force fields. And in the case of canon, such as it is in Star Trek, force fields can be degraded and brought down after a period of time...

 

Hence the belief in NND but the need to have some sort of rule to ablate/degrade barrier/forcefield.

 

I think that Star Trek force fields are probably better represented by combining Damage Negation with either a Force Field (Borg) or Force Wall (closing off a hallway) of otherwise relatively low strength. The 'tuning' of the Phasers could then be a Gadgeteering/Inventing roll addition of Reduced Negation used to defeat the 'force field'.

[mallet]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I think Star Trek force fields would definitely be built using the Barrier power. In fact I believe the 6th ed book even refers to using this power to simulate it.

 

I would build a Star Trek star ship force field like this:

 

Star Ship Force Field: Barrier 30 PD/30 ED, 30 BODY (up to 300m long, 200m tall, and 1/2m thick), Dismissable, Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation (+1/4), Impenetrable (+1/4), Mobile (+1/4) (1095 Active Points); Feedback (Damage directed to Interior Displays, conduits, work stations and computers) (-1), Conditional Power: Cost END equal to STUN & BOYD Damage resisted (-1), Costs Endurance (to maintain; -1/2), Restricted Shape (Only to Englobe) (-1/4), Real Armor (Engineering must maintain and repair shield generators) (-1/4)

 

The PD/ED/BODY numbers are just guesses. These would be set to campaign standards. Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation is simple, they can never beam stuff up or down when the shields are up. Feedback is used because even when the ships shields are still up, work stations and display screens are always blowing up when the shields take damage. Real Armor is because engineering staff have to fix, repair the shield systems all the time after combat. The Conditional Power is how I think it is best to describe the force field eventually failing. Since it takes a lot of END to keep the shields up, and the more damage they take the more END they drain from the ships power supply. This way the crew can redirect power (END) to the shields to keep them up. For example if the ships shields had an END of 100 and lost 30 END in an attack, then the "Shields down to 70%, Captain!" In a personal Force Field, the constant attacks would quickly drain the END of the field, causing it to drop and the person to be vaporized.

 

Thinking about it more, you might even take Feedback off and have the exploding work stations and displays be part of the ship "paying STUN" to feed the "END" of the power once the shields END reaches zero.

 

There also might be a Limitation you could design that made it so the max PD/ED/BODY of the shield was only ever equal to the current END of the ship. That way as the power dropped, the shields strength would also fade. In fact, this might be the best way of simulating Star Trek force fields, but someone with better Hero-Fu would have to work out that limitation for you.

 

A personal force field would be the same, but smaller in size. Since the tech in Star Trek all comes from the same source, it's a safe bet that personal force fields are just smaller versions of the big ones.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I don't think a phaser would be NND at all and as far as how shields work in a Star Trek setting, well, that obviously has more to do with the shields than with phasers.

 

mallet has a pretty good take on the shields I think.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Disintegration is a slightly tricky effect in Hero. In order to completely destroy something you need to do 2x Body. Er. Sort of. So to even 'disintegrate' a normal starting character with no defences at all you need to do 10 Body to reduce them to 0, another 10 Body to kill them and then another 10 Body to 'destroy/disintegrate' them...so, 30 Body....and that is not even a difficult kill. That is 9d6 worth of killing attack...27 DCs, for goodness sakes.

 

So...I'm thinking that if you want to model Star Trek disintegration effects you need phasers to do a HELL of a lot of damage, OR you need to build characters with a lot less Body, or you need to come up with a some campaign build rules.

 

In Star Trek, you tend not to get resurrected, so you could probably get away with saying 'once you're dead, you're dead' and say disintegration can occur at -Body, rather than -2xBody. Even then you'd need 6d6 killing, or 18 DC.

 

Stuff is not easy to destroy in Hero. This could easily mean that a hand phaser should be able to do massive damage - but then you have to look at the 'reality' of Star Trek - do 'missed' phaser bolts disintegrate man sized holes in the wall? No, they do not. That could mean that people are particularly vulnerable to phaser fire and every character should have 'Vulnerability 2xBody v Phaser Fire'.

 

I would not particularly be inclined to make phasers NND: I vaguely recall, possibly from one of the books, some sort of armour that was capable of blocking or at least blunting phaser fire.

 

If you DO say -BODY = disintegrated, then you need 18 DC of damage: 2x Vulnerability means you 'only' need 9: which means that phasers could do as little as 3d6 Killing and still disintegrate someone. If you then make phasers 'half damage v shields, and No stun unless at least 1 Body damage done' then 9 points of shields can effectively protect a person from phaser fire, without being overwhelming. You should probably also make personal shields limited so that they lose 1 or 2 points of rED each time they are hit by phaser fire (except Borg shields, obviously) so that concentrated phaser fire can, eventually, even bring down a shielded opponent.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Why not build the phaser setting as an AVLD KA that Does BOD (AVLD is versus force field SFX). Shields are a barrier with force effects.

 

The disintigrate setting isn't unlimited. A hand phaser doesn't Disintigrate a city wall or a mountain.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Why not build the phaser setting as an AVLD KA that Does BOD (AVLD is versus force field SFX). Shields are a barrier with force effects.

 

The disintigrate setting isn't unlimited. A hand phaser doesn't Disintigrate a city wall or a mountain.

 

I suppose it depends if you care about points. Phasers are capable of disintegrating someone with one shot, so, you'd need to be able to do 27 DC of killing damage to, on average, disintegrate a normal human. If you then make it AVLD/Does Body we're looking at 472 points.

 

Now it may well be that this a heroic game and you do not really need to worry about character point cost for equipment, but come one, that's a bit much, isn't it? Also, bear in mind that, as most city walls do not have shields, that much damage could, quite easily, destroy a city wall: 30 Body (AVLD) would knock a 2 km hole in a 32 metre high, 8 metre thick city wall. Yowza!

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

How about building a separate "Disintegrate" slot for a Phaser Multipower as Extra-Dimensional Movement, Usable As Attack, to the "dimension" where the character exists as discorporated atoms? The required Defense would be an energy Force Field/Force Wall/Damage Negation/Barrier.

 

I can hear the screams of "Kludge!" from here , but that would be a rules-legal way to build the effect without huge Active Points and Damage Classes, or house-ruling how every character takes Damage.

[gojira]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

So...I'm thinking that if you want to model Star Trek disintegration effects you need phasers to do a HELL of a lot of damage' date=' OR you need to build characters with a lot less Body, or you need to come up with a some campaign build rules.... Stuff is not easy to destroy in Hero. This could easily mean that a hand phaser should be able to do massive damage[/quote']

 

Some good Trekkie analysis here. I think the one thing you didn't consider was that phasers do extra damage to living things, rather than making all characters have a vulnerability to phaser fire. Note that bulkheads and stuff in a star ship might be really tough. I do seem to remember Kirk disintegrating some rocks when needed.

 

Phaser Kill setting: 2d6 RKA + 4d6 RKA, only versus living things -1/2

 

is what I'm thinking.

 

I suppose it depends if you care about points. Phasers are capable of disintegrating someone with one shot, so, you'd need to be able to do 27 DC of killing damage to, on average, disintegrate a normal human. If you then make it AVLD/Does Body we're looking at 472 points.

 

After playing around a bit with some of the stuff Steve has done for various fantasy genres, I think it's appropriate to reduce the costs of things that players are "supposed" to have. Look at the Turkakian Age, for example, were spells cost one third as much, because they need to be balanced vs "free" weapons and because many players are "supposed" to have spells. Or The Atlantean Age or Tuala Morn, where spells cost 1 point each.

 

Cost out the phaser "correctly". Then if its too expensive, apply a divisor until it's in the point range that works for your character starting points.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Why not build the phaser setting as an AVLD KA that Does BOD (AVLD is versus force field SFX). Shields are a barrier with force effects.

 

The disintigrate setting isn't unlimited. A hand phaser doesn't Disintigrate a city wall or a mountain.

 

This is how I would build it as well.

 

NND has always been All Or Nothing - it hasn't changed in 6E. It's the wrong choice for this kind of thing.

 

Also, addressing Sean's point, it's quite possible every organic has a Vulnerability To Phasers so you can disintegrate a human in a short period of time versus just pocking walls. Of course, how phasers worked in ST always seemed plot-devicey to me anyways and trying to model it is a lot like trying to get a coherent canon time line out of the series....

[Farkling]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

We built our 4th and 5th edition phasers as Drain BODY for disentefration effects, though I believe the FReD phasers had a small killing attack too...probably for that 'disentegration' effect. The drain didn't work against targets with Hardened defense.

 

The ruling used was that starship bulkheads and exteriors were hardened or had power defense.

It wasn't a Trek game though, so they only needed to 'look' like a phaser effect.

 

Speaking to Trek canon... full disentegration seems to take slightly longer on screen than a simple stun or explosion. There's that whole 'holding the beam on target' and the 'afterglow' effect used by the special effects department.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

In fact, after the original series it is really rare to see a phaser disintegrate someone, and people actually get phaser injuries that are not fatal on occasion. Perhaps the disintegration is due to the continuing nature of the attack...the beam hits them for like 5 seconds, maybe they are dead in the first 1 or 2 and the rest of the time it's just a corpse taking damage until there is nothing left.

On the other hand you could just chalk the disintegration up to SFX and I doubt it would be an issue 90% of the time.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

The times from Next Generation forward that people have been disintegrated by phaser (or other energy weapon) fire, they usually make a point of showing the weapon being cranked up to its maximum setting. In most phaser-based fights, even those using lethal force, targets drop as if they were hit with powerful projectile weapons -- presumably a lower-energy setting. It's logical (if you'll pardon the expression) to assume that disintegrating matter takes a lot of the weapon's power reserve, and so isn't energy-efficient if you only want your opponent to just die.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I suppose it depends if you care about points. Phasers are capable of disintegrating someone with one shot, so, you'd need to be able to do 27 DC of killing damage to, on average, disintegrate a normal human. If you then make it AVLD/Does Body we're looking at 472 points.

 

Now it may well be that this a heroic game and you do not really need to worry about character point cost for equipment, but come one, that's a bit much, isn't it? Also, bear in mind that, as most city walls do not have shields, that much damage could, quite easily, destroy a city wall: 30 Body (AVLD) would knock a 2 km hole in a 32 metre high, 8 metre thick city wall. Yowza!

 

How about building a separate "Disintegrate" slot for a Phaser Multipower as Extra-Dimensional Movement, Usable As Attack, to the "dimension" where the character exists as discorporated atoms? The required Defense would be an energy Force Field/Force Wall/Damage Negation/Barrier.

 

I can hear the screams of "Kludge!" from here , but that would be a rules-legal way to build the effect without huge Active Points and Damage Classes, or house-ruling how every character takes Damage.

 

Herein lies the problem. It's a kludge because it lowers the cost of a very powerful effect. One hit, character gone, dead, over. Shouldn't that be expensive? How is it that the major Trek characters avoided disintigration given the sheer number of firefights they are involved in, and the common nature of the phasers? For some reason, only bit players ever get disintegrated. Maybe it's a mook rule - all but 1 BOD of a mook is purchased "not vs phasers", so if 2 BOD gets through, they're disintegrated. Now 1d6 KA, AVLD vs Force Effects, does the trick quite nicely.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

OK, this is a hijack, but it is a point near and dear to my heart: Hero can simulate pretty much anything, but just becasue it can, doesn't mean it should. On a related point, role players in general, and Hero players in particular (because of the thought that has to go into character realisation) are much more honest with their characters than authors are, generally: I've seen a comic where Cyclops punches a hole in Blob's shoulder by narrowing his eyebeam - right through and out the other side pretty much just to make a point - but do we see him doing that again when it really really matters that a villain is stopped? No. It isn't that Cyclops has a code against killing - no more than any other sane, well adjusted person does - it is that it looked cool in that panel, but would quickly get boring if he solved every villain encounter where deadly force may be justified with one shot between the eyes.

 

We do not have the luxury of changing powers and power levels on the fly: we have what we have built, and we play it straight. Yay us!

[torchwolf]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

OK, this is a hijack, but it is a point near and dear to my heart: Hero can simulate pretty much anything, but just becasue it can, doesn't mean it should. On a related point, role players in general, and Hero players in particular (because of the thought that has to go into character realisation) are much more honest with their characters than authors are, generally: I've seen a comic where Cyclops punches a hole in Blob's shoulder by narrowing his eyebeam - right through and out the other side pretty much just to make a point - but do we see him doing that again when it really really matters that a villain is stopped? No. It isn't that Cyclops has a code against killing - no more than any other sane, well adjusted person does - it is that it looked cool in that panel, but would quickly get boring if he solved every villain encounter where deadly force may be justified with one shot between the eyes.

 

We do not have the luxury of changing powers and power levels on the fly: we have what we have built, and we play it straight. Yay us!

Many Hero system GMs are probably far more consistent writers than some other writers.

 

I usually apply a fairly thick filter when building things in Hero that are taken from fiction, especially in the case of comics, movies and TV series. Writer inconsistency will surely ruin every writeup made if taken into account too seriously - even more so than retcons!

Player: "But in issue #7982, Wolverine could fly! Based on that, I now want my character Wolverine-Clonoid to be able to fly."

Me as GM: "Sure you can, if you have the points and can explain to me how it fits in your concept. But Wolverine cannot fly. That issue will remain fictionally fictional to me."

 

(Hmm. Is there not a game convention called RetCon? No, wait, there used to be...?)

[Tom Carman]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

In fact' date=' after the original series it is really rare to see a phaser disintegrate someone, and people actually get phaser injuries that are not fatal on occasion. Perhaps the disintegration is due to the continuing nature of the attack...the beam hits them for like 5 seconds, maybe they are dead in the first 1 or 2 and the rest of the time it's just a corpse taking damage until there is nothing left.[/font']

On the other hand you could just chalk the disintegration up to SFX and I doubt it would be an issue 90% of the time.

 

An off-screen use of phasers in TOS at less than full-disintegration was in the episode "The Omega Glory". Spock shows Kirk an expended powerpack and reports that he found it among the remains of several hundred Yang bodies.

[Dino]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

How about building a separate "Disintegrate" slot for a Phaser Multipower as Extra-Dimensional Movement' date=' Usable As Attack, to the "dimension" where the character exists as discorporated atoms?[/quote']

 

Or better yet, to the corn field!

 

By the way, this is in fact how my old game group wrote up the disintegrate (or "glow and go") settings in Trek games, for exactly the reasons you describe.

[Eodin]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

One of the key concepts in both Trek and Traveller is that for energy versus matter, matter loses. So I would still use AVLD (protective energy field with resistant defense) and does BODY. The number of dice of RKA is a matter of conjecture.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

An off-screen use of phasers in TOS at less than full-disintegration was in the episode "The Omega Glory". Spock shows Kirk an expended powerpack and reports that he found it among the remains of several hundred Yang bodies.

And?