Phaser Disintegration in 6E

[dmjalund]

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!

 

maybe extra DC that only works out of combat situations?

[Tasha]

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

 

Actually in Undiscovered Country the marines on board seemed to wear some kind of armor. That implies that some sort of armor does something to mitigate the damage of a personal phaser blast and possibly even a personal disruptor blast. Klingons also wear armor which also implies to my mind that it is good for more than turning blades.

 

I assume that the Away teams usually leave the armor behind to give the better appearance of being peaceful. Wearing bulky obvious armor can be taken as a provocative gesture.

 

For an adventuring party, I would shy away from any insta death writeups of ANY sci fi weapons. While it works to have mega weapons in a Scripted TV show where the writers choose who gets shot. In a RPG it can make for a frustrating experience when the PCs keep dying to Disruptors or phasers set to kill. So leave the NND does body kills home and just do straight kills and EB's. Your campaign and players will thank you for it in the long run.

 

It doesn't really hurt the genre to assume that Star Fleet standard issue uniforms give a couple of points of PD and ED. In fact it makes sense in a way that there are high tech fabrics that are more resistant to cuts and burns.

 

Now for Ship's shields I would use Barrier with highish PD and ED with tons of body. That would be the easiest way to simulate the ablative-ness of Star Trek Universe ship shields.

 

As for the disintegration effects of both Disruptors and Phasers, I am of the opinion that is caused by training the weapon in question on a corpse.

 

ie a Phaser on Kill is probably something like a 2 1/2d6 RKA Continuous controlled attack. (Stun mode is 8d6 normal Stun only)When the person reaches negative double body he/she disintegrates. This make the phaser still a good weapon, but not something totally unbalanced.

[ImperialOne]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

My intent was to simulate the effects seen on TV/movies instead of design for play balance. Hey, phasers can kill.. sorry, time to deign another character with HD.

 

In the case of armor, despite the fact that it is not unprecedented to see in Star Trek (TMP, ST VI, Klingon armor in TNG), I will argue it doesn't stave off disintegration at all. Look at all those scenes dueing the Dominion War for DS9 (i.e. Siege of AR-558)... the Federation is at war and in a dedicated grond action and they still don't wear armor.

 

I think Trek has been relatively consistent (I laugh at the irony when I say/write that) that technology of destruction remains ahead of protection/defense.

[Tasha]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

My intent was to simulate the effects seen on TV/movies instead of design for play balance. Hey, phasers can kill.. sorry, time to design another character with HD.

 

In the case of armor, despite the fact that it is not unprecedented to see in Star Trek (TMP, ST VI, Klingon armor in TNG), I will argue it doesn't stave off disintegration at all. Look at all those scenes dueing the Dominion War for DS9 (i.e. Siege of AR-558)... the Federation is at war and in a dedicated grond action and they still don't wear armor.

 

I think Trek has been relatively consistent (I laugh at the irony when I say/write that) that technology of destruction remains ahead of protection/defense.

 

I just don't remember phasers disintegrating people left and right. Heck I don't remember the Klingon Disruptors doing it. I do remember it being possible, but it seemed like you had to hold a Phaser on target for a bit to cause the effect.

 

If you are going to emulate what was seen on TV make Phasers incredibly inaccurate. Those darned things never managed to hit main characters. Hundreds of bolts being fired but nothing hit.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

As I mentioned before, after TOS phasers are rarely shown to disintegrate people (though it does happen) and more importantly, people are repeatedly shown with phaser wounds which, in my mind, is not indicative of a one-hit kill weapon. If you really want to simulate the show, phasers will be extremely dangerous, but so will disrupters, plasma weapons, lasers, and phase weapons, and none of them, including phasers, will be auto-killers every hit.

[mallet]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

As far as I can remember seeing on the shows, phasers only killed when hitting the chest (and I assume the head, although I don't recall anyone ever being hit in the head). Hits to the arms and legs never seemed to kill anyone. At it's worst I remember Nog being hit in the leg and having to have it amputated in a DS9 episode but apart from that most arm & leg hits only hurt people, not killed them.

 

So maybe tie the phaser damage effects into Hit Locations?

[SteveZilla]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

My intent was to simulate the effects seen on TV/movies instead of design for play balance. Hey' date=' phasers can kill.. sorry, time to deign another character with HD.[/quote']

 

Or just erase & re-write the name.

 

Disintegration in ToS was IMO both for “ratings” (not the Neilson kind) and as a time/budget reducing choice. I would hazard two guesses:

1. That management thought that a quick glowie-vapor “death” was more acceptable to the public than a gruesomely wounded corpse.
   
2. That the overall cost of doing the glowie-vapor “death” was less than that of doing the makeup for a gruesomely wounded person – even with an unknown actor playing a generic redshirt.
   

In the case of armor' date=' despite the fact that it is not unprecedented to see in Star Trek (TMP, ST VI, Klingon armor in TNG), I will argue it doesn't stave off disintegration at all. Look at all those scenes during the Dominion War for DS9 (i.e. [i']Siege of AR-558[/i])... the Federation is at war and in a dedicated grond action and they still don't wear armor.

 

Grond? When did Paramount and DoJ decide to do a crossover?

 

I think Trek has been relatively consistent (I laugh at the irony when I say/write that) that technology of destruction remains ahead of protection/defense.

 

Well, yes and no IMO. In ToS, the technology of both in terms of raw Power vs brute Protection are about equal (ship-to-ship battles, the shields do a pretty good job of staving off most damage for a good while). The difference becomes apparent when viewed in terms of miniaturization -- where Protection is nowhere near as compact (man-portable) as Power.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Given the way the Disintegration effect functions, perhaps the Disintegrate setting should be X6d Killing NND, Does BOD, Does no Stun, defense is having a unique character sheet or unusual biology.

 

Main characters never got Disintegrated, but Standard Redshirt #3 was probably just a name tagged on to a mook template. Anything unusual seems phaser-resistant, at least at the Disintegrate level, and was also immune. Unique character that can be disintegrated? That's a Physical Complication!

[IKerensky]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

About the Armor shown in some episods and Klingons :

 

It all depend on what you go against. Klingons fights a lot against themself and against other people than federation, and thoses doesnt use Phasers but Disrupters, Plasma and even Solid Projectiles... against thsu weapons some medicum of armor is usefull.

 

I guess the reason is the same for when Federation issue personnal armor to his ground troups.

 

It is also interesting that federation dont have real "marines" or ground fighting army. They have security forces that are trained in hand-fighting but are never shown as other-thing that police-security duty. Real groundwar weaponary are somewhat light with no tanks nor real heavier weapons than a phaser rifle. Wich make sense if you consider that the main battle field is space and that you can probably obliterate any opposition with teleportation and orbital phaser fire.

 

About Phaser disintegration it is obviously more used against non living things than living ones, why :

1- It require concentrated and long fire burst wich are energy consuming and hard to obtain on moving/unwilling target.

2- Deconstructing living molecular patter is perhaps harder than crystalline/unliving ones, like teleporting them.

3- You can set your phaser rifle to have a very very large stunning cone of effect wich is definitely more efficient than a tiny high concentrated blast (especially if you look how hard times thoses things have to hit ). In fact after seing in one episods what a wild phaser stun did I always wondered why they didn't always use it that way.

4- Desintregation is shun by federation troups as "inhuman" lethal use of force.

 

About ressurection I must point out that , in fact, ressurection is quite possible with Federation medical level of expertise. There was some episods of ressurection happen or it was implied not to be possible because the body was dead too long, too damaged or wasn't put in stasis fast enough.

[dmjalund]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

also - in some combat situations, minimizing power consumption may be more important than making things disappear.

[LoresLost]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I have only glaced at this thread so forgive if it had been mentioned earlier.

Looking at the source material, primarily the televised series and early movies, they had quick disintegration only when it fit the story or budget need. Most of the latter ST:NG stories had a slow disintegration. I think of the show that introduced "trans-phasic" shielding. Doctor Crusher tried to kill an alien that had an usual biology and shot a hole clean through It and made it mad. So she used a longer shot at the same power level and vaporized it.

 

SO that story out I would say 10d6 Killing Damage ALVD, does Body with cumulative advantage (This level would allow for instance kill of most normal characters with an average damage of around 30 points)

[SteveZilla]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Unless I'm mistaken, disintigrating something has the following effects (past just killing/rendering inoperative):

 

1. impossible to restore to life/function (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no Resurrection)

2. impossible to analyze remains for information about both object and weapon used on it (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no KS of Weapons/Objects)

 

Based on the fact that having no body/object left over after being vaped, I think it might be appropriate to build the Disintigration effect as something other than just more dice of damage, however limited.

[Tasha]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Unless I'm mistaken, disintigrating something has the following effects (past just killing/rendering inoperative):

 

1. impossible to restore to life/function (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no Resurrection)

2. impossible to analyze remains for information about both object and weapon used on it (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no KS of Weapons/Objects)

 

Based on the fact that having no body/object left over after being vaped, I think it might be appropriate to build the Disintigration effect as something other than just more dice of damage, however limited.

 

If disintegration is too easy at 2xBody then how about 3x body. The thinking being that at 2x body the corpse has just become an inanimate object and to utterly destroy it may need more damage done. 4xBody seems to be too much damage to me, 3x body seems to be a nice compromise.

 

Though I would just rule that Mooks taken down to 2x body are disintegrated and non-mooks don't get disintegrated unless the players really want to get rid of the person or if it fulfills a story need.

[IKerensky]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

Unless I'm mistaken, disintigrating something has the following effects (past just killing/rendering inoperative):

 

1. impossible to restore to life/function (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no Resurrection)

2. impossible to analyze remains for information about both object and weapon used on it (no Mechanics/Paramedics, no KS of Weapons/Objects)

 

 

About 2- I am fairly certain that ship sensors and tricorders are able to keep tracks of desintegration residuals, even if not always able to have exact reading on them. Also they tend to notice energy discharge residual trace, so I dont think desintegration entire enable to determine the weapon used.

[Tasha]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

About 2- I am fairly certain that ship sensors and tricorders are able to keep tracks of desintegration residuals' date=' even if not always able to have exact reading on them. Also they tend to notice energy discharge residual trace, so I dont think desintegration entire enable to determine the weapon used.[/quote']

 

Yeah you are right. All Star Trek Weapons have an energy signature that tricorders and other sensors can pick up on.

[SteveZilla]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

About 2- I am fairly certain that ship sensors and tricorders are able to keep tracks of desintegration residuals' date=' even if not always able to have exact reading on them. Also they tend to notice energy discharge residual trace, so I dont think desintegration entire enable to determine the weapon used.[/quote']

 

I don't think that is unwarranted, and I didn't say that it was impossible to gain any infomation. But if someone kills Bob the NPC, after the fact you can discover the body and possibly tell "Bob was killed by Weapon X", but disintigrate him and after the fact all you might be able to tell is "some ogranic lifeform, maybe Human, was disintigrated in this vicinity". No body, no Forensic Medicine skill roll.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I strongly suspect that, like most fiction upon which we notionally base some of our ideas and concepts, the continuity is not exactly watertight and the script writers are probably not as faithful to their imagined mechanics as we are to our very real ones.

 

In order to sort this one out you have to ask yourself a number of questions:

 

What, for me, epitomises the 'essence of phaser'?

 

How can i model that using Hero?

 

Is the 'disintegration effect' just sfx of killing on a high setting/hitting a red-shirt, or do I want to actualy model it?

 

Am I willing to exclude phaser details from ST that are not incorporated in the build I decide upon?

 

So long as everyone is clear on the ground rules, you should be fine. If someone wants to do something with a phaser that is not within the Hero design specs, consider allowing them to use an appropriate skill (electronics? systems operation?) as a Power Skill to change the way the phaser works on a one off basis.

 

Most importantly: have fun and don't pet the sweaty things

[Sean Waters]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

I don't think that is unwarranted' date=' and I didn't say that it was impossible to gain any infomation. But if someone kills Bob the NPC, after the fact you can discover the body and possibly tell "Bob was killed by Weapon X", but disintigrate him and after the fact all you might be able to tell is "some ogranic lifeform, maybe Human, was disintigrated in this vicinity". No body, no Forensic Medicine skill roll.[/quote']

 

Whether or not you should be able to discern who has been disintegrated, other than by a process of elimination ("Hey, has anyone seen Bob?") is probably a matter for the plot. I'd probably hedge with: a 'clean' shot will disintegrate someone comlpetely, preventing any analysis beyond 'someone or something has been hit and disintegrated by phaser fire' (and even that can only be detected for a limtied time before the energy signature fades), but not every shot is 'clean' and some shots that disintegrate a target can still leave parts of that target intact, even if the traces are usually microscopic, and such traces can be detected and analysed.

 

That gives me, as GM, the widest discretion to use the phaser disintegration as a story element, without worrying if I've got it 'right' in some absolute sense.

[SteveZilla]

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

 

... but not every shot is 'clean' and some shots that disintegrate a target can still leave parts of that target intact' date=' even if the traces are usually microscopic, and such traces can be detected and analysed.[/quote']

 

"Sir! We looked all over for Bob, but all we found were these items:"

 

(Click on picture for ThinkGeek page.)