room filled with water

[Ragitsu]

Re: room filled with water

 

You could always force players to choose "Fake water" instead of "water", so that they can't use it to wreck electrical equipment, drink from it, waterboard someone/drown someone or do anything water can do. But hey, it sure does look like water, right?

[Squall]

Re: room filled with water

 

You could always force players to choose "Fake water" instead of "water"' date=' so that they can't use it to wreck electrical equipment, drink from it, waterboard someone/drown someone or do anything water can do. But hey, it sure does [i']look[/i] like water, right?

So, in all seriousness, pretend you're GMing a Champions game. You have a character that wants the power "fill a room with water." How do you have him stat it up, what power does he use for it, and how many points does he pay for it?

[prestidigitator]

Re: room filled with water

 

As part of a Base? Pffft! I'd call it free if it's just one room that's set to flood with water. I wouldn't make you pay for a swimming pool either. Not in a superheroic game, and not in a heroic game (except with money/sweat equity when you're putting the place together, of course). If you could flood any room in the base, or the whole base, as a general booby trap defense, on the other hand, I'd consider milking the Character Point pocketbook.

[Markdoc]

Re: room filled with water

 

There's an interesting point here. On the one hand "build from effect" is generally the way to go in HERO. On the other hand, Transform is an actual power that costs actual points - and in significant numbers; this isn't a vanity/niche perk like Immortal.

So I bought Transform (nonliving solid matter to water) 5d6. That's 75 points. What exactly can I do with this power?

 

Can I drink the water? Can I make holes through walls by turning the masonry into water? Can I put the water in a bucket and throw it on a fire?

If I can't even do those things, it makes no sense. 75 points is not a reasonable amount to spend for "flavor text" that has no mechanical effect. And yet, those are all things that could be covered by other powers.

 

You can certainly do all of those things. You could indeed duplicate those things with other powers, but any of them (or even all of them) would be cheaper than the transform, for equivalent or greater efficacy, so there's no issues of balalnce

 

But let's say that yes, we can do that. Then it gets trickier:

Can I turn someone's weapon or armor into water? Can I short circuit electrical equipment? Can I combine it with a teammate's Barrier and drown people?

 

This is a little trickier, but not too bad. The first answer is yes. You paid for a transform, and transforming foci is a viable approach - you still need to hit (at the standard -2 for targetting foci) and you still need to roll the transform dice, but yeah, that's doable. Number 2 is questionable. You haven't paid for this. As GM, I'd let it slide sometimes - you'd be able to short out much mundane electrical equipment - anything ruggedized (military gear, heroic gear) is going to be unaffected, unless it's really low tech. #3? No. If the barrier is impermeable to the people inside it, it's impermeable to you. Once it's up you can't create water inside it without indirect. If it isn't impermeable, the water runs out. This is the beauty of the rules set - since the level of definition is fairly granular, it's relatively trivial to see what is, and is not, possible.

 

On the one hand, we don't want Transform to be a "do everything" power. But making it a "do nothing" power is equally unacceptable. And the line between "appropriate related effects" and "super effective secondary powers" is not always clear cut, much less something that makes any IC sense. Really, it seems like there's two ways to go:

 

1) Explicitly allow Transform to have secondary effects, even those that duplicate powers. Have some kind of guideline on what effects are suitable at a given value of Transform - maybe up to half the AP?

 

This is the way to go. Special effects are explicitly part of the game - but as I have indicated, the GM needs to adjudicate. Special effects are explicitly for minor effects, to allow simple things (like: I make it wet) without complex power builds to cover every eventuality. Note: minor effects. If the player wants to reliably create major effects - or even significant ones - he needs to buy the power(s) to do that.

 

2) Price any Transform like this one as a "Niche Transform" at a cost of 5 points or so (total' date=' not per die). "Transform foes to mice" would still be full cost though.[/quote']

 

These are not exclusive options - a player could buy a large transform to do things like turning his opponent's powersuit to water and a small cheap one for when all he wants is to make Power Girl's T shirt wet. In a multipower this costs him a whole one point.

 

cheers, Mark

[Enforcer84]

Re: room filled with water

 

You don't create water in HERO, you create what you want water to do in HERO.

 

It's like creating a vehicle in HERO. There isn't one Power to do it. You create a collection of abilities describing what the vehicle does.

 

It's a conceptual thing.

 

Activate someone's susceptibility to water. How would you?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: room filled with water

 

Activate someone's susceptibility to water. How would you?

 

Honestly?

If I were the GM of a game and a player wanted a character who could create water in some sort of combat useful sort of way I would highly encourage the use of a Limited VPP similar to my Firestorm example up-thread. This avoids any controversy as there would likely be no consensus on the "right" answer to what specific power should be used in your example (and aren't susceptibilities a meta concept of sort?)

[Enforcer84]

Re: room filled with water

 

Honestly?

If I were the GM of a game and a player wanted a character who could create water in some sort of combat useful sort of way I would highly encourage the use of a Limited VPP similar to my Firestorm example up-thread. This avoids any controversy as there would likely be no consensus on the "right" answer to what specific power should be used in your example (and aren't susceptibilities a meta concept of sort?)

 

Great, so every power is a VPP.

I understand the OP was using theirs in a combat manner. But using non combat abilities in combat once in a while is...well common enough in the source material for any RPG that the GM should be able to get around it. Creating a glass of water shouldn't be a huge deal. Which I think was Ragitsu's point.

[Ragitsu]

Re: room filled with water

 

But using non combat abilities in combat once in a while is...well common enough in the source material for any RPG that the GM should be able to get around it. Creating a glass of water shouldn't be a huge deal. Which I think was Ragitsu's point.

 

Or, if you pay enough points to get high enough mass, filling up a swimming pool or lab room with air/watertight doors could be handy. But, yeah, that's basically what I meant.

[Enforcer84]

Re: room filled with water

 

I"m pretty sure Transform does that.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: room filled with water

 

In the case of triggering a susceptibility, I would suggest that the person who took the Susceptibility "paid for" the power on your behalf - he received extra points for being susceptible. Now, if he is Susceptible to something extremely rare, then there should be very few people capable of creating that effect - otherwise, it's not "very rare" - but if he is susceptible to something common, it should show up frequently.

 

Transform: Air to Water was a build created before we had Change Environment. Given that, perhaps the "Transform should not be used to simuate another power" rule should be applied retroactively and take away "transform air to water" in favour of a CE with implements the effects you expect that water to have in combat, and provides the ancillary effects of putting a bunch of water in the area. We would not suggest "transform air to fog", so why "transform air to water"? Both can be better addressed with Change Environment.

[Ragitsu]

Re: room filled with water

 

Keep on stomping. I'm just not sure it's going to do any good in the long run.

[dmjalund]

Re: room filled with water

 

Remeber 2 things

 

1: BODY is exponential - you need to create a lot of BODY of water in one go to fill a room (high active points) thus:

 

2. If you create a low amout of BODY of water, It will take a LONG time to fill a room

[Ice9]

Re: room filled with water

 

Actually, BODY by size is more like logarithmic - making something twice as big adds a static amount of body. Or if you treat each hex / 1m-area as a separate entity, then it adds a linear amount of body - but never exponential. But yes, even for something with relatively low BODY like water, creating mass quantities is going to take quite a while.

 

If Change Environment is accepted as a valid method though, it makes the change pretty much instantly, so if the new environment is "underwater", then the entire AoE should be water-filled in seconds.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: room filled with water

 

Change Environment fills a room with water.

 

NND or AVLD / AVAD attacks for filling someone's lungs with water or a water cannon / stream.

 

Transform "creates water" in a sense, but again Active Points can get out of hand.

 

You could create a Custom Power of "Create (stuff)" using BODY as your basis - figure 5 BODY of "stuff" created would be about 1 hex filled with said material, and I would tier it - 5 AP for 1 BODY / 1d6 of normal stuff (water, wood, rock, pudding), 10 AP for 1 BODY / 1d6 of "useful stuff" (metal, gems, gourmet food), and 15 AP for 1 BODY / 1d6 of rare or complex stuff (a computer, unobtanium, etc.) Then modify it by how long the stuff remains (basically, using continuing charges would be simplest), and you can add disadvantages for things like how long it takes, etc.

 

Using this custom power, you could buy a 50 Active Point "10d6 Create Water" that would, by standard effect, fill 2 hexes per phase, and fade at about 1 BODY per phase or about a hex per Turn on average.

[pawsplay]

Re: room filled with water

 

I think the core power is Transform (nothing to water). CE and the rest are really good ideas for a multipower.

[Escafarc]

Re: room filled with water

 

According to the book(not sure if it was 6E1 or the APG) it suggests using Tranform to create Water from nothing at a rate of 4 litres per BODY rolled. But I would use CE to drown someone.

[Rapier]

Re: room filled with water

 

According to the book(not sure if it was 6E1 or the APG) it suggests using Tranform to create Water from nothing at a rate of 4 litres per BODY rolled. But I would use CE to drown someone.

 

Which is the crux of the issue. Even if you manage to get a whopping 20 BODY, you created 80 litres of water. Which is less than 3 cubic feet of water. That's a decent sized puddle in a room that's 10' x 10'.

[prestidigitator]

Re: room filled with water

 

Which is the crux of the issue. Even if you manage to get a whopping 20 BODY' date=' you created 80 litres of water. Which is less than 3 cubic feet of water. That's a decent sized puddle in a room that's 10' x 10'.[/quote']

 

Yeah, that's pretty silly. Since water has an easy to remember density (that coincidentally makes computations very easy in the metric system), for large Transforms I'd probably go with 10 Body being 100kg, and each +1 Body doubling it. Which makes 20 Body worth equal to about 100,000 liters, or 100 m^3. That WOULD fill a standard sized room, but also keep in mind that according to the standard Transform rules, your effect roll would have to be 40 to affect 20 Body worth of whatever; for an effect roll of 20, you should get 100kg (100 liters = 0.1 m^3) worth (that's definitely going to fill the party's canteens, but it's not going to drown anyone unless they're laying unconscious, face down, on the floor).

 

There's also the cumulative aspect to address. Normally you'd be able to keep rolling until you got enough Body to affect the target (though for difficult targets, there is Power Defense to consider...). But would you allow that for a "room full of water" or would you have the Transform come off instantly on each roll? Maybe, even though it has some aspects of cumulative built-in, adding the Cumulative advantage to this kind of Transform would be appropriate if you really want to be able to keep rolling until you get a big enough effect to pull off what you want. With some careful GM scrutiny added in too, of course.

[Ragitsu]

Re: room filled with water

 

According to the book(not sure if it was 6E1 or the APG) it suggests using Tranform to create Water from nothing at a rate of 4 litres per BODY rolled. But I would use CE to drown someone.

 

Don't worry: ordinary water is perfectly capable of drowning someone.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: room filled with water

 

Which is the crux of the issue. Even if you manage to get a whopping 20 BODY' date=' you created 80 litres of water. Which is less than 3 cubic feet of water. That's a decent sized puddle in a room that's 10' x 10'.[/quote']

 

Just a thought, could we use Megascale Transform for large volumes??

[prestidigitator]

Re: room filled with water

 

Just a thought' date=' could we use Megascale Transform for large volumes??[/quote']

I suspect you're going to find the same kind of problem with Transform as exists with Telekinesis. That is, applying some kind of Area of Effect to it doesn't seem like it should massively increase the amount of the thing you are trying to transform; it'll just allow you to affect a larger number of targets. I suppose if you're very liberal with the interpretation and consider each "hex" (or 2m x 2m x 2m volume or whatever) as a target, it could have a very devastating effect. I'm on the fence, myself. How else would you build a power that'll transform large areas of landscape or something (supposing some circumstance where the effect incontrovertibly calls for Transform)? Doesn't seem like you should need a billion Active Points if the game effect isn't that big, but....