Transmit Sense Modifier (5e)

[phoenix240]

I hope my pizza example didn't come across as snarky. I was grasping for something fairly simple but distinct. In retrospect, gold might have been a better choice or gold deposits (Prospector extraordinaire) I made it an Unusual Sense to avoid the mechanical and logical baggage that comes with attaching Sense Groups. 

[Lee]

Regardless, adding Transmit to Sight or Hearing is redundant and redundant because most characters already broadcast visual and audible information by default.

 

I have to say, I still disagree with this regarding Sight. While I certainly reflect light in the visible spectrum, I don't actually transmit it. That's why I brought up bioluminescence. A deep ocean creature will reflect light (if light reaches down that far or your submersible shines a light on it), but that's not the same as its bioluminescence. If they are in the dark, there is no reflected light, but they can certainly transmit using their bioluminescence.

 

I realize that this can bump up against Images, but ISTM that the difference is the complexity of the transmission. Again, using bioluminescence as an example, the lights they transmit usually only blink, change colors, change patterns or maybe act like "tracer" lights. However, they don't transmit High-Def images of a predator to scare away other fish. That would indeed be Images. I think it's just a GM call as to whether the Transmit of a Sense should be allowed or made into Images depending on the complexity of what is being accomplished.

 

Having said all that, I would agree with your assertion that Transmit is redundant for Sight if it is in the IR part of the spectrum. We all certainly transmit Infrared radiation as heat and so would be redundant in that realm. But, unless Infrared Perception is common I don't think Transmit is redundant.

 

With regards to it being redundant with Hearing, I agree except if the person is mute or the creature simply doesn't produce any sounds. There are animals that can hear but do not make sounds. So I'd say with hearing, Transmit is "baked in" but should be allowed to be bought off if the character is mute or a creature that makes no sound. You could go the other way and require Transmit to be purchased to be able to speak, but I like the other way around--make speaking the default.

 

Lee

[Lucius]

I hope my pizza example didn't come across as snarky. I was grasping for something fairly simple but distinct. In retrospect, gold might have been a better choice or gold deposits (Prospector extraordinaire) I made it an Unusual Sense to avoid the mechanical and logical baggage that comes with attaching Sense Groups.

 

Maybe you, or someone, should ask Mr. Long.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Detect Palindromedary, Sense, Transmit

[phoenix240]

Maybe you, or someone, should ask Mr. Long.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Detect Palindromedary, Sense, Transmit

 

I thought someone did earlier in the thread. 

 

 

I suspect it will do little or nothing, but I asked in the rules forum for clarification.

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/93825-transmit-effects/

 

Nothing much seemed to come of it?

[bigdamnhero]

Lee - I see your point about bio luminescence. That would certainly be a simpler way to model it than to build Images as a separate Power.

[Christopher]

I have to say, I still disagree with this regarding Sight. While I certainly reflect light in the visible spectrum, I don't actually transmit it.

That is pointless semantics. We evolved on the surface of a planet that is highly illuminated. Developing sight as primary sense made sense.

If anything not needing it to be active is a big boon to survivability.

And isn't sign language a very viable way to transmit information on the visual spectrum? Isn't Body language a very important social clue/part of communication? So yes, we do send on the Sight spectrum.

 

Active Radar and active Sonar both have the clear disadvantage that you are seen for even wider then you can see. You know how you defeat radar based Anti Air? Shoot a missile that goes for the strongest Radar emission (or even locks onto a specific emission).

Now that the Radio spectrum is more saturated, passive Radar is becomming a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar

The term "illuminator" is used a lot in that article, despite thier being no light invovled.

 

Sharks Developed the ability to detect Electromagnetic Fields, because sight (and even smell) only bring you so far. And everything down there emits a magnetic field.

If we evolved on a dark planet where a regular sound beat came out of the ground, we would have evolved passive echolocation as primary sense.

 

Regarding Bioluminousence:

At first glance a stupid idea. I mean you go for a active sense.

On second thought, maybe not so much. Almost nothing down there relies on sight. They all rely on smell or hearing. In the kingdom of the Blind, strobing light is less unusual then a flee fart.

[Lucius]

Radio Group is the specific exception to the rule because 1) most characters do not emit significant radio waves, and 2) the equipment used to broadcast radio signals and the equipment required to receive them are two different things that are frequently sold separately (ie - car radio, locator beacons, etc).

I don't see why that means Radio should be an exception, especially in light of Mr. Long's statement (that "we have seen enough TV and heard enough radio to reason by analogy" suggesting that rather than an exception, Radio Transmit is the model from which we should judge what Transmit does.)

 

You make a fair point about the distinction between being perceivable vs transmitting information. Tho there's another fine line between "transmitting information" and "communicating" - the latter is Mind Link, Clairvoyance, etc.

Really? I'd like to think I am communicating with you and others who read this right now. Would this be a case of Clairvoyance then?

 

What about when I'm, you know, just talking to someone? Is that Mind Link, or is it "not communication?"

 

Since you've defined it as an Unusual Sense, you have some latitude. If you wanted to be able to "re-broadcast" the information you Detected, I'd probably allow that. So if you Detect a thin crust pepperoni pizza in the kitchen, anyone nearby who also had Detect Pizza would be able to know "Phoenix240 says there's a thin crust pepperoni pizza in the kitchen." But no more than that - you wouldn't be able to have a conversation about it, discuss your favorite toppings, or coordinate how to divvy up the pie without Mind Link or something similar. Or just, y'know, talking.

 

OTOH if you had somehow bought it as based on Sight Group (maybe your character is blind but can only see pizza?) then I don't think Transmit would add anything because the pizza is already transmitting information visibly, ie - everyone else can already see it.

I'm a bit confused by this. You state that if the Detect Pizza sense is in the Sight Group, Transmit is pointless because the other people can see the pizza already. But wouldn't that be the case if it were in the Unusual Group too? The only way they can perceive the Transmission is if they have Detect Pizza, and having Detect Pizza, can't they tell for themselves that the Pizza is there?

 

Conversely, if I can stand in the doorway and communicate that there is a pizza in the next room, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do so regardless of what Sense Group I am using either to be aware of the pizza on the kitchen table or to pass that information on to the gamers in the living room.

 

Edit: The ability to impersonate a pizza, while hysterical, would clearly be Images.

Well, you have stated that

 

Regardless, adding Transmit to Sight or Hearing is redundant and redundant because most characters already broadcast visual and audible information by default.

and the information I am by default broadcasting visually is basically my existence, position, and identity. According to you, this constitutes "Transmit." So if I also Transmit with the sense Detect Pizza, I would be broadcasting about the same information.

 

To be fair, the example Power that Phoenix gave had Discriminatory, so I would be detected as a Lucius Alexander pizza, or at least as a person-pizza. So Phoenix would probably realize "that's not a pizza, that's someone else like me with the Detect Pizza sense, because a person is not a pizza!" But if the Sense did not have Discriminatory or Targetting? All it can tell is "this is pizza" and if I Transmit I "ping" that Detect Pizza Sense. Admittedly the only way I can carry the impersonation off is if they can't perceive me with any other sense....I could hide under the table and fool them into thinking there was a pizza hidden there but as soon as they look they would say "What are you doing under the table? And where are you hiding the pizza, I know you have one!"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary communicates distress by turning the Transmit off and on repeatedly in Morse code: Pizza pizza pizza, piiizzzaaa piizzaaa piizzaaa, pizza pizza pizza

[Hugh Neilson]

Edit: The ability to impersonate a pizza, while hysterical, would clearly be Images.[/quote

Why wouldn't it be Shape Shift?

 

And, thinking on that, why isn't Shape Shift a form of Self Only Images? Maybe the sense-affecting powers need to be reviewed with an eye to consolidation. Invisibility is really only the image that I'm not really there, isn't it?

[massey]

Here's how I see it.  We're running into some confusion because people are looking at this in reverse.  That happens with Champions sometimes.  People say "how would my power work if I put the Hole in the Middle Advantage on my Tunneling?"  And you're just really not supposed to do it that way.  You're generally supposed to come up with the effect you want, and then figure out how to get there, rather than slap a random Advantage or Adder on something and then ask what it looks like.  Because at that point, you're asking someone else to come up with a special effect for a power that you've created, even though you can't really picture what that power does.

 

The other important thing is that we have to remember that multiple powers can all have the same special effects.  We say "I think it would do this", and somebody else comes in and says "no, that's Images".  Well, actually, it can be both of them.

 

So... transmit allows you to send information similar to what you can perceive.  So, basically it's something like this:

 

Transmit Sight -- you are sort of like a living movie projector.  You can display visuals at range.  They won't fool anyone into thinking that they are real, not even a bit.  But you can make some sort of visual image appear.  From a movie projector to R2-D2's little hologram of Princess Leia, you can send an image to others over some amount of distance.

 

Transmit Hearing -- you can make noises that other people can hear.  Not just your voice, but lots of stuff.  You open your mouth and a symphony orchestra plays Beethoven's 5th.

 

With more exotic senses, the other side needs some way to perceive it.  Buying Transmit on "Detect Pizza (unusual sense)" is kind of worthless in a lot of games, because most people don't have anything in the unusual sense group.  You're broadcasting info that other people can't receive.  If they had something in that sense group, they'd know you had... found a pizza, I guess.  As far as radio goes, we perceive radio as sight and hearing, because humans can't perceive them in their normal state.  Theoretically, somebody with that power could perceive it though.  I guess Transmit Radar would let you send the green dot on your radar screen to somebody else's radar dish. Could be useful for military applications, I guess.

 

And that's really the problem.  Since we're humans and we perceive things with our normal human senses, fictional people who have enhanced senses still get described as perceiving things in very human ways.  We have a hard time visualizing (even the word, visualizing, shows how we think of it) how radio would sound(?) if we could hear(?) it.  It's easier to just give your TV screen radio listen, and not worry about having to give it a limited version of transmit sight as well.  But once we get beyond normal senses that humans are used to dealing with, it's kind of hard for us to picture (there it is again) what these other senses would "look" like.  So describing it gets hard.

[Christopher]

Regarding Bioluminousence:

At first glance a stupid idea. I mean you go for a active sense.

On second thought, maybe not so much. Almost nothing down there relies on sight. They all rely on smell or hearing. In the kingdom of the Blind, strobing light is less unusual then a flee fart.

Bioluminousence in the depths of the Ocean is kinda like radio up here:

There is no natural light down there, hence nobody has any worthwile detection ability.

Making it uniquely save way to communicate. Especially if the critters that have it are transparent to most other sense (like Echolocation, Magnetic Sensing).

 

Here's how I see it.  We're running into some confusion because people are looking at this in reverse.  That happens with Champions sometimes.  People say "how would my power work if I put the Hole in the Middle Advantage on my Tunneling?"  And you're just really not supposed to do it that way.  You're generally supposed to come up with the effect you want, and then figure out how to get there, rather than slap a random Advantage or Adder on something and then ask what it looks like.  Because at that point, you're asking someone else to come up with a special effect for a power that you've created, even though you can't really picture what that power does.

 

The other important thing is that we have to remember that multiple powers can all have the same special effects.  We say "I think it would do this", and somebody else comes in and says "no, that's Images".  Well, actually, it can be both of them.

 

So... transmit allows you to send information similar to what you can perceive.  So, basically it's something like this:

 

Transmit Sight -- you are sort of like a living movie projector.  You can display visuals at range.  They won't fool anyone into thinking that they are real, not even a bit.  But you can make some sort of visual image appear.  From a movie projector to R2-D2's little hologram of Princess Leia, you can send an image to others over some amount of distance.

 

Transmit Hearing -- you can make noises that other people can hear.  Not just your voice, but lots of stuff.  You open your mouth and a symphony orchestra plays Beethoven's 5th.

 

With more exotic senses, the other side needs some way to perceive it.  Buying Transmit on "Detect Pizza (unusual sense)" is kind of worthless in a lot of games, because most people don't have anything in the unusual sense group.  You're broadcasting info that other people can't receive.  If they had something in that sense group, they'd know you had... found a pizza, I guess.  As far as radio goes, we perceive radio as sight and hearing, because humans can't perceive them in their normal state.  Theoretically, somebody with that power could perceive it though.  I guess Transmit Radar would let you send the green dot on your radar screen to somebody else's radar dish. Could be useful for military applications, I guess.

 

And that's really the problem.  Since we're humans and we perceive things with our normal human senses, fictional people who have enhanced senses still get described as perceiving things in very human ways.  We have a hard time visualizing (even the word, visualizing, shows how we think of it) how radio would sound(?) if we could hear(?) it.  It's easier to just give your TV screen radio listen, and not worry about having to give it a limited version of transmit sight as well.  But once we get beyond normal senses that humans are used to dealing with, it's kind of hard for us to picture (there it is again) what these other senses would "look" like.  So describing it gets hard.

No argument on the part where this is going backwards. It is one of those things so obvious, you can forget to mention it.

 

One good example for Transmit hearing would be C-3PO explaining the story to the Ewoks:

 

Regarding Radio:

We build it as "Radio Sense, Also affect by sight and/or hearing (-?)"

The person able to directly receive Radio would just leave out those Limitations. He can somehow mentally parse that data.

[Lucius]

Here's how I see it.  We're running into some confusion because people are looking at this in reverse.  That happens with Champions sometimes.  People say "how would my power work if I put the Hole in the Middle Advantage on my Tunneling?"  And you're just really not supposed to do it that way.  You're generally supposed to come up with the effect you want, and then figure out how to get there, rather than slap a random Advantage or Adder on something and then ask what it looks like.  Because at that point, you're asking someone else to come up with a special effect for a power that you've created, even though you can't really picture what that power does.

  

I don't think that's the case. Look at the first post:

 

It's a 2-point modifier, and I was wondering if this might be appropriate as a Naked Adder to be applied to a sense group. From the recipients perspective, they receive images (sight group) or audio (hearing group) when someone "sends it". 

 

I thought it would be an interesting power. Is there any reason it wouldn't work as a "naked adder" to various sense groups?

g3taso is not "asking someone else to come up with a special effect" because they "can't really picture what that power does." I think g3taso has a very clear picture (and clear audio, too) of what the power does. It's just not the same picture everyone else has of what it does.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary proposes a power:

Impizzanating a person: (Total: 7 Active Cost, 7 Real Cost) Shape Shift (To Detect Pizza Sense, limited group of shapes(any pizza)) (Real Cost: 7)

[Lee]

That is pointless semantics... 

 

While you may not want to model such things in your game (thus making them pointless to you), they are nonetheless correct and may not be pointless to someone else. I was simply offering an alternative way of viewing the situation and other ways that the power might be used.

 

Regarding Bioluminousence:

At first glance a stupid 

 

No need to be insulting.

 

I will now bow out of what was, up until now an interesting and delightful interaction. But I leave you with two quotes:

 

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

--George Bernard Shaw

 

“It is because of my wish to be helpful that I share my ideas and experiences; being helpful to even one person is valuable. “

– The Dalai Lama

 

I've lived my life according to these philosophies. Perhaps I should now reconsider...

 

Lee

[Christopher]

While you may not want to model such things in your game (thus making them pointless to you), they are nonetheless correct and may not be pointless to someone else. I was simply offering an alternative way of viewing the situation and other ways that the power might be used.

 

 

No need to be insulting.

 

I will now bow out of what was, up until now an interesting and delightful interaction. But I leave you with two quotes:

 

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

--George Bernard Shaw

 

“It is because of my wish to be helpful that I share my ideas and experiences; being helpful to even one person is valuable. “

– The Dalai Lama

 

I've lived my life according to these philosophies. Perhaps I should now reconsider...

 

Lee

Please stop only partially quoting sentences and ripping said stuff out of context.

 

That we only reflect light does not realy mater. Light is almost everywhere (maybe except a 17th century setting). Indeed being part of a solar system means there is light half the duration of the day.  And then we went and added more lightsources to our daily life, for the cases where natural light is not yet common enough.

Sight is our primary and targetting sense because the impressions are abundant. Otherwise we would have evolved something else.

 

I was saying going for a active sight sense would be stupid from a evolutionary point of view for the critters that do. Only to then point out how it made sense, due to the special considerations of the Environment (twice).

You somehow projected that to a personal attack on yourself, wich really only works if you cut off the sentene I wrote at the point you did.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think quoting

 

"At first glance a stupid idea." and excluding

 

"I mean you go for a active sense.

 

On second thought, maybe not so much. Almost nothing down there relies on sight. They all rely on smell or hearing. In the kingdom of the Blind, strobing light is less unusual then a flee fart."

 

is not really an accurate portrayal of the comment by the poster.

 

It seems like transmitting his quote in this manner markedly changes his tone.

[Lucius]

 

Impersonating a pizza: (Total: 36 Active Cost, 7 Real Cost) +18 with Disguise (36 Active Points); Limited Power Only to disguise a person as a pizza (-2), Extra Time (20 Minutes(or it's free), Only to Activate, -1 1/4), IIF Expendable (Difficult to obtain new Focus (where do you get that much tomato sauce??); -1/2) (Real Cost: 7)

 

Why +18?

 

What kind of penalty would YOU put on trying to Disguise a person as a pizza?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Impalindromedariating a person

[Ninja-Bear]

Just thought of something weird, to hide something we use concealment. I wonder why not disguise?

[Christopher R Taylor]

You could use disguise to make something appear to be something else, rather than hide it.  As in: I can't hide this bicycle under my notebook, so I'll make it look like part of the fence instead.

 

I have to confess I'm not really sure what the "transmit" modifier is supposed to be for exactly and have never used it.  I think the concept is to make all senses able to work like a 2-way radio; that is you can use your senses to broadcast to someone else, but I'm not completely sure.

 

So while we no longer have the old Champions standard two-way radio hearing, you can build radio sense and then put transmit on it to get the same thing.  But honestly I don't really grasp the limits and concept very well.  Can anyone hear it?  Do they need a special ability to hear it?  Does it only work for people with radio hearing (a radio)?  And can I build smell transmit to fill the world with the smell of frying bacon?  Or is that images?

[Lucius]

Just thought of something weird, to hide something we use concealment. I wonder why not disguise?

Because they are two different Skills that do different things.

 

Concealment makes an object (including a person, including self) hard to perceive.

 

Disguise makes a person (usually self) hard to recognize.

 

Now, a Base or Vehicle can buy Disguise, so it's not completely restricted to people. But I'm a little dubious about letting, say, a vehicle that can disguise itself as an ice cream truck use that same Skill to make the driver look like someone else, or to let a character with Disguise Skill make a bicycle appear to be part of a fence.

 

Maybe someone who wants that should buy a version of the Skill for people and another for objects? I dunno.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Can I Disguise myself as a palindromedary?

[g3taso]

Because they are two different Skills that do different things.

 

Concealment makes an object (including a person, including self) hard to perceive.

 

Disguise makes a person (usually self) hard to recognize.

 

Now, a Base or Vehicle can buy Disguise, so it's not completely restricted to people. But I'm a little dubious about letting, say, a vehicle that can disguise itself as an ice cream truck use that same Skill to make the driver look like someone else, or to let a character with Disguise Skill make a bicycle appear to be part of a fence.

 

Maybe someone who wants that should buy a version of the Skill for people and another for objects? I dunno.

 

 

You made an excellent point. I had just been thinking about vehicles and how they might hide. Using your notions I could use Stealth as a "stealth system", or concealment to make that vehicle  look like some other type of vehicle.

That's interesting..

[bigdamnhero]

You made an excellent point. I had just been thinking about vehicles and how they might hide. Using your notions I could use Stealth as a "stealth system", or concealment to make that vehicle  look like some other type of vehicle.

Not quite:

• Stealth makes the vehicle harder to perceive.
• Concealment represents the vehicle's ability to hide other things (smuggler's compartments perhaps?).
• Disguise lets it look like a different vehicle.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Theoretically a vehicle could use concealment to hide its self inside something like a motorcycle in a dumpster

[dsatow]

Transmit is not communication it is the ability to transmit what you are sensing.  So transmit sight allows someone to see what you are seeing.  Transmit touch lets someone feel what you are feeling or taste what someone is tasting  Its been used in a couple of scifi stories.

 

I generally use it for normal sight and hearing and affected as another sense (radio) to create the helm cams of the colonial marines in Aliens.

[bigdamnhero]

Theoretically a vehicle could use concealment to hide its self inside something like a motorcycle in a dumpster

If a person was trying to hide in a dumpster, I'd generally call that a Stealth Roll; so I don't know why it would be different for a vehicle? I've always thought Stealth was for hiding yourself and Concealment was for hiding other things. The description for Stealth even specifically includes the ability to "conceal himself." [6e1 p89]

[Lucius]

If a person was trying to hide in a dumpster, I'd generally call that a Stealth Roll; so I don't know why it would be different for a vehicle? I've always thought Stealth was for hiding yourself and Concealment was for hiding other things. The description for Stealth even specifically includes the ability to "conceal himself." [6e1 p89]

 

I've always interpreted it as Stealth is hiding in motion (i.e. move silently) and Concealment applies if hiding while still (i.e. hide in shadows)

 

I could swear that's in accordance with some version of the rules, but I just checked 6th edition and it seems to imply otherwise. So I may be either out of date or just plain wrong on this.

 

edit: what do you use if one character is trying to hide ANOTHER character in a dumpster?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Hiding behind a palindromedary

[Amorkca]

 

edit: what do you use if one character is trying to hide ANOTHER character in a dumpster?

 

 

A hammer??