Building a proper 5er Mental Defense Force Wall using 6e Barrier

[Surrealone]

Per 5er page 180:

Some Force Walls provide Mental Defense and/or Power Defense. To determine whether an attack with a Mental Power or a Power that works against Power Defense breaks through such a Force Wall, the attacking character counts the Normal Damage Body on the dice rolled, even if the attack ordinarily does no BODY.  Then apply that "BODY damage" to the Force Wall as normal to determine if the attack penetrates the Wall.

 

Also per 5er page 180:

Force Walls that provide only Mental Defense, Flash Defense, and/or Power Defense are automatically Transparent to Physical and Energy damage.

 

Use Case:

With the above context in mind, the goal is to create a Force Wall providing Mental Defense that covers an area ... such that there's a mental 'screen' that has no physical manifestation (i.e. one can readily walk into and out of ... just as attacks that cause physical and energy damage readily pass through it due to its transparency) ... whose shape is clearly defined by the person creating it ... at the time of creation (i.e. not just a mere radius or cone) ... wherein the top can be left open or covered (to englobe).

 

The 5er RAW for Force Wall are ideal for this, as they address mobility, transparency, and shape ... with plenty of granular shape/layout options at the time of Force Wall creation ... all at reasonable cost ... in a simple format.

 

Question:

How is this accomplished in 6e using Barrier?  I am asking because:

1. I see nothing in CC's Barrier rules detailing Barriers for Mental/Power/Flash Defense 
2. Linking such defenses to physically-manifested Barriers doesn't seem to cut it, either, since this approach lacks the physical/energy transparency inherent to a Mental Defense Force Wall and because one shouldn't pay points of PD/ED in Barrier and then lay two transparency Advantages on top ... since PD/ED defenses are not the point of a Mental Defense Force Wall, at all
3. Looking beyond Barrier at Usable By Others Area of Effect Mental/Power/Flash Defense also doesn't seem to cut it in terms of granularly controlling size/shape a la Barrier rules

 

So -- how does one build a granularly controlled (in terms of size/shape/layout) Mental Defense Force Wall in 6e ... that is transparent to PD/ED attacks as well as people walking into/out of the space protected by the Mental Defense Force Wall?  If there's a clean and simple way to do this in 6e that matches what the quoted 5er RAW, above, allows for -- it's absolutely eluding me using Champions Complete RAW...

 

What am I missing?  A little help, please???

[Christopher R Taylor]

OK in the Hero System rules big book it says:

 

At the GM’s option, a Barrier’s defense can be defined as Flash Defense, Mental Defense, or Power Defense for the same cost (3 Character Points per 2 points of Resistant form of those defenses)

 

Any defenses you don't buy the wall is transparent to, you don't start with any.

[Hyper-Man]

From 6e1 page 169:
 

At the GM’s option, a Barrier’s defense can be defined as Flash Defense, Mental Defense, or Power Defense for the same cost (3 Character Points per 2 points of Resistant form of those defenses). However, in many cases this simply serves to protect the Barrier itself, since the very nature of the Barrier prevents many “exotic” attacks from getting through it even without these defenses (see below). Standard Barrier rules still apply; a Barrier that provides, say, Power Defense but no PD is going to shatter quickly if hit with a Physical attack. (If a character wants to create a “barrier” that just provides Flash Defense, Mental Defense, or Power Defense, he typically shouldn’t use Barrier; he should buy the defenses with some form of the Usable On Others Advantage, such as Usable By Nearby (6E1 358), or with the GM’s permission apply Area Of Effect to a Defense Power (see 6E1 147).)

Even if a Barrier’s defenses aren’t defined as Flash Defense, Mental Defense, or Power Defense, a Barrier still has protective properties that may thwart attacks that apply against those defenses. For example, a Barrier with the Opaque Adder to the Sense Group affected by a Flash prevents characters on the other side of the Barrier from perceiving the Flash. Similarly, an Opaque Barrier blocks Line Of Sight with the defined Sense (Group), thus preventing a character with Mental Powers from attacking through it unless he can get around it somehow (for example, by flying into the air and looking over the Barrier at his target). Similarly, since a Barrier is a physical object, attacks that work against Power Defense can’t “go through it” any more than they could go through an ordinary wall (though it would be possible to attack the Barrier directly with them in some cases, such as using a Drain BODY to reduce the Barrier’s BODY).

With the GM’s permission, a character can buy Flash Defense, Mental Defense, or Power Defense only for his Barriers for a -1 Limitation on the defense. That protects a Barrier from attacks made against it specifically (like a Drain BODY intended to weaken it, or a Mental Blast that Does BODY). If that sort of Barrier is used to englobe a target (see below), the victim has to “penetrate” the defense before he can affect targets outside the globe. For example, Mental Defense on an englobing barrier would subtract from the effects of Mental attacks made by an englobed victim against targets outside the globe.

 

HM

[Hyper-Man]

If the APG books can be considered valuable but 'extra' stuff for 6e1 and 6e2 I would say that having a PDF copy of 6e1 and 6e2 should also be considered a valuable 'extra' for Champions Complete (and Fantasy Hero Complete) to help deal with challenges like this one.

 

HM

[Surrealone]

I originally thought the above solved for my need and had marked this solved, but upon closer inspection I've revised that thinking and edited this post appropriately.

 

EDIT:

Unfortunately, the guidance provided by 6e RAW in blue, above, does not appear to address the problem.  Per my original post, Usable By Other fails to allow for granular area/size determination when setting up the Mental Defense 'screen' a la a 5er Mental Defense Force Wall.  To correctly model what was possible in 5er without any handwaving, I believe one needs to be able to define a set of hex sides (i.e. meters in 6e) that are directionally defended by the 'screen'.  Usable By Others is not directional in nature ... it's all/nothing, right?

 

To wit, if I put up a Mental Defense screen behind and to the right of you ... and the mental attack comes from the left of you given the LOS-based position the mentalist has relative to you, the screen would provide no Mental Defense.  Barrier can capture that concept via its size and placement at time of creation ... but an approach based on Usable By Other ... completely fails to handle this sort of directionality.

 

So, we're back to Barrier if we want directionality -- which I do.  But then, in the RAW quoted above, 6e indicates that a "Barrier that provides, say, Power Defense but no PD is going to shatter quickly if hit with a Physical attack" .... whereas in 5e it would have been transparent to a physical attack. This precludes us from using Barrier as a directional Mental Defense barrier through which Mental attacks can't pass ... but through which physical attacks readily pass as in 5er.

 

With Usable By Others out because it's not directional (i.e. not something I can erect between a mentalist and a target) like 5er Force Wall 'screens' ....  and Barrier out due to transparency problems (i.e. someone can't walk from the unprotected side to the protected side ... and physical/energy attacks don't readily pass through it like in 5er) -- I believe we still have an open question in how to properly simulate what was possible with a Mental Defense Force Wall in 5er ... using 6e.

 

​THOUGHT:

Maybe this is as simple as Mental Defense bought with the Area of Effect (Any Area) advantage ... for a configurable 'screen' ... or the Area of Effect (Line) advantage for a 'screen' that can only be straight lines ... or the Area of Effect (Radius) advantage for a 'screen' that's a globe?  That would provide directionality and also be transparent to physical/energy attacks ... granted, it'd take 3 separate powers (think slots in a MP) to do what was formerly one ... unless Variable Advantage was used to allow switching between AoE Any/Line/Radius.

Input?

[segerge]

Huh.  My copy of Hero Designer allows you to set Mental Defense, Power Defense, and Flash Defense on a 6ed build.  Is that a bug or a feature, then?

[Surrealone]

Segerge,
​I believe the answer to your question depends entirely on which set of 6e rules the makers of Hero Designer rely upon as their authoritative source.

• If the makers of Hero Designer rely on the in-print CC 6e rules to determine what's authoritative, there's no mention of  Mental/Power/Flash defense Force Walls, so it'd be a bug.
• If the makers of Hero Designer rely on the out-of-print 6e v1 & v2 rules to determine what's authoritative, then it's a feature that's correctly present in Hero Designer for 6e builds.

Both sets of rules are deemed/dubbed authoritative by long-standing forum members, here, but only the makers of Hero Designer know what they deem authoritative.  Personally, I think the ability to set Mental/Flash/Power for Barriers in HD is accurate/correct ... even if CC makes no mention it ... and even if 6e's approach to such Barriers has transparency issues that are in direct conflict with the way 5er handled the transparency of such Force Walls.

 

 

Stepping away from that specific issue and getting back to trying to properly model a 5er Mental Defense Force Wall using 6e modeling, I think I just found a modeling problem with the Mental Defense Area Of Effect (Any/Line/Radius) approach I mentioned, above:

• It fails to properly model counting 'BODY' of the mental attack's dice and completely negating the incoming mental attack if the rolled 'BODY' on the dice do not exceed the Defense provided by the screen (as a 5er Mental Defense Force Wall would).
• If others agree that this is, indeed, absent, using Mental Defense in AoE fashion within 6e, then the AoE Mental Defense approach I originally hoped might be viable ... looks like it is ruled out, too.

Thoughts?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Oddly enough, the rules don't have anything about buying barriers that are transparent to some attacks.  You can buy the Barrier so it is not there for your attacks (you can shoot through it without knocking it down):

 

With the GM’s permission, a character could define a Barrier as being One-Way Transparent, meaning attacks from one direction pass through unhindered while the normal rules apply to attacks from the other direction. The character defines which direction the transparency works with when he buys Barrier, and cannot change it thereafter.  For a +½ Advantage, the Barrier is transparent

to a single attack or specific group of attacks; for a +1 Advantage it’s transparent to all attacks.

 

 

But it doesn't list any way to make the Barrier just not there to some attacks, which is an oversight, since in 5th edition you could buy Force Wall +¼ advantage to make it transparent to one obscure defense and +½ for a common defense.  I'd use the same rules for Barrier.

 

Here's the thing to keep in mind.  People complain aout how huge the 6th edition rules were, and they're right, they were too big for a playable ruleset.  Its more a reference, with all the rules and notes.  But the reason its that big is because it has all these exceptions and additional little bits in it and explained.  So you can't have both "small and easy to read" and "exhaustive" so complaining that Champions Complete isn't technically complete because it lacks everything the big books has is sort of confused.  

 

Its "complete" in the sense that it has everything you need to play, not "complete" in that it contains every possible rules variation, explanation, example, and idea possible.

[Cantriped]

Attempting to replicate the mechanics of one edition of a game in another is almost always going to result in problems. RAW, CC simply doesn't allow you to create a Barrier with defenses other than PD or ED, and contains no mechanics for being Fully Transparent to an Attack.

 

As GM you have (at least) two potential solutions:

First, you can simply allow Barrier to buy other forms of resistant defense (such as Mental Defense), and allow barriers to be made Fully Transparent to any attacks which they provide no defense against as a +0 Advantage. Then you can build a Barrier that functions almost identically to Force Wall by giving it 0 BODY, X "exotic defenses", Fully Transparent (+0), and Costs Endurance To Maintain (-1/2) (CC 102).

Second, you can allow Force Walls from 5th Edition Revised (5er 179), and make the appropriate revisions for it to be compatible with CC. For example, Target becomes "Target's DCV" (which for an area would be 0 or 3 depending upon its distance from you), Range would become "Standard Range" (which would be 10m per active point), and Cost would become 5 CP per 2 resistant defense and 1 CP per 1m of length of height.

[Surrealone]

 

Oddly enough, the rules don't have anything about buying barriers that are transparent to some attacks.  You can buy the Barrier so it is not there for your attacks (you can shoot through it without knocking it down):

 

 

But it doesn't list any way to make the Barrier just not there to some attacks, which is an oversight, since in 5th edition you could buy Force Wall +¼ advantage to make it transparent to one obscure defense and +½ for a common defense.  I'd use the same rules for Barrier.

It's not just the inability to buy transparency for some attacks that is the problem; RAW appears to have flip-flopped from 5e regarding Mental/Flash/Power Defensed Force Walls being automatically transparent to attacks that do PD/ED damage ... such that 6e Mental/Flash/Power Defense Barriers were no longer automatically transparent to attacks that do PD/ED damage.  That's important because something that was built into the 5e power at its previous cost would then be 50% more expensive to cover the change in 6e ... assuming the advantage were also carried forward (which it wasn't).  50% more is a LOT of cost increase ... for something that's an edge case and rare.  In a system where one supposedly gets what they pay for, that's excessive ... and leads me to believe the so-called flip-flop may have been an oversight or unintentional.

 

 

Here's the thing to keep in mind.  People complain aout how huge the 6th edition rules were, and they're right, they were too big for a playable ruleset.  Its more a reference, with all the rules and notes.  But the reason its that big is because it has all these exceptions and additional little bits in it and explained.  So you can't have both "small and easy to read" and "exhaustive" so complaining that Champions Complete isn't technically complete because it lacks everything the big books has is sort of confused.  

 

Its "complete" in the sense that it has everything you need to play, not "complete" in that it contains every possible rules variation, explanation, example, and idea possible.

I think you misunderstand what people want when they indicate they want a small, single rule book.  They're not asking for a book that's missing rules people need, they're asking for a book that doesn't have a pile of pages tied up in pictures and examples that are nice-to-have but unnecessary.  I believe that's what Champions Complete was supposed to be -- but it's fallen short of its name in that it's missing actual rules, tables, and the like.  No one here is complaining about that.  (A statement of a fact is not necessarily a complaint.)

 

 

Attempting to replicate the mechanics of one edition of a game in another is almost always going to result in problems. RAW, CC simply doesn't allow you to create a Barrier with defenses other than PD or ED, and contains no mechanics for being Fully Transparent to an Attack.

Elimination of one set of mechanics with no suitable replacement is almost always going to result in problems ... especially when there is an expectation (set by the 6e books/rules, themselves) that you can translate a character from 5e rules to 6e rules -- with the implication being it's without any loss of functionality (albeit, with cost changes we've been explicitly told to expect).  I'm trying desperately to do exactly that (translate a character's existing ability), but so far I see a loss of functionality that cannot be overcome with any existing 6e rules ... unless handwaving or a GM's special ruling is invoked.

 

To me, that smacks of an oversight to be addressed by errata. However, with all the creative minds here, I'm still hopeful someone might put forth a way to build a proper 5er Mental Defense Force Wall using only 6e RAW ... without carrying forth anything from 5e or doing any handwaving or cheesy GM fiat type stuff.  I'm out of ideas, which is why I posted...

[Christopher R Taylor]

It's not just the inability to buy transparency for some attacks that is the problem; RAW appears to have flip-flopped from 5e regarding Mental/Flash/Power Defensed Force Walls being automatically transparent to attacks that do PD/ED damage ... such that 6e Mental/Flash/Power Defense Barriers were no longer automatically transparent to attacks that do PD/ED damage.

 

 

Force Walls were never automatically transparent to defenses they did not cover, at least not in my 5th edition rules.  The rules for creating transparent force walls are on page 182 of FRED and they specify that you have to buy every defense the wall is transparent to: mental, power, PD, ED.

 

Is this more expensive?  Well, yes, but not enormously, since you're not likely to buy defenses nearly as high for a power defense barrier as you would PD and/or ED.  How much should it cost?

 

In my opinion, not a lot.  After all you literally are weakening your barrier's defenses, since it works both ways (in and out), and you can buy the Barrier to be transparent only to your attacks (a much more advantageous situation for a defensive barrier):

 

For a +½ Advantage, the Barrier is transparent to a single attack or specific group of attacks; for a +1 Advantage it’s transparent to all attacks.

 

It seems like +¼ for PD/ED and +¼ for Power/Mental is sufficient to do the job.  Most of the time you won't need power/mental, since they won't be dealing any body damage anyway.

[Cantriped]

 

Force Walls were never automatically transparent to defenses they did not cover, at least not in my 5th edition rules.

See 5th Edition Revised, Page 180 (at the top of the second column). If the Force Wall only provides exotic defenses (such as Mental Defense), it is automatically transparent to Physical and Energy damage.