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Is Area Effect needed for this power?


Tech

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The power is TK which en globes one target, regardless of size with a glow which surrounds the entire object, regardless of size (to a point). If it's a 60 foot yacht, the entire yacht will glow, but if it's only a human, you'll only get a man-sized glow. Now, I was thinking of adding Area Effect because if the object is large (like the aforementioned yacht), the entire object takes damage, not just a section of it. If a train engine gets en globed, the entire engine will take damage. The limitation on the Area Effect is that only one object (the one aimed at/targeted) will take the damage; if a dog was nearby, it's not the target and will not take damage.

 

So, help me out with this power. Let's assume a 50 Str TK for purposes of the power.

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Short answer, "yes, AE is needed"


Long answer, your way of defining the power around "one object" is not something the rules recognize. "One object" is arbitrary. Was the man one object, or was his shirt the one object, or just his skin, but not the bones underneath was the target? Was the main cabin of the yacht the one object, or the whole yacht? That kind of arbitrary "what constitutes an object?" isn't supported by the game... but area affected is. If you want a power that can essentially effect large and small objects, you'll need AE to cover the largest possible object you want to be able to cover.


Then put Selective on it... so TK, Area Effect, Selective... now, while you could get everything in a particular area, you can selectively choose only the man, and not his dog. If you and your GM consider an added limitation "Only can select on object in the area affected" that might work as well... but from your description, I have a hard time figuring out how that would work. If you target one object, and that object is a yacht... what about the people and objects ON the yacht? At what point is one object part of another object?

That kind of arbitrariness is probably more a SFX, general in-game, at the time ruling. What you want is the logical game effect... which is TK, Area Effect, Selective.

 

At least that is my take on it.

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1 hour ago, Tech said:

The power is TK which en globes one target, regardless of size with a glow which surrounds the entire object, regardless of size (to a point). If it's a 60 foot yacht, the entire yacht will glow, but if it's only a human, you'll only get a man-sized glow. Now, I was thinking of adding Area Effect because if the object is large (like the aforementioned yacht), the entire object takes damage, not just a section of it. If a train engine gets en globed, the entire engine will take damage. The limitation on the Area Effect is that only one object (the one aimed at/targeted) will take the damage; if a dog was nearby, it's not the target and will not take damage.

 

The power description seems incomplete. It's described as telekinesis, but you then refer to things taking damage from it. Did I miss something?

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I think you are overly thinking it. You can apply object to any congruent object with a single body value.  Grabbing that object with TK does not require an area of  effect.  So grabbing a yacht would simply be grabbing a yacht with TK which has say 15 BODY.  You don't need AoE for this. 

 

If what you are saying is that on the yacht, there is a door and you can't just grab the door, that's different.  Then you have what RDUNeil is asking: How do you describe a single object?  For example:  Lets say you have a competed jigsaw puzzle.  In your example, does it qualify as a single object or a bunch of objects?

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IndianaJoe3, TK now allows you to do damage with the power.

 

"A single object" is defined by commonsense understanding of what's being said. If you say a 'yacht', the player is being ridiculous to say a 'yacht' when he means a 'rivet of the yacht'. If you say a 'car', everyone knows what a car is; we don't ask if the gas cap or tailpipe is being referred to (unless there is a problem with the car). To be overly descriptive of what 'an object is' would cause the same problem if a player says "I'm spreading my blast to hit the supervillain"; do you mean the supervillain's clothes, his foci, etc? It's self-explanatory to mean: blast the villain and take some damage you evil foe!

 

However, grabbing a door on a yacht is very specific and the player would have to specify that, thus adding Selective on the Area Effect. However, that's not the case for the power.

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4 minutes ago, Tech said:

IndianaJoe3, TK now allows you to do damage with the power.

 

"A single object" is defined by commonsense understanding of what's being said. If you say a 'yacht', the player is being ridiculous to say a 'yacht' when he means a 'rivet of the yacht'. If you say a 'car', everyone knows what a car is; we don't ask if the gas cap or tailpipe is being referred to (unless there is a problem with the car). To be overly descriptive of what 'an object is' would cause the same problem if a player says "I'm spreading my blast to hit the supervillain"; do you mean the supervillain's clothes, his foci, etc? It's self-explanatory to mean: blast the villain and take some damage you evil foe!

 

However, grabbing a door on a yacht is very specific and the player would have to specify that, thus adding Selective on the Area Effect. However, that's not the case for the power.

 

 

If that is the case, you don't need AoE as I noted.  AoE would be needed to grab several objects at once.  Since by your definition, the PC is grabbing a "single object", no AoE is needed. 

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What you've described is bog-standard Telekinesis. Area of Effect isn't necessary. As long as you have enough Strength or Telekinesis to lift the single defined "object" (be that a Character, Vehicle, Focus, or part of the environment), and anything attached to it, or inside of it, than you can lift it with a single activation of the power. Remember you can generally maintain more than one instance of Telekinesis at once (for those Lift The Boat followed by Toss The Goon Off It situations) if you can afford the END costs.

 

The concept of using AoE on Strength to represent being able to lift whole large objects without them breaking only applied to Strength IIRC, and was based on the assumption that the GM was imposing a realistic optional rule limiting on the size of carried objects compared to the size of the carrier (by having them potentially take damage). I think the default assumption in the rules is that super Strength functions like Superman's, where he can generally catch/lift an object from any part of it.

 

Area of Effect allows you to exercise that same amount of Strength/Telekinesis on many "objects" at once (allowing you to lift two or more boats, and everything inside them seperately with a single activation of the power)

 

Area of Effect Selective works more or less just like normal Telekinesis, except you get to make your Attack Roll against the Area the "object" occupies.

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On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 11:28 AM, Cantriped said:

I think the default assumption in the rules is that super Strength functions like Superman's, where he can generally catch/lift an object from any part of it.

 

 

Really? I've always played, since 1st Ed, that if you try to lift a large object (more than a hex, and of course, detail specific) w/o AE, it will begin to break around the lifting point, depending on the object, lift angle, whether the object is supposed to move as a single object (a vehicle as opposed to a house), etc. So an strong enough character can take ahold of the front door handle of a house and just walk off with the whole building over his head?

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1st edition rules are all well and good... but not the slightest bit relevent, nor do I own the sources to validate your claim. However... Yes really*. In 6th edition "Realistic Lifting" is an optional rule found in APG I (pg 11).

* Although in the specific case you mentioned I consider the Door to be a seperate Object that is effectively Clinging to the Base, so chances are that he'll just end up ripping the door free... although if you built the entire thing out of Destreum or some such than you might just be able to lift the entire building by the door handle.

A better example would be that in the default rules Defender (as he's built in Champions 6th/Champions Complete) could theorethorically (because I'm not running calculations to be sure he'd succeed) catch a falling airplane or boat without having it colapse around him or split in half (which it realistically would since neither vehicle was designed to handle that much pressure applied to a single point.

 

Don't get me wrong, the 'optional' rule makes a lot of sense, and the size templates for characters do still take AoE to represent hands/feet large enough to attack areas and pick-up multiple smaller objects (per the standard rules for AOE STR/TK). However the default rules don't really mess with issues of scale too much because Size isn't a consistently defined element: Only Vehicles and Bases have a Size Characteristic... Automatons, Characters, Objects (and Foci technically) can have unusual sizes, but they are rarely actually defined.

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2 hours ago, Cantriped said:

1st edition rules are all well and good... but not the slightest bit relevent, nor do I own the sources to validate your claim. However... Yes really*. In 6th edition "Realistic Lifting" is an optional rule found in APG I (pg 11).

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that 1st Ed had a specific rule, just that I hadn't, in 30 plus years of playing, ever played in a game allowing unrealistic lifting. With or without rules defining such.

 

2 hours ago, Cantriped said:

* Although in the specific case you mentioned I consider the Door to be a seperate Object that is effectively Clinging to the Base, so chances are that he'll just end up ripping the door free... although if you built the entire thing out of Destreum or some such than you might just be able to lift the entire building by the door handle.

 

This gets back to my point above... what constitutes as "single object" ? For purposes of lift and damage, both?

 

2 hours ago, Cantriped said:

A better example would be that in the default rules Defender (as he's built in Champions 6th/Champions Complete) could theorethorically (because I'm not running calculations to be sure he'd succeed) catch a falling airplane or boat without having it colapse around him or split in half (which it realistically would since neither vehicle was designed to handle that much pressure applied to a single point.

 

Don't get me wrong, the 'optional' rule makes a lot of sense, and the size templates for characters do still take AoE to represent hands/feet large enough to attack areas and pick-up multiple smaller objects (per the standard rules for AOE STR/TK). However the default rules don't really mess with issues of scale too much because Size isn't a consistently defined element: Only Vehicles and Bases have a Size Characteristic... Automatons, Characters, Objects (and Foci technically) can have unusual sizes, but they are rarely actually defined.

 

I'll check the rules later, but aside from lifting, I'm now concerned about the implications for damage? So... if I have a flat 50STR TK, no AE... I can apply my 50STR to the entire structure of the Yacht uniformly, to crush it? So the damage is spread around the entire craft?


How big can one object be? Is the Earth a single object with a single Body stat? Granted it might have a defense large enough, but can I envelope the entire planet and squeeze with just a base 50 STR TK?

 

I recognize that size/scale has never been effectively applied/ruled in Hero (because size and scale should not be separate from, say, damage, because a larger EB should do more damage, or at least damage a larger area, etc.) and would love to see some kind of easily applied universal, but I don't think that is possible. It seems to me though, that any time you are moving beyond affecting just what is in one hex, you are getting into AE by default... or you get some really, really weird interpretations.

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5 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

 

Really? I've always played, since 1st Ed, that if you try to lift a large object (more than a hex, and of course, detail specific) w/o AE, it will begin to break around the lifting point, depending on the object, lift angle, whether the object is supposed to move as a single object (a vehicle as opposed to a house), etc. 

 

Do you have any rules to support this?  What page number says it works this way?

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3 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

This gets back to my point above... what constitutes as "single object" ? For purposes of lift and damage, both?

Generally? Any given Automaton, Character, Vehicle, or Object/Foci (as defined by sharing a BODY score). 

Bases get funky, because they are an abstract representation of a defined space including a structure and any objects occupying the space it defines. Therefore I apply dramatic sense when adjudicating how much of it constitutes a single object.

Doors often have seperate statistics from the Walls of the Bases into which they are installed and so are pretty obviously seperate objects.

It is also worth noting that you don't need AoE to affect a secondary target indirectly (for example, a door installed into a boat, or rope sitting on the deck).

Since the secondary objects are being supported by the primary object, I would apply Crushing Damage as appropriate to determine if the object (a boat) can support being crushed by the objects (people, doors, rope, etc) it supports.

 

3 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

I'll check the rules later, but aside from lifting, I'm now concerned about the implications for damage? So... if I have a flat 50STR TK, no AE... I can apply my 50STR to the entire structure of the Yacht uniformly, to crush it? So the damage is spread around the entire craft?

Per RAW if you Lift multiple targets with AoE STR/TK you have to divide your lift capacity amongst the targets lifted (in other words the total mass liftable remains unchanged, characters inside a vehicle effectively make it heavier). However when attacking multiple targets with AoE STR/TK every target in the area suffers the full effect of your strength. So AoE STR/TK used to crush a vehicle will also crush every other target on the vehicle for the same amount of damage (Characters, Foci, other Vehicles, props, etc). I would have to double check, but potential targets inside the vehicle may benefit from the vehicle's defenses.

Normal STR/TK can still be used to lift the Vehicle (and potentially everything inside it), but when used to crush the vehicle is much, much less likely to affect anything inside.

 

3 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

How big can one object be? Is the Earth a single object with a single Body stat? Granted it might have a defense large enough, but can I envelope the entire planet and squeeze with just a base 50 STR TK?

Depending on the scope on the campaign, an entire planet can be defined as a single Base. Although a Base has a more or less "singular" BODY score... it refers to the standard rules for destroying Walls; and the ground is just a big, multilayered wall englobing a relatively small molten core (defined as a Persistant AoE RKA plus END Reserve).

So yes in some instances you could move an entire planet with enough unmodified STR/TK, but trying to Squeeze it with unmodified STR/TK will only result in a crater proportional in size to the degree by which your Damage exceeded the DEF+BODY of the section of "Wall" (ground) you were closest to... conversely, if you use a large and powerful enough AoE STR/TK to Squeeze a planet it will affect each area of "Wall" it can reach seperately, as well as any Characters, Vehicle, Foci, etc exposed to the field. Again, I think each layer of "Wall" (ground) will shield the layers beneath, but that means if you can do enough damage, it is just a matter of time before you grind even a planet size object to dust.

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Just my $0.02 when I GM Champions (your mileage would and should differ based on game style and genre):

 

In general, it would depend on the object you are exerting your strength over.  In the example of the house with a door handle or even the door handle of a car, if a brick said I am going to lift the car by the handle of the door, the object you are exerting your strength on isn't the car, but the handle of the door.  Just to be clear, if you said, "I want to lift the house." I might let you depending on how the house was built and how much of the foundation you can get under and lift.  I would also probably warn you that most houses weren't designed to be mobile after being planted to a foundation and will take damage being moved without adequate support.

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22 hours ago, dsatow said:

Just my $0.02 when I GM Champions (your mileage would and should differ based on game style and genre):

 

In general, it would depend on the object you are exerting your strength over.  In the example of the house with a door handle or even the door handle of a car, if a brick said I am going to lift the car by the handle of the door, the object you are exerting your strength on isn't the car, but the handle of the door.  Just to be clear, if you said, "I want to lift the house." I might let you depending on how the house was built and how much of the foundation you can get under and lift.  I would also probably warn you that most houses weren't designed to be mobile after being planted to a foundation and will take damage being moved without adequate support.

 

Yes... exactly this. We house ruled that logic would apply based on the situation, since there was no game rule on this...  and everyone was cool with "larger things not meant to be moved, will usually start falling apart unless you have AE to support the lift across most of the object in question."  Seriously, it never really caused issues, as every player seemed to be fine with the losing the sillier interpretations of comic book physics, and being more logical about it.

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Looking at the 6E rules on TK, it mentions under Fine Manipulation:

 

A good basic test for whether Fine Manipulation is required to do something is this: if a character can pick up the object or perform the task with a large, infinitely thin paddle, then he doesn’t need Fine Manipulation. For example, he could slide the imaginary paddle underneath just about any object (no matter how small or delicate) to pick that object up; therefore, Fine Manipulation isn’t ordinarily required just to pick up objects.

 

With this in mind, I'd imagine TK could lift the 60-foot yacht without needing AoE, as it's just a really large imaginary paddle. 

 

However, using said TK to squeeze the yacht does beg the question - what about the people on the deck?  Or people inside?

 

Personally, I'd say people on the deck are technically outside the vehicle, and not TK grabbed at all, unless the power is bought with AoE.  The people inside also aren't grabbed (directly), but would be treated as passengers / crew in the vehicle.  Funny thing - the basic vehicle combat rules don't cover damage to occupants at all, though the complex damage table in The Ultimate Vehicle does. 

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42 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

Looking at the 6E rules on TK, it mentions under Fine Manipulation:

 

 

 

 

With this in mind, I'd imagine TK could lift the 60-foot yacht without needing AoE, as it's just a really large imaginary paddle. 

 

However, using said TK to squeeze the yacht does beg the question - what about the people on the deck?  Or people inside?

 

Personally, I'd say people on the deck are technically outside the vehicle, and not TK grabbed at all, unless the power is bought with AoE.  The people inside also aren't grabbed (directly), but would be treated as passengers / crew in the vehicle.  Funny thing - the basic vehicle combat rules don't cover damage to occupants at all, though the complex damage table in The Ultimate Vehicle does. 

 

I would probably say, since the TK grabbed the boat, the people are free to move about as they please.  If they are inside the boat and the door is closed, then the door might be sealed closed from the grab based on special effects and whether the door opens in or out.  If they are outside the boat, they could jump off.

 

I believe in one of the vehicle supplements there are hit locations and crit locations for vehicles with one location being driver/passengers.  In this case, I'd probably fudge it and say once the body of the vehicle is gone (i.e. the vehicle is dead) the occupants are next.  This gives the player a time gauge (the body of the vehicle) for them to come up with a solution to get out.  Again, what I'd do and what you or your GM does will vary and should vary to heighten your game genre, play, and style.

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On 5/7/2018 at 4:22 PM, Cantriped said:

As a side note, I'm fairly sure I've run across articles discussing the mechanics of destroying worlds in a more official capacity in supplements such as Star Hero and Champions for 6th edition.

I believe such rules first showed up in the Dragon Ball Z book using Fusion Lite rules.

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