Cosmic Advantage?

[specks]

GURPS has an advantage called Cosmic that allows powers to bypass normal defenses or have defenses that block normal attacks.

Does HERO have something equivalent? If not I was thinking of using the cosmic advantage as indicated the power pool build.

Would "+2" advantage be about right or should it be or or less?

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

What do you mean by "bypass" and "block"? 

[L. Marcus]

For attacks, there's the Attack Versus Alternate Defense ("AVAD").

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

Pulled my buddy's copy of GURPS 4th Edition Horror, which had Cosmic in it.  Based on the text there, GURPS Cosmic is just your choice of Difficult to Dispel or Innate on the power, or Power Defense limited to defending certain powers. 

[specks]

For bypass p103 of the GURPS Character (4th edition) book explains it as:

Attack does negate targets protection; innate attack ignores DR

For block (same page) your desolid power can bypass barriers not protected by cosmic protection.

 

Hope that clarifies ?

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

OK, that does clear it up.  You're looking for absolutes. 

HERO doesn't really do absolutes.  See 5er p559 or 6e1 p133. 

 

That said, you can kludge it.  Pick something suitably obscure (Resistant Power Defense comes to mind) to be the "Cosmic Defense" against Cosmic attacks and AVAD/AVLD will carry you the rest of the way. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Is Cosmic in Gurps all or nothing or can some damage get thru? If it’s all or nothing then use NND not versus Cosmic. Else you can do AVAD-I would use Power Defense myself.

[Lucius]

6 hours ago, specks said:

GURPS has an advantage called Cosmic that allows powers to bypass normal defenses or have defenses that block normal attacks.

Does HERO have something equivalent? If not I was thinking of using the cosmic advantage as indicated the power pool build.

Would "+2" advantage be about right or should it be or or less?

 

What happens when a Cosmic Attack meets  a Cosmic Defense?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says that when the Hound that Can Catch Anything chased the Fox that Could Not Be Caught, Zeus intervened and turned both to stone.

[Christopher]

1 hour ago, Lucius said:

What happens when a Cosmic Attack meets  a Cosmic Defense? 

I would asume normal attack/defense handling?
Of course that raises the question how that part works to begin with in Gurps

 

4 hours ago, specks said:

For bypass p103 of the GURPS Character (4th edition) book explains it as:

Attack does negate targets protection; innate attack ignores DR

For block (same page) your desolid power can bypass barriers not protected by cosmic protection.

 

Hope that clarifies ?

Please sepcify what you mean with "Attack does negate targets protection"

Does it ignore the protection for this attack? (aka skip the defenses?)

That sounds more like AVAD, including the NND variant of AVAD (in 5E a seperate advantage)
Does it turn off the proteection for a while? If so, how long?

That sounds more like Dispel, Drain, Supress. Maybe some APG uses of Change Environment.

 

"For block (same page) your desolid power can bypass barriers not protected by cosmic protection."

That part as least might be partially doable. Desolidificaiton in Hero is a all or nothing power so it might not map that well to GURPS Desolid power. There is however the "Affects Desolid" Advantage.

 

However Teleport has elements like this too. The Barrier power - as well as normal walls in bases - can be given the "Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation (+¼)" Advantage:
" Ordinarily, a character can escape from an englobing Barrier by Teleporting out of it. Characters cannot Teleport out of an englobing Barrier with this Advantage — unless the Teleportation is
Armor Piercing, which cancels out this Advantage. (Characters may buy multiple levels of Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation to prevent this if desired, or multiple levels of Armor Piercing to counteract that.)"

[Doc Democracy]

10 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

What do you mean by "bypass" and "block"? 

 

just as apt would be what is meant by normal defences and normal attacks...

[archer]

8 hours ago, Lucius said:

 

What happens when a Cosmic Attack meets  a Cosmic Defense?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says that when the Hound that Can Catch Anything chased the Fox that Could Not Be Caught, Zeus intervened and turned both to stone.

 

They could try it using "Last In-First Out".

 

So if I got my Cosmic Attack the day before you got your Cosmic Defense, your defense goes out the window and my attack works. But if you got your Cosmic Defense first, my Cosmic Attack wouldn't work.

 

That way it makes it more difficult to overthrow the Old Gods.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd have to check on the wording of the Cosmic advantage in GURPS, but I think it gets used in a variety of ways.  Essentially it's shorthand for "this power can break the rules in some way".  

 

AVLD/AVAD/NND let you specify defenses, but barring homebrew or GM permission, there isn't really anything in Hero that covers other uses.

[zslane]

The way I handle this is to have a campaign-specific Special Effect called "Cosmic". Any attack or defense can be given the "Cosmic" Special Effect, but as the GM I reserve it exclusively for gods and other celestial beings (and their weapons/spells) whose point totals are immaterial because they are basically Plot Device NPCs and items anyway. Then, I establish a +0 Limitation on all defenses in the game "Does not work against Cosmic attacks", and its sibling for attacks, "Does not work against Cosmic defenses."

 

This is basically a way for the GM to establish absolutes that "just work" using standard Hero System terminology and idioms. It throws points out the window in a sense because Cosmic is a Special Effect rather than an Advantage, for which no multiplier is likely to be adequate in any case (is +2 Advantage enough? Probably not, but who cares? PCs aren't going to have such powers except maybe temporarily as part of a storyline anyway).

[Tech]

zslane, if point totals are immaterial because they are "Plot Device NPCs and items", I'm curious why you bothering to create it? Are they supposed to fight these beings? If so, do the characters even stand a chance?

[zslane]

Well, the Cosmic (Special Effect) mechanic is an easy way to introduce a game element like Primal from WotC's old Primal Order books. The idea there is that anything imbued with Primal can't be stopped by non-Primal defenses, and any weapon that isn't imbued with Primal is completely ineffective against Primal defenses. It essentially puts all the standard game mechanics into two separate tiers with an impermeable membrane between them. This allows gods and their weapons/spells to affect each other "normally" while completely transcending the weapons and armor of the mortal world.

 

And no, PCs don't really stand a chance against gods, and that is sort of the point of Primal/Cosmic which introduces absolutes into the game. Such things need to be handled specially and with care by the GM. If this is not the effect needed, then the GM can simply give his cosmic entities absurdly high normal defenses and obscenely high DC normal attacks.

[Chris Goodwin]

The following Google search string: 

 

GURPS cosmic site:sjgames.com 

 

shows 6,220 results.  So, beware.  I think that might be all of our Great Debates rolled into one.  I'm at work right now and don't have any GURPS books with me, but I do have the GURPS 4e Basic Set at home and could look it up there.  It looks like there's at least one thread at the SJ Games forums ([PU4, Powers] What does Cosmic power modifier actually do?) with some basic info on how it works.  

 

The HERO System generally goes for "every attack must have a defense" as a general rule, which is seen in pretty much every one of its "exception" abilities (Desolidification, Transform, NND).  

 

I know @Christopher R Taylor has used an "Always Hits" Advantage, which I think he costed out in relation to AVLD/AVAD/NND.  +1, I think?  As with most similar constructs, I think his version required some way to defend against it, and it also made the attack Stun Only, requiring an additional +1 to make it do Body.  

 

For stuff that already exists in Hero, look at:

• The "Absolute Effect" Rule (6e1 p. 133)
• Desolidification/Affects Desolids/Affects Solid World
• Extradimensional Movement
• Teleport/Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation/Armor Piercing
• Transform
• Attack Vs. Alternate Defense (including NND and AVLD)
• Armor Piercing/Penetrating/Hardened/Impenetrable
• Inherent
• Constant/Controlled/Uncontrolled
• Linked/Conditional/Limited Power
• Real Armor/Real Weapon
• Variable Power Pool

These have all generated probably more discussion and questions than everything else combined, throughout the history of the HERO System.  But these are the main things used for "tiered" power types, absolute effects, exceptions-to-exceptions, and so on.  

[Christopher]

This is a entry on the Wiki I found:
https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Cosmic

 

"Cosmic, +50% to be exempt from any one of the limiting rules in Chapter 4. For instance, it could eliminate the FP cost for Abilities and Exertion (p. 159)."

FP seems to stand for Fatigue Points.

And Exertion seems to be a way to get FP, similar to the "Long Term Endurance" rules.

 

I can not quite tell if FP are STUN, END, Long Term Endurance or a hybrid of all 3. But as STUN can be burned instead of END if you run out, it sounds like that example talks about "applying 0 ENd (+1/2) to a power". Also the Energy Reserve reminds me of HERO's Enduance Reserve. So END seems a pretty good equivalent.

I mean technically "cost endurance" is a game rule, and 0 END allows you to override said rule. But we Heroites might not think of it that way, because Reduced Endurance is such a normal modifier.

 

We can also asume that "does not work on Desolidfied* targets" is a normal game rule for most GURPS and HERO powers. If so, "Affects Desolid (+1/2)" would be a fitting equivalent.

*It is worth noting that in Hero, some powers have a mandatory weakness. Every Desolid, Healing and Regeneration needs one special effect it is useless against. Just to prevent some stuff from becomming OP.

 

If that trends holds for  1 or 2 more examples, we could asume that a number of +1/2 advantages are equal to "Cosmic" in most cases. Wich would mean "Cosmic" is mostly split over multiple advantages.

[specks]

To me the +2 Cosmic represents three things:

1) Auto hit; target DCV will drop to 0 unless protected by cosmic defenses.

2) Attack goes right through target's defenses (normal, resistant, etc..) unless protected as per #1

3) Attacker can choose the amount of damage to do (as per his attack damage) unless target is protected as per #1

 

This advantage could easily be broken down in advantage cost as having only one of these is +1/2, two would cost +1 and all three +2

 

I know HERO doesn't handle absolutes well but I was trying to open up the discussion.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

1 minute ago, specks said:

To me the +2 Cosmic represents three things:

1) Auto hit; target DCV will drop to 0 unless protected by cosmic defenses.

2) Attack goes right through target's defenses (normal, resistant, etc..) unless protected as per #1

3) Attacker can choose the amount of damage to do (as per his attack damage) unless target is protected as per #1

 

This advantage could easily be broken down in advantage cost as having only one of these is +1/2, two would cost +1 and all three +2

 

I know HERO doesn't handle absolutes well but I was trying to open up the discussion.

Then that's just AVLD (Defenses with "Cosmic" SFX) +1.5 (or more), Does BODY +1, AOE Accurate +0.5.  Sums to +2.5 (or more). 

I also question the wisdom of statting something like this out.  If the cosmic being is supposed to be an unstoppable force, follow M&M's Power Level X conventions and outright admit it's a walking ball of fiat. 

[Lucius]

3 hours ago, specks said:

To me the +2 Cosmic represents three things:

1) Auto hit; target DCV will drop to 0 unless protected by cosmic defenses.

2) Attack goes right through target's defenses (normal, resistant, etc..) unless protected as per #1

3) Attacker can choose the amount of damage to do (as per his attack damage) unless target is protected as per #1

 

This advantage could easily be broken down in advantage cost as having only one of these is +1/2, two would cost +1 and all three +2

 

I know HERO doesn't handle absolutes well but I was trying to open up the discussion.

 

Here's an approximation

 

 

It's a Blast Man, and it's so so CSMIC!:  (Total: 68 Active Cost, 68 Real Cost) Blast 3d6+1 (standard effect: 10 STUN, 4 BODY), Area Of Effect Accurate (4m Radius; Can't miss it!; +1/2), Does BODY (It's to DIE for!; +1), Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Cosmic Defense; Gonna Blow you Away!; +1 1/2) (68 Active Points) (Real Cost: 68)

 

1) DCV will be 3 and the target can Dive for Cover

2) Ignores most Defenses

3) You can always pick how many dice you want to roll. By making it Set Effect, you get a choice of :

1 STUN no BOD

3 STUN 1 BOD

4 STUN 1 BOD

6 STUN 2 BOD

7 STUN 2 BOD
9 STUN 3 BOD
10 STUN 4 BOD

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And a cosmic palindromedary

 

 

 

[Christopher]

15 hours ago, specks said:

To me the +2 Cosmic represents three things:

The only +2 Advantage called "Cosmic" relates to changing Powers in a Variable Power Pool. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with what you want to do. And many people dislike what it is named for confusion like this.

 

15 hours ago, specks said:

1) Auto hit; target DCV will drop to 0 unless protected by cosmic defenses. 

A 1m AoE is a common way to drop the targets defenses. Effectively you attack against the are the target is in. Normal AoE defenses apply (like Dive for Cover and that AoE affects teh DC calculation, allowing less dice to be rolled).

For a similar reason, shifting the Defense Atribute to Mental DCV could work. Non-Mentalists generally leave it at 3.

The closest to a "can not defend attack" would be something like a Huge Area (100m Radius or so) AoE attack, that only affects a single target. Large enough that even a miss will still put he target in the Area. And the target is unlikely to get out via Dive for Cover (as that maneuver is more difficulty based on distance).

 

15 hours ago, specks said:

2) Attack goes right through target's defenses (normal, resistant, etc..) unless protected as per #1 

AVAD - including the NND variant - Cover this.

 

Overall both 1 and 2 run afoul of one core rule:
"Every attack should have a reasonably common defense".

 

The less likely the target is to escape, the more expensive this will get.

 

15 hours ago, specks said:

3) Attacker can choose the amount of damage to do (as per his attack damage) unless target is protected as per #1 

That is ... wierd.

I mean logically you would always pick maximum damage?

If you do not want to do Body damage, "Does no Body Damage, -0" is the Limitation you might be looking for.

 

I think remember an option to always do flat damage without rolling (something like 3 per dice?). Of course you would need a lot of extra Dice to get the same damage as a max roll. But do not ask me for the Rule in question. I think somewhere in Adjustment Power rules? Supress/Boost maybe?

[zslane]

17 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

If the cosmic being is supposed to be an unstoppable force, follow M&M's Power Level X conventions and outright admit it's a walking ball of fiat. 

 

This is my feeling as well. It is also why working out the "point value" of such things is kinda pointless in my view. As someone once said long ago on the Red October BBS, "Silly wabbit, points are for players."

[Tech]

57 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

This is my feeling as well. It is also why working out the "point value" of such things is kinda pointless in my view. As someone once said long ago on the Red October BBS, "Silly wabbit, points are for players."

I remember that Red October BBS statement.