Drone Protection

[BoloOfEarth]

I'm working on a character who has drones that buzz around her, whose sole purpose is to automatically sacrifice themselves to deflect attacks coming her way.  (So if she has 8 drones, they can at most stop 8 attacks before she no longer has any drone defense, and I'm okay with the defense becoming less good as drones drop.)  To be clear, I don't want her to constantly have to use her own combat actions to activate this defense -- these  are automated drones.

 

I can see several ways to do this in 6E (and know that the fine minds out there will probably come up with several more I hadn't considered), and I'm trying to figure out the easiest / simplest / best way to do this.

 

1. (Messiest option, IMO, but most literal)  Buy eight Followers (or more likely, Summon 8x Drones), giving them Flight, probably Mind Link among themselves, just enough defenses to absorb one hit and die, and let them individually interpose themselves in front of attacks heading her way.
2. Buy Deflection (either Uncontrolled, on a Continuing Charge, or on an automatically-resetting Trigger with 8 Charges) along with additional CSLs in Deflection.  Then, the increasing penalty (or the Triggered Charges) represents drones sacrificing themselves until she has no more.
3. Buy additional DCV, with Ablative (loses some DCV each time an attack misses her because of the added DCV).  So she starts with +8 DCV, and then goes to +7, then +6, etc. as subsequent attacks miss her due to the DCV bonus.

 

Personally, I'm liking option #3, but am open to suggestions.

[Mr. R]

I'd go with either #2 or #3. 

 

 

I love the idea BTW!

[Amorkca]

I'm inclined with idea #3 as well.

 

For a different angle, what if you buy 8 Force Walls as foci and they would protect from the 8 attacks completely.  Perhaps they can talk incessantly to really present the Drone (on) effect? 

[Asperion]

Something that I considered was to make it either RP or DR with ablative.  As the char gains xp, ubo can be added to this ability (to represent that the drones are going to others).

[Doc Democracy]

I would be attracted to Damage Negation with charges. You would not need to buy much to provide solid protection to effective damage but would open up the idea of an overwhelming attack burning straight through a drone and still damage the character.

[Surrealone]

I like #2 the best, as it seems the cleanest and most representative of what you describe (among the proposed approaches) while being less hand-wavey (IMHO) than #3 (due to reliance on Ablative which, per RAW, is specifically for STUN or BOD damage IIRC) … and because #1 seems un-necessarily convoluted.

 

I don't particularly care for the Force Wall or Damage Negation suggestions, either, because I think both of them would need to rely on Ablative, too - in order to properly represent the reductions associated with each sacrifice. 

[Doc Democracy]

2 hours ago, Surrealone said:

I don't particularly care for the Force Wall or Damage Negation suggestions, either, because I think both of them would need to rely on Ablative, too - in order to properly represent the reductions associated with each sacrifice. 

 

I don't agree.  I think that the damage negation should be the effect of a drone taking a hit and reducing the amount of damage that gets through, what might change as time goes on is the ability of a drone to get in the way but if it does, the protection afforded should be the same.

 

I think what we all agree is that we are not talking about protection, that can be modelled 100 ways to Christmas.  What we are circling round is how that protection degrades over time and how it might be restored.

 

I agree with Surrealone in that you do not want this to get too complicated or it will be a pain during the game.  I would be happy with the damage negation with 8 charges.  If you wanted to make it degrade in effectiveness as the drones get destroyed, then give it an activation 14-, and lose 1 in the activation roll for every 2 drones destroyed.  Personally, even that would be too fiddly for me, I would stick to the damage negation, 8 charges.

[archer]

As I was reading the description but before reading the options, I was thinking ablative.

 

But I'm not sure the mechanics of doing ablative with DCV.

 

If someone autofires against you, are you using up DCV per shot? Per theoretical hit?

[BoloOfEarth]

I'm using a GM's Option version of Ablative;  per 6E1:147:

 

At the GM’s option, Ablative can function in a different, but somewhat simpler, fashion: for a -1 Limitation, every shot against which an Ablative Defense Power provides protection and which could, if a good enough roll were achieved, do BODY damage to the target reduces the Defense Power by 5 Active Points, regardless of whether the target itself takes damage.

 

So for example the character starts with, say, +8 DCV (Ablative).  After the first attack against her (which "misses" due to the higher DCV), she now has +7 DCV.  And so on.

 

As to autofire attacks, I'd think you'd lose DCV per theoretical hit.  (If any of the attacks would have missed her even without the drones, they wouldn't have done any damage to her, so the Ablative wouldn't come into play.) 

[BoloOfEarth]

On 5/23/2019 at 1:25 AM, Doc Democracy said:

I would be attracted to Damage Negation with charges. You would not need to buy much to provide solid protection to effective damage but would open up the idea of an overwhelming attack burning straight through a drone and still damage the character.

 

Good point about an overwhelming attack still doing some damage.  I'll have to think on that. 

[Tech]

I question the write-up of #2: wouldn't you have to do the Missile Deflection, thus using your move? If it's a continuing charge, I'm assuming that just means you have the option of using it as long as the charge continues.

 

When I created a power a long time ago that created 5 mirror images of the person, I built it as: +5 DCV, loses 1 DCV after each 'hit' until +0. If an attack missed due to the extra DCV, that was considered a 'hit' and you lost 1 DCV/mirror image. It was cheap and it worked for me. Just a suggestion for you to try.

[BoloOfEarth]

1 hour ago, Tech said:

I question the write-up of #2: wouldn't you have to do the Missile Deflection, thus using your move? If it's a continuing charge, I'm assuming that just means you have the option of using it as long as the charge continues.

 

If you bought it Uncontrolled, it would only take your action when you started it.  I'd think a Continuing Charge would do the same (after all, if you set off a Smoke Grenade, you don't lose an action for every Phase it's active).

 

When I created a power a long time ago that created 5 mirror images of the person, I built it as: +5 DCV, loses 1 DCV after each 'hit' until +0. If an attack missed due to the extra DCV, that was considered a 'hit' and you lost 1 DCV/mirror image. It was cheap and it worked for me. Just a suggestion for you to try.

 

That's #3:  Extra DCV with the GM-option version of Ablative.  That's probably how I'll do it for ease of use, with a -0 Limitation that it doesn't work vs. attacks doing, say, > 14 DC (to cover overwhelming attacks as mentioned by Doc D). 

 

Thanks, all, for the suggestions and feedback!

[Devolutionary]

Ah, I was just talking about something like this today.

I'm working up a villain who uses drones for defense, attack, and spying. 

 

I'm using 4E but the basic concepts seem to be pretty nearly the same across editions. The arithmetic may differ.