Gary

Re: Affects Solid World You're allowed to make PRE attacks while Desolid without paying the +2 advantage according to the FAQ. However, the GM is allowed to remove a few dice if the targets know you're intangible and can't hurt them.

Re: Affects Solid World So the person with ARW could never actually open an unlocked door with poison gas inside or press the button of the doomsday device in your opinion? Your interpretation would make disarming a bomb real easy at least. If the blue wire is the one you need to pull, you could literally never pull the red or yellow one.

Re: Affects Solid World Of course this might lead to some interesting tactics. Situation: There are 3 doors. 2 are death traps filled with poisonous gas and the third is the door to freedom. The desolid character in the party simply tries and pulls each door open. The ones he can't pull open are the deathtraps...

Wow, based on Steve's answer to this and his followup, it appears that a Desolidified person can't go around pulling pins on grenades of guards or the triggers of guns or do anything that could conceivably hurt anyone else in any way indirectly, even if he purchased Affects Solid World on his Str. Not even press a button or flip a switch. I can understand the game balance reasons for this, but does this make sense to anyone?

Steve, Does your prior answer imply that a Desolidified character with Affects Solid World on Str or TK couldn't pull the trigger of a gun, or pull a firing pin on a grenade, or flick a switch that activates a weapon?

If a character has the capability to go Desolid with Affects Solid World on part of his Str or Telekinesis, does he have to purchase a Naked Advantage to be able to shoot or wield any weapon he picks up with it? How about if it's his own weapon that he paid for with his own Character Points?

Re: Killing Attack idea IMO, Killing Attacks should fit the following criteria: 1) They should do more Body to unprotected targets 2) They should be balanced against normal attacks 3) The mechanics shouldn't be too complicated and should be easily understandable 4) Related to 2 is that there should be a reasonable number of clearly defined circumstances where the KA is superior and a reasonable number of clearly defined circumstances where the NA is superior 5) They should not be able to end a combat against an undamaged high end foe in a single shot without an extraordinary roll (and rolling a single '6' doesn't qualify) 6) Low level KAs should not be able to inflict even a single stun point vs a well protected target.

Re: Killing Attack idea Fair enough point. Although Bricks would still need relatively high levels of resistant defense to stop stuff like artillery shells and missiles, even if they don't need it against most villains.

Re: Vehicle: Gepanzerter Gehender Träger Läufer I'd make the 105 howitzer to be a multipower with some additional types of ammo. There's a HEAT round which would be some sort of AP RKA of moderate armor penetration, and a smoke round as well as HE.

Re: Killing Attack idea Well, the 15d6 normal attack does 15 Body and 52.5 average Stun. The 12d6 'killing attack' does 24 Body and 54 Stun vs completely unarmored targets. An additional 1.5 Stun on a 15 DC attack doesn't seem to be too much of a bonus vs such a limited target set (0 Resistant Defense targets). The way I structured the power, 'killing attacks' are better vs low armor targets and normal attacks are better vs high armor targets. And neither one is obviously better than the other in general. That seems balanced to me.

Re: Killing Attack idea I think the warhammer is better than the sword because while neither can actually penetrate plate, the warhammer transmits its energy more efficiently than the sword. The tank is irrelevant since its defenses are so high that it wouldn't matter what melee weapon is used unless it's something like a vibroblade or lightsaber. The AP bullet again is a different class of item since it's expected to penetrate the armor and thus would be eligible for the multiplication effect. If it didn't actually penetrate the armor, it would cause less damage than the sword or warhammer.

Since the other thread was a little cluttered, I'd thought I'd start a new one. Just brainstorming and borrowing an idea from GURPs. How about making KA a +1/4 advantage on Normal Attacks that are stopped by Resistant Defenses. Body and Stun are rolled as normal, but any Body that gets through defenses are doubled and Stun is increased by a corresponding amount. 2d6 would be subtracted for Knockback, not 3d6. Let's compare 15d6 normal attack vs 12d6 'killing attack' at 75 AP and assume they roll average. Vs 15/30 defenses, the NA would do 0 Body and 22.5 net stun while the KA would do 0 Body and 12 net stun. Vs 10/30 defenses, the NA would do 0 Body and 22.5 net stun while the KA would do 2*2=4 Body and 12+2=14 net stun. Vs 5/20 defenses, the NA would do 0 Body and 32.5 net stun while the KA would do 7*2=14 Body and 22+7=29 net stun. Vs 0/20 defenses, the NA would do 0 Body and 32.5 net stun while the KA would do 12*2=24 Body and 42+12=54 net stun. Some assessments: 1) Against high resistant defense targets, the NA is significantly better. Which kinda makes sense since a warhammer is better against plate armor than a sword would be. 2) Against many inanimate objects and Force Walls, the Normal Attack is better. Again, a blaster should probably be better against a door than a laser in doing structural damage. 3) Against low resistant defense targets, the KA is significantly better. As it should be. 4) Against many objects and Entangles, the KA is significantly better. For stuff like rapiers and lasers, you might want to have a custom -1/4 Limitation that Body after defenses isn't doubled vs inanimate objects. And perhaps make it so that any focus with the Real Weapon limitation only multiples by 1.5 instead of 2 to keep the body count reasonable. Needless to say, any weapon would be converted into it's equivalent damage class in damage. So a 1d6+1 pistol is 20 AP and would be converted into a 3d6 KA (15 AP with a +1/4 Advantage). A 2d6 rifle would be converted into 5d6 KA (25 AP with a +1/4 Advantage). Nice, clean, and elegant. Fixes the Stun Lotto and does its job of shredding unprotected targets while not being as good against high resistant defense targets. Targets in a non-superheroic campaign would rightfully fear it, while Supers usually have enough Resistant Defenses so that they don't have too much to fear. Seems to fit the genre material pretty well and gives a reason why VIPER would outfit its agents with 10d6 EBs rather than assault rifles when dealing with tough supers.

Re: Irreducible Damage Quadruple hardening is extremely effective if you put it on something like 3/3 Force Field to stop Penetrating Attacks. Dirt cheap, and gives great piece of mind. Of course you'd still have to slip it past the GM...

Re: Mechanics vs. SFX... Where is the line? A quick dirty answer: Special Effects is anything that consistently falls into the range of < 1/4 Advantage/Limitation. It may give you minor Advantages/Limitations at times, and maybe even consistently, but not to the level of +1/4. When something consistently gives you a game advantage or limitation equivalent of +-1/4 or more and it's not listed on your character sheet, that's a good sign that the Power isn't built or costed correctly.

Re: All Standard Effect HERO? It totally depends on the character how predictable this becomes. However, certain archetypes will have more trouble than others. If your gunslinger or swordsman has a 10 maximum OCV, then the target will either be hit 100% of the time at 10 DCV, or 0% of the time at 11 DCV. Fights between 2 otherwise equal characters will result in a slaughter. As for character redesign, you're probably going to have the high CV types and the low CV types who depend on lots of cheap skill levels or area effects and high defenses. There probably wouldn't be anything in between since you're simply not going to be effective trying to be a well rounded character.

Re: New Skills Idea It's too cheap IMO at 18 pts for tons of skills at +7 bonus or any language with native fluency and imitate dialects. I would be more comfortable with a multipower approach since each skill would be explicitly listed and paid for. Perhaps a 5 pt reserve and 1 pt per slot if I were to go the framework method. But if you're comfortable with your approach, that's all that really matters.

Re: CHAR: Captain America Since a vault door is 16 Def and I don't believe that Cap could damage the door itself even with a Pushed Offensive Strike with the shield, my scale would be as follows: 14d6 Cap with shield. 12d6 Cap with punch or kick. 11d6 Batman with punch or kick. And scale all other martial artists from there.

Re: All Standard Effect HERO? I don't like the idea. Once you know your opponent's highest OCV, it's easy to set your DCV to be 1 higher and never get hit. This would make low CV high damage archetypes unplayable. 2 identical people except 1 has 26 dex and 10 DCs while the other has 23 Dex and 11 DCs should be a even fight. Except the first person will win 100% of the time if they fought.

Re: VIPER's Draysha boosted stats...

Re: CHAR: Captain America Too much damage. Your writeup tops him out at 20d6 with an offensive strike and the shield. I would cut him down to +2 DCs with martial arts and +2 DCs with shield to top him out at 14d6 before pushing. Body seems too high as well. And the shield's defensive capabilities should probably be higher than 200 Active Points... Other than that, excellent writeup!

Does a character have to purchase Affects Solid World for Find Weakness in order to use it while Desolid?

Re: What would you trade for wealth? To me, Str (because it feeds to Rec), Con, Body, and Rec are bad since they'll probably lower my life expectancy to some extent. Int, Ego, and Pre are bad since they'll change my personality and who I am. Spd is bad because it's such a drastic change, to think and/or react at 1/2 my current level. Com is bad because of vanity. That would leave Dex, Running, or Swimming.

Re: New Skills Idea That's why I incorporated a 'diminishing returns' aspect into this system. So that skills become cheaper if you have more of them, and it becomes cost effective to purchase enough pluses to your skills to have true differentiation between them, rather than every skill at the same level. If Quantum Physics is your only science skill, you'll get far more usage and airtime out of it (IME at least), than if it were just one out of 20 sciences. It should be significantly more expensive for the first science compared to the 20th.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? No, adherents of the linear school of damage would have us believe that a crate of dynamite could destroy the Earth. Adherents of the exponential school of damage recognize that for the most part, defenses, body, and damage scales up accordingly. It seems extremely silly to me that dropping a chunk of dwarf star matter on a target would do a tiny fraction of the damage that a similar amount of energy would do in an explosion.

Re: Tactical Principals This actually works against Crux in this scenario. If he doesn't know that Wrath has FW and 87 active point energy attacks, there would be no reason for him to abort every phase to Desolid. And then get hammered by the first shot.