Active defense questions

[Mgellis]

One can purchase a force field as a switchable, active defense that you turn on and off with Active Defense, -40%. This gives you a Block of DX/2 + 3. For a person with DX 10, this would give them a Block of 8.

How do you enhance the block?

Is it simply Enhanced Block (Force field) [5]/level?

If you are using the Psionic Powers rules and each ability has an associated skill, the skill here would be PK Shield (an IQ/H skill). PK Shield is normally a passive ability (most DR is passive, after all), but in this case, since it is now an active defense, does the roll become [skill]/2 + 3?

(PK = psychokinetic, for anyone who did not know the abbreviation.)

A related question...I am assuming that when a PK Shield is a purely passive ability, one normally does not have to make any skill rolls with it (in the same way that one does not have roll to active normal DR). So the skill is normally only for special uses like Power Block. It's only a necessity if one has made the PK shield an active defense. Am I getting this right?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[lexington]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

One can purchase a force field as a switchable, active defense that you turn on and off with Active Defense, -40%. This gives you a Block of DX/2 + 3. For a person with DX 10, this would give them a Block of 8.

How do you enhance the block?

Is it simply Enhanced Block (Force field) [5]/level?

That seems fair. I think Powers has something to say on the subject.

Originally Posted by Mgellis

A related question...I am assuming that when a PK Shield is a purely passive ability, one normally does not have to make any skill rolls with it (in the same way that one does not have roll to active normal DR). So the skill is normally only for special uses like Power Block. It's only a necessity if one has made the PK shield an active defense. Am I getting this right?

For Psionic Powers this is wrong, although PK Shield is passive you must roll against skill each time you are hit to protect yourself. It's only passive in the sense that it activates even if you are not aware of the attacker.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by lexington

For Psionic Powers this is wrong, although PK Shield is passive you must roll against skill each time you are hit to protect yourself. It's only passive in the sense that it activates even if you are not aware of the attacker.

One could argue that with the way it was written up, using Requires IQ Roll rather than Active Defense, it should only require a roll each turn it needs to be up rather than for each attack. On the other hand, with Active Defense, you'd run up against the usual limits on number of defenses in a turn, so PK Shield is still better than that would be, even apart from the issue of being aware of the attack.