Wall Innate Attack - Encase the target?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by RicoZaid

So with the 12 yards of wall I have I could fully encase 2 adjacent people before they were hit by an attack?

If you don't need to shield them from above, you'd only need 8 yards of Wall to shield them. To do it from above as well, I'd require 18 yards - 8 hexes for the base, 8 hexes on top (basically each hex of Wall is double height), then 2 hexes above the characters.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

three-yard-long by one-yard-wide wall per yard of radius in your area

I missed that, and actually thought it gave you the same number of affected hexes as you would normally have for your Area Effect, so good catch there.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

We are given 2 dimensions here, 1 yard by 3 yards is 3 square yards. You can also look at that as 3 feet by 9 feet is 27 square feet. It is effectively just described in 2 dimensions. Which dimensions you label terms like length, width, height, thickness, depth, etc. doesn't really matter.

I don't think Wall is meant to work like that, even the +60% version. Length, width, and thickness are pretty well interchangeable terms, but height is a horse of a different color. At least, that's how I interpret it, but the fact we are only given two dimensions does throw a wrench into handling things.

Honestly, this thread is causing me to wonder several things about Wall, so I think I'll start a new thread to ask those, rather than derail this one.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Area Effect and Wall do nor have a height.

Length and Width are terms you will generally only see when a 2D object is on the ground.

But this is GURPS, and while a typical battlemap only shows things in 2 dimensions, the world it takes place in has 3. Area Effect and Wall must have a height, but the text fails to explicitly define them.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

For a standup wall, length and width would be uses interchangeable, as would thickness/depth.

Agreed, at least with the +60% version (the +30% one I think can only make a straight wall that is 1 yard wide/thick/deep and 3 yards per yard of nominal radius long).

Originally Posted by Hellboy

There isn't really anything special about height here. A wall doesn't even have to go straight up. You can make a 45 degree wall for example.

Even if we don't call any of them height, a 45-degree wall still has 3 dimensions to it - a length, a width, and a thickness. The text only defines 2.

Incidentally, I went ahead and made that thread. It can be found here.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Varyon

But this is GURPS, and while a typical battlemap only shows things in 2 dimensions, the world it takes place in has 3. Area Effect and Wall must have a height, but the text fails to explicitly define them.

The text rather explicitly defines them.

Originally Posted by Basic Set p.101

Range, Area, and Duration for Advantages
When applying modifiers, you occasionally need to know the range, area of effect, or duration of an advantage for which one or more of these quantities is not specified – for instance, when applying an enhancement that gives a range to an ability that normally has none. Assume that range is 100 yards, area is a circle 2 yards in radius (and 12’ high, should volume matter), and duration is 10 seconds, unless the advantage specifies otherwise. Exceptions will be noted.

Emphasis mine.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The text rather explicitly defines them.
...
Emphasis mine.

Ah, there we are, thank you. I tried to find this, but looked at Area Effect and the rules in Campaigns for them, and missed this part.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Volume doesn't matter for wall though. It's 2-dimensional.

I have no idea where you are getting this ideas from (walls are pretty obviously 3-dimensional things), but Bruno has supplied us with the relevant text, so I think we're good to go here.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

12' high is 2 yards high, so let's look at that with the known stats:

No it's not 12′ is 12 Feet, 3 feet to a yard so 12′ is 4 yards

[Edit 12″ is 12 inches which is 1 foot or 1/3 a yard]

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Walls aren't obviously 3-dimensional things. It's perfectly feasible to make a 2D wall of light.

A wall has 3 dimensions - height, width, and thickness. A "2-dimensional" wall is simply one that is really, really thin, and isn't really an option for Wall anyway, as it has a minimum thickness of 1 yard (it takes up hexes, rather than simply blocking the path to them).

Originally Posted by Hellboy

The problem here is that this requirement is not met

We don't care about the Ranged requirement, and it's not like the text is trying to say "None of these rules apply if the ability has a stated Range, or isn't Ranged." Seriously, it's basically "Hey, if the ability should have one of these traits, but doesn't define it, here are the defaults to use." One of those is a height of 12 feet, and as Area Effect and its variants (including Wall) should have a height, but it isn't defined, 12 feet is what you use.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Volume doesn't matter if you go with the RAW and give it 2 dimensions.

Once again, walls are 3-dimensional objects, and the 2 dimensions that are stated in the text don't include arguably the most important one, height (as height is needed to use the Wall to actually keep things out, which is kind of the whole point of the Enhancement).

Originally Posted by Hellboy

So by default, walls are 3 feet thick? That's pretty thick!

Yes, it takes up an entire hex. That's sort of needed for, say, a wall of fire that continuously damages targets that stand in it.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

A 9 foot long wall which is wide upward 3 feet with no thickness seems a little more balanced here.

It's also nearly useless. If it's rigid, it's at worst bad terrain that costs an extra movement point to hop over. For both permeable and rigid walls, you can avoid them entirely with a simple roll against Acrobatics or Jumping - the Wall is the same height as a hurdle.

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Think of the problems that 3x6x9 = 162 cubic feet (36 x 72 x 108 = 279936 cubic inches) causes.

You could make a 1 inch x 1 inch x 23328 foot wall and then make a huge tripwire!

3x12x9=324 cu ft, actually, and to the best of my knowledge Walls require contact with the ground - they don't simply hover in the air (although that's something that could be clarified, I'll add it as a question to the other thread). Additionally, if Walls can even be made thinner than 1 yard thick, this should come with a reduction in damage or DR+HP. Your massive tripwire would have DR+HP that rounded down to 0 (remember, when it was 1 yard thick and 4 yards tall it only had DR 3 and HP 1), meaning anything that hits it is going to break through without even slowing down.

Originally Posted by roguebfl

[12″ is 12 inches which is 2 feet or 2/3 a yard]

Just to avoid confusion, 12 inches is one foot, or 1/3 of a yard. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Walls aren't obviously 3-dimensional things. It's perfectly feasible to make a 2D wall of light.

Even a "wall of light" has a thickness... even if it's only one photon deep.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Going with that....if you can manipulate the dimensions of your wall using the +60% version, imagine how tall and wide such a thin wall could be made. You might well be able to use it to encase the entire earth!

How would that problem be addressed?

By poking it with your finger. Seriously, something that thin is going to shatter from a light breeze, unless you have enough levels of IA built into it that it actually gives some DR... at which point you've probably invested more points in that than you would have in sufficient Area Effect to accomplish what you're going for.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

A single level of IA gives more DR than a human skull. It is HP which walls don't have much of.

The shape you form a wall into doesn't appear to alter its stats far as I know.

If you want to ignore basic logic (thinner barriers give less protection) in favor of interpretations that break the game, feel free. The three options are that Walls take up full hexes at a time, may be thinned down (but not in a manner that stretches them out) without any changes to stats, or may be stretched out and have a linear decrease in DR+HP as they are thinned. Those options are fairly balanced, and won't break the game. Options that will cause serious problems, like your 1-micron-thick world-encompassing Wall that retains full DR, should be ignored.

[RicoZaid]

Originally Posted by Varyon

(thinner barriers give less protection)

Not if you (magically) increase the density :)

Material isn't mechanically relevant in Innate Attack Walls, correct? I could have a 1 yard earth wall of 24 DR and I could have a 1 inch think 'more dense' earth wall of 24 DR, correct?