12-16-2015, 05:17 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
That would dramatically conflate the Astral Plane with the plane of Limbo. The Astral Plane is the domain of reason and intellect, where intelligence makes characters fast and strong. It's the plane of Limbo that responds to willpower and the strong-willed and imaginative can create anything out of the yielding protomatter of that plane.
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12-16-2015, 06:01 AM | #12 | ||||||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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I'm retaining HT for knockdown, consciousness and death checks, but for skill purposes, I'll have Will take the place of HT. Quote:
I'm revising the calculation of Astral Basic Speed, however. Instead of (IQ+Per+Will+HT)/8, I'm going to use ((2xIQ)+(2xPer)+Will)/8. This will result in really high Basic Speed for sapient characters, which is deliberate, as it's meant to reinforce that people move at the speed of thought on the astral plane. Quote:
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On the other hand, capping combat skills at unmodified Body Sense or Free Fall has the effect of making everyone who doesn't live and train on the Astral Plane equally terrible at fighting there. The group's best warrior, Sir Michael, who has most combat skills at DX+5 to DX+10, will be no better and no worse at hand-to-hand combat than fire elementalist/sorcerer Abadas, who has Judo at DX and Knife at DX+2. On possibiliby is to allow characters to anchor themselves mentally and fight at -2 (or no penalty with a Perk) or to move around freely, but then they fight with skills capped at their default Body Sense or Free Fall skills (with a bonus +1 for every 3 points of IQ). I also think Free Fall ought to default to Acrobatics and certainly to Astral Movement. Say that Astral Movement defaults to Acrobatics-4, Aerobatics-3 and Aquabatics-5 and that Free Fall defaults to Acrobatics-5, Aerobatics-4, Aquabatics-5 and Astral Movement-3. Quote:
Creatures unintelligent enough not to understand that they can move around by mind-power behave exactly like they would in free fall, however. So do stunned characters or inanimate objects. Quote:
Ranged weapons have a familiarity penalty for those used to gravity having an effect on thrown weapons or arrows, but otherwise work fine. In fact, the lack of gravity or normal drag means that most short-ranged weapons are useful up to a longer range, once the user has adjusted to the lack of drag or gravity. Unfortunately, two factors combine to make long-range missiles impractical. The first is mental drag, which eventually stops any inanimate object that has no mental force behind it. Typical arrows and spears will be stopped within a few hundred yards. As a rule of thumb, figure that muscle-powered ranged weapons ranges are doubled, but that there is a hard cap for how far each projectile can go. In good news, though, Zen Archery checks are made at +10 on the Astral Plane. The second is that although the Silver Void seems infinite and large objects, like the floating islands composed of the corpses of dead gods, can be seen from a very long way off, practical visibility for human-sized targets is actually only around 200 yards. It's like a mental horizon, objects further off, unless exceptionally big, mystical or important (or all three) are simply invisible. When they get within 200 yards, they suddenly appear, clearly visible in the empty void. Quote:
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12-16-2015, 09:53 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
I never did play Shadowrun.
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12-16-2015, 10:06 PM | #14 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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I think Fatigue has enough mental components to allow it having some use in an Astral Plane. Gurps IQ is so expansive that it tends to hug tightly to species average. So I would prefer to have numerous sub-attributes see the limelight if only to allow PC/NPC variability.
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12-16-2015, 10:10 PM | #15 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
I'm so shocked that my monocle just fell out. ;)
For some reason, I have a hard time imagining you playing Shadowrun. Most of the game's Astral Plane was "just" a way to travel rapidly, invisibliy, and through un-living objects. Only later added Outer Planes dealt with what most of us think of when thinking of Astral Planes.
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12-16-2015, 10:27 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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Sorry about that.
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. |
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12-16-2015, 11:11 PM | #17 | |||||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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So, he's still quite the formidable guy, it's just that he's not acclimated to the conditions in the combat zone and has to think about things in a way he's not yet accustomed. Once he becomes so accustomed, the combat starts to look like something choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. Quote:
That setting, does, indeed, treat movement in its Astral Plane as if it followed Newton's Laws of Motion. Having just seen Gravity, again, I can't really go with that model. Momentum really isn't a thing, when you move where you will and stop when you like, so I'll go with a different approach. I'll go with the vast silver-gray void with no gravity for the deep places in Yetzirah, but locations in the outer reaches reflect material reality "close" to them. So, the genius locus of Denver, for instance, inhabits an Astral realm that looks like an idealized projection of Denver, with some anachronisms caused by echoes of particularly significant events, in the past. Anyone who travels, there, will recognize the place instantly, and it will feel quite like Denver should feel. It's only after walking around, for a bit, that the visitor will notice some things that are "off" (less grime; no graffiti except in the alleys off 13th Avenue, which reflect some of the amazingly cool things done, there, 20 years ago; some of the older parts of town -- for instance, Five Points -- look like they used to in their hey-day, rather than they do, now). For my campaign, I'm gonna go with Ken Hite's restrictions found in G: Cabal. People appear in a form that reflects their perception of themselves, but only really powerful magical items have "shadows" and can function, there. However, magic spells always work, as does training in skilled HTH combat.
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. Last edited by tshiggins; 12-16-2015 at 11:16 PM. |
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12-17-2015, 12:07 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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12-17-2015, 12:31 AM | #19 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
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Well, I hadn't mentioned how I'd calculate FP, but if pressed, I'd figure them as equal to IQ (since IQ=ST on the astral and I've already made Will = HP). If a character has raised or lowered FP, I suppose those could be retained, calculated from the new base. Quote:
Only two PCs have IQ, Per and Will all at the same level anyway. Those are Rasul Khamsin Mubtasim, who has IQ, Per and Will at 16, and Abadas Hussein, who has IQ, Per and Will 15. Most of the others have a fair bit of variation already. Sir Michael, for example, has IQ 12 and Per and Will 14, which goes up to Per and Will 18 when he's wearing the Amulet of Wisdom he was given by priests of Deneir. Ankhapet has IQ 16, Per 17 and Will 16. Murlak has IQ 15, Per 16 and Will 14. And Nelior Bladeburner has IQ 15, Will 16 and Per 17, at least while his imp familiar is nearby. It's true that most of them will have similar Basic Speed (9.75-11), but then, their Basic Speed is similar on the Prime Material too. Rasul has spent 15 points on BS, Abadas 20 points, Murlak 30 points, Ankhapet and Mickey 5 points. Abadas Basic Speed 10.00 -- Full Move 40 Ankhapet Basic Speed 10.50 -- Full Move 42 Mickey Basic Speed 9.75 -- Full Move 33 Murlak Basic Speed 11.00 -- Full Move 41 Nelior Basic Speed 10.00 -- Full Move 40 Rasul Basic Speed 10.75 -- Full Move 42
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12-17-2015, 07:48 AM | #20 |
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Movement and Combat on the Astral Plane
Combat on the Astral Plane is probably different enough to require its own skill, or at least a technique, not just a measly perk. I'd also probably phrase the difficulty as a bonus to dodge/defense: hitting things that don't think in the astral is probably exceptionally easy. +2 feels about right. Astral combat styles ignore that +2 and get that +2 to their parries/blocks.
defaulting from one skill to the other is at -2, but you have to have a teacher really sit down and show you how the other one works: you can't just show up and figure it out by yourself in an hour. So until they find (and pay?) a teacher, the travelers have to deal with a huge advantage by everyone else. At least,that's how I would do it.
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