GURPS Powers: The Weird

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's hard to provide comprehensive guidelines for that in the space of a short ability definition, but yes, that would be a plausible way to approach this. If you change your dimensions by a factor of 2 you're as dense as steel, which isn't much of a problem, though you may sink into soft soil, and you won't be able to swim. At a factor of 5 you're denser than any chemically bonded material. At a factor of 10 you have 1000x human density, and exert 100x as much pressure.

Wikipedia says a typical human foot has a surface area of 100 square centimeters. At a factor of 10 that diminishes to 1 square centimeter. Given human body mass on the order of 100 kg, you'll be inflicting 1000 N per square centimeter when you're on one foot, or 10 million N per square meter. That's enough to damage some forms of bricks or concrete, but won't affect rock.

So, based on some googling, that looks like 1450 PSI, which probably exceeds the strength of a typical wood floor. Maybe look up "cover DR" of whatever you're standing on, if your armor divisor would reduce its DR to 0, it can't support your weight? That seems harsh at first (wood only has about 1 DR/inch), but I don't think I'd count on a 2x4 to support something denser than any earthly material.

[Klark]

The Automata style includes some guidelines for determining an invention's complexity rating. However, it looks like there are actually two complexity tracks: one for the power source/requirements and another for how it reacts to the world (if at all). How is this best handled? Should I a) have fantastic reactive automata require two separate inventing sequences, or b) use the higher complexity rating? Both have their own issue (one doubles time/costs and is the only example of an invention requiring two rolls, and the other promotes "in for a penny, in for a pound" mentality), so I wanted some advice from the source

Also hooray for necroposting.