Diffuse and armor

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

One of the cool upsides of Diffuse is that you basically can't be grappled.

Where are you getting that, exactly?

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

That makes perfect sense, it does sound impossible to grab a water elemental, for instance.

That depends entirely on the density of the water, surface tension, if there's magical forces preventing it from deforming, etc.

I had always assumed for Diffuse characters to escape grapples better than normal would require at least having P53's "Infiltration" enhancement:

Your body is a fluid that can flow through the tiniest of holes.
..
you can ooze through porous barriers and narrow cracks

That's the type of thing that T-1000 would have had, and I can see giving it to some (not necessarily all) water elementals, but I don't think this is something we can expect standard Diffuse to do.

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

none of the Body Of templates with Diffuse have Can't Wear Armor.
Air and Fire can't as a result of ST0,
but does that mean Water and Earth can?
Are there any rules getting in the way of it?

Firstly I'll note: M55 only lists EEs as being Homogenous, not Diffuse. This is a change from B262's Body of Earth. My guess is basic wrote it with the "sand" option in mind (let's call it "Body of Sand") then Magic made it a bit more solid.

Not that I can see on M191 for WEs, but you could certainly tweak the template to give that to DR to make them cheaper.

Keep in mind though that Water Elemental only has ST 7 and they are also Invertebrate (B140) which means they only get full basic lifting for pushing, and merely 25% Basic Lift for lifting/carrying.

This means per B17 instead of BL 9.8 they get BL 2.45, less than what ST 4 would provide. They're not going to be able to move around too well in any armor of significance unless you beef them up.

B262/B263 also used Invertebrate for Body of Earth / Body of Water as well. Neither has ST penalties though. BL20 would be BL 5 which I guess would allow some light armor to be worn without penalty.

Invertebrate had a "squeeze through much smaller openings than your size might suggest!" benefit which I think was in the spirit of giving the water elemental something akin to "Infiltration" prior to Powers introducing it (Magic came out first)

Originally Posted by mr beer

Seems OK to rule that while Diffuse can't be grappled, the armour that they are encased in can be.

Except there's no written immunity to grappling I can remember, but I do think the Infiltration enhancement could warrant allowing it as a Power Dodge.

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I think I saw someone put it at -20% to remove that
since it basically seemed like a 20pt disad to be able to be grappled

Remove something that's not even there?

I think the whole reason B263/M191 both have "Slippery 5" is to help counter grapples because Diffuse itself does not. B85 explains the benefits of that.

I'd probably also buy Double-Jointed for Body of Water. When you're Diffuse, having limited range of motion in the joints seems like a psychological limitation.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Plane

Where are you getting that, exactly?.

Page 60: "Most foes can not slam or grapple you". The exceptions are GM decisions. Reed Richards could use his stretching to grapple diffuse foes. One Air Elemental could wrestle another.

Oh and a reminder to all "Diffuse" is "Injury Tolerance". It's an easy thing to forget.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by mr beer

Seems OK to rule that while Diffuse can't be grappled, the armour that they are encased in can be. The grapplee would then presumably have the option of engaging in a normal Grappling contest or abandoning the armour and regaining immunity to a Grapple.

That makes sense to me. I could also see Diffuse beings 'allowing' a grapple so they can be picked up by friends and immediately be let go on a whim.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Unfortunately it isn't; GURPS doesn't have the hard 'you get what you pay for' that appears in systems like Champions, so sometimes there are assumed advantages and disadvantages that aren't written down.

I totally get that, that's why I was glad it was simple for Diffuse.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Page 60: "Most foes can not slam or grapple you". The exceptions are GM decisions. Reed Richards could use his stretching to grapple diffuse foes. One Air Elemental could wrestle another.

I wish there was any sort of recommendation for what can grapple you. To me, I can't see anything grappling an air elemental, even another one. But a fully encasing force field could likely grapple anything whatsoever because it creates a 'hard mold' around something. And I guess a bucket can carry water and thus a water elemental? I guess Size Modifier could come into play, like how a SM difference of 7 allows for 'large area attacks'. It's pretty unclear and I'd hate to have it feel as arbitrary as, say, antimagic.

Honestly, I might actually just make the default 'nothing can grapple you' and let Nuisance Effects allow for more with the GM and player coming up with some guidelines based on what can grapple you.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I wish there was any sort of recommendation for what can grapple you. To me, I can't see anything grappling an air elemental, even another one..

It seems like the most natural way for them to fight to me, They turn into one big battling whirlwind as they struggle for dominance. Whirlwinds can tear each other apart you know.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It seems like the most natural way for them to fight to me, They turn into one big battling whirlwind as they struggle for dominance. Whirlwinds can tear each other apart you know.

They absolutely can, but that sounds more like the air elementals having some sort of 'knockback only aura' and taking advantage of the fact that it hurts air elementals (like many air-based knockback only attacks do). Having air grab air and pin it doesn't quite make sense to me.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Page 60: "Most foes can not slam or grapple you". The exceptions are GM decisions. Reed Richards could use his stretching to grapple diffuse foes. One Air Elemental could wrestle another.

Thanks, sandwiched between the reference to B380 and the No Blood benefit, just wasn't processing it.

Do you think this also bans them from grappling most foes themselves (since grappling is mutual at least per TG) or attacking with a slam (since slamming results in getting mutually slammed by your target, in a sense) or using slam-based damage on a move an attack?

I find it incredibly weird that you could still suffer 2 HP of injury from punches but not slams though...

After all they suffer FULL injury from AE and a slam seems more AEish in nature since you're probably getting hit with a bigger body part than a fist.

This would make more sense for Swarm where you become effectively insubstantial for most purposes, I would get inability to grapple (or be grappled) or slam (or be slammed) if this coincided with all the other usual attack inhibitions.

LT59 describes the "net" weapon as diffuse. I'm pretty sure you can grapple a net. Damaging a net with a cutting weapon should be pretty easy but I could see it being very injury-tolerant to crushing damage in general (not just slams, but punches too)

Found old thread http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...3&postcount=18 which also points out that having Slippery on top of being immune to grappling does seem kinda redundant.

Perhaps the "most foes" guideline just assumes you will take levels of Slippery with Diffuse (as the sand/water templates do) to reflect that? Otherwise there's no mechanic to guide GMs.

The one issue with relying on that though is per TG27 penetrating DR with claws removes the Control Resistance afforded by Slippery or being oiled. Not sure if Claws gave any grappling benefits like this prior to TG but it makes sense for those. I don't think it actually removes raw Control Resistance though, so either having Diffuse buy that or having some level of CR built into Diffuse might be the way to go?

CR just means someone needs to be stronger to manipulate you though. I'm not sure how Diffuse is meant to be anti-grapple is necessarily anti-strong.

You presumably still suffer FULL knockback from crushing attacks like punches (just take less injury from them) making shoves very effective against diffuse foes...

So what would allow being shoved but not slammed or grappled?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Plane

Thanks, sandwiched between the reference to B380 and the No Blood benefit, just wasn't processing it.

Do you think this also bans them from grappling most foes themselves (since grappling is mutual at least per TG)

Actually no. There's no particular reason why an animate pile of goo couldn't grab something solid. A cloud of butterflies couldn't but that's because it's ST 0. You could of course struggle to break free of your swamp monster assailant but you wouldn't have anything to grab onto to suplex it.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Oh, this is slightly off-topic but I have a Diffuse character with Payload, which has come up in this conversation... but also (for probably obvious reasons) the character has Invertebrate.

I wasn't clear if Invertebrate affects Basic Lift for determining Payload size or not. Do we have any clarification on that anywhere? Does taking Invertebrate effectively quadruple the cost of Payload?

From strict reading of it, it doesn't look like it has any affect on Payload, which might even be intentional. If anything, I'd restrict how many levels you are allowed to take instead; For instance, you should ask your GM about taking more than five normally, so I'd require that for more than 1 (because 1/4 of 5).

Originally Posted by Plane

I find it incredibly weird that you could still suffer 2 HP of injury from punches but not slams though...

To me it's the other way around. I just find it bizarre that regular attacks (aka not AEs) can do any damage. Most of the time in fiction one of two things is happening with 'Diffuse' beings;

A) Your attacks seems to have no effect on them. Your sword might get stuck in a swamp monster. Your spear just annoys a group of bees.
B) You're not so much attacking a diffuse being as the magic that binds them, thus why water elementals might go down as easily as anything else (and I'd rule that particular type of being wouldn't put Diffuse on their sheet).

I guess it can make sense of Diffuse beings made up of tiny creatures, but I don't get how an RoF10 gun is doing any damage to an air elemental, let alone a useful amount.

[Taneli]

Guns damaging an air elemental is probably just game balance. If you want something that isn't damaged by guns, get Insubstantial with Can Affect Substantial, Can Carry Objects and Can't Pass Through Solid Objects -limitation.

Also, as a GM I'd rule that normal gear can totally be grappled, but then the diffuse could just flow out of their gear.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Taneli

Guns damaging an air elemental is probably just game balance.

That one in particular is just odd and might not have been intended. I could see ruling that RoF can't do more than 2 damage with all shots combined to line it up with other damage types.