Damage Resistance with Force Field enhancement: What gets through?

[Edges]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

DR does protect against afflictions, actually, giving a bonus to HT rolls equal to the DR. However, lots of sound attacks would have the Sense-Based modifier, which would ignore DR.

Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me.

[Christian]

Any more thoughts? Especially explanations why the forcefield works for one source of damage, and not the other? Or even better a generalized rule to distinguish where it works, and where not?

[zylosan]

The easyest explanation of why the force field blocks some attacks but not others is that its by default a semi-permiable membrane that protects the user from immediate sources of damge via a temporary hardening of the shield and does not prevent gas transimision.

For vacume, breathing attacks, etc the key point is that the field does not prevent the transfer in and out of gases, slow moving liquids or intentionally picked up solids.

Gas exchange will allow airborn poisions, corrosive elements, and high pressure to affect you. A high enough presure to trigger the fields "stop rapidly moving objects" effect would have already killed a normal human. If the character is not a normal human that they would have advantages such as pressure support.

Gas exchange would also explain the effects of persistant heat and cold. They are opposite sides of the same effect. Air touching your body is either hotter or colder than your body, resulting in heating or cooling. The field does not prevent either effect from occuring as it allows gases to come into contact with the users skin. A generous GM would perhaps allow a bonus to rolls to resist them. Exterme tempature changes trigger a temporary hardening of the field that allows it to block direct energy attacks. i.e. Fireballs, ice arrows, etc.

Electricity would also transfer as an electrical current is quite capable of being transfered through the air. i.e. Lightening. A sufficently high power electrical transfer will result in the field hardening as above. i.e. An innate lighting bolt attack will activate it and it funcitons as DR per normal.

Solid objects are a special case in that the user is able to phase an object slowly through the field should they wish. This allows the user to pick up objects, eat, drink, take a ****, have sex, touch another person, etc. In regards to if the hand shake of death affects the character, it would depend on if the character trusted the other party sufficent to allow their hand to phase through.

Constant pressure (stone pressure) would either eventually phase through or simply push the hardened shield into the characters body, having the same effects as direct pressure. Water pressure would affect the charcter for the same reason. Direct damage attacks such as a high pressure water stream would cause the liquid to move fast enough to trigger the shield.

A vacume is the abcence of any air pressure and would affect the character normally as the gas with in the shield was draw away from the body due to gases property of expanding to fill its enviroment.

Light attacks of sufficent strength to do direct damage result in an energy surge that hardens the field. A low level light sufficent to blind a person would not have sufficent energy to activate the shield. Unless however your blinding attack is shooting someone in the eye with a laser rifle.

The field does not prevent the transmission of low level energy waveforms. i.e does not block light, vision, radiation, radar, sonar, quarks, and gravity waves. (that is if gravity is a wave form anyways.) As the field does not affect gravity it does not function as an innertion dampner.

Not sure what a weakness attack covers but am assuming that it is some form of FP based attack. This will also apply to spells that affect a target but that do not deal direct damage. The force field is not solid at all times nor is it consistant in strenght at all times around the character. It there for does not prevent the formation of a "mana link" (i.e. energy exchange) required for a non-missle/melee spell to affect the character. It does prevent the transfer of touch based attacks due to the spell having a mystical requirement of contact between the caster and the target.

Finally the question of mundane armor piercing attacks.

1. Any non magical attack that provides an armor divisor does so due to an increased ability to concentrate force or energy into a smaller surface area. Such attacks affect the force field normally. The shield is responding to a rapid attack as normal but is facing an abnormal amount of force and its normal protective value is reduced.

2. It depends on the nature of the attack. Liquid effects are able to phase though the shield as normal. Energy attacks such as a disinigration ray reduce DR by removing some of the protective material between the character and the outside world. Such attacks are capable of depleating the over all damage stopping ability of the shield. I would make this a temporary reduction that returns at the same rate as a deplition of natural armor to corrosion effects. i.e. the same rate as HP regen.

3. A penetrating spell works on the same principle as an AP attack. More energy/force/mana/fuzzy bunnies are focused on a reduced surface area to improve the ability to penetrate the shielding material and reduce the shield effectiveness. i.e. it gets its armor devisor.

4. The field does not prevent the transmission of slow, low energy partical of solid matter. It does not protect agianst getting dirt, viruses, bacteria, or liquid transmission of any of the above.

5. Its conceivable that high energy motion of sexual intercourse could result in the hardening of the field, providing a condom like effect. It would not how ever prevent liquid transfer, rendering it unable to prevent exposure to STD's (which are normally transmited via bodly fluid) nor prevent pregnancy as sperm is suspended in a liquid enviroment.

6. Explosions are a special case in which gases are moving at a sufficently high volocity and carrying enough energy to cause the field to harden and the pressure is of sufficently short duration to have disipated before the shield returns to its gas permiable state.

[Kromm]

All the Force Field enhancement does is move the DR off your skin a tiny distance. The benefits are threefold:

1. It now protects your eyes.
2. It now protects your equipment.
3. It now means that any touch that must contact you to deliver a Melee spell or whatever must do enough damage to pierce DR.

Otherwise, it's just DR, and only helps against things that DR helps against: damaging attacks and the Affliction advantage when either lacks a special penetration modifier that bypasses some or all of your DR. All armor divisors affect it normally unless you add Hardened – and unless you also take the Sealed advantage, any area effect that bypasses DR by dint of the Contact Agent enhancement or similar still affects you. Note in particular that it has no effect on Leech and similar abilities that cause injury without going through the steps of rolling damage, assessing DR, determining penetrating damage, and applying a wounding modifier. It also has no effect on anything with Malediction.

It's always best to think about it terms of what the game-mechanical effects are: damaging attack vs. some other sort of effect, penetration modifier vs. no penetration modifier, something that Sealed protects against vs. something that DR helps with, etc. The actual source – fire, electricity, whatever – isn't used for this purpose.

Note in particular that to get the sort of comic-book force field that also protects against deadly mists, tiny bugs, etc., you need Sealed as well. And unless you want your gear to get corroded, coated with poison, or whatever, you might want to consider adding Force Field to that advantage, too.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by dds_ks

Yesterday, we had a big discussion...
... and agreed to ask the forum:

A PC has Damage Resistance (B46) with the Force Field enhancement (B47).
The rule book says:

Force Field: Your DR takes the
form of a field projected a short distance
from your body. This protects
your entire body – including your
eyes – as well as anything you are carrying,
and reduces the damage from
attacks before armor DR. Effects that
rely on touch (such as many magic
spells) only affect you if carried by an
attack that does enough damage to
pierce your DR. +20%.

As I don't want to influence a discussion/vote in this forum, I would like to ask two groups of several Y/N-questions. Some of them are obvious, others... well, you'll see.

First group: Which of these damage sources ignore the effects of Force Field (e.g. Force Field won't help at all)?

[Gertrude Stein]What is DR? DR is DR is DR.[/Gertrude Stein]

DR stops any Hit point damage attack that doesn't bypass DR either by being consumed like a poison (you let the apple through your forcefield to eat it) or using Cosmic Bypass or the magical equivalent (Deathtouch).

Unless you specifically limit the forcefield against specific attacks, it stops all to the limit of it's level.

Second question: Which effects work against a Force Field as if it were "normal armor"?

All of them have to overcome the Forcefield's DR first, and then deal with any Armor DR the character might have. Forcefield is an enhancement without listed built in limitations. There are thus no built in limitations to worry about.

By contrast, Tough Skin is a limited form of DR. Tough skin level 2000 won't help a bit if a Judo expert gets an arm or finger lock on you and decides it's time to break some bones. And your character really really really doesn't want to fall without some other form of DR.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Note in particular that to get the sort of comic-book force field that also protects against deadly mists, tiny bugs, etc., you need Sealed as well. And unless you want your gear to get corroded, coated with poison, or whatever, you might want to consider adding Force Field to that advantage, too.

Heh... had a little trouble parsing this at first. I thought you were saying that if you had a FF and wanted to add Sealed, that you had to add the Force Field enhancer to Sealed. Of course that is not what you meant *doi* It is just that the bare Sealed will only help the character's body, not his stuff. If you have an FF, it usually makes sense to add the enhancement to other protective advantages that can take it.

Got a little worried because I was just posting in another thread about Sealed :/

[dds_ks]

O.K, that was the first round.
As I see it, the community has similar problems as I had.

In general, most agreed that the FF mainly works like normal armor, and most (but not all) agreed, that it doesn't include sealed, pressure support and so on.
On the other hand, nobody suggested that a FF without further limitations would have any effect on the sense of touch.

Surprisingly for me: breathing effects of poisonous spores get a general "FF does not protect", whereas skin contact of spores only gets a majority. So spores can touch the lung, but not the lips?

Insects...
... don't get agreement: some say that they were "big enough" to be stopped. But does size really matter? Insects get through non-sealed armor, that's what the rulebook says.
But which consequence has this for shaking hands?

Just one said that speed would matter... which happens to be my own opinion, but never mind. I always think of a DUNE-shield, which stops fast moving objects, but slow moving objects go through.
That was the reason for the different situations with death touch:
If you strike with a hand or staff charged with death touch, you need to get through the DR to make your spell work: explicitely stated in the rules.
But... the FF is slightly above the skin. So if you first shake hands, your hand already is under the opponent's shield! So how could it protect? Or can't you shake hands if you have a FF?

But if this is true, then the next should be true, too:
And the same situation is the vampiric bite: If the vampire wants to bite during combat, he has to bite fast: DR of the FF protects. But if you're asleep and the vampire sneaks to your bed, takes 5 seconds (which the insects need to get through) to press his mouth on your neck and then bites...
... his teeth are through the shield before starting to inflict damage.

So where does it end? The four types of slow moving solid objects are:
Spores - Insects - Handshake - Slow Bite.
And what about the surgeon who has to cut your skin with his scalpel?

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by dds_ks

O.K, that was the first round.
As I see it, the community has similar problems as I had.

The only real problem is when people try to get something for nothing, or GMs who lack in common sense.

Basically in GURPS you don't get any free lunches, if you want an advantage you have to pay for, if you think that for thematic reasons a specific power should be doing X then you pay for X as part of the power when you create it from the RAW advantages, but you never get X for free.

On the flip side, you never get a disadvantage that you don't get points for, so if you, as an example, have DR which makes it hard for you to operated on, then you buy the DR with a limitation to that effect.

Many things may simply be nuisance effects, or just features and not worth any points, but if you don't specify it as part of the power then the RAW advantage is as written and doesn't give any symmetry/free advantages or disadvantages.

[Christian]

Ze, Dierk (DDS) is mostly a very fair GM on this regard, though he likes (as me) if things make sense logically.

At the moment we face the significant problem, that several members of our adventuring team do have a focefield ... and we are heading into an area where those grey areas DDS named could be a problem. Not the heat, not the water pressure, but those things that are neither answered by the RAW nor till now here.

I think we all agree, that what Kromm said regulates 95% of the cases: straightforeward damage independent of source is stopped/reduced.

I think we also agree, that those things that directly require different advantages, are not stopped (Temperature Tolerance for Heat, Pressure Support for Water and Air Pressure, Sealed for gases and liquids...).

But there are a few areas that are not clear yet. Areas that can become deadly important for our characters.

Basically it's questions concerning touch, size and time.

Forcefield states that attacks requiring touch, will only affect you, if they overcome your forcefield. Dierk asked specifially for the "handshake of death", which is out if you go by that sentence only. But which is in again, if you follow the train of thought, that an accepted handshake is already "inside" the forcefield.

Now someone could say: "I didn't buy the limitation that I can be hurt if I let someone inside voluntarily" ... and he would be right. On the other hand, Forcefield does have the feature that you can "partly" switch it, to be able to eat, go for the bushes ... and such.

Second mosquitos: the Forcefield text states that it protects ALL your body. Which would rule the mosquito bite out (think magical mosquitos, and it is a true advantage), as they probably can't penetrate your forcefield. BUT: B461 about swarm attacks clearly states that ordinary clothing protects against insects for 2 seconds, low tech armor for 5 seconds, and only special clothing indefinitely. Now one could say that a forcefield surrounding your body doesn't have cracks and slits where the insects can crawl in, so it could count as special clothing here. Basically this would just apply the "larger swarm animals have to overcome the DR" rule to the smaller insects by taking into account the fines mesh of the forcefield. But how fine is that mesh? When would this turn into a "hijacked" Sealed advantage?

This is also exactly the point where spores come into play. Most seem to agree that they can invade your body via the breath. But there is no clear cut agreement if they can also get to you if they require touch. But if mosquitos do get in ... then spores definitely also get in ... and thereby can apply their touch based damage ... which would be against specific rules by the forcefield modification (needs to overcome DR).

And last but not least someone might come up with the idea to "generalize" the whole" slow and steady overcoming". Basically Dierks Dune-shield. The vampire that takes time to not overcome DR, but to slowly get through the forcefield so he can apply touch. But wouldn't that call for a limitation?

[Christian]

Oh and I of course forgot the "pressure from a stone laying on you".

Pressure support is the correct advantage for pressure coming from gases or liquids surrounding you. But what's with a stone that falls on you (that's basic DR), AND then lays on you for some time? Doesn't it just give basic crushing damage while crushing you slowly to death? Then a forcefield should help, as would even a chainmail (though with limited DR). But you could also say "pressure requires pressure support", and then a forcefield wouldn't help.