Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-13-2011, 12:49 AM   #1
Sunrunners_Fire
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Now this is a fun one:

Innate Attack (Burning) 10d
  • Area Effect 15
  • Cosmic: Irresistible Attack
  • Wall: Permeable (Any Shape Desired)
  • Emanation

Wall is preset to make the Area-Effect into a Spherical Area Effect, working out to a 28.63 yard radius sphere. This utterly ignores DR. It hits everything (except the user) within the Spherical Area Effect. That is the easy part.

The complex part: How do I calculate how much of the landscape is slagged? Cover, barriers, etc ... none of that matters. The ground can't hide behind the ground to avoid damage so long as it is within the Spherical Area Effect. It all gets slagged equally.

A 1/64 lb homogeous "object" (itty bits of the ground) is 2 HP. Minimum damage for 10d (assuming all 1s are rolled for damage) takes that down to -8 HP (or -HPx4 if you prefer). The expected 3.5 per dice (35 damage) reduces said object to -33 HP (-HPx16.5), utterly destroying it.

Is this the appropriate method of determining the effect?

(... for those of you who are going to ask the question of what this is meant to represent: a conversion suffusion-field that partially converts some of the affected matter into micro-quantities of anti-matter, then allows the more normal matter/anti-matter reactions to take place. The other expected effects of this mixing are constrained by "special" forces and methods.)
Sunrunners_Fire is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 04:25 AM   #2
B9anders
 
B9anders's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Denmark
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

If you want a controllable field that follows you around, I would suggest aura and selective area instead of wall.
B9anders is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 04:36 AM   #3
Sunrunners_Fire
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by B9anders View Post
If you want a controllable field that follows you around, I would suggest aura and selective area instead of wall.
A variety of limitations are included in the build that aren't listed because I don't consider them relevant to the question being asked.

I've found that being more detailed than required is counter-productive on these forums; much to my dismay.

In practice, using this kills the user upon activation. It is a single pulse that isn't controllable by the user because, well, the user is (irrecoverably) dead.

Would you have an opinion as regards how to determine the minimum 'object' size and thereby how much of the landscape gets slagged or vaporized when used?

Last edited by Sunrunners_Fire; 06-13-2011 at 05:03 AM.
Sunrunners_Fire is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 06:31 AM   #4
Humabout
 
Humabout's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

My sleep-deprived shot in the dark is to apply blow-through rules and look up what the ground is made of using either the tables in the back of basic set (I believe stone and such are listed there) or in LTC 3 on p. 34. At least, you could use these for reference to ballpark what you're looking for, I suppose.

Running some quick numbers, this results in not a lot of earth really getting vaporized without tremendous damage. It's a thought, though.
__________________
Buy My Stuff!

Free Stuff:
Dungeon Action!
Totem Spirits

My Blog: Above the Flatline.
Humabout is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 09:28 AM   #5
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

I'd suggest doing the numbers on a per hex basis. Area Effects tend to create or destroy hexes of things.

Another comparison would be to treat it as an explosion of the same number of dice for making a crater.

I suspect the numbers won't be as impressive as desired, though. 10d isn't really a lot of damage. It's about two pounds of C4. If you want to disintegrate everything in a 30-yard radius, you'll need more power than that.
Anaraxes is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 09:52 AM   #6
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

... How much C4 did the Mythbusters use to eradicate that dump truck?

Or was it anfo? It was a heck of a LOT whatever it was.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 10:29 AM   #7
zoncxs
 
zoncxs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: earth....I think.
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
... How much C4 did the Mythbusters use to eradicate that dump truck?

Or was it anfo? It was a heck of a LOT whatever it was.
they filled the whole thing up and it was loud enough to be heard about 2 miles away. the ground was barely dented.
zoncxs is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 11:03 AM   #8
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
they filled the whole thing up and it was loud enough to be heard about 2 miles away. the ground was barely dented.
Pretty much exactly my point :)

GURPS, rightly, doesn't break up homogenous masses into arbitrariliy small segments - 1 inch of steel isn't treated as 25.4 individual layers of 1 mm-thick steel, because damaging objects just doesn't work like that.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 11:59 AM   #9
jeff_wilson
Computer Scientist
 
jeff_wilson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire View Post
Now this is a fun one:

Innate Attack (Burning) 10d
  • Area Effect 15
  • Cosmic: Irresistible Attack
  • Wall: Permeable (Any Shape Desired)
  • Emanation

Wall is preset to make the Area-Effect into a Spherical Area Effect, working out to a 28.63 yard radius sphere. This utterly ignores DR. It hits everything (except the user) within the Spherical Area Effect. That is the easy part.

The complex part: How do I calculate how much of the landscape is slagged? Cover, barriers, etc ... none of that matters. The ground can't hide behind the ground to avoid damage so long as it is within the Spherical Area Effect. It all gets slagged equally.

A 1/64 lb homogeous "object" (itty bits of the ground) is 2 HP. Minimum damage for 10d (assuming all 1s are rolled for damage) takes that down to -8 HP (or -HPx4 if you prefer). The expected 3.5 per dice (35 damage) reduces said object to -33 HP (-HPx16.5), utterly destroying it.

Is this the appropriate method of determining the effect?
The problem with dirt is, it's already destroyed, similar to the way water doesn't burn because it's already burnt hydrogen. Dirt and dust is what you get when rocks, dead bodies, etc. are reduced to -10XHP and left to dry out of any remaining volatiles. If you want to blow dirt *away*, I recommend adding Overhead to your attack, which technically covers applying damage from any direction despite the name. The Irresistable nature of your attack will let it apply damage directly into the ground, and with Overhead allowing it to be directed at arbitrary angles, the combination will have the net effect of blowing the dirt and loosened rocks up and out in the directions not constrained by still more ground as yet unexploded, similar to a boiling pot blowing off its lid and much of its contents.

You still need a ruling on how Area Effect damage scales to arbitraily small things, but I can't locate one offhand.
__________________
.
Reposed playtest leader.

The Campaigns of William Stoddard

Last edited by jeff_wilson; 06-13-2011 at 12:02 PM.
jeff_wilson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-13-2011, 11:23 PM   #10
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Burning Attack, Emanation, Irresistible Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
... How much C4 did the Mythbusters use to eradicate that dump truck?
Or was it anfo? It was a heck of a LOT whatever it was.
850 pounds of "commercial blasting agent", according to http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/02/m...ape_dynam.html
Anaraxes is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
aura with area effect, emanation, innate attack, irresistible attack

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 04:40 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.