building a wall of force
 

Hi All,

I'm the GM and I'm trying to stat up a power. A solid wall of force. I don't have any problem adding ranged and wall to this power even though its a little outside of the regular definition. However, I'm trying to figure out if there is a fairer way to create it.

This is what I came up with:
System: (fyi I'm using multiplicative advantages)
DR 5/level (+20% forcefield, +60% wall, ranged +40%, Area of Effect 2 yards +50% -20% semi-ablative, -10% force, skill roll -10%, 1 fatigue/minute cost) : 8.1/level

Description: This power allows the character to erect a barrier tangible Force energy. The wall can be any shape and can be 6 yards long and 2 yard wide wall and about 10 feet high (not listed in the rulebook). The wall is rigid solid force that can do damage if knocked into strongly enough.

So here are my questions:
1. The wall ability is made strictly for damaging effect and a rigid effect gets DR 3/die of damage. Should I give some extra DR to the force field for that or change the price to maybe +50% instead for that loss?
2. other than affliction DR can anyone else think of another way to make the power that I've missed?

Re: building a wall of force
 

Crushing Attack with the Wall modifier can be a rather solid barrier, needing only Area Effect and Persistent to be a thing.

Re: building a wall of force
 

The Wall Enhancement is intended for use on Attacks (usually Innate Attack or Binding) with Area Effect and Persistent.

A solid Wall (such as a Wall of Force), would usually be an Innate Attack (Crushing; Area Effect, Persistent, Wall)

For DR, Powers (page 46) says you need Area Effect and Affects Others for a Force Field that covers an area!

Re: building a wall of force
 

here is the rewrite.

Description: This power allows the character to erect a barrier of tangible energy. The wall can be any shape . The wall is rigid solid force that can do damage if knocked into strongly enough. The wall is about 10 feet high, 6 yards long and 2 yards wide.

System:
Innate Attack crushing 5/level (+0% no die roll 2 points/level, cosmic +100% (stops energy attacks as well), +60% wall, persistent +40%, +40% 10x duration (100 seconds) area of affect 2 yards +50%, hardened (x5), +60%, no wounding -50%, skill roll -10%, power modifier force -10%) 6.75/level

Notes this gives a wall with DR 3 and ½ hp/die of damage (round up) each level. That pushes back any physical force and bounces back any energy force that hits it. Someone can hide behind it for cover. When it takes its full damage it fades away.

Re: building a wall of force
 

you don't need cosmic. A rigid wall will stop energy attacks as is.

Re: building a wall of force
 

Innate Attack crushing 5/level (+0% no die roll 2 points/level, +60% wall, persistent +40%, +60% 30x duration (5 minutes) area of affect 4 yards +100%, hardened (x5), +60%, no wounding -50%, skill roll -10%, power modifier force -10%) 5.4/level

here is the new one I bumped the duration a bit more.

Re: building a wall of force
 

Is there anything that would prevent someone from throwing half a dozen of these up to block a corridor by just taking a few all out attacks(double) for a few seconds?

The ability to layer it seems like it would substantially reduce the utility of having more than one level.

Of course as this would mostly be in a Divine Favor/Alternate Ability pool, it would vanish as soon as the user pulled out another force power

Re: building a wall of force
 

Each wall is a specified thickness - you can't layer them if there isn't space to put them all down. So if you're in an open field, there's little difference in utility between having a DR5 wall that you put down 6 times and having a DR30 wall that you put down once. In a tight corridor, there's a huge difference in utility between having a DR5 wall that you can only put down once and a DR30 wall that you can only put down once.

Is the DR30 wall worth 6x the DR5 wall? Probably not, but GURPS tends to undervalue the binary difference between having an ability at all and not having the ability.

Re: building a wall of force
 

I would probably not allow them to be be closer than a certain distance from one another as a gm call. For no reason but that for 5.4 points that is a pretty beefy ability.

So I wouldn't mind someone running away tossing one of these every turn to bug their pursuers. i would mind them filling one hex with 12 of them to fend off the Death Star's lazers with 5 character points.

My likely call is that only one of these can be in a given hex as that seems to be the intent of the wall ability.

Re: building a wall of force
 

Do note that it's 5.4/lvl, and considerably more expensive if you don't use miltiplicitive modifiers in your campaigns.