Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Terrestrial tissues are mostly made of water, which isn't combustible in oxygen ever. There's really not much trick past that.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

And evaporates fast enough to prevent any of the more flammable substances from reaching its ignition point until almost all the water is gone.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Which does of course point to how to be easier to ignite - have a biochemistry with less thermal buffering short of the ignition point.

That doesn't really have anything to do with what type of atmosphere you're in though.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

A lifeform with silicon polymer base and fluorine as its oxidant likely wouldn't contain much water, and might not have much thermal buffering in a terrestrial environment.

"In a terrestrial environment" is of course the joker in this deck. What if we put lifeforms into a nonterrestrial environment? If you put human beings into an environment where rock is molten and there's fluorine in the air, we might burst into flame. There's no statistic on a normal GURPS character sheet that even vaguely reflects this vulnerability. I think you just have to figure that GURPS isn't intended to be quite that Generic.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

If your Damage Resistance is not Limited, it should protect against these, regardless of whether they're coming as a result of the environment or a heat or cold Innate Attack.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

The proteins are part of you, have the full Temperature Tolerance, and therefore are not oxidized below the top of your TT range - because that would be damage, and you are not damaged by temperatures below that point.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Armor isn't really all that relevant to slow environmental damage (it's generally lousy insulation), though it typically has enough heat capacity to be relevant against attacks that occur on the time scale of combat (i.e. it's fine for burning attacks to be stopped by armor).

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Having a lack of thermal buffering is only important when you're being exposed to temperatures higher than your ignition point in the current environment, though. A silicon/fluorine critter is likely to have a very high ignition point in an oxygen atmosphere, it seems to me. Very high compared to temperatures they're likely to encounter in that environment, that is.

I don't think thermal buffering should depend on environment except insofar as that changes where the ignition point is.
Well, at that temperature they'd be lethally burned, dessicated, and eventually burst into flame in a terrestrial atmosphere. I'm not sure in exactly what order. The fluorine (depending on concentration) probably makes them easier to ignite, but what with the rapidly being seared to death your subject is unlikely to care much.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I'm not talking about armor you wear, though, I'm talking about DR bought with CP. Innate DR (as opposed to gear) need not be defined as an external shell over more vulnerable inside bits, after all. Innate DR (Limited:Fire/Heat) could easily represent every single bit of your body being resistant to direct damage from fire or heat*, and as Kromm notes in a bit quoted earlier in this thread, about DR 10 will suffice to protect you against normal flame or fuel-primed flame, and even likely against most furnaces; DR 20 would encompass even more.

I'm saying that unless your DR is provided by external gear, or if bought with CP, further limited to represent being an external coating of some kind, that protection is indefinite and will allow you to hang out in that fiery environment, or pool of lava, for as long as you like. That's as far as the direct damage effects go, of course; to avoid the FP or HT loss, you still need Immunity and/or Temperature Tolerance.

*Some examples of this being elementals (esp. fire and earth ones), many kinds of golems, and supers that transform into stone or metal form.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

DR bought with character points does not claim to differ from any other sort of DR.