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.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Look at armor vs. swarms. DR that armor worn as gear gives you is indeed different from innate DR, unless you think biting insects are able to eventually crawl under Luke Cage's skin.

In any case, if you won't let innate DR protect forever against the 1d-1 or 1d from being in fire, or the 3d or so from being in lava, then GURPS can't have fire elementals. GURPS does have fire elementals, so that's wrong.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Sure it can. Just take Temperature Tolerance +2000F or so.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Read the threads on such builds it has be Explicitly ruled Temperature Tolerance will do nothing to protect you from being burned by fire, it pure environmental protection, it pretect you from heat stroke and first bite.

your Fire elemental need not just Temperature tolerance but DR (Limited Fire only) too.

That's very common in GURPS to need More than one Advantage to cover the full scope of an idea.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

That just means you also need the DR.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

If you have the DR only you can run into burning building and rescue people without Damage with out the need for Temperature Tolerance. Temperature Tolerance would be needed if you plan on spending hours on end in the fire though.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Fire Elemental [341]
Attribute Modifiers: ST-10 [-100]; DX-1 [-20]; IQ-2 [-40]; HT+8 [80].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -1; HP+10 [20].
Advantages: Burning Attack 2d (Always On, -40%; Aura, +80%; Melee
Attack, Range C, -30%) [11]; Doesn’t Breathe (Oxygen Combustion, -50%) [10]; Doesn’t Eat or Drink [10]; Doesn’t Sleep [20]; DR 50 (Limited: Heat/Fire, -40%) [150]; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards [30]; Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) [100]; Temperature Tolerance 160 (35F to 2,970F) [160]
Disadvantages: No Manipulators [-50]; Weakness (Water, 1d/min.) [-40].

This fire elemental is comfortable from human ranges to high end magma. Buying/Selling HT up/down means buying more Temperature Tolerance.

Under the system I proposed, HT could be left at 10, and Temperature Tolerance would only cost 15 points giving a template cost of 116. Under the normal rules they spend more on their Temperature Tolerance than they do on their DR.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Long thread so I apologise if this has already been suggested. But can't we mess with it the way certain authors have for radiation damage?
Turn it into a Resistance advantage and toss the TT?

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I think TT should simply increase HT rolls for fatigue loss and whatever other effects you decide to pay attention to. It would be easier to manage I think. Uses the s/r table on page 550? to determine what the penalty is, based on the temperature.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Doesn't need the Temperature Tolerance, otherwise the Fire Elementals and Flame Lords from Dungeon Fantasy (which don't have any) die in their natural environment. Since they get by on DR and Immunity to Metabolic, that must be sufficient.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

The fire elementals that have actually been published in GURPS don't have that, so they must not need it. They have DR good against fire and Immunity to Metabolic Hazards, but no Temperature Tolerance whatsoever.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

And if you used them as written with the recommendation for non-metabolic thermal stress, you get stupid results, right?

Just under Basic Set rules, I think Immune to Metabolic Hazards knocks off all the effects of non-preferred temperature ranges. The trouble is that that's obviously wrong...

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Or because they lack Temperature Tolerance, they have a temperature range the same as humans but set much higher and die if they go somewhere too cold (like the range of temperatures humans normally live in).

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Die of what, exactly? Not HP loss as they have enough DR. Not FT loss as they don't have any.
Merely something not fully defined that appears nowhere on any character sheet.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Yeah, there's a general problem with temperature tolerance, in that there are plenty of non-metabolic effects of temperature, but no rules for any of them. In part this might be because any temperatures sufficient to cause non-metabolic effects will simply kill anything that lacks IMtH. An automobile engine can probably continue to operate (if not always well) over a range of close to 300F; for humans it's more like 20F.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Everyone remembers post #13 where both printed and Word of Kromm bits on non-metabolic thermal effects were quoted.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

That is only in reference to the non-core book Zombies. It still doesn't add anything but opinion for what rules SHOULD be added. As to how incredibly unhelpful such a rule is...
+15 is high enough to make it a non-issue, except for those that want a simple immunity.

We need a supplement that puts to rest the incredibly vague, inconsistent, unreasonably expensive, and unplayable rules of fatigue damage for fatigueless characters.

Edit: I stand by the intent of this post, but think I should state that it comes off a bit more aggressive than I feel.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Well, bear in mind that the roll is at -1 per 10 degrees, so it's basically adding 300 degrees (150 up, 150 down) to the range.

If we convert TT into Resistant (metabolic effects of heat) or Resistant (metabolic effects of cold) or both, those are probably Occasional, Occasional, and Common. That gives a price of:

• +3 (30 degrees): 3 points for either heat or cold, 5 points for both.
• +8 (80 degrees): 5 points for either heat or cold, 8 points for both.
• Immune: 10 points for either heat or cold, 15 points for both.

That looks plausibly similar to how low levels of TT are currently priced, but does rather imply we need to define (a) what non-metabolic heat damage is, and (b) how one defends against it.

For consistency with other types of damage, I'd be tempted by something resembling either non-penetrating or corrosion damage, though either one might mean a cost of (5) is no longer appropriate.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I'm fine with the listed Ht loss as damage that affects those suffering what would be fatigue loss for those lacking immunity to metabolic hazards.

I hope that sentence structure makes sense. I couldn't think of any other way to state my position.

The exact thing that occurs when "killed" by such Ht loss doesn't really mean much to the player rules-wise; dead is dead. I don't think we should require rules for whether that means melted, cracked and shattered, carbonized until blackened, or up in puff of smoke.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Since they're meant for summoning and monster encounters into those temperature ranges, and there are no notes about how long a Summoner can expect their summoned fire elemental to survive at room temperature.... nope.

The write-ups of official GURPS monsters in published GURPS supplements, with no errata against them, if nothing else, should serve as a good example of how to apply the GURPS rules to certain character/monster concepts. Since fire elementals are only given Immunity to Metabolic Hazards and DR good against Heat/Fire, with no Temperature Tolerance, and there's no reason to believe they're not good to go both in their home environment and at typical dungeon temperatures for an indefinite period of time (albeit being Vulnerable to cold attacks), we can only conclude that they do not need Temperature Tolerance.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Sure, but DR doesn't get mentioned in that post.

DR that's good against heat should protect just fine against any structural (non-metabolic) damage due to heat, and the amount of DR you need is well defined by the dice of damage dealt by the level of heat/fire involved. And in the end, dice of damage and FP lost due to metabolic concerns are the only kinds of damage defined in the rules for being in a hot (or cold place).

It doesn't make sense to have ItMH only give a +15 to resistance rolls, with permanent damage to HT rather than to (non-existent) FP, for two reasons:

a) the temperature at which an object takes structural damage like melting, freezing, brittleness, etc., as opposed to a living thing or mechanism taking metabolic damage (heat stroke, engine overheating) is usually much, much higher, often even more than the +15 could account for, and

b) in any case, the mechanism for taking structural damage from temperature extremes and attacks, including standing in a fire, is already established to be taking a certain level of damage (i.e., dice of damage), subtracting applicable DR, and seeing if you lose any HP or not.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I think I might have accepted the +15 if Kromm mentioned the no nuisance roll perk. If the roll to avoid HT loss is 16 or above, ignore it.

But that does raise the question of how one goes about making a character unusually susceptible to temperature.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Problem is that 'dice of damage' from heat/fire is only minimally correlated with temperature. Between swimming in boiling water, and walking through a bonfire, the boiling water will actually kill you much faster (higher 'damage'), but if I put a lump of tin in the boiling water nothing will happen to it, while if I put it in the bonfire it will melt.

The other problem is that DR in general is mostly about thickness, and thickness is utterly irrelevant to the maximum temperature a material can withstand -- it just determines how long it takes for the heat to get through.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

In the GURPS rule set, hotter fires do more dice, so it seems more than minimally correlated. It might not perfectly reflect differences in convection vs. conduction depending on the medium, but it's close enough.

And no, DR on a character writeup (so how many inches of mild steel or whatever we're talking about is irrelevant unless you're statting up a tank) is about damage resistance that's invariant with regard to time of exposure, unless it's Ablative.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Hotter fires do more damage, but more exposure also does more damage. The damage, basically, is biased toward a playable approximation of burning humans rather than something either general or particularly accurate.
You seem to be assuming that the damage effects of high heat must be expressed as cyclic burn damage. Anthony, meanwhile, is concluding that they cannot be.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

A steam hex is treated as doing the same damage as a fire hex, despite the fact that a hex of steam is likely under 300°F and the hex of fire is likely above 1000°F. Lava has about the same temperature as a bonfire, but does far more damage. A tight beam burning attack doing the same raw damage as a fire hex is probably above 3000°F.
Nothing in the text of DR implies that it's categorically different from other types of armor, and it certainly can represent X inches of mild steel or whatever -- a typical robot, for example.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

DR bought in a character writeup is not ablative unless you take Ablative or Semi-Ablative. Period.

Therefore, DR without such limitations will protect against damage of the types it's good against each and every turn, forever. There is no difference with longer term exposure.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

So what? Most personal armor DR also lacks the Ablative limitation.
No, DR without such limitations will be as non-ablative as armor which lacks such limitations.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

And said armor won't take damage from said attacks. What happens to the person inside is not related to this issue. Only what happens to the object/character with DR itself.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Low Tech Companion 2, page 25.

The listed DR values for armor are (obviously) what protection it provides to the wearer, not necessarily (or likely) what it provides to itself.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Optional rules.
But even that one I think covers small perforations rather than actual damage like how cat scratches may break the skin but don't come close to causing 1 point of damage.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Unless the attacks are corrosive. Which is a generally accurate description of long-term burning damage.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Plate armor gets turned into scrap metal by cat scratches?

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

That hardly seems correct. You could bake your steel mail in an oven for a while and it's not going to become flimsy and fall apart.

Damage vs DR is a bad model for non-fast thermal effects.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Unless you expose it to temperatures above the melting point of steel, at which point it will in fact ablate rather rapidly.

However, the other mechanic is heat conduction, and DR is a lousy model for figuring out the R-value of some heat shielding.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Not in gurps terms. It's either corrosive or it's not. Burning alone is not.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

No, but cat scratches penetrate human flesh without causing HP injury.

I think the issue is conflating DR of worn objects vs. inherent DR. But never mind.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Real world thermodynamics is far too complex for modern science to fully understand let alone playable game rules.

True, aerogel has incredible heat shielding properties but can't be said to have much DR.
I think we've all seen how slowly ice melts under a blowtorch compared to lead.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Which is completely non-ablative to anything that's not Corrosive. So, until there's a new edition of Basic that redefines long-term heat/fire exposure to be in effect, Corrosive, unlimited DR - that's innate to your body, not the consequence of something you're wearing - will protect you from it indefinitely.

Same deal with swarms crawling through armor. If your DR is part of your bodily makeup, say you're an iron golem, there's nothing for the little buggers to crawl under, or at any rate no way for them to get through.

Bottom line, the Damage Resistance does what it says.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Exactly my point. Armor that you wear, that's gear, has certain inherent limitations to it. Swarms can crawl through it given enough time, certain types of damage (other than Corrosive) are assumed to get you through any gaps in it, etc. Damage Reistance you buy as an advantage with CP, however, does EXACTLY what the advantage text says (which includes the eyes being a vulnerable spot, etc.) and is not limited AT ALL except with regard to the Limitations you actually take on it. If you didn't take Ablative or Semi-Ablative, and the damage type isn't Corrosive, it continues to protect you to its full value indefinitely.

And while cyclic damage may be a kind of wonky way of representing damage from heat/fire, that and FP loss are the two ways we have from the rule book of dealing with it. Furthermore, the fact that the fire elementals from Dungeon Fantasy are presented as being able to live in both their home environments and the dungeon environment with just Immunity to Metabolic Hazards and DR good against fire/heat, but no Temperature Tolerance whatsoever, means that is all they need and TT is superfluous once you have that combination. Otherwise, logically, if the idea of applying FP losses from temperature outside one's comfort zone to permanent HT instead to creatures with ItMH were correct, then even with the +15 to HT for resistance rolls, these creatures would be rolling 18s often enough that they would pretty rapidly die either in their home environment or in the dungeon - but there are no notes about them being unable to survive for long periods of time in either environment.

Anybody who thinks I'm wrong is free to submit errata for those creatures explaining that they either need to have Temperature Tolerance up the wazoo or a note about their survivability.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

It's worth noting at this point that many of the cyber shells in Shell tech have DR, Immunity to Metabolic Hazards AND Temperature Tolerance. The Baikal Cryobot has DR 30, the Machine trait (includes Immunity to Metabolic Hazards) and Temperature Tolerance 25.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I would not really assume that DF reliably pays attention to such things. DF Monsters entries frequently have both Temperature Tolerance (often 10) and Immune to Metabolic Hazards, but whichever book you got that from (DF9?) could easily have just ignored the subject. Or could have point-optimized away the temperature tolerance which they should have because the rules as written at the time didn't include even the token 'roll with +15' which seems to have come from GURPS Zombies.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Natural DR is DR. It protects you from any effects that DR protects you from. There is no guarantee that long term heating is an effect that DR protects from -- at least certain types of long term heating are explicitly not in the category of things GURPS DR protects from.
Which is not to say, stops any attacks that are affected by damage resistance.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

My reading of the GURPS rules is that this is not the case unless the human has a level of DR with Tough Skin; 1d-4 cut or whatever still counts as 1 damage before DR even on a roll of 1, and thus causes an unarmored human who is hit by it to lose 2 HP from injury. The only damage type with an exception to this rule is Crushing.

You can even be an ST 1 pixie with an SM-6 sword, rolling something like 1d-11 damage or whatever, unless your sword has an unfavorable armor multiplier you still cause 1 cut or 1 imp to an unarmored human when you strike him.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

1 unless it's Impaling; you do drop fractions when applying the wounding multiplier for cutting. This rule of course has its own realism issues.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

It does bring up the issue of granularity and damage from low strength.
A house cat would be unlikely to ever cause HP damage except through infections of minor wounds. To a healthy adult that is.

1 HP is 1/20th the damage required to cause 50% lethality in ST 10 HT 10 adult males.

Sorry for the derailment.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Long term heating causes Fatigue.

There is no one way to decapitate. It's merely a special effect of cutting damage to the neck that results in death.

So why not have melting be a special effect of heating damage that results in death?

DR protects you, then you aren't taking enough heat to melt.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Because that's comically unrealistic for reasons which have been beaten utterly to death in the thread.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

I disagree. No one lists the lbs per square inch required to automatically decapitate someone. They just eyeball damage, and HT rolls.

It's just an artifact of using DR, and damage in the first place.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

Uh. The subject is the heat thing, not the decapitation thing.
It's an artifact of using DR and damage in a place that's totally inappropriate for them...or are you talking about something else?

You don't have to determine when things melt by Burn damage versus DR and HP (and HT). That was your suggestion. It's not an artifact of using DR, it's an artifact of using DR and several other things in a specific way.

Re: Is temperature tolerance really that expensive?
 

If I pour tap water on a chunk of ice, that chunk of ice will eventually melt.

If I pour tap water on a human, nothing happens, at least on any moderate time scale.

How much burning damage is the tap water doing, then? Other than being at a temperature that happens to be harmless to humans, this isn't any different from 'how much burning damage does boiling water do' or 'how much burning damage does lava do' -- it will eventually destroy any object that can't withstand being raised to whatever temperature it is, and won't meaningfully harm any object that can.

Now, you might want to say something like "1d6 per X degrees of temperature difference", which would make a clear connection between temperature and damage -- but if 200F water can do a point of damage (100F more than human body temperature), which it certainly can, this implies that a candle (temperature at flame core ~2500F) should be doing 7d damage, which is obviously ridiculous, and tends to result in DR vs heat that is essentially uncorrelated with DR vs other effects (actually, the equivalent for physical attacks is something like "what's the Mohs hardness of your armor").

I actually wrote a relevant blog post a while back.