Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

You would think Contact Agent wouldn't be impaired by DR (tough skin -40%) but unless that exception is hidden away somewhere it seams it does.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

The Tough Skin limitation itself (p.47 of Basic) says "Any effect that requires [...] skin contact [...] affects you if the attack carrying it penetrates the DR of any armor you are wearing", so it looks to me as if any Contact Agent agent ("Your attack must touch bare skin or porous clothing to have any effect at all", p.111) should bypass it as expected.

EDIT: Contact agent says "DR always stops it", but that shouldn't be taken too fanatically- it needs to be relevant Damage Resistance. A fire-proof being's DR (Only versus heat, -x%) wouldn't stop a (non-fire-based) contact agent attack, and Tough Skin is essentially DR (not versus scratches and contact effects).

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

Tough Skin explicitly does not protect against any effect that requires a scratch (for example, a Blood Agent) or skin contact (for example, a Contact Agent) (Basic, p. 47). It is one of the many reasons why Tough Skin provides a -40% discount.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

B49 prohibits Sealed for Oxygen Absorption (and probably also for combustion due to 'as Absorption') but not for gills, storage, or the non-limited Doesn't Breathe.

B82 mentions Sealed protects your "exterior breathing apparatus" giving example of nose or snorkel...

I really have no clue how to work that though...

How can a layer be gas-impermeable yet you can breathe through your nose or gills?

TBH the only way Sealed makes sense to me is with Doesn't Breathe, or in using a limited form of DB w/ Sealed being Switchable or "Bane: Nose"

Sounds like what B55 Filter Lungs is for. The note about not needing it if you have DB might just be for the non-limited form?

Forcefield DR being the recipient of Sealed is one thing I'm able to envision keeping out gas/liquids. P12 mentions they're often combined...

If you have DR with AE then that should probably also be an improvised oxygen supply so long as you put it up before the water/gas seeps in.

DR w/ AE can be pushed through using thrust-stepping though so maybe you'd need pressure support to avoid having the field collapse from external pressure in deep sea or internal pressure in space.

B108 Respiratory Agent +50% only allows Doesn't Breathe or Filter Lungs to protect... no mention of Sealed... B111 Contact Agent +150% only allows Sealed to protect... B110 Blood Agent +100% seems to work somewhere in between...

BA100 like CA150 is also stopped by Sealed, but has the added countermeasure alternative of "1 of 2 and 1 of 2" (DB/FL+NM+PV)

I'm thinking the reason Blood Agent is more valuable is because if the mouth/nose/lungs are protected (they're a mucous membrane) then it just hits through the eyes unless they're protected too.

B109 Sense-Based is worth the same as Blood Agent +150% though... I guess that's the part I don't get.

I guess maybe because Nictitating MEmbrane or Protected Vision are only partial defenses (bonus to resist, need multiple levels for higher chances) against Sense-Based whereas they are absolute defenses (even at 1 level) against Blood Agent.

This is also one way Nictitating Membrane is better than DR (forcefield) too, since while the latter gives DR to protect eyes, it doesn't give a bonus against vision-based or immunity to Blood Agent.

B47

Any effect that requires a scratch (e.g., poison) or skin contact (e.g., electrical shock or Pressure Points skill) affects you if the attack carrying it penetrates the DR of any armor you are wearing – even if it does exactly 0 damage! Your natural DR, being living tissue, provides no protection at all against such attacks.

Pretty sure Contact Agent is NOT impaired by it.

The weird part about Tough Skin's description is twofold:

1) forgetting Contact Agent also applies to "porous clothing" on B111

2) the idea of treating a "scratch" (I would assume this refers to Blood Agent?) and "skin contact" as the same thing...

B110 requires an "open wound" for Blood Agent unless you target a mucous membrane after all.

We need some kind of threshold for that. I always assumed 1 HP but that's a major wound for 1 HP creatures so I'd be fine with a lower threshold (perhaps to 1 decimal place if using higher-res dmg) of something like 0.1 damage, and make that the new minimum Basic Damage of non-crushing attacks.

If doing that I would suggest repricing innate attack, rather than 0.25 for 1 or -0.3 per -1, could just do 1/10 price per 1d/10. Since that's 20% cost for 1d/5 (average 3.5 / 5 = 0.7) that seems better than "take 1".

Subbing 3 for 1d would be fine if someone wanted fixed damage. 3/4 = 0.75 dmg for 25% cost. You'd need 34% price for 1 dmg.

I don't know how to reflect how some Burning Attacks ought to 'cauterize' (ie any blood it draws is sealed off) though. That should somehow be a thing.

We'd also need some kind of rule for the SM of wounds created by % of HP loss, like say if you drew blood using a knife and then tried to hit that later with a non-AE blood agent.

Obviously there should be some way to destroy "sealed" too...

Do we have text for unmodified sealed doing that? I thought you needed Acid-Resistant enhancement on Sealed to have it function like Corrosive Attack (No DR REduction -10%)

Another issue is shrinkers, P76 "unsealed armor" note. Grapples can enter an orifice (ear/nose/ETC.) without it. Could be RPed in more interesting ways, obviously there should be different amounts of "crawling time" needed to find the chinks in DR with different degrees of coverage, at least slowing down Atoms/Wasps even if they're no absolute defense. Should be easier to get through chainmail than around plate, for example.

We should note drawbacks too of course...
P106's example of Sense-Based reversed mentions you can't smell external stuff from within a sealed suit. Which does make me wonder how you can actually breathe... seems like Sealed really ought to "prevent you from breathing stuff outside your bubble" but maybe allow AE to be bought on Sealed (much like DR) to seal in a larger bubble of air, to allow you to breathe/smell a wider volume.

P108 mentions buying Force Field for Sealed which is a distinction I'm trying to get my head around TBH. I guess because it protects your clothing from contact acids and not just your skin?

Force Field normally adds "eye protection" to DR, so would that imply FFless Sealed to be "sealed skin" but not "sealed lungs" ? If it isn't introducing this benefit then why should it cost as much as it does for DR?

I thought I remembered a way to 'eat away' at sealed but I can't find it in Basic/Powers/Weird... this ring a bell?

I'm thinking maybe pg 5 of Shell-Tech 'Acid Resistant' not sure if this book introduced the rules it would be an exception to...

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

It's true, which is why Sealed is 15 instead of 5.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

I finally found that weird bit I remembered.

B429 under Hazardous Atmosphere.

"Those with the Sealed advantage are safe; those in sealed suits might be safe, but some gases eat away at seals."

I could've sworn I saw a Corrosive Attack enhancement for eating away at seals (maybe just vs gadgets?) that complimented this but still can't find it...

Ht178 has non-sealed DR protect against Flamethrowers at 1/5 while Sealed DR works 100%, which I guess is something like Armor Divisor with a limitation where AD doesn't affect sealed DR. though if it was ablative I guess it would go down normally.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

Erosive, Power Ups 4 page 18.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: No-Mana Shutdown
 

Thanks! NOT GOING CRAZY. That's a cool one. Now that I know the name, it's also on P108 too.

That must be what corrosive atmospheres have.... apparently can be added to ANY attack though, not just Corrosion Attack.

I guess this would work against Sealed w/ Gadget Limitation and gradually whittle HT of the gadget (of course... you don't actually PAY for HT of gadgets, that seems like a problem)

That's along the lines of "I wear my gadget but my gadget itself is not sealed"? If we viewed gadgets as characters with a payload (extending sealed to their contents, as a vehicle would) then the vehicle itself shouldn't have Sealed since then it would somehow be "requires HT roll" with failures depleting HT instead of FP...

I think one way to represent "corrosion destroys sealed" would be...

PU8p5 "Only while using (ability): This ability turns on only when a
different ability is in use."

That -10% limitation on Sealed would mean you require DR to be up for it to work, and it seems reasonable that depleting the DR to 0 should deactivate Sealed.

"Requires HT roll" on a vehicle/armor ally lacking FP would probably float FP costs to HT per "Extra Effort Costs HT" from Zombies 67.

That or if the FP-cost element of Requires (Attribute) Roll could be shifted directly to an HP cost.