Questions about Innate Attack (Wall)

[Varyon]

Thread Necromancy Part II: Electric Boogaloo!

A bit of discussion with Nedorus via PM has brought up some more Wall options I want to jot down so I don't forget them.

Alternate Scaling: Rather than getting three Wall Units per nominal yard of radius, it was suggested to have it scale such that you get a number of Wall Units equal to the radius squared - so 4 at radius 2 (AE1), 16 at radius 4 (AE2), 64 at radius 8 (AE3), etc. This means you'll typically have a lot more Wall to work with than the default (unless you only had a radius 2 Wall, in which case you're two Wall Units shy), but then that also means you don't have to give up proportionally more and more area as you have a larger area effect, as the number of Wall Units is scaling to same way the area is, with the square of the radius (roughly, anyway; using hexes means area doesn't quite scale with the square of the radius, but close enough).

Power Parry: It's always seemed like a projectile should potentially be affected by a Permeable Wall; the PM suggested letting such Walls do a Power Parry, with a success resulting in the Wall rolling damage and subtracting this from the attack's damage. This seems an elegant solution to me. Note this does mean Permeable Walls can potentially protect just as well as Rigid Walls against projectiles (as the average damage is equal to a Rigid Wall's Cover DR). Think of it as Rigid Walls getting No Roll Required for their Power Parry, in exchange for becoming vulnerable to being destroyed (with a slew of side effects associated with being a rigid wall, like characters being unable to walk through them without destroying them first).

Obscuring Vision: That PM brought up something I don't recall ever showing up in this thread - B109 actually states that at least Permeable Walls impeded vision, although it doesn't say by how much (and doesn't explicitly extend this to Rigid Walls, but the implication is certainly there). But I determined if you treat that as completely blocking vision, you can get something very close to Obscure 10 at only around 1/10th the cost (with a 1 point No Wounding Permeable Wall). But if you instead required around 10 damage for that -10, you get rather close to the [20] of Obscure 10. So, I'd say it's a -1 to Vision per point of damage; you can either go with average damage here, or you could even roll - once per use, once per second, or even each time someone tries to see past the Wall - to represent a variable obscuring effect (like flickering flames). You can forgo or reduce this effect as a Feature when designing the Wall; being able to vary it is probably worth +10% or so (but for a powerful Wall, you probably shouldn't apply the Enhancement to more than 3d of it). Enhancements for Obscure are available at 1/5th normal cost (but Stealthy requires you to also buy Sneak Attack at full cost, unless the Wall is No Wounding + No Blunt Trauma + No Knockback; also, as above, you probably shouldn't buy it for more than 3d of the damage). By default this only blocks visible light; buy Extended (again, at 1/5th cost) to cover Infrared and/or Ultraviolet.

[Nedorus]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Alternate Scaling: Rather than getting three Wall Units per nominal yard of radius, it was suggested to have it scale such that you get a number of Wall Units equal to the radius squared - so 4 at radius 2 (AE1), 16 at radius 4 (AE2), 64 at radius 8 (AE3), etc.

I actually decided to use 3 square yards (1x3) per radius squared. I get this from the area of a circle: pi x r^2 with pi being approximately 3 this results in 3x r^2 or exactly what I use for the surface area of the wall.

For me walls have "no thickness" so why would they not have the same area as an equivalent area effect? Just my thinking here.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Power Parry: It's always seemed like a projectile should potentially be affected by a Permeable Wall; the PM suggested letting such Walls do a Power Parry, with a success resulting in the Wall rolling damage and subtracting this from the attack's damage. This seems an elegant solution to me. Note this does mean Permeable Walls can potentially protect just as well as Rigid Walls against projectiles (as the average damage is equal to a Rigid Wall's Cover DR). Think of it as Rigid Walls getting No Roll Required for their Power Parry, in exchange for becoming vulnerable to being destroyed (with a slew of side effects associated with being a rigid wall, like characters being unable to walk through them without destroying them first).

I found this:

Originally Posted by P168 Power Parry

If the parrying ability has Wall, subtract its DR

So walls are explicitly meant to be able to do this (provided you are using this rule at all in your campaign).

With all the restrictions on Power Defenses (like being only able to do one per turn) I think this is really not a very unbalanced feature and have included it in my "house ruling" for both *permeable* and *rigid* walls.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Obscuring Vision: That PM brought up something I don't recall ever showing up in this thread - B109 actually states that at least Permeable Walls impeded vision, although it doesn't say by how much (and doesn't explicitly extend this to Rigid Walls, but the implication is certainly there). But I determined if you treat that as completely blocking vision, you can get something very close to Obscure 10 at only around 1/10th the cost (with a 1 point No Wounding Permeable Wall). But if you instead required around 10 damage for that -10, you get rather close to the [20] of Obscure 10. So, I'd say it's a -1 to Vision per point of damage; you can either go with average damage here, or you could even roll - once per use, once per second, or even each time someone tries to see past the Wall - to represent a variable obscuring effect (like flickering flames). You can forgo or reduce this effect as a Feature when designing the Wall; being able to vary it is probably worth +10% or so (but for a powerful Wall, you probably shouldn't apply the Enhancement to more than 3d of it). Enhancements for Obscure are available at 1/5th normal cost (but Stealthy requires you to also buy Sneak Attack at full cost, unless the Wall is No Wounding + No Blunt Trauma + No Knockback; also, as above, you probably shouldn't buy it for more than 3d of the damage). By default this only blocks visible light; buy Extended (again, at 1/5th cost) to cover Infrared and/or Ultraviolet.

I have preliminarily decided to go for -2 per damage die. I'm not so much a fan of many die rolls
(~_^)
So a 5d wall would be like "Obscure (vision) 10" as in totally blocking sight. A 1d wall would be like Obscure 2...
Note that I think that having "impede vision" for *permeable* walls but not for *rigid*, balances out the fact, that my *rigid* walls use Power Parry and Overpenetration and thus potentially apply their DR twice to an attack at or through them.
[EDIT]
Also the effect of a wall impeding vision through it is different from Obscure where it is unclear (to me at least) whether the penalty applies for perceiving "through" as well as into/out of the area.
[/EDIT]
I like the "Extended (Infrared/Ultravision)" idea and will include that in my house rules.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nedorus

For me walls have "no thickness" so why would they not have the same area as an equivalent area effect? Just my thinking here.

I treat Walls as having a full hex of thickness (unless modified as described in this thread), but I think I understand your rationale here. I feel keeping the Walls as 4 yards tall and then using radius squared for the number of hexes works out fine, however.

Originally Posted by Nedorus

With all the restrictions on Power Defenses (like being only able to do one per turn) I think this is really not a very unbalanced feature and have included it in my "house ruling" for both *permeable* and *rigid* walls.

The "one per turn" rule I think is about the character actively using their powers; the idea for Walls doing it seems more passive. But keeping in mind that normally you only get one attempt per round, I may have Walls Parry at -3 (basically, they get no +3, it's just Skill/2).

Originally Posted by Nedorus

I have preliminarily decided to go for -2 per damage die. I'm not so much a fan of many die rolls

I'll note the dice rolls are simply an option if you want them - just going with average damage should work fine. But if you want to do it as -2 per die (I'd suggest -3 for 1d+2, -5 for 2d+2, and so forth), that also works. Also, it occurs to me that 1/5th cost for the Obscure Enhancements is too low - rather, they should probably be full price. With my suggestion of -1 per point of damage, enough damage on your Wall to give -10 has a base cost of [15], while with your suggestion of -2 per die of damage, the base cost jumps to [25]. Both are close to the base cost of [20] for Obscure 10, so it may be more appropriate to simply have such Enhancements be at full cost (if you want soundproofed walls or similar, buy the appropriate Obscure at 1/5th price and Link it to the Wall). A better - but decidedly non-RAW - way to do it is treat the character as though they have the appropriate Obscure without actually paying for it, then apply the Enhancement to that - so any Obscure modifier tossed onto your Wall actually uses a base cost of [2] multiplied by the Vision penalty.