Area Effect Advantages

[Tamahori]

I'm trying to work how you go about applying various advantages, such as Invisibility or Warp to an area. For example, a super that can port out themselves and a large bunch of people with them at once, useful for any party.


An obvious approach is just to slap Area Effect (and in most cases, Emanation though both of these have the little 'gun' icon on them, which means I shouldn't be applying them to the above enhancements. There is also the question of how this ties in with the Extra Carrying Capacity effects.

Then we fall back on what seems to be the new 'rule one' of GURPS, if you can't make it work any other way, use Affliction. I assume you apply all direct modifiers to the Advantage (like Reliable on Warp) before throwing it onto the Affliction, and then you can apply all your Area Effect and so forth. Again, do you need to bother buying the Extra Carrying Capacity, or do you just get that for free as part of your 'everything in a 2 yard radius goes with me' effect? If you have Selective Area do you need to bother having the Warp as a normal advantage? (For Warp it might be the difference between being able to get a combat dodge off or not, but I'd figure it could).

For useful afflictions, from the sound of it you need to make an HT roll to get affected? While I can see how this is important for a bunch of useful advantages, especially where they get applied for x minutes, is there any way to get around this for 'People who want to come with me can, people who don't get to make a Will save', and, assuming this uses the Will save (which seems to make more sense given the way powers like this normally go) how do you work out if an inanimate object resists? Do you need to slap Cosmic on it so that allies don't have to roll to come with you, or would that be only needed if you wanted to make sure even people who don't want to come have to?

For Advantages that hang around, like Invisibility, do you need to roll to work out how long they affect a given person inside the area of effect, or, especially with Emanation, can you just assume that inside the area you're invisible, outside the area you're visible?


On a side note, do people think its valid to require an IQ check for Selective Area when the character is trying to be very precise, ie: Somebody with the machines only version of invisibility wanting to leave themselves visible to a scanner, but not the gun in their pocket? I think it's valid for stuff more precise then 'Me, and those two, but not him' kind of selections.


On another side note, does anyone else think that the levels for Afflictions are a bit odd? Say you have the 90 point 'make them invisible ... is it really worth 180 points for them to have a +1 to HT to be affected? Same for the negative versions, I think your often more likely to get past somebody's HT if you make the Affliction a side effect on an Innate Attack, and you also get to hurt them directly as well.


Brett

[PK]

Yeah, you can't just add Area Effect to Warp and 'port everyone around you. By definition, you need to use Affliction. Though there's been hints that "Affects Others" (from Shrinking) will be made more generic so you can use it on other, willing subjects. That might make this ability easier to build.

[Tamahori]

I hadn't noticed that one for Shrinking. That is ... odd, that this one advantage gets this special 'and you can affect other people' modifier while most (all?) other advantages don't, very odd.

I assume that since it is a 'per person brought along' thing, then the people brought along also have to follow the brought up encumbrance level effects, mmm, trying to work out if it is legit to just slap this on other advantages, it's not a bad way to handle the requirements of how the teleporting character in the game wants to be able to operate at times.

Still looks like Affliction is the right approach for a true 'Area Effect' though, so I think I'll have to use that for my own PC in the game, I'm using Invisibility to Machines to get an effect kind of like The Drummer from the Planetary comics, who has this automatic x feet 'no monitoring zone' around him. Currently my own PC has the invisibility, but it will be more useful if she can spread the effect to sneak the party though security. :)


Oh for Powers to be released.


Oh, and on a side note Reverend, thanks for all of the posts you've done over time, you're one of my 'trusted sources' currently, the house rules and suggestions you hand out make sense. Keep up the good work. :)


Brett, who even did a 'house rules' version of the Characters GCA Data set to incorporate a bunch of Pee Kitty's ideas ... wasn't as hard as he thought it would be either.

[transmetahuman]

Originally Posted by Tamahori

I hadn't noticed that one for Shrinking. That is ... odd, that this one advantage gets this special 'and you can affect other people' modifier while most (all?) other advantages don't, very odd.

I assume that since it is a 'per person brought along' thing, then the people brought along also have to follow the brought up encumbrance level effects

I'd agree on that last. I'm a little annoyed with how little fleshed out that Shrinking modifier is - no word on where your friends can be, if you need to be or stay in contact with them, if they can revert to normal size without you, or any other details on how it works. Hopefully if they do flesh it out in Powers, they'll touch on some of those things too.