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Old 10-06-2020, 09:08 PM   #1
solidsingularity
 
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Default [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

So if you have an Innate Attack with Wall what power defense do you use?
If you use Power Parry do you roll damage or use the DR value of the wall?
If you use Power Block does the DR of the wall get doubled?
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Old 10-06-2020, 10:17 PM   #2
Plane
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

Quote:
Originally Posted by solidsingularity View Post
So if you have an Innate Attack with Wall what power defense do you use?
If you use Power Parry do you roll damage or use the DR value of the wall?
If you use Power Block does the DR of the wall get doubled?
P168 mentions Wall under context of Power Parry:
The defender subtracts his damage from that of the attacker.
(Exception: If the parrying ability has Wall, subtract its DR.)
I think that's probably (B109) meant to be "Rigid" walls since they're the only ones assigned DR. Something with "Permeable" probably uses the standard rules.

Since rigid gives 3 DR per die, that's roughly equal to 1d ... slightly lower, but then it's more of a reliable defense, I guess? You can't exactly gamble to stop the 6 damage attack like subtracting 1d, but you can guarantee you'll stop the 1-3 damage ones.

Power Block is for "normally passive defensive abilities".

The actual creation of a wall is not passive, it's an active use of a power. You could not summon a Crushing Attack : Rigid Wall as a Power Block, for example, just like you couldn't summon up switchable DR as a power block. The DR would already need to be activated, and passively protecting you.

However: if a wall is already up, then I could see it making sense to use a Power Block to double it's DR. You couldn't do this in the same second you did a Power Parry with it though, due to the limit of 1 power defense per turn (not even with AOD-double)

P169 does say "Power Block counts as an active use of the defending ability, even if that ability is normally passive." implying via IF that it might be usable with "normally active" abilities too though...

Psionic Powers distinctions, Psychic Armor (PP25) and Astral Armor (PP26) both seem "normally passive" since neither have Requires IQ roll. Their skills are "optional, used for power
defense, psi techniques, etc."

EK Shield (PP33) and PK Shield (PP56) on the other hand, by merit of having Require IQ roll, both seem like "normally active" abilities. These two Shields do confusingly contain the sentence "This is a passive ability" just like the two Armors.

All I can figure is that's either a remnant of when they were written w/o requires IQ, or is intended to describe how it is a "passive use" of an "active ability" to actually have the DR operate, especially for a continuous minute in between the rolls once per 60s.

You could probably do a Power Block in all 4 cases but the shield skills are going to need at least 1 IQ success per minute to stay up (and failures cost 1 FP to try to restore) whereas the Armors will ALWAYS stay up, except on optional failed power blocks where they only fade intermittantly.
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Old 10-11-2020, 12:46 PM   #3
oneofmanynameless
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Power Block is for "normally passive defensive abilities".

P169 does say "Power Block counts as an active use of the defending ability, even if that ability is normally passive." implying via IF that it might be usable with "normally active" abilities too though...

Psionic Powers distinctions, Psychic Armor (PP25) and Astral Armor (PP26) both seem "normally passive" since neither have Requires IQ roll. Their skills are "optional, used for power
defense, psi techniques, etc."

EK Shield (PP33) and PK Shield (PP56) on the other hand, by merit of having Require IQ roll, both seem like "normally active" abilities. These two Shields do confusingly contain the sentence "This is a passive ability" just like the two Armors.

All I can figure is that's either a remnant of when they were written w/o requires IQ, or is intended to describe how it is a "passive use" of an "active ability" to actually have the DR operate, especially for a continuous minute in between the rolls once per 60s.

You could probably do a Power Block in all 4 cases but the shield skills are going to need at least 1 IQ success per minute to stay up (and failures cost 1 FP to try to restore) whereas the Armors will ALWAYS stay up, except on optional failed power blocks where they only fade intermittently.
I'm not totally sure I'm understanding this and I feel the wording on Power Block leaves something unclear:

If I have an ability built with DR (let's assume it's a front only forcefield) that costs fatigue (1 to activate, lasts 1 minute, maintain at 1 per 2 minutes) and requires an activation check, and I activate that for a power defense, would that be a power block and get the doubling of the DR? Or would it be a power dodge?
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Old 10-11-2020, 04:36 PM   #4
Plane
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

If I understand correctly, anything from the P153 list, "pay FP" (costs fatigue and retries for others) or "make activation roll" (requires attribute or unreliable) would probably be free actions? IE operate liker Switchable w/ Reduced Time?

Quote:
Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless View Post
If I have an ability built with DR
(let's assume it's a front only forcefield)
that costs fatigue
(1 to activate, lasts 1 minute, maintain at 1 per 2 minutes)
Sadly I think it's actually 1 per minute, you need to round up, so it's usually worth taking 2 levels of Requires Fatigue -5% (total -10%) because you end up paying the same per minute and just pay a slightly-higher upfront fee.

The way DR works with Costs Fatigue has always been confusing though since B111 never explicitly specified for every advantage what was "instantaneous" and what was "continuing effects" for determining what a "use" was. Nor did Unreliable

The best guideline seems to be how "Active Defense" works
1) P112: "requires (attribute) roll" works "like Unreliable"
2) PU8p10: "really a special case of Requires (Attribute) Roll (p. 17), which itself is a variant of Unreliable (p. B116)"
We know this applies to "normally passive" abilties like DR, so the duration of it's use could probably inform us how R(A)R and Unreliable work too.

Both Unreliable and R(A)R can incur FP costs too: it's a mandatory fee for an attempt following a failed activation, no matter how much time goes by. In your "down time" it could be wise to "waste" FP on unnecessary attempts just to get a success so that in the future when you DO need it, you won't need to spend that FP.

"Based on Half DX -20%" is a major component. It seems like the +3 and "benefits from Combat Reflexes" doesn't really get paid for... except I guess it's probably balanced out by the cumulative -4. There's no cumulative penalty that I'm aware of for R(A)R.

Quote:
Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless View Post
and requires an activation check,
and I activate that for a power defense,
would that be a power block and get the doubling of the DR?
Basically once it's in a state where "I can reliably use it at 100%" you have the option of rolling Power Block to get a "200% if I succeed, 0% if I fail" gamble. I'd probably allow someone to do that with partial levels (ie if you have DR 10, power block with half of it, so failure means you have 5 DR, success means you have 15 DR)

P168 is something I think implies that the ability is already on. While on, DR is passively protecting you. So I don't think you could use Power Block if you had Switchable and it was off, for example, since Switchable requires a Ready maneuver to turn the ability on.

Even if you had Switchable + Reduced Time, where you could switch it on as a free action, that has to be done at the start of your turn, so I still think you couldn't Power Block normally.

Quote:
Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless View Post
Or would it be a power dodge?
Power Dodges are something I think could broadly represent the idea of "when I use a free action on my enemy's turn, did I react quickly enough for my ability to take effect before my enemy's action took effect".

Say for example I had DR 4 (Switchable +10% Reduced Time +20%) [26]. I might choose to normally keep this off because I want to avoid hurting people who punched me for 5 damage (they would suffer 1 HP to their hands). If I ever want to switch it on, I can do it as a free action at the start of my turn. If however, I want to make that choice during my enemy's turn (let's say they Fast-Draw a gun and shoot at me) then a "Power Dodge" to switch on that DR before the bullet hits sounds appropriate.

Where this differs from P167 is it ignores the "around or through" explanation, because it's not a literal dodge (you're not avoiding the attack) it's merely an activation, so the bullet would still hit you, but you gain the benefit of subtracting the damage.

P167 prohibits you from using more than 1 power defense per round, so unfortunately if you use this 'Power Pseudododge' to flip on your free-action DR, I don't think you could also Power Block with it during that turn, but you could probably do that on your next turn.

I think there might've been some perk out there which let you do multiple power defenses per turn but I can't remember where I saw it. Maybe I'm thinking of Blocking Spell Mastery?

- - -

Interesting feature: I think normally you would also need to "Power Pseudododge" to flip off your free-action switchable DR on an attacker's turn, but I think "Power Block" has an interesting workaround here.

Power Block does not seem to require DR to be switchable... and yet by operating at 0% on a failure, it sort of gives the ability to by "briefly switched off" in respect to a single attack.

I don't really know of any easy ways to "throw" a power block though... I guess since P167 gives a bonus for AOD and is forbidden for AOA, you could get a -2 penalty if you made a Committed Attack. If you could stun yourself you could also get a -4 penalty for being stunned too... and also a -2 penalty for trying to Power Block against a side attack.

So in theory you might be able to "throw the defense" (fail it on purpose) to make your DR not count briefly in a situation where that would matter. Like for example: your mind-controlled ally is shooting you with a laser and you don't want your Reflection DR to bounce the laser back and kill them, you'd rather take the damage yourself.

DR doesn't drop at all if you don't do the power block, but by "penalty hunting" you can near-guarantee failure and 0% your DR to make it nonfunctioning against an attack where that's beneficial.

That would also be cool for stuff like "I actually want to make my hand bleed by punching this wall" for those with non-switchable DR. You could roll a "Power Block" to try and double the DR for protecting your hand against the punch, then try to fail that roll so it doesn't protect your hand whatsoever and 'Hurting Yourself' kicks in.

I'm thinking a "Power Pseudododge" might also make sense for using Selectivity to toggle enhancements. That's a free action you normally do at the start of your turn (example "I want my DR to reflect damage") so there's no option to do it while someone is attacking you (example: keep it off by default because mind-controlled children are stabbing you with knives, but toggle the reflection enhancement on when their evil necromancer master shoots you with his gun).
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Old 10-11-2020, 05:12 PM   #5
solidsingularity
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

Thanks, Plane this helped a lot!
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Old 10-11-2020, 07:31 PM   #6
Plane
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

ARMOR
Psychic/Astral (25/26)

SHIELD
EK/PK (33/56)
I'm still dwelling on the differences here. We know that the armors can do power defenses. They have optional skills explicitly for that purpose: pg 8 you use half the skill as the basis.

I get the impression the 2 shield abilities do this too... so they not only use a skill to sub for their IQ roll, but also for power defenses...

That seems kinda unfair... why should you get double the benefits from a psi skill? There's not as much incentive to buy the skills when they're ONLY to double DR on a power block. There's way more incentive to buy the skill for the shields since they're ALSO to have DR work in the first place
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Old 10-16-2020, 09:36 AM   #7
solidsingularity
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

This is also been bugging me. I would love to get an editor's take on it.
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Old 10-16-2020, 01:52 PM   #8
Plane
 
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Default Re: [Powers] Innate Attack + Wall, Power Parry or Power Block

To get back to OOMN, there's THREE -10% versions of Costs Fatigue to consider.

These are distinctions which I don't know if they have different names... slightly different terms would probably help in illustrating the different workings so that abilities don't need fluff for that.

There's the one-level "1 FP per second for -10%" version...
There's the two-level "2 FP per instantaneous use" version...
There's the two-level "2 FP for 1st minute, 1 FP per additional minute" version.
Not to mention the "requires success roll and if it fails, spend FP to try again if you have 4 or more FP left" versions (which luckily are not called Costs Fatigue so we don't get them confused, but still have similar "instant or minute" questions sometimes) which have a "btw you can never attempt the ability again until you rest all your FP up to 100%" brutal embargo (ideal FP to have: 4):

Unreliable Activation 14
Unreliable Gadget Malfunction 15
Unreliable Power Malfunction 15
Requires (Attribute) Roll (primary attribute, uncontested)
Authors with a better understanding of advantage classification probably just assume readers can intuit which should be used, but I have trouble with intuition like that which is why tweaking the name would really help.

P153's AVP box first bullet (passive) makes me wonder about the 2nd grouping:
If it requires a die roll, the owner or the GM must roll – there’s no opting out.
Is THAT how RAR/RSR and the three Unreliable variations all work? Die rolls don't imply character consent?

OTOH die rolls also fall under the 2nd bullet (active) too:
An active ability does nothing until the wielder takes a maneuver to use it – most often Attack, Concentrate, Move, or Ready – or chooses to make a die roll
The "takes a maneuver" thing probably shouldn't be taken too literally since I'm pretty sure you can have "free action" active abilities too...

The bottom paragraph's distinction between switching=active but switched-on-effects = passive could be helpful here...

This makes me wonder if you could have identically modified (same enhancements/limitations) abilities have both passive or active variations as 0% features? There would be benefits and drawbacks to either of them.

For example with "passive ability which requires HT checks each minute" you're forced to make the HT checks (can't turn the ability off unless you fail the HT check against your will) but since the HT checks are passive (you're not choosing to make them) the HT checks would not count as an "active use" for detection purposes?

Whereas with "active ability which requires HT checks each minute" you're NOT forced to attempt the HT checks (you have a once-per-minute window to "switch off ability for free" if you opt to pass on that) but each time you DO attempt them (or perhaps only if they succeed?) that minutely moment counts as a detectable active use?
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