Insubstantiality and moving vehicles

[CeeDub]

Salutations!

Suppose a PC is a passenger in a car / stowaway in the trailer of a truck / passenger in an airplane and goes insubstantial. What happens?

With an advantage like this, normal physics are out the window anyway, so I'm not terribly concerned with realism, just the game mechanics.

My personal guess is that the characters "frame of reference" matters a lot. Frex, he can look through the windows of the car and see the car moving through a stationary world, so the car passes through him and leaves him on the road. In the trailer of the truck, he only sees the inside of the container and only the vibrations and bumps indicate that the trailer is moving, so he might stay in.

But that's just a guess. How would you decide?

Also, would Walk On Air change anything?

[Sam Baughn]

I'd say by default it should work the same way it does in most TV and films with characters who can walk through walls: they can walk or sit on solid objects and are carried along with them if they move. They only pass through things which they force themselves through or which hit them.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

But that's just a guess. How would you decide?

As you correctly observe, Insubstantial is physically ridiculous, so there is no reason to treat it any way other than whatever most conveniently models the power you are attempting to emulate.

Unless you have a source that overthinks it to an intermediate degree (enough to try to apply physics but not enough to notice it is incompatible at much more fundamental levels than those involving motion) you almost certainly can move with any physical things that could transport you if you were substantial more or less at will. So you move with the vehicle until you decide not to (or step through it), at which point you instantly (i.e. with no regard for inertia) start moving with, well, whatever it was moving on, probably a planet, but if you step through the wall of an elevator on a ship, you could stay with the ship if you like.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Suppose a PC is a passenger in a car / stowaway in the trailer of a truck / passenger in an airplane and goes insubstantial. What happens?
[...]
Also, would Walk On Air change anything?

Walk on Air would make a difference as long as there is air inside or outside the vehicle or container, though large differences in speed could be damaging, as there is when an Air Walker falls and then lands on the air.

As for just plain Insubstantiality, IIRC there was a rule that a Ghost whose template was built with Insubstantiality could change rest frames for 1 fatigue in order to haunt planes or cars they encountered in mid-voyage.

POWERS says,
"Paradoxically, most such entities
can “anchor” themselves to material
objects as needed, allowing them to
stand on floors, ride in vehicles, and so
on. This is a standard feature of
Insubstantiality."

A long or slow vehicle like a train or a ship might let the Insubstantial person "catch up" by their Move per turn while overlapping the vehicle. This would probably also work for the outside world when leaving a speeding vehicle.

The Partial Change enhancement would let you materialize your feet or hands (presumably protected) so that you can grab parts of objects to be pulled along or drag your feet to slow to a relative stop.

[Nereidalbel]

By default, Insubstantial allows you to choose to go along with a moving vehicle, or just phase through it. It also includes Walk On Air, as well.

[CeeDub]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

By default, Insubstantial allows you to choose to go along with a moving vehicle, or just phase through it. It also includes Walk On Air, as well.

Oh. Cool. I'd missed that. Saved me a bunch of points, thank you! :)

[Kuroshima]

<physics nerd mode>

If we disregard the fact that insubstantiality is physically impossible, and postulate that individual items can somehow make their atoms not interact with "normal" atoms (through strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational forces), then a character that turned insubstantial on a train moving at a uniform speed over a straight endless train track in a infinite featureless plane with not other physical objects would move along with the train, no problem. It would not be pulled up or down by gravity, it would retain it's speed, as while it would not be accelerated by the train nor slowed by friction, etc. It would also be in total sensory deprivation (it would be blind since it would not interact with light a.k.a. electromagnetic radiation. It would not be able to touch or taste because touch and taste require interaction with matter. Likewise for smell, as smell is basically interacting with airborne contaminants. It would not be able to hear as hearing requires interaction with some medium to transmit vibration). On the plus side, it would also be invisible. If the train tracks turned, the character would keep it's trajectory, while the train went some other way. Given that the character is in total sensory deprivation, it would not realize it, and so wold not be able to correct this change of direction (that's assuming that it can actually make trajectory corrections while insubstantial, meaning that there's some kind of medium for him to interact with.). Once you add the fact that the train goes over a sphere that moves around a star that moves with it's arm of the galaxy, that is moving away from the site of the big bang, you get a mess.

</physics nerd mode>

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Salutations!

Suppose a PC is a passenger in a car / stowaway in the trailer of a truck / passenger in an airplane and goes insubstantial. What happens?

Nothing much. It continues to move in synch with the surface it was standing on until and unless he moves.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

<physics nerd mode>

And you couldn't breathe, so you wouldn't have no source of energy, which is just as well since you can no longer lose heat by conduction and would cook in a few minutes. None of which is going to be a problem since your atoms are held together by those forces that no longer affect them - you disintegrate into an expanding cloud of (superheated, since the binding energy has to go somewhere) insubstantial subatomic particles....

It's definitely not a power you should be trying to apply physics to.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

<physics nerd mode>

You clearly have not read The Physics of Superheroes. Insubstantiality is a very narrow subset of Probability Manipulation. For normal, macroscopic objects, phasing through each other requires all of their atoms to line up just right to pass through each other; an event so unlikely it probably won't happen anywhere on Earth before the Sun goes red giant. For characters who can phase through matter, they manipulate probability until those odds are 100%.