Additional modifiers for extreme cold?

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

Just checked in the other night, and was pleasantly surprised about how much attention this thread was getting

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I'm trying to pump up Deluge to 500pt. GURPS standard by seeing how much more dangerous he can be by increasing his create to level 40

Incidentally, assuming he's on an elevated position, how much create would be needed to cause a mini-flood?...if allied soldier are climbing a narrow icy path and a sudden rush of water say...1 foot deep came rushing down the path, what would the effects be? and how much create would be needed?

Also since we are talking logistics and winter wear of WWII troops. Does anyone know what the supply chain for the Afrika Corps was? In other words would it have been foolish to deploy this character in the mountains of Monte Cassino instead of creating potable water in the desert? Or were they "all good" without him?

You need to make some assumptions explicit. The way you're speaking about Deluge's abilities suggests that you're waiving the cost to make the created water permanent. If you are not, then Deluge needs a sizable Creation Pool to stabilize his water, so that it doesn't vanish at the end of 10 seconds. This is especially true if he's being used as a source of potable water, drinking the water is equivalent to eating it for rules purposes, meaning that the points spent to stabilize the water are lost and cannot be regained, only replaced by new character points.

Assuming there is no need for a Creation Pool, the upper limit for Deluge's potable water will be his fatigue. Assuming a 10-hour working day, 7 days a week, and running himself down to 0 fatigue at the end of his work day, he can use his Create Water 35 times, resulting in 14,000 gallons of water. The rule of thumb is that 1 man needs 5 gallons of water/day for all personal uses, including drinking, cooking and hygiene, but not any water needed by vehicles. Thus Deluge can provide the water needed for 14,000 men daily. If the Germans use him for potable water only, the need drops to 1 gallon/man and he can supply the daily needs of 70,000 men. This is a considerable contribution from a single individual but Panzer Army Afrika had about 200,000 members when it surrendered to the Allies, so Deluge is a big help logistically, at best he's supplying something between a third and half of all the potable water required daily and none of the water needed for cooking, hygiene or vehicles.

What you seem to be thinking of is a "flash flood" which is different from an "ordinary" flood like the "Red River Flood of a Century" in 1997. An ordinary flood can be quite slow and would likely be beyond anything Deluge could do. A "flash flood" is doable but has a lot of constraints on it. Deluge's creation is a bit less than 54 cubic feet of water. To be a flash flood, the water needs to be constrained, so we'll assume the path is at the bottom vertex of an equilateral triangle of indeterminate depth. an equilateral triangle with a depth of one foot has an area of about 0.866 sq. ft., making the flash flood about 63 or 64 feet long. The main thing that will determine the effect is how fast the "flash flood" is going, ehich will depend on the downward slope of the ravine, the steeper the slope, the faster the water will be moving. Having forded a coupe of rivers, I feel confident in saying that a flash flood that is waist deep with water moving at 4 mph, is likely (say 80% likely) to knock an unsupported person off their feet, if they're moving. Even at waist depth, a stationary person isn't likely to be "swept away", or "knocked down." In knee-deep water (about 18"), I'd call it possible but not particularly likely (say 50%) and at ankle depth, it's unlikely to have any effect unless the bottom is especially slick. In short, maybe, but only if the person isn't anchored (eg., holding onto a rope that's secured to something solid, and pitons probably count as something solid in this instance) and panics.

The short answer is it might be possible to knock the soldier down if the path is in a deep enough ravine and if the path itself is slick enough and if the target fails a Fright Check. Shorter answer still, how much goodwill are you going to get from your GM?

[Bathawk]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

You need to make some assumptions explicit. The way you're speaking about Deluge's abilities suggests that you're waiving the cost to make the created water permanent. If you are not, then Deluge needs a sizable Creation Pool to stabilize his water, so that it doesn't vanish at the end of 10 seconds. This is especially true if he's being used as a source of potable water, drinking the water is equivalent to eating it for rules purposes, meaning that the points spent to stabilize the water are lost and cannot be regained, only replaced by new character points.

Yeah in the last 30 years I'm almost always the GM :p. I typically waive the "creation pool", but do require extended duration up to permanent (though if they could create something like wealth if they can create gold or what not)

I really appreciate you crunching the numbers, but if a gallon of water weighs 8.33lbs., wouldn't classic Deluge (create 10 =1,000lbs. = 120 gallons) and my "new" deluge (create 40 =16,000 = 1,920 gallons)

If he used it 35 times, wouldn't that be 4,200 gallons (or 67,200 gallons for "my" version)?

Also wonderign how cool the water is at creation....The power assumes "room temperature"...but if your in freezing temperatures I don't think it would create bulk ice (it's not "create (ice)") So I would assume to be water in freezing temps it would "come out" at 33-35 degrees. If it is created in a targets hex....essentialy immersing him in water if only for a second, wouldn't the water begin to crystalize almost immediately? kind of like those youtube videos where people toss water in the air and it comes down as snow?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

To be a flash flood, the water needs to be constrained,

It would be logical that Deluge's normal workplace would be a portable tank farm (collapsible canvas tanks) with attached firehoses located on the top of a hill, to use gravity to distribute the water.

Directing the hoses or rupturing one of the tanks might release considerably more than 54 gallons of water if he's had a chance to repeatedly use his abilities.

Depending on water speed even a few inches depth can be enough to sweep people off their feet. Given sufficient area to surround a vehicle, even a few inches might be enough to stall or float vehicles. That would probably be any amount of water sufficient to come up to the bottom of a vehicle's doors (for an unsealed vehicle).

Releasing a flood of water down a mountainside will also give penalties to Climbing skill for slippery conditions, slow movement and possibly require extra skill rolls to avoid falling or sliding down the slope.

If he can create and store water, there's also no reason why he has to be the person creating the floods. Set up a canvas tank full of water, camouflage it along a mountain trail and trigger it using a grenade or handy volunteer to kick out supports to send it gushing down the mountainside.

Quick and dirty game rules might be to treat being hit by a wall of water as a Collision with a soft object with mass equal to the water's mass. Say that it's speed as it travels downhill is about 1/2 to 1/3 the usual falling speed.

Alternately, treat the mass of water as the BL and reverse the BL formula (ST = SQRT(lbs. x 5) or just check the Lifting ST table on p. B17) to get hypothetical water ST. I have no idea of that comes any place close to getting the physics right, but it's probably good enough.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Yes. When the Germans were pushed back into Tunisia, which is less of a desert than Libya, he might have been sent to Stalingrad.

Or any place on the Eastern Front where there are lots of troops and limited water supplies. Until the recently-destroyed Kherson dam was built in the 1950s, southern Ukraine could be extremely dry during the summer in addition to blisteringly hot mid-continental summer heat.

North Africa would be the logical place for him from 40 to late 42, but during 1943-44, he could be anyplace in eastern Ukraine or southwestern Russia.

It's boring from an adventuring point of view, but he might also have served as a fireman in Germany as the RAF and USAAF blasted German cities to rubble. Not only would he be a one-man fire brigade, he'd also be useful for creating potable water in areas where the water mains were broken and invaluable as a Nazi propaganda tool. Of course, if there was a female equivalent she'd be on the home front instead of him.

In any case, his real value is water where and when you want it for the logistical price of moving one man and a few trucks full of portable water tanks and fire hoses around as opposed to entire fleets of tanker trucks, desalinization and water purification equipment and all the fuel and men required to operate them. Even better, all those trucks and men normally needed to haul water can haul fuel or ammo instead.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

Also wonderign how cool the water is at creation....The power assumes "room temperature"...but if your in freezing temperatures I don't think it would create bulk ice (it's not "create (ice)") So I would assume to be water in freezing temps it would "come out" at 33-35 degrees. If it is created in a targets hex....essentialy immersing him in water if only for a second, wouldn't the water begin to crystalize almost immediately? kind of like those youtube videos where people toss water in the air and it comes down as snow?

I'd say you decide when creating the power what temperature the water is created at, possibly with the option for Ambient, in which case it's created at, well, the ambient temperature. If going with Ambient, you'll also need to decide at creation if your water will always appear as liquid or if it can appear in a different state if the ambient temperature is above boiling or below freezing; if it can, it simply does, while if it can't, I'd suggest having it appear at the boiling point for high ambient temperatures, at the freezing point for low ambient temperatures; it'll eventually (possibly quickly, depending on how hot/cold it is) be converted to another state, but it will start out as liquid.

As for the "instant snow" videos, IIRC that's only doable in very cold temperatures (below 0F or below ~-18C), and is done with boiling water. If I'm remembering the physics right, basically the water sorta flash-boils into steam (because when it's cold out, there's very little humidity on account of water vapor freezing, but the air immediately around the boiling water droplets is warm enough for the water vapor to enter), but because the ambient temperature is so low this steam basically immediately undergoes vapor deposition, converting to ice crystals (snowflakes) and falling down to the ground. That would be relevant if you had a character who had Create (Steam), but not for Deluge.

[Bathawk]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Or any place on the Eastern Front where there are lots of troops and limited water supplies. Until the recently-destroyed Kherson dam was built in the 1950s, southern Ukraine could be extremely dry during the summer in addition to blisteringly hot mid-continental summer heat.

North Africa would be the logical place for him from 40 to late 42, but during 1943-44, he could be anyplace in eastern Ukraine or southwestern Russia.

It's boring from an adventuring point of view, but he might also have served as a fireman in Germany as the RAF and USAAF blasted German cities to rubble. Not only would he be a one-man fire brigade, he'd also be useful for creating potable water in areas where the water mains were broken and invaluable as a Nazi propaganda tool. Of course, if there was a female equivalent she'd be on the home front instead of him.

In any case, his real value is water where and when you want it for the logistical price of moving one man and a few trucks full of portable water tanks and fire hoses around as opposed to entire fleets of tanker trucks, desalinization and water purification equipment and all the fuel and men required to operate them. Even better, all those trucks and men normally needed to haul water can haul fuel or ammo instead.

By the time the Third Reich was collapsing and Africa had fallen to the allies, would it be easy to re allocate resources to the Eastern Front as opposed to dropping back to Italy?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

By the time the Third Reich was collapsing and Africa had fallen to the allies, would it be easy to re allocate resources to the Eastern Front as opposed to dropping back to Italy?

Germany wasn't a spent force by early 1943. It was obvious that the 3rd Reich was losing, due to the near simultaneous losses of North Africa and Stalingrad, but it wasn't clear that they were certain to lose. German defeat only became inevitable after the Normandy Invasion, the Allied air offensive against Occupied Europe and the massive Soviet victories in 1944.

There's no reason why Deluge couldn't have been deployed to Russia between 1942 and 1943, although it would have required him to transfer to an entirely different army.

More likely, his original command would have fought hard to keep him after the retreat from North Africa. Southern Italy can be as hot and dry as Ukraine/Southern Russia. If he stayed in Italy, he'd initially be in Sicily in early 1943, then evacuate to Southern Italy and slowly retreat up the Italian peninsula during late 1943.

[Rupert]

I think they were clearly losing by the end of '43, and had no realistic prospect of turning that around. By then the allies were clearly not going to lose in the Pacific, The Soviets were advancing and had their act together, and the western Allies had shown that their victories in North Africa were not a fluke, and they'd located the deadwood in their commands and largely discarded it.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I think they were clearly losing by the end of '43, and had no realistic prospect of turning that around.

Pretty much, barring some massive unforeseen catastrophe that didn't happen in our timeline. By early 1943, the U.S. was on a full war footing and pumping out enough ammo, fuel and equipment to supply all its allies. By the end of 1943, all the weapons weapons programs which allowed the Allies to defeat the Axis were either in production or close to it, with the exception of the atomic bomb.

Thinking about the character, while it's easiest to design Deluge as a fanatical uber-Nazi, it might be more fun from a roleplaying perspective if he was an ordinary man with an extraordinary power and a "go with the flow" personality. That would be in keeping with a "water sign" personality. Flexible, creative and intuitive but also sentimental, sensitive and a bit lazy.

The civilian-in-uniform version of Deluge would be loyal to his friends and immediate superiors, but also perfectly happy to be a human fire hydrant operating dozens of miles behind the front lines. Before the war he worked in a brewery or water treatment plant, probably in a city along the Rhine or Elbe or on the Baltic Coast. He liked his job, loved his home town and didn't want to leave.

While he might have the makings of a good combat soldier or special operator, he'd never volunteer for such duties. If drafted, initially won't be happy in his new role. After he gets settled in, however, his sense of duty and intuition make him a formidable foe.