Dropping a rigid wall on someone

[oneofmanynameless]

If you have Crushing Attack 4d (Persistant, Area 2 yards, Wall: rigid) and you drop the wall such that it will occupy a hex with an enemy in it (you drop the wall on them), what happens? do they take 4d of crushing damage? Is this functionally still an attack? Or do they get harmlessly bumped aside?
Note that I'm intentionally not including No Wounding in this build.
The description of rigid wall says it does no damage itself, but the damage type applies to the injury inflicted on anyone crashing into it, but that definitely seems to address the wall existing rather then appearing on someone.

[solidsingularity]

Good question!

[ericthered]

The "dice" of a rigid wall don't effect the damage it deals, only how much DR and HP it has. The damage done by the wall is equal to if that character ran into any other wall. The difference is if you have an impaling damage wall the damage is now impaling.

As the wall is not a damaging effect, I'd say it deals no damage if you drop it "on" someone. depending on the fluff, I'd either say the wall construction fails, or that it has to move slightly.

If you drop the wall right in front of someone moving, they take damage as though they ran into a normal wall.

[Anders]

I would allow it if you buy the Overhead enhancement (+30%). Then it would do 4d crushing.

[Mark Skarr]

My short answer is "you can't create the wall on someone." For that, get Binding.

Creating a wall in such a way that it "impacts" a target . . . well, I can see that being used creatively.

I would treat it as a "knockback only" attack. The wall appears in their hex and inflicts 4d knockback. If that's enough to move them a hex, they move the hex. They take no damage, they're just moved. If it's not enough, they stay in the same hex as the wall, just at range C to it.

Trying to create a wall between two people, say who are at C, or are grappling (but there's some room, like holding someone by the neck), I would still treat it as a KB only attack affecting both of them. If neither are moved, then the wall appeared around one side of them (you didn't quite get it where you wanted, or they were able to maneuver around it). If it knocks one or the other, or both, away, the wall appears where intended.

[Varyon]

That was part of the discussion here, and you can find another thread here. Personally, I'd be disinclined to have walls able to injure by falling on people, but if you feel differently, keep in mind they have very low HP and thus are likely to deal low damage. If you get one falling quickly enough to cause significant damage, note it's capped at the average damage it would have dealt without the Wall Enhancement (or if it were rigid) - B431 states an immovable object cannot inflict more damage in a collision than its DR+HP (damage beyond this simply breaks through), and Walls have DR 3 and HP 0.5 per dice of damage (that is, maximum collision damage of 3.5 per dice).

Note here I'm assuming you're creating the Wall in the air and letting it fall on someone. If simply creating the Wall in the same hex, I think Mark Skarr has good suggestions. I also assume yards are 1 yard thick, so it may be possible to have the Wall raise them into the air 4 yards (the height of a hex), although I'd allow them to hop off as it's rising.

[RyanW]

If you want a wall able to crush (or bisect) someone, just buy the two parts of the effect with Link, +10%.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by ericthered

As the wall is not a damaging effect, I'd say it deals no damage if you drop it "on" someone. depending on the fluff, I'd either say the wall construction fails, or that it has to move slightly.

If you drop the wall right in front of someone moving, they take damage as though they ran into a normal wall.

The usual means of doing damage is basically an immobile wall where collision damage is calculated based on the speed of the enemy who collides with it.

Not sure how you'd make that happen unless "no signature" creatures invisible walls... should there be a "See Invisible" countermeasure there?

for entirely-visible walls, people can usually just decide to slow down, or even if they can't, to veer course. It usually only causes problems for Enhanced Move who can't decelerate full in a turn w/o risk of falling down.

- -

I imagine the further off they are, the higher sped/range penalties to the perception rolls required to perceive that a wall is there. Speedsters are probably going to need high Per to begin changing their path/decelerating for obstacles, though I'm not sure exactly when you would make these rolls during a turn.

Like in theory you could make a per roll as soon as a wall is created (you're far off) but maybe additional per rolls as you get closer? Allowing a per roll every time you move 1 yard closer seems like it could be broken though since that could allow you to brute-force your Per checks.

Maybe you can make unlimited per checks but we could do something like -1 per extra per check like MA's optional rule to prevent unlimited dodges? Treat perception like an active defense, sort of.

- -

It is possible to use Innate Attack as almost a "free action" via a "Power Parry" instead of an Attack maneuver, (actually expends an active defense, and you're limited to 1 power defense per turn, kind of like old-style parrying or blocking before "multiple" rules allowed)

P168 does allow Wall abilities to be used with as Power Parry, as it specifically calls out subtracting the DR of the wall you create from the rolled attacker damage instead of rolling dice and subtracting that.

This seems to be a the sole exception to the "Neither its other modifiers nor its damage type are important." text found earlier on the page. Clearly it IS important... but perhaps the context is "for establishing whether or not you can power parry" rather than "the tactical viability of Power Parry" (in which case other stuff like Costs Fatigue would matter)

I think this Wall note is assuming a Rigid Wall because a Permeable Wall does not supply DR ... so are Permeable Walls pointless for a Power Parry (subtract DR of 0) or would they just function like non-wall Power Parries?

- -

Reading B109 this means IA (wall) is a more reliable defense against low-damage attacks since you get 3 DR per die, so you're guaranteed to stop 1-3 damage whereas a standard IA power parry is only guaranteed to stop 1 damage.

It does seem to come up short in average/max situations though... 2d IA will parry an average of 7 damage (possibly as high as 12) while 2d Wall will only parry 6.

It's underwhelming when walls should probably be way better defenders.

I think maybe "his attack still goes off, though" is key here: if the attack used to parry still goes "off" even on a failed parry, then it should certainly still "go off" on a successful one.

So in either case: you create a wall, but if you failed your parry, the wall appears in front of you after the attack gets past and hits you. If you succeeded, the wall appears first and gets to use it's DR to guard you.

To give walls a slight buff, I think maybe we should also be taking their HP into account. You only get 0.5 hp per die, so the 2d wall would go from stopping 6 damage to stopping 7 damage, so this would at least allow it to tie the average of usual Power Parries.

I'm guessing that got ignored since it's of less consequence, can anyone see any problems with that?

We're never actually told how the HP of walls operates... like for example if you want a Fragile (brittle/combustible) or an injury-tolerant (Unliving/Homogenous) wall, how you'd go about getting the HP of your IA to act that way.

Having an ally w/ Unkillable 2 (can't be destroyed... does it still provide cover DR based on HP if it's at -10xHP ?) and No Legs (Sessile) could be kinda broken if you could create indestructible immobile allies for the purposes of providing indestructible immovable cover...

I'm thinking we could ditch Sessile and just use Portable and apply stuff like Clinging (always on) to reflect stuff like "it's harder to lift a tree than it's weight dictates since it's roots grapple the ground". Always-on Clinging should inherently remove the aspect of being able to move around on walls/ceilings since you are unable to voluntarily detach from that surface, at least not without damaging it... there probably should be some way of ripping Spider-Man off your wall even if the result is that he takes some wallpaper with him.

The only "failed Clinging" situation I'm aware of is "slowing effect of the failed
Clinging attempt" where you fail a ST roll at -1 per yards of fall. Beyond subtracting "yards fallen" for damage, I could at least see broadening that to reducing velocity in general (ie using clinging to decelerate rapidly to take less horizontal collision damage)

Beyond collisions though... seems like maybe your ST roll could influence other stuff, like how hard it is for someone to pull you off a wall (or ceiling, or even the ground) or maybe even grappling, even though Technical Grappling doesn't mention it.

MA62 mentions Lizard Climb gives a half-MoS bonus (rounded down) to the Climbing skill, for example, so it might make sense to give that bonus to the climbing skill for Clinging also?

Makes me wonder if it'd be simpler to drop the idea of Rigid Wall enhancement (just use Permeable Wall to give flexibility to Persistent AE shaping) and instead use Ally w/ Conjured and Minion and somehow Cosmic it (+300%?) where "my ally already being conjured does not prevent me from conjuring a new one".

interesting Q: if you conjure an ally above an enemy, can you drop that ally on the enemy from where you conjured them mid-air? Is that possible with Create?

You might need something like Affliction (Ally, Cumulative) to do that? Probably also needing cosmic to ignore the usual illegality of afflicting social traits since only physical/mental is normally allowed.

- - -

anyway what I veered off from was the idea that "if I create my wall, where do I create it?" is an issue that could matter for Power Parry. I think it could actually apply for using Power Parry on other forms of attack too: like for example if I have a grenade in the form of Crushing Attack (carrier) Burning Attack (explosive, followup) and use the Crushing Attack to parry an incoming arrow, there's probably going to be a massive AE explosion at whichever point my grenade hits that arrow.

Aside from AE that probably also matters if you allow "Sacrificial Parry" attempts for "Power Parry" to protect distant allies.

[Plane]

You have an inherent penalty to target things accurately at a distance already: per B550 you're at -10 to target something 100 yards away (the standard Max for Innate Attack)

I could see requiring making this attack roll first regarding the distance at which you want to intercept an attack. If you can't even target a hex with your attack then you shouldn't really be able to parry attacks in that hex.

Basically if you have an Innate Attack skill of only 3 (your DX is horrible) and on average when you try to shoot someone even in close combat (-0 to hit) your fireball ends up 5 yards away from the both of you: then it seems like you ought to have trouble using that explosive fireball as a power parry with reliable accuracy.

Since an added success roll adds an additional chance of failure (nerfing power parry) a balancing offset for this might be to allow this mandatory roll to work like a Complimentary Skill: a success gives +1 to the active defense roll (+2 if crit)

I guess in theory even if you can't aim your fireballs (they end up 5 yards from where you want) the process of throwing a fireball might still offset an incoming fireball in some way? It just seems odd that your 1d explosive fireball rolling a 5 could negate the incoming 4-dmg fireball and then go on it's merry way 10 yards off and not actually explode on you or the enemy attacking in close combat...

The only thing missing is the Size Modifier of the target and the Speed... are you shooting down some SM-9 bullet or an SM+9 comet? Higher-SM projectiles easier to perceive are probably something worth exploring as a limitation on innate attacks.

If you have an AE attack the SM isn't something you need to worry about: you're just targeting the hex (you even get a SM+4 bonus to hit)

Speed seems like it ought to still matter: even though the patch of earth you're targeting is immobile, if you're specifying a variable "the hex in front of where my enemy will be" (which you don't necessarily know, unless you can lead them) vs "the hex 100 yards in front of me" (you know enemy needs to pass through that, it's a narrow hallway, and you don't think they'll get past that hex within 1 second)

We just sorta lack complex rules for determining attack speeds. TS32's Bullet Travel (250y/s pistol 600y/s rifle) has some general guidelines for guns which I definitely wouldn't apply to spring-powered and many lower-powered CO2 rifles... somehow projectile speed should probably be tied to the weight of the slug and the damage which the slug does.

I think the standard assumption is near-zero weight projectiles and near-infinite speed for the physical forms of Innate Attack. Bullets-like-lasers so to speak. If you had a slow-moving attack (like Guided or Hoing which only moves 1/2D per second) then you're not going to be able to Power Parry very far from yourself: for 10/100 v 10/100 that explosion is going to go off 10y from defender (bad news if it carries a 50y AE or explosion)

If we deviate from that, then attacks from slower projectiles with higher mass could be interdicted by Power Parry a further distance from the defender, while using a slow projectile to power parry means interdicting at closer distances from defender.

"creates encumbering mass" is an effect possibly beyond what IA alone should cover: we have Create Matter to cover that, or Affliction: Warp on your weapn's ammunition (good combination with Fast Reload limitation: you're "warping" the slug and only actually "consuming" your gunpowder projecting it) or maybe Affliction (Snatcher) so that whoever you shoot teleports existing mass to themself.

- - -

Power Parry rolls a defense based on the Innate Attack weapon skill so to get the "it's hard to parry stuff moving fast" I'd just borrow from the Dodge This rules Cole wrote in Pyramid 3/57 for Intercepting the Projectile (pg 29: -50 halved to -25 for light-speed lasers, compared to -8 for rifle slugs, -7 for pistol slugs)

if you pass a Per check (actually gets bonus against higher-speed attacks, long as it's not so tiny that it's SM would prevent rolling before speed bonus was applied) you can get a +1 dodge or +2 parry, as a minor consideraiton

I could see the "Parryable" limitation for IA (comes built into Melee limitations) being an important consideration here. This is intended to move you from "can't parry" (ie effectively the -25 laser) to "no penalty to parry" for -5%.

If we broke that down, varying from a -25 baseline, perhaps we could do that like every -1% works out to enemies being +5 to parry your attack? Basically replace Parryable with "easy to parry" and limit it to 5 levels.

Dodging uses half the penalty so if we assume laser-like speeds for IA ranged attacks, -25 to parry should work out to -13 to dodge. Each +1% should give half the amount (rounded up) so +3 to dodge, +2 to dodge, etc. Again limited to whatever brings penalty up to 0.

Cole approaches the new "-13 or -12 to dodge lasers" problem (no more unpenalized dodges, for realism!) with pg 28's Move and Attack (evasive) though it only penalizes someone targeting you with direct fire (not suppression fire) so rather than reacting and dodging (which if you perceive the attack you can always try for a crit 3 for that to work regardless of penalty) you just try and make them miss.

The only drawback to that IMO is it assumes you will want to make an attack, there should probable be a Move (Evasive) if you don't want to do that, which could at least allow you to avoid the -2 to avoid obstacles.

MAA(E) replaces the -4 penalty to your attack w/ double the penalty (up to encumbered move) to hit you, so maybe one factor which complicates building a Move (Evasive). That's not always a drawback though: if you're only taking -1 to be hit then that's only -2 to your DX skills. Plus you can actually apply this to the Move maneuver too since "all DX-based skill use, including any Contests of Skill" would actually cover resisting feints or trying to Evade someone.

MAA(E) changes MAA from full move to half move which would limit the automatic penalty to hit you via B550's speed/range table, so it's probably only a good choice if you're taking a big enough penalty to make up more than that difference. Someone with Move 10 (-4 to hit) for example, is only able to go Move 5 (-2 to hit) so it's maybe worth it to incur a -2 penalty to your DX rolls to have attakers only -1 to hit you, since that only totals -3 to hit you: you'd be harder to hit if you just took the classic Move.

Cole's alternative approach is pg 30's "Tactical Dodging, Redux" where you choose to dodge during your turn instead of attacker's (not sure how that works with Waits) where Cole's "Refux" removes the "specify the attacker" requirement so you can do a generic dodge "against anyone who might target me" instead of "against this one guy targeting me"

I'm not sure if TDR is meant to be something you due to forgo the speed-based dodge penalties (pg 30: -12 laser -4 gauss -3 rifle -2 pistol/hunt-arrow -1 baseball/medieval-arrow/spear/javelin, -0 knife/axe) for dodge? Guessing not intended as a universal requirement to dodge ranged attacks since needing to declare dodges ahead of time to avoid throwing axes is a pretty big gamechanger.

If we're meant to keep the penalties then non-preemptive dodging against ranged attacks should probably still be possible but just at some kind of penalty if TDR is the default non-penalized assumption.

If TDR doesn't completely eliminate dodge penalties (which seems ideal: you're not reacting to any specific attack) then it could at least partially mitigate them if you're allowing non-TDR dodge vs. ranged.

One way of doing that could be that it automatically imparts the "+1 to Dodge as a blanket “if you can see it, you can predict it” bonus" and you ignore the perception check.

- -

so anyway yeah, applying that stuff to Power Parry rolls: P168 even allows you to apply DB from a shield if you're using Power Parry against Innate Attack (Melee) or Innate Attack (Blockable) as I guess somehow wearing a shield allows you to react faster to subtract your damage? I don't grock why tbh

footing/posture/height otoh only matter if using Innate Attack (melee) on a power parry. Apparently there is also not the usual penalty against parrying ranged attacks in this case, so all that stuff I'm concerned about like -25 for lasers could be a non-issue.

That's also something I don't really get: if Power Parry is DX-based (based on Innate Attack skill) and if the penalty (sometimes impossibility under Basic Set without Precog or Parry Missile Weapons .. only Dodge This seems to allow ANYONE to dodge ANYTHING) for parrying ranged attacks is based on "it's hard to physically react fast to things going fast" then why would physicality not matter?

I would assume other kinds of DX penalties (like being grappled, suffering shock) would apply to the underlying skill for a Power Parry, though shock penalties get ignored for other DX-based active defenses (anti-realism to avoid deadly death spirals?) and grappling penalties for active defenses was a new MA rule absent in Basic.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If you get one falling quickly enough to cause significant damage, note it's capped at the average damage it would have dealt without the Wall Enhancement (or if it were rigid) - B431 states an immovable object cannot inflict more damage in a collision than its DR+HP (damage beyond this simply breaks through), and Walls have DR 3 and HP 0.5 per dice of damage (that is, maximum collision damage of 3.5 per dice).

Not sure that "breaks through" is a guarantee here. There's a separate dice roll on both sides of collisions so it's possible you might run into a wall, suffer DR+HP from it, but not inflict enough damage to the wall to destroy the wall.

Maybe knock it down though: presumably a wall has DX 0 so if you inflict 1 yard of knockback it should fall down automatically. That means even for a 6d wall (3HP) a single point of damage should suffice.

If a wall falls down then it's height becomes it's length and it's thickness becomes it's new height, so it would probably be easier to just crawl overtop it, maybe even use it as a bridge across a moat.

Walls being subject to knockback/knockdown would be a natural compliment to "I can drop my walls" rules, since it's mobile.

It might be that the traditional wall is meant to operate like No Legs (Sessile) in which case it probably can't suffer knockback and would be anchored to whichever place it was created: so a rigid wall made in mid-air would just stay floating in the air, not get pulled down by gravity.

Immovable objects are just weird though so I like treating walls as Portable and treat hard-to move ones as having always-on-Clinging (or some kind of obligatory grappling?) if they anchor to other things with mass (more weight to lift, more HP to knockback)

For the "my wall hovers in midair and somehow anchors to the air, even though it has low mass/HP for doing damaging collisions and avoiding destruction" effect, maybe we need some way in using Flight to counter Knockback?

If you can fly forward at 100 yards per second then in a situation where you're knocked back 100 yards, I could see "you don't move at all" as some kind of Power Dodge for nullifying the standard hex relocation which occurs from knockback.

In this case allowing Flight for No Legs (Portable) instead of No Legs (Aerial) the idea would be that flight is ONLY useful for power dodges (subtracting fro knockback)

More broadly speaking I could also see using this for normally non-portable people to negate knockback as well: like you could have Flight (temporary disdavantage: portal) so that it prevents actually moving with the flight (only negating external movement) and for someone you want to move around normally with flight, you could instead take TD:portable limitation on your Enhanced Air Move, so you're capable of using flight to negate more hexes inflicetd upon you than hexes you can actively inflict on yourself.

That actually seems better than weird stuff like "Immune to Knockback" which again seems way too absolute and "immovable object". Instead of a hard cap like that, Air Move is basically a soft cap: just buy enough flight speed to counteract the knockback.

I like that soft cap system for getting immunity to toxic/FP attacks too: just get really high DR or injury tolerance, Mr. Blueberry Muffin