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Old 06-17-2021, 04:39 PM   #1
b-dog
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Default Elder Thing power that lets them affect spiritual beings

I am curious if there would be any Elder Thing power that would allow them to attack spiritual beings. Maybe there is some sort of Extradimensional power that allows them to interact with spirits? Or some sort of reality warping chaos that destroys the spirit? Just curious for ideas.
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Old 06-17-2021, 04:43 PM   #2
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Elder Thing power that lets them affect spiritual beings

The basic answer is that you buy their attack abilities with Affects Insubstantial. In some game worlds spirits will have a particular variety of Insubstantial and the abilities will need to be bought to affect that variety, perhaps.
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Old 06-17-2021, 06:24 PM   #3
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: Elder Thing power that lets them affect spiritual beings

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Originally Posted by b-dog View Post
I am curious if there would be any Elder Thing power that would allow them to attack spiritual beings.
(a) define elder thing. (b) define spirit. If spirits are insubstantial creatures using body of spirit, affects insubstantial (plus a sense that can detect them) is all you need.
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Old 06-18-2021, 09:32 AM   #4
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Elder Thing power that lets them affect spiritual beings

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
The basic answer is that you buy their attack abilities with Affects Insubstantial. In some game worlds spirits will have a particular variety of Insubstantial and the abilities will need to be bought to affect that variety, perhaps.
You can take Affects Substantial via "Modifying ST-based damage" as if your punch were a Crushing Attack (Innate Attack) with the Melee limitation...

But that only covers damage... AFAIK having Affects Insubstantial on Innate Attack doesn't give you the ability to GRAPPLE insubstantial beings...

For that purpose I wonder if we could somehow interpret the ability of our limbs to grapple as some form of "Binding" to then enhance with Affects Insubstantial too?

TG28 says that basic binding is a legs-only grapple while the Engulfing enhancement (B40: used to PIN you) just doubles the Control Points (since TG rightfully got rid of an 'overall pin' idea, changing a hard cap to a soft cap)... either way I don't know if this represents what arms do given that arms can grapple stuff other than legs.

Unless of course we interpret the melee attack LIMITATION as endowing some kind of grappling capacity to innate attacks, which just feels off somehow...

That said, TG talks about how melee weapons can now carry grapples similar to bites (leave a thrusting weapon inside your foe) so there should probably be some way to emulate that through Innate Attack modifiers.

Would it feel right to call that an enhancement? IA often seems underpriced so making you pay more for grappling abilities given by weapons could be a decent balancing factor.

Would you just go and take "affects insubstantial" to use Telekinesis against insubstantial foes? TK isn't an "attack ability" like Binding/IA/Affliction so I don't really know if that's "staying true to the pistol icon" so to speak...

But if that were the case, Telekinesis probably more closely models all the capabilities of what arms do than Crushing Attack.

I thought about Affects Insubstantial on Extra Arm but that feels pretty off too. I realize more liberalness is given to certain pistol-icon modifiers such as No Signature but that doesn't mean all of them should be that flexible.

If adding Affects Insubstantial to your built-in Crushing Attack via Modifying ST-based Damage also gives you "ghost grappling" then it seems only fair to impart ghost-grappling abilities to standard Innate Attack as well, which only makes it seem further underpriced.

There was probably a pyramid article somewhere on natural weapons which approached this, so you could do stuff like summon a magic lasso.
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