[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Invisibility

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How do you see? Does Defensive make that possible?

Defensive: You are unaffected by your own Obscure ability.

You can see (and receive radio call, and be hurt by a laser weapon, ...).

For a mind-based effect, it is easy to explain. For superscience / magic / ... don't ask.

The problem is the same with invisibility, of course.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

You can see (and receive radio call, and be hurt by a laser weapon, ...).

For a mind-based effect, it is easy to explain. For superscience / magic / ... don't ask.

The problem is the same with invisibility, of course.

Well, no. I was asking about game mechanics, not physics.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How do you see? Does Defensive make that possible?

yup "unaffected by your own Obscure"

probably good to take Selectivity in case you actually do want to be affected by it, like using Obscure to protect yourself from the Sight-based Petrification of a Gorgon.

Though that's very all-or-nothing (turning defensive off) so Selective Effect is probably better because then you could probably say stuff like "I don't want to see the Gorgon's eyes but I do want to see the gorgon's body" so you can still fight them with some competence.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Plane

Although conceptually I'm not sure how that works... if a crowd can perceive the entire rest of the crowd EXCEPT you then it's hard to think they would be unable to perceive a gap in the crowd...

I think to get that you'd need some middle ground like "crowd only perceives directly adjacent crowd members to avoid collisions, but doesn't perceive the ENTIRE crowd so they can't notice where there's gaps".

This would come back to using the game mechanics to model an in-universe ability, and to define the physics of the ability first.

If it's a psychic illusion, people in the crowd wouldn't notice the hole. If it's optic channeling, then someone on the other side of the effect might appear to be next to you.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

This would come back to using the game mechanics to model an in-universe ability, and to define the physics of the ability first.

If it's a psychic illusion, people in the crowd wouldn't notice the hole. If it's optic channeling, then someone on the other side of the effect might appear to be next to you.

But in that case, you're putting something there other than yourself for them to avoid, not just removing their perception of you.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Plane

One neat contrast with Invisibility vs Stealthy Obscure would be the 'walking through a crowd' idea.

With invisibility, you won't see the walker but you'll see the crowd gaps.

With Obscure, you won't notice that 2y radius even has a gap...

But then one unavoidable aspect is the crowd itself is going to start bumping into each other (they won't perceive each other, or even themselves)

Invisibility is a really bad idea in a tight-packed crowd. People realise they're bumping into something they can't see, and they get worried by that rapidly.

The best way IMHO to pass through a crowd without being noticed is to seem like an uninteresting member of the crowd. You might be able to build that with Obscure, but it's different from the build for getting somewhere unnoticed.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I'd like to see an official limitation value for invisibility that fails on attacking or otherwise dramatically drawing attention to oneself a la dungeon fantasy (or, if we believe this to happen by default at no cost change in Dungeon Fantasy, an enhancement value for violence-stable invisibility, which is by no means unprecedented in the genre).

I just spent a few minutes poking around and didn’t find anything. Surely there is an official worked example of some advantage that fails under such conditions.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I just spent a few minutes poking around and didn’t find anything. Surely there is an official worked example of some advantage that fails under such conditions.

If it exists, I've failed to find it.

Thinking about it, I'd put the limitation somewhere between -25% and -50%. That's largely based on almost never having attacked from Invisibility if there was anyone other than the victim in line-of-sight, because that would make it obvious that there was someone invisible around. However the campaign is one where that secret is worth keeping, which is not the case in typical dungeon games.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Invisibility is a really bad idea in a tight-packed crowd. People realise they're bumping into something they can't see, and they get worried by that rapidly.

The best way IMHO to pass through a crowd without being noticed is to seem like an uninteresting member of the crowd. You might be able to build that with Obscure, but it's different from the build for getting somewhere unnoticed.

I guess for tight crowds you'd need not just sight but also obscure:touch so people don't feel the bumping or lack of bumping.

Yet with Stealthy they don't know they're not feeling things?

[awesomenessofme1]

Obscure (Touch) feels... very odd to me conceptually. Like, obviously, having it wouldn't mean people could reach through you, that would be Insubstantiality, and it's a lot more costly. So if they touch you, even if they don't feel you, it's still going to stop them and make space. I really don't understand how it makes sense.