should there actually be "indestructible" weapons?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

Does this mean batteries get slightly lighter when you use up their stored energy, I wonder? .

Yes, it does get lighter but no you probably can't measure it. Calculating how much and figuring how many decimal HP that is would be a masochistic element in working many, many places tot he right of the zero.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Yes, it does get lighter but no you probably can't measure it. Calculating how much and figuring how many decimal HP that is would be a masochistic element in working many, many places tot he right of the zero.

Nah, it's not that bad. One kilogram is 9e+16J or 2.5e+13 watt-hours, so for a lithium-ion battery rated at 200 Wh/kg, the mass loss is 200/2.5e+13 or 8e-12, and its weight when empty is 99.9999999992% of its weight when full; hp should be very close to 99.99999999973%.

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Plane

Even a million DR can be penetrated by ignores DR unless the DR is cosmic or hardened.

Does the damage ignoring the DR actually pass through the DR? If not then it isn't actually chewing it's way through the unstated DR of a Force Sword is it? Invoking Cosmic isn't a way to test this I think.

The authors gave the standard Stasis Web an armor divisor of 10 million commenting that it essentially has Cosmic levels of Injury Tolerance. They could have just as easily given a figure for DR to the Force weapons as well but they did not.

Now, "cannot be broken" may indeed be limited solely to parrying other weapons. Yet we are left with no upper limit to the weight of personal weapon's that may be encountered. A Galaxy-eating Giant or Elder God may be swinging a 1000 pound axe. If the Force sword blade is not going to break to that would it also survive in a half ton press? 10 tons? 20? If not, why not?

Some thoughts on adjudicating this.

1) Set an upper limit on what "cannot be broken" means. Limit it to parries or not as desired. Maybe add some pyrotechnics for when the force field strength is exceeded...

2) It really cannot be broken because {hand wave}. Mostly useful for forces perpendicular to the blade. Force on the tip in line with the blade will force the emitter against something and break it. Pyrotechnics should ensue. Remember that annihilating energy! What ever is applying force to the blade is getting TBB with a (5) AD every second. I would give it max damage to boot.

3) It is superscience...let it have Cosmic capabilities. It's ability to resist force is tied to it's ability to transfer energy to the Universe. Have you got a Universe worth of force to bring to bear on this? Allowing different levels of Cosmic livens things up also - there may be trump for that trick.

4) Remember that the wielder is the weakest link. Just because the blade can't break doesn't mean that the user can keep it from being forced back on to himself. If an assailant is armored to the point he can take Xd(5) he can grab the thing and shake it.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Does the damage ignoring the DR actually pass through the DR?

Cover DR is DR so ignoring cover DR to hit someone means you passed through whatever thing had that DR, whether or not you actually hurt it.

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

3) It is superscience...let it have Cosmic capabilities. It's ability to resist force is tied to it's ability to transfer energy to the Universe. Have you got a Universe worth of force to bring to bear on this? Allowing different levels of Cosmic livens things up also - there may be trump for that trick.

cosmic DR countering ignores DR still relies on Hardened to stop Armor Divisor?

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

4) Remember that the wielder is the weakest link. Just because the blade can't break doesn't mean that the user can keep it from being forced back on to himself. If an assailant is armored to the point he can take Xd(5) he can grab the thing and shake it.

ie the TG rules to attack others with their weapons

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Plane

Cover DR is DR so ignoring cover DR to hit someone means you passed through whatever thing had that DR, whether or not you actually hurt it.


cosmic DR countering ignores DR still relies on Hardened to stop Armor Divisor?


ie the TG rules to attack others with their weapons

But we are not talking about Cover DR protecting the wielder, we are talking about breaking the Force weapon. If the attack passes through it doing no damage to the weapon it isn't going to break it. The problem is that as written the Force weapons are unbreakable [for some situations] no matter what DR they possess. If you lean towards that superiority only existing for combat with other melee weapons (whether parried or being targeted for destruction) you don't need to know what DR the Force weapon has. You do need to know what DR the opposing weapon has and we can find that.

Cosmic DR, Hardened, and AD - I think it may depend on how you structure your Cosmics...

TG rules - I don't have TG, I am extrapolating from what I would do about the physics of the situation.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

The problem is that as written the Force weapons are unbreakable [for some situations] no matter what DR they possess.

One thing I just realized about the 'damage to objects' rules.

If B483 has you make HT rolls to avoid "breaking" at 0HP or less... and B484 has you make HT rolls to avoid "death" at -1xHP or less...

If you have max 1HP then they are still two categories (0 HP and -1)

If you have fraction HP which approaches zero, you get to a point where 0HP and -1xHP become closer and closer together.

Maybe for near-massless objects (like energy weapons) with nearly-zero fractional HP you effectively skip that "0 or less" category (can never "break") and instead move right into "HT roll to avoid shattering" territory.

Actually more than that... it also means the automatic shattering threshold (-5xHP) is easily reached.

For example if it were possible to have "0.2 HP" then -5xHP is reached at -1 HP, while 0.1 HP would reach it at -0.5 HP.

This means your blade wouldn't even need a HT attribute for death checks... any time the DR is penetrated it just automatically "shatters".

You could have it reconstitute itself a second later by giving it "Unkillable 3" plus Regeneration (1HP/second) which you're going to be buying anyway to regenerate the Ablative DR too.

UK3 requires full HP regen to reconstitute, but 1HP/second recovery would be all it would take to go from -5xHP to 1xHP (requiring 6xHP) if you had a max HP of 0.1.

Or we just use UK2 which is cheaper and avoids the whole "GM's choosing" weirdness. I thought we'd need that for "blade is remade wherever the handle is, not where it was broken" but I think UK2 covers it like "the handle is your ally that lugs around your indestrucitble corpse".

I'm thinking UK2's "indestructible skeleton" just means "there's a transportable thing you can lug around which heals HP" but not something like "you have something with infinite cover DR". Someone at -10xHP might still "exist" in some form but shouldn't be like the perfect shield...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

If B483 has you make HT rolls to avoid "breaking" at 0HP or less... and B484 has you make HT rolls to avoid "death" at -1xHP or less...

If you have max 1HP then they are still two categories (0 HP and -1)

If you have fraction HP which approaches zero, you get to a point where 0HP and -1xHP become closer and closer together.

Maybe for near-massless objects (like energy weapons) with nearly-zero fractional HP you effectively skip that "0 or less" category (can never "break") and instead move right into "HT roll to avoid shattering" territory.

I believe the "break" rules are meant to parallel the "stay conscious" rules for characters, while "shatter" rules are meant to parallel the "death" rules. So, at HP 0 or less, the object must make an HT roll each time it is used/stressed (used to attack or parry for a weapon, sat upon for a piece of furniture, etc) to avoid breaking, just as a character at HP 0 or less must make an HT roll each time they do Something during combat (as opposed to Do Nothing). So, the "break" rules would always be in play, at least so long as the target is above -5xHP (or hasn't failed the "shatter" check).

For fractional HP objects, if they have 0.2 HP or more, tracking their HP may be worthwhile (1 damage drops them to -4xHP). If HP is lower than that - and indeed, I'd argue for below 0.5 HP - 1 damage past DR is enough to completely destroy them (drops to -5xHP or lower). Tracking even lower is only an option if you opt to allow for fractional Injury, but GURPS only deals with integer values (indeed, HP below 0.5 should generally just be rounded down to 0, which functions as above - any damage that gets past DR outright destroys the target; HP 0.5 should round up to HP 1).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd argue for below 0.5 HP - 1 damage past DR is enough to completely destroy them (drops to -5xHP or lower).

one thing I'm just realizing, when reviewing the -10xHP for "Unkillable 1", is that normally -5xHP is "death" but I think even for non-UK kills, "death" is not "destruction" since you still leave a corpse which can be resurrected long as you aren't dropped below -10xHP

This is a weird issue to me when I think of stuff like cover DR, like if you're a skeleton at -9xHP wouldn't you provide less cover since there's holes in you that bullets can shoot through if allies hide behind your skel?

plus since there's the whole "corpses are unliving, bones are homogenous, ashes are diffuse" kind of metamorphosis where your remains actually gain "Injury Tolerance" as they're broken down, the question is when to enact those template changes at HP multiples

that should prob apply to objects too except they start out unliving (maybe even homogenous if non-complex) so they go through fewer stages