Insubstantial objects carried released

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I personally prefer they stay insubstantial, at least for an indefinite time not under your control. Stays insubstantial eliminates virtually all the obvious abuses, if you add the rephasing at a time not under your control option it even kills the object disposal one.

I particularly like this one in the really common case where the "insubstantial" realm is effectively its own world, with its own inhabitants and objects. Carry an item from one world to another and it drop it and it stays there, no reason for an insubstantial world to be any different.

Yeah, I think you need Partial Change, +100% to pull off most of the tricks described in this thread.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I personally prefer they stay insubstantial, at least for an indefinite time not under your control. Stays insubstantial eliminates virtually all the obvious abuses, if you add the rephasing at a time not under your control option it even kills the object disposal one.

I particularly like this one in the really common case where the "insubstantial" realm is effectively its own world, with its own inhabitants and objects. Carry an item from one world to another and it drop it and it stays there, no reason for an insubstantial world to be any different.

Eminently reasonable. I'd be in favor of making that the official default if they were taking suggestions. If you have Insub. with CCO, the stuff you carry changes state with you, but there's no reason to automatically assume it changes back if you let go of it. It seems more intuitive that it retains the state it was in when you released it.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I personally prefer they stay insubstantial, at least for an indefinite time not under your control. Stays insubstantial eliminates virtually all the obvious abuses, if you add the rephasing at a time not under your control option it even kills the object disposal one.

That can work. In theory, being insubstantial means neither gravity nor air resistance affects you, so you could throw/launch the MacGuffin clear of Earth's atmosphere before it was likely to resubstantiate, potentially putting it on a collision course with the Sun. If it would likely resubstantiate while still in the atmosphere, you could instead throw/launch it straight down, and it would end up stuck somewhere in the crust or mantle.

Of course, that's if there's a random factor for when it reappears; if it's up to GM fiat, you can just have things resubstantiate whenever would be least convenient for whatever scheme the PC's tried to come up with to exploit its temporarily-insubstantial nature. So, yeah, your solution would likely work quite well.

Originally Posted by malloyd

I particularly like this one in the really common case where the "insubstantial" realm is effectively its own world, with its own inhabitants and objects. Carry an item from one world to another and it drop it and it stays there, no reason for an insubstantial world to be any different.

Yeah, a setting where an insubstantial ecology, civilization, etc exist is one where "once there, stays there" is less exploitable. You can carry more across than your level of Can Carry Objects would normally allow, by bringing things a bit at a time and then loading it all up while everything is insubstantial, but I feel that isn't a huge exploit - particularly given you've got to deal with insubstantial thieves and the like!

[Anaraxes]

A setting using "once there, stays there" probably should also tinker with any energy cost the ability might have. An ongoing cost per unit time suggests that objects have some natural preference for one world or the other that the ability has to work to overcome, with the subject reverting once that effort stops being made. "Once there, stays there" suggests a distinct transition and transition back -- with the second transition perhaps never happening. So, the energy cost would be one time only, to perform a transition -- operating more like Jumper.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In theory, being insubstantial means neither gravity nor air resistance affects you, so you could throw/launch the MacGuffin clear of Earth's atmosphere before it was likely to resubstantiate, potentially putting it on a collision course with the Sun. If it would likely resubstantiate while still in the atmosphere, you could instead throw/launch it straight down, and it would end up stuck somewhere in the crust or mantle.

You couldn't launch it into the sun, because you couldn't possibly generate the necessary delta-V by throwing. Even the mantle is probably off limits for the same reason. Of course absent gravity and the mass of the Earth in the way it should fly off at high speed tangent to the sum of those two down vectors for the same reason.

But Insubstantial things don't do that - they usually stay with vehicles and *always* stay with the planet (and solar system, and moving galaxy and....). They experience selective friction allowing them to move around by walking. They don't cause massive explosions when they rematerialize in volumes filled with air. They don't explode into cold plasmas as their atoms are no longer able to interact electromagnetically. Trying to apply physics to insubstantiality is a pointless exercise, it's simply not physically plausible and can't be forced to come even close without destroying its ability to do the kinds of things it ordinarily does in stories using it.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by malloyd

... Trying to apply physics to insubstantiality is a pointless exercise, it's simply not physically plausible and can't be forced to come even close without destroying its ability to do the kinds of things it ordinarily does in stories using it.

However, some kind of consistency needs to be attainable to make the ability gameable.