Physical shields and the Wall enhancement

Genesis · 05-05-2015, 10:35 PM

So I have a player in my current game who wants to be able to conjure "wall of force"-type shields that can provide battlefield cover. He was building the power with DR (Forcefield, Area Effect, Affects Others, Directional), but I suggested he look at the Wall enhancement for attacks instead as a simpler way to go about it.

We built a couple of versions that work pretty well, but here's my issue: the DR/HP of the Wall advantage seems odd compared to non-power-based shielding mechanisms. Per 1d of the IA it's applied to, an attack with wall gets 3 DR and 1/2 an HP. That puts it in a weird place relative to, say, physical shields, which typically have modest DR and much higher HP. What if my player wants to have enemies chip gradually away at his conjured wall, rather than have it bounce most attacks until one penetrates DR and destroys the whole thing in one blow? We can't just reverse the ratio, I bet - 1/2 DR and 3 HP per 1d of IA can't be balanced if the original is - but how would you go about changing that balance?

05-05-2015, 10:35 PM	#1
Genesis Join Date: Dec 2010	Physical shields and the Wall enhancement So I have a player in my current game who wants to be able to conjure "wall of force"-type shields that can provide battlefield cover. He was building the power with DR (Forcefield, Area Effect, Affects Others, Directional), but I suggested he look at the Wall enhancement for attacks instead as a simpler way to go about it. We built a couple of versions that work pretty well, but here's my issue: the DR/HP of the Wall advantage seems odd compared to non-power-based shielding mechanisms. Per 1d of the IA it's applied to, an attack with wall gets 3 DR and 1/2 an HP. That puts it in a weird place relative to, say, physical shields, which typically have modest DR and much higher HP. What if my player wants to have enemies chip gradually away at his conjured wall, rather than have it bounce most attacks until one penetrates DR and destroys the whole thing in one blow? We can't just reverse the ratio, I bet - 1/2 DR and 3 HP per 1d of IA can't be balanced if the original is - but how would you go about changing that balance?