New Option: Ablative Force Field (Variant)

[piratespice]

Okay, after posting on this thread, I decided to work on a variant of Force Field that made it ablative, so it works more like Sue Storm's force fields. Here's what I've got so far:

Variant: Ablative Force Field (No Additional Cost): Stones spent defensively do not generate free stones from the General Pool, but remain in your Action Box for the remainder of the scene. These stones absorb stones of attack before figuring your own Defense. Essentially, the force field has its own Defense and Health. Any stones of attack that exceed the force field’s Defense (its total current stones) are then applied as damage to the force field. Remove stones from your Action Box just as you would Health (1 stone per 1-3 stones of attack). Only after all stones are gone will physical attacks reach those within the field. While initial force fields generated with this variant will not be as strong, they are longer-lasting (if not destroyed) and can be bolstered by spending additional stones in following Panels (up to twice your Action Number).

I think the system is sound, but I'm not sure whether this should be considered more or less powerful than the original Action. I'm learning toward more powerful, given how much punishement this can take...so maybe it could have a Cost Level increase. Though there's definitely room for a disadvantage in there (maybe optional) of inflicting stun damage on the character when the Force Field loses "Health."

Thoughts?

[Neros]

thoughts... I like it... But i also like the other variantion of the forcefield... But this fits allot more with Sue Storms forceshield.

So stones spent = Forcefields Defense And health... Or Stones spent = Forcefields Defense while AN# is the number of health it has?

[piratespice]

neros said:

thoughts... I like it... But i also like the other variantion of the forcefield... But this fits allot more with Sue Storms forceshield.

So do I. The beauty is that both can exist in the same game. Just variants of the same power. Now if only I can hammer out a fair cost...

So stones spent = Forcefields Defense And health... Or Stones spent = Forcefields Defense while AN# is the number of health it has?

Stones spent = Defense and Health

Though this does create a classic "downward spiral" problem. But I think this is counterbalanced by the fact that you can keep spending stones to beef up the Force Field further.

[Neros]

Hmm.. So as long as you have stones to throw into this action, it wont be able to "Die"

Sue Storm wants to create a forcefield to protect herself from a energy blasting villain with not to good a costume tast.
She throws 6 stones into the action wich creates a Thoughness and Health 6 forceshield.
The Villain then fires a Force blast of 10 stones at her, and takes 2 stones from the shields health and leaves it with 4 stones of Health and Toughness (AN = Health AND Defense)

Next panel, she wants to keep the shield between herself and the Villain, so she throws in another 6 stones and increases the forceshield to Toughness and Health 10.
She could keep increasing the shields Toughness and Health upto Double her AN, but surely Thing or one of the otherrs are bound to arrive soon.

This how i understand the Shield so fare. So as i see it, it looks like a killer ability and would have a rather large cost.
I would make it for every stone of attack that gets through, there is substracted 1 from the shields Health (the shields health is after all still in red stones).

[piratespice]

neros said:

Hmm.. So as long as you have stones to throw into this action, it wont be able to "Die"

And if all the person is doing is maintain their Force Field, I don't see a huge problem with this. If they start spending stones on other things (like, say, Defense...in case someone does get through the Force Field), they'll have less energy to maintain it.

Sue Storm wants to create a forcefield to protect herself from a energy blasting villain with not to good a costume tast.
She throws 6 stones into the action wich creates a Thoughness and Health 6 forceshield.
The Villain then fires a Force blast of 10 stones at her, and takes 2 stones from the shields health and leaves it with 4 stones of Health and Toughness (AN = Health AND Defense)
Next panel, she wants to keep the shield between herself and the Villain, so she throws in another 6 stones and increases the forceshield to Toughness and Health 10.
She could keep increasing the shields Toughness and Health upto Double her AN, but surely Thing or one of the otherrs are bound to arrive soon.

And by the third Panel, she only has 3 stones of Energy to pump into the Shield, and that's assuming she hasn't spend Energy on anything else in the meantime. Force Fields are meant to be a powerful defense, especially if defending is all you're doing.

Let's take the same scenario, but with the original version of Force Field. She can spend 5 stones per Panel on her Force Field, and completely fend off her attacker PLUS anyone else attacking her that Panel for up to 10 stones of attack, and that's before they even get to whatever other defenses she has. With the new variant, multiple attackers means the shield will go down a lot quicker (assuming they can overcome its Defense...the last thing I want is Sue Storm going down in a hail of bullets from thugs with handguns).

This how i understand the Shield so fare. So as i see it, it looks like a killer ability and would have a rather large cost.
I would make it for every stone of attack that gets through, there is substracted 1 from the shields Health (the shields health is after all still in red stones).

Don't get hung up on the color of the stones. Health stones are white simply to differentiate them easily from Energy stones. These are red stones because they came from the Energy Pool. Power are what make typical game mechanics do funky things. This is just another example of that.

[Neros]

Shield of Greater Funkyness
But how long would this shield last (if not maintained and not attacked).
Would it simply be stones spent = stones of duration (either on the row or 1=1 panel)

[piratespice]

It says right in the first sentence of the description: "Stones spent defensively do not generate free stones from the General Pool, but remain in your Action Box for the remainder of the scene."

Like a Psi-Weapon, the Force Field stones last until the end of the scene (assuming they're not destroyed first). Allowing it to last longer than a scene would make it a tad too powerful, in my mind. The character would almost never not have a fully powered Force Field active.

[Neros]

hmm... I was looking at this new and improved forcefield and the old... When i noticed that there where something missing in the new force field:
* Protects self and others
* Pay stones for area greater than 2
* Ignore Armor Penetration

Shouldent these be rules for the new shield to

[sgingell]

I really like the way this works, I think it represents force fields much better, but I also think it is a *lot* more powerful. Compare the two based on pure damage stopping ability. Someone who can put 3 stones per panel into the old FF stops 6 stones of attack, someone who puts 3 stones per panel into the new one stops 10, since a ten stone attack would drop to 7 from the field's defense then the 7 would drop all three stones of the field.

The higher the AN, the bigger the difference. At AN:6 the old FF user had 12 defense, while the new one has 22. At AN: 9 the old user had 18, the new user has an all but unbreachable 38. To rival the defense a new user could put out a AN:3 old user would need 2 more levels, an AN: 6 user would need 5 more levels, an AN: 9 would need 8 more levels to rival the new power. On the basis of that alone, I'd suggest a +3 or +4 over force field.

However, looking at levels ignores the stones required to sustain that defense. A new user with AN:6 can put up a 22 stone defense, even if we made the new power AN+8 so that the old FF could match that defense for the same price it would still be the case that the new user only pays 6 for that defense, while the old user pays 11 stones. That difference is worth a couple cost levels as well.

Still more advantage for the new power is that the stones stick around. Under the old power, if you put a lot of stones into defense and then aren't attacked you have to spend more stones to keep your guard up. The new power doesn't have any such limitation. Add on top of that the ability to put up to twice your AN into the field and things get out of hand very fast.

Imagine a fight between Sue Storm and the Hulk if the Hulk is trying to batter down the field.
Panel 1: Hulk attacks for 13, Sue puts 6 into FF. Her forcefield soaks 6, takes 7 and drops to 3.
Panel 2: Hulk attacks for 14, Sue puts 6 more into FF. Her forcefield soaks 9, takes 5 and drops to 7.
Panel 3: Hulk attacks for 14, Sue puts 3 more into FF. Her forcefield soaks 10, takes 4 and drops to 8.
Panel 4: A tired Hulk can only attack for 10, Sue puts 3 more into FF. Her forcefield soaks 11, and sits at 11.
Panel 5: Hulk rests? Sue puts 1 more into FF and recovers 2. Her forcefield sits at 12.

From this point, the Hulk can't get through the field. At most he could deliver a 21 stone attack, which would knock 3 stones off the field and Sue could put them back with her regeneration for the round. Since the Hulk can't do 21 stones every panel, but Sue can do 3, she'll be able to *rest* and regenerate stones once she has the field up while the Hulk will just pound himself into exhaustion trying to get through. Sue isn't capable of anything like that under the old system. Faced with a fully irrate Hulk, her forcefield would stop 12 of the 21 and she'd get smeared across the pavement unless she used some other power.

I think that the power gets a lot weaker if you don't let the stones stick around, if you want to keep a field up you need to keep concentrating on it (which also removes the way this power gets around the '2 actions per panel' rule). I also think it works a lot better if the field's health drops with in 1:1 ratio with damage rather than the quasi 3:1 way that health does.

I do really like the power though, I just think it is a whole lot better than the one in the book. Rather than give it a huge cost, I think it would be best to tone it down a bit while keeping the flavor the same.

-Stephen

[Neros]

I would like that you had thrown in the energy amount left... It would be nice to have track of those things.
But i aslo like this version MUCH more than the official one.

But yea, if she ONLY used her forcefield, and hulk dident think of something els, like picking her up , she could keep on going.
But as long as she is in there, she cant harm any one, which also would go for any other character.
Except maybe telepaths, which would have to trie and calm a angry hulk, and get exausted.

But i might also make the power just a +1 more expensive... Or maybe even +2...
Because this is getting as useful as flight... Or even more useful....

[sgingell]

My worry isn't so much that Sue is unbalanced if she can hold off the Hulk, it is that she can stand up to punishment she couldn't dream of before.

That suggests to me that the new version is a whole lot more powerful than the old one (at least as far as one opponent is concerned), so should cost a whole lot more.

-Stephen

[Neros]

Actully, it isent more than what she had dreamed of... Ive seen her keep her shield up more than one panel against villains...
So this is actully more close to the Comic version they made... But either a higher cost or a drawback to the power... What is, i dont know RIGHT now...

[rennyn]

Its overpowered as written, as shown by the example.

I say the shield should stay at full strength. Every attack that gets through does not come out of the shield, it comes out of the users Energy pool at a 1:1 ratio. If that pool drops to 0, so does the shield. In addition, the user should NOT be able to continue spending stones making it stronger, its max strength should be directly related to the AN of the power.

[Neros]

hmm... not much for tat idea Rennyn... So the shield will only fall when the characters energy reserve is used up... Mostly cause im not sure how you want it to work.

Lets say we have a AN# of 6. When used, it will ALWAYS prevent 6 stones of attack. Every stone whích exceeds 6, is taken from the players Energy Reserve.
I dont have the time today to post and exampel, but once i see/make one, ill be able to give better suggestions and comments...

But a thing that could fix the shield suggested, is that you cant pump it to like double AN# and it does cost some stones to keep up...
Maybe a small personal shield wouldent cost anything, but if you want it to protect a larger area, stones will have to be spent every panel.

[piratespice]

Whoa, looks like I missed a few comments.

neros said:

hmm... I was looking at this new and improved forcefield and the old... When i noticed that there where something missing in the new force field:
* Protects self and others
* Pay stones for area greater than 2
* Ignore Armor Penetration

Shouldent these be rules for the new shield to

They are. This is just a variant of the existing Force Field Action. Unless otherwise stated, previous rules still apply.

sgingell said:

I really like the way this works, I think it represents force fields much better, but I also think it is a *lot* more powerful.

... (edited rather than repeating entire post)...

I do really like the power though, I just think it is a whole lot better than the one in the book. Rather than give it a huge cost, I think it would be best to tone it down a bit while keeping the flavor the same.

-Stephen

Thanks for the praise, and the for the observations. You're quite right, this one can potentially be a lot more potent, but at a very significant cost...no other actions. As your examples show, Sue can hold off the Hulk (as it should be ), but do nothing else. While I can see that this variant could possibly use a higher cost, I will most definitely take into account the fact that using this Action to its fullest means making a character otherwise useless. The previous version of Force Field didn't suffer from that problem nearly as much.

I don't presently have my books with me, but soon I'll re-examine this whole thing to try to work out a decent cost. Think in the meantime you could give me an analysis of how this would work with the 1:1 Health ratio?

Again, thanks for the keen analysis!

rennyn said:

Its overpowered as written, as shown by the example.

I say the shield should stay at full strength. Every attack that gets through does not come out of the shield, it comes out of the users Energy pool at a 1:1 ratio. If that pool drops to 0, so does the shield. In addition, the user should NOT be able to continue spending stones making it stronger, its max strength should be directly related to the AN of the power.

Its not overpowered, just powerful. Inability to act in exchange for staying alive isn't unbalancing. Heck, at worst, its boring.

Thank you for the suggestion, but it entirely defeats the purpose of the variant. The point is to make the force field ablative, meaning it weakens as it absorbs damage.

Using your suggestion of taking stones from the user's energy pool should be a Disadvantage, not the Action itself. It makes using the Force Field a terrible idea in exactly the kinds of situations you'd most want it in (such as with a cranky Hulk charging you), since you'd rapidly find yourself with no Energy.

As for being able to spend stones to improve it, its necessary to make it worth it. Its either that, or going back to the 2 for 1 exchange of the original Action.

And for the record, its maximum strength is directly related to the AN. As the rules state: "...can be bolstered by spending additional stones in following Panels (up to twice your Action Number)."