Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

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Axelmania
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Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Axelmania »

Killer Cyborg wrote:9 February 2018:
HU2 257 Control Elemental Forces: Earth can create a Wall of Earth.
A dirt wall has AR 10, 200 SDC.
A clay or sand wall has AR 11, 300 SDC.
A stone wall has an AR 15, 400 SDC.

And there are some instructions as to how the AR for these walls functions:
All attacks strike the wall and do full damage to its SDC.
A roll that is higher than the AR will go right through the wall and may hit somebody or something behind it.
However this means the shooter is firing blindly and is -5 to hit.
Additionally, the projectile or energy blast punching through the wall uses up some measure of energy doing so, thus a projectile that penetrates the wall's AR does half damage and the damage of an energy blast is reduced by 25%.


I was thinking it would be interesting to compile a list of everything in HU which provides AR barriers.

Aside from the much-argue Energy Field spell, there's the sleep stasis fields in Powers Unlimited 1 which come to mind.

Are all of these simply "AR" or do any specify NAR?

Is there precedent for treating some or all of these ARs as NAR even when they do not explicitly say natural?

What KC has identified seems like a 3rd category of AR, which isn't really "body armor AR" or "natural AR" because of how it functions differently.

If I had to term it something I would say "blowthrough AR" perhaps?

This AR seems to reflect something which cannot be missed ("all attacks strike", so even a 1-4 will hit!) and which always takes damage. Rolls below AR damage the barrier nad stop it, rolls above AR damage the barrier and go beyond it to damage something else.

Full damage appears to be taken by the barrier, and whatever is hit next takes either 50% damage or 75% damage depending on projectile/energy nature.

Since it says half damage and not half dice I figure it would work as follows.

2d6 bullet hits a dirt wall, rolls 11 to strike and 2 damage. Due to -5 to strike, modified roll to hit person behind it is 6, still enough to hit, but probably easy to dodge. The -5 to hit would also make it harder to penetrate any body armor / natural AR if applicable.

I think you could layer walls like this to create a cumulative -5. For example, lets say I roll a natural 20 and a 3d6 pistol rolls 16 damage.

Wall 1 modifies this to a 15 to hit and 8 damage.

Wall 2 modifies this to a 10 to hit and 4 damage.

Wall 3 modifies this to a 5 to hit and 2 damage.

Wall 4 modifies this to a 0 to hit and 1 damage.

One thing I'm not sure about: if it penetrates a wall, is the damage it does to the wall reduced compared to if the wall stopped it?

Like if a wall is penetrated by a 10 sdc bullet, does it do 5 to the wall and 5 to whatever it hits behind it?

In the case of "by 25%" energy, I think an energy blast doing 4 SDC would be reduced to 3 SDC but both the wall and whatever was behind it would each take 3, for a total of 6 SDC between them?

Or would it be 3 to wall, 1 to thing behind it, or 1 to wall, 3 to thing behind it?

I'm thinking since "all attacks .. do full damage" it must mean that wall always takes full, thing behind it takes 0.5 from bullet 0.75 from energy. Any other categories of attack come to mind?

Only a "shooter" is mentioned. How do we deal with melee attacks but with decent ranges like a lance?
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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

Meanwhile, the APS: Ice power lets you make ice walls that have no AR at all.
Weird.
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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Sir_Spirit »

So make the dirt wall 2 feet thick?
Damn ICE/BCP/BorderPatrol! Damn everyone who won’t damn ICE/BCP/Border Patrol!! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning CE/BCP/BorderPatrol!!!
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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Axelmania »

Killer Cyborg wrote:Meanwhile, the APS: Ice power lets you make ice walls that have no AR at all. Weird.

I'm not sure if that's an advantage (impossible to shoot through your wall to hit you without destroying it) or a disadvantage (wall provides no AR to protect you, enemies can always opt to hit you).

Thinking about it conceptually... since ice is translucent it probably should be easier to aim at targets on the other side of it compared to a dirt wall...

While on the topic of APS Ice on page 244, it's interesting to move past "5. Ice Wall" to "6. Encase in Ice" that by layering on extra 6 inches on Ice Manacles, 2 actions per +2 is like 1 action per AR, total melee attacks spent to AR produced is...

2 = 8
4 = 10
6 = 12
8 = 14
10 = 16
12 = 18
14 = 20
and so on.. no upper limit. add +2 AR on top of that if using the "Encasing the entire body" move on 245.

Although I don't see "natural", the function of the AR is presumably to make it hard to damage the SDC of the encasement so that's the impression I'm left with. Certainly a lot more balanced if it functions like normal AR. This will have me doing 7ft manacles to protect the entire body of my minions though while still leaving them mostly mobile, unlike entire-body casement.

"Most melt enough to pull or smash free within 10 minutes" is a pretty vague guideline, and it wouldn't logically apply in cold climates or for people who have manacles around gloves which would insulate their body heat and prevent it from helping to melt the ice.

4 attacks a melee, 16 a minute, 160 in 10 minutes, you can generate an AR of 166 and an SDC of 4800 (16,000 SDC and AR 168 if encasing an entire body)
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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Razorwing »

I am not sure I quite understand what is being asked here... but why let such a minor detail stop me from throwing by own $0.02 opinion into the mix.

I am assuming that people are asking just what the AR of barriers (such as Wall of Earth/Stone/Ice) is for... and that is fairly simple... it indicates how hard it is for someone to damage a section of that barrier.

For example, a Character with Control Elemental Force: Earth can create a wall of stone 20 feet long, 12 feet high and 3 feet thick per level of experience (each level of experience allows the creation of a section of wall with these dimensions... you don't multiply the dimensions by level). A 4th level character can create 4 of these wall sections (to isolate an opponent in a box with 4 walls... or to increase ONE of the dimensions of the wall by 4 times (the wall could be 80 feet long or 48 feet high or 12 feet thick) while the other two dimensions remain the same.

Each section of the Stone Wall will have a Natural AR of 15 (a roll of 4+ will hit but do no damage... only a roll of 16+ will harm the wall) and 400 SDC (which must be depleted for the wall to be completely destroyed). Thus a wall created by a 4th level character that is 12 feet thick will have a total of 1600 SDC to completely destroy (though every 400 damage will effectively break through about 3 feet of the wall).

If a barrier has no AR, then it is easy to damage... just deplete the SDC and it falls. If the barrier has an AR but no SDC (like a Wall of Fire for example), then the AR represents the difficulty of shooting through it to hit something on the other side... either because it is hard to see what is there... or because the barrier is made of some sort of energy that can harm most projectiles (or a combination of both). A wall of fire would probably melt a bullet before it passed through rendering the projectile unable to do damage (provided the attack roll didn't surpass the wall's AR).

As for Axelmania's ice manacle example... you seriously expect a minion to be able to move with his hands trapped in a 7 foot block of ice? Beyond just the dimensions of such manacles is the weight of that much ice.

The only dimensions provided is that such manacles start off about 6 inches thick... which comes about half way up my forearm (6 inches from my fist) and would likely extend a similar amount in front of my fist as well, assuming my fist is at the center of this block of ice (and my fist is approximate 4.5 inches in all three dimensions) we are looking at a block of ice roughly 16 inches across (extending 6 inches from my fist in all three directions). The weight of that much ice on a single hand is going to make moving rather difficult... and that is without increasing the amount of ice in the manacles. If you were to take a single action/attack to increase the thickness... I would now have a block of ice centered on my fist that extends to just past my elbow (with an equal amount of ice in front of my fist too)... with a second increase more or less encompasing my entire arm (18 inches from my fist)... there is no way I am going anywhere with that much ice surounding my fist... not unless I have a superhuman (or supernatural) level of strength... and even then I am unlikely to be able to do much with that much ice more or less rendering my arm immobile.

That 7 foot block of ice you think will leave your minion sill mobile will more or less be encasing him (depending whether to mean it is 7 feet across or 7 feet thick from his fist at the center)... either way, there is no way he is moving anywhere.

One has to take into account the practical limits of these power... which mitigate the otherwise game breaking mechanics of some of these powers. You simply can not put 7 feet of ice around one's fist and expect it not to immobilize a person.
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Axelmania
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Re: Wall of Earth AR and other AR barrier powers

Unread post by Axelmania »

The ability of a minion to move with hands trapped in a 7 foot block of ice could depend on their strength. They also may have no need to move, if I just want to plop them in a hallway as a guard and breathe fire at intruders.
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