Eleanore's Request (Fantasy MnM 3E, Recruiting)

[Jemal]

Well, it's obvious I'm not going to bring you around to my way of thinking, so I guess we're waiting for Superzero's ruling. If it comes down to it, my backup's a lot simpler and pointwise is identical - Make him a transmuter instead of a force mage by simply swapping the Variable force array to a Transform power.

In the meanwhile however, there are a couple of specific quotes I wish to respond to:

Read it again, please. He's saying, almost word for word: "The rules as written are that a created object has a Toughness equal to its Rank." That directly implies that "Created objects' Toughness is therefore *not* affected by Progression." The first statement is not, IMHO, at all conditionned by the presence or absence of the second. it's simply the basis of his reasoning.

If you're instead suggesting that his later suggestion *in case that group decides to houserule it* is in fact what happened when they created 3rd ed (i.e. "They removed Progression, so that must mean we're now allowed to boost Toughness with thickness, right?")... I think that's a bit of a stretch... And it seems to be contradicted by a lot of other piece of advice in the main 3rd ED forum (see link above).

I don't see how you translate "I treat it as a bit of an exception.." into "The rules as written say.."  Nor do I see "If you want the option" as meaning "you have to house rule to get this". Both of those are interpretations, not 'word for word' as you suggest.
My take on what he said was also a personal interpretation, but I never claimed it was exactly what he meant.. In fact, I specifically said it "SEEMS to be" what he was saying.

basically, I read his post as being inclusionary (If you want to do A, I'd suggest also doing B) wheras you seem to see it as EXclusionary (You can't do A, but if you decide to allow that as a House rule, then you have to house rule B as well!)

Mazes and obstacles are things that slow, immobilize, distract or confuse their targets (Afflictions, mostly). Houses are things that protect you from the cold, wind or the elements (Immunities), or, maybe a bit of a stretch for a Force-based power, give you peaceful rest (Healings). Bridges are... no problem at all with Create, I would think, unless you wanted to ford the Grand Canyon or something? Once you start opening up a closed shape, you can get a lot of surface out of your create.

I find that amusing, considering I was originally using Immunity until you and Shayuri suggested changing it into a create, and now you're suggesting immunity instead of create.
as for the mazes: I've tried, and seen others use afflictions for this before and its always thoroughly underwhelming. None of the affliction abilities do what I'd imagine a maze doing, and the ways to get out of them are so different.
An affliction maze can be 'resisted' by a single save, wheras a real maze can be bypassed by certain powers (movement modes, teleportation, destroying the maze itself, etc)
Now, if you want to use it to simulate a 'mental maze' that the target has to break out of through willpower before they can act again, that's one thing, but for an actual physical maze it just doesn't work well.

Note: "Trivial weight" is not the same as "weightless". Created object have enough mass to stay in place provided nobody tries to actively move them.

Didn't say it was weightless, said that if it was trivial it wouldn't cause the large amounts of falling damage a create can cause, and could be moved effortlessly regardless of its size. If either of these were false, then it would no longer be considered trivial.

We have GM's to interpret exactly this sort of thing: "Moveable only allows you to move the weight of your own created objects, whatever that weight may be.". Voila. If you want to move more weight, you know which power to consult. (Various housrules are also a possibility, of course (TK rank = diff between Object toughness and your rank in the Create power or the like)).

That would support my mass definition.. It gives you a Move Object equal to your create rank, but if that move object is only usable for the created object ITSELF, then the object must have a weight worth having such a high Move Object rank for. Else adding the "equal to your create rank' to it is superfluous and confusing.
Either the object weighs enough that it takes up the entire strength of the Move Object (which specifically says it gives one rank per rank in create)
Or the object has trivial weight, in which case the Move Object effect would be usable as my previous example of a full strength TK with platform limit.
The only other reasons I can think of consist of either the author having a chuckle at our expense, or the hated and ultimately unprovable argument of "its just a typo".

did I mention the Stationary extra by any chance?

In fact I had a section on that, right between the Movable and Tether sections which you read and responded to. I'll repost it for you.

Stationary: It appears to me to be about keeping an object in the air, not about keeping it in one place. It does mention that it resists being moved with a str score, which upon thinking further, IS better than just having that much mass, because mass doesn't resist, so that could be useful to me, but that's a different point.

The main problem in terms of logic seems to be the frankly cludged-on "Dropping Objects" use. We have a specific power designed to do just this and it's called Damage. Every other power *has* to buy an Alternate Power to do what "Dropping Objetcs" describes. Why is Create so special? I say drop that section in the waste bin of inhereted system nonsense and good ridance.

Speaking of house rules...

Sure, a fixed density could be the way to go. You do realize though that 1. the above formula works out to a density of somewhere between 0.8 to 0.9 depending on the rank you're looking at (i.e. slightly *below* the density of water, which is far from realistic for pretty much all building materials known to man), 2. even then a rank 10 objects weights 25 tons, which, if we go with your proposed version, will be resting on a contact surface 1 inch thick (Can forest ground support that weight, never mind the second floor of the Villains Villa?).

At rank 10 (25 tons - 1000 cubic feet) The density would be 50 pounds per cubic foot.
Water (just over 60 Pounds per cubic foot) is actually more dense than a lot of SOLID materials.. Not stones or metals granted, but still using it as an example is misleading. For example, water is denser than any type of wood on earth, and about the same as people.
so yes, this material is less dense than the person creating it. But so is your Teakwood desk or that redwood tree you see in the forest. Or a bundle of apples, or a sack of potatos..
The closest example in density to this object would actually be Pecan wood. So the question is, would a fence made of wood sink deep into the earth because its too heavy for the soil to support it? While I highly doubt it, we might as well do the math.

As far as the contact surface, don't forget that objects are three dimensional. All of that weight is not rested on a single point, but distributed along the whole object. Because the volume and mass will remain the same, what matters is the total weight and the Surface area touching the ground. So really the only factor that contributes to how much PSI it exerts on the ground is the height, since (As I'll prove in a moment) the lengthXwidth will always yield the same square footage if the height and volume remain constant. If its longer, the surface area is just spread in a different direction. Regardless of the other two dimensions (Unless one of them is thin enough for a cutting effect to come into play) the weight distribution would be the same.

If we assume 1 foot thickness, then the surface area touching the ground would be 1(thickness) X 100(length). So the 25 tons is spread across 100 square feet.
Going down to just 4 inches thick would make it 300 feet long, again the same square footage.
How about UP to 10 feet thick? that makes it a 10 foot cube.. still 100 square feet.
In every case the 25 tons is spread across 100 square feet (14,400 square inches). That's just under 3.5 PSI That's about a quarter of the pressure being exerted by the air around you, and about twice the pressure your lungs feel when you take a deep breath.

NOW I'll concede the argument of using large masses on upper stories of buildings where the total mass is more than the entire floor structure can support - but that's got nothing to do with thickness or shape of the object. Anything of that mass would cause a collapse at that point given the same load-bearing capabilities.

In all cases, a Minimum Wall Thickness (needed to get your base rank in Toughness) needs to be set (Jemal is suggesting 1 inch, I'm suggesting 1 foot... could easily climb up past 3 feet if we're talking about a free-standing wall without the Stationary add-on, really).

I never suggested a minimum of 1 inch, I used 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 inch examples because the toughness rules started at one inch so it made sense to begin calculations there. I only used 1 inch thickness examples to combat the 'thickness doesn't matter for toughness' argument. In fact if you read back my preferred size examples have either been 4 inches (When i was using invulnerable and wanted the '12 invul toughness to be immune to standard rank 6 damage, indicating an 'invincible' force effect) or 16 inches.

 

[Binder Fred]

I find that amusing, considering I was originally using Immunity until you and Shayuri suggested changing it into a create, and now you're suggesting immunity instead of create.

True. Each has it's use though and I think you'll grant that Immunity simply wasn't doing what you wanted it to do there.

Didn't say it was weightless, said that if it was trivial it wouldn't cause the large amounts of falling damage a create can cause, and could be moved effortlessly regardless of its size. If either of these were false, then it would no longer be considered trivial.

Not to contradict too strongly, but you did use "weightless" in a couple of places. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page there.

That would support my mass definition.. It gives you a Move Object equal to your create rank, but if that move object is only usable for the created object ITSELF, then the object must have a weight worth having such a high Move Object rank for. Else adding the "equal to your create rank' to it is superfluous and confusing.

The only other reasons I can think of consist of either the author having a chuckle at our expense, or the hated and ultimately unprovable argument of "its just a typo".

You could have a point there. Though, unfortunately, those typos/omission/extra info do sometimes occur (let's just look at the lack of a fixed Minimum Wall Thickness, which both our versions of Create *need*: it's essential and yet it's simply *not* listed; You'd think, after 3 versions...).

Too tired to do the math for the area pressure now. Will get back to it later. The wood comparaison is interresting though. The area of construction I'm (remotly) involved in is mine construction, so it seems I've somehow simply stopped thinking of wood as a construction material! Odd, when you think about it... Anyways the "known to man" was a bit premature and over the top, it seems. My apologies.

NOW I'll concede the argument of using large masses on upper stories of buildings where the total mass is more than the entire floor structure can support - but that's got nothing to do with thickness or shape of the object. Anything of that mass would cause a collapse at that point given the same load-bearing capabilities.

But you were going to create a maximum Toughness force wall there eventually, weren't you? Your argument seems to be that that collapse is and should be a built-in feature of all Created objects, while the way I've always seen it played is that floor structures sufficient to easily support the PCs (i.e. pretty much everything defined IC as a floor) would support any created objects created on it as well, without anybody at the (virtual) table even thinking about it. i.e. trivial weight. (Dropping Elephants on people/structures being another thing entirely in this context). Certainly for anything with the "force" descriptor, which sort of has the built-in "has no weight at all" thing built into its descriptor. For things with the "iron" or "Lead" descriptor, people would probably think about it more, granted, and in our games would have had to add levels of Stationary if they wanted to gain advantages from the weight. Hasn't come up in our games yet... though I expect even Iron Boy will expect his Cubic Cage of Defense *not* to collapse the dungeons/structures he's in as a matter of course, no matter what size/how thick he makes it -- probably ever, unless he's taken a related Complication for it.

EDIT= Oh, that's another possible way to determine mass that I forgot to list in my last post (by descriptor). Amended.

I never suggested a minimum of 1 inch, I used 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 inch examples because the toughness rules started at one inch so it made sense to begin calculations there. I only used 1 inch thickness examples to combat the 'thickness doesn't matter for toughness' argument. In fact if you read back my preferred size examples have either been 4 inches (When i was using invulnerable and wanted the '12 invul toughness to be immune to standard rank 6 damage, indicating an 'invincible' force effect) or 16 inches.

Thinking about it, I must be remembering it wrong: it can't have been a foot, can it? It wasn't my character that was using the Create Objects barriers so I don't have the notes on hand... I'll have to ask the next time I see him.

... anyways, what should we put in as your recommended Minimum Wall Thickness then?

 

[Jemal]

Not to contradict too strongly, but you did use "weightless" in a couple of places. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page there.

Touche. I meant 'virtually' weightless... of course... *shifty eye*

You could have a point there. Though, unfortunately, those typos/omission/extra info do sometimes occur (let's just look at the lack of a fixed Minimum Wall Thickness, which both our versions of Create *need*: it's essential and yet it's simply *not* listed; You'd think, after 3 versions...).

Yeah, not saying they dont happen, just that I despise that argument, its either a last resort or "who cares" argument IMO. Not that you were making said argument, just pointing that out.

Too tired to do the math for the area pressure now. Will get back to it later. The wood comparaison is interresting though. The area of construction I'm (remotly) involved in is mine construction, so it seems I've somehow simply stopped thinking of wood as a construction material! Odd, when you think about it... Anyways the "known to man" was a bit premature and over the top, it seems. My apologies.

I do love it when someone is big enough to admit a mistake.
Not that I'd know, as I never make any.

But you were going to create a maximum Toughness force wall there eventually, weren't you?

maybe...

Your argument seems to be that that collapse is and should be a built-in feature of all Created objects, while the way I've always seen it played is that floor structures sufficient to easily support the PCs (i.e. pretty much everything defined IC as a floor) would support any created objects created on it as well, without anybody at the (virtual) table even thinking about it. i.e. trivial weight. (Dropping Elephants on people/structures being another thing entirely in this context). Certainly for anything with the "force" descriptor, which sort of has the built-in "has no weight at all" thing built into its descriptor. For things with the "iron" or "Lead" descriptor, people would probably think about it more, granted, and in our games would have had to add levels of Stationary if they wanted to gain advantages from the weight. Hasn't come up in our games yet... though I expect Iron Boy will expect his Cubic Cage of Defense *not* to collapse the dungeons/structures he's in as a matter of course, no matter what size/how thick he makes it -- probably ever, unless he's taken a related Complication for it.

If you're playing indoors you probably wouldn't have enough room to use the full size of a large create, thus if you WERE playing with the 'volume=mass' ruling, then the smaller object that is able to fit inside the hallway would have considerably less mass, and thus be less likely to cause collapse.
*Side note: Your statement gives me an idea.. A house rule or combined quirk/feature that makes 'Force' objects *Virtually* weightless but also *Virtually*immovable?

Thinking about it, I must be remembering it wrong: it can't have been a foot, can it? It wasn't my character that was using the Create Objects barriers so I don't have the notes on hand... I'll have to ask the next time I see him.

A foot would make sense from a purely 'ease of use' perspective, just not from a 'thickness doubling' perspective, where the 'effective' sizes go from 8 to 16.
Actually, amusing side note: there is no number you can achieve by doubling from 1 that is evenly divisible by 12.
This is because doubling 2 never gives you a 3 (Another prime number, and the other LCD of 12)

 

[Jemal]

As for my recomended minimum thickness.. well that depends on whether they have (non-trivial) mass or not, really.. If they do, then I'd say minimum dimension of 10% of the height give or take a couple inches.
if no/little mass then I'd say a flat number like 4 regardless of height (thick enough to support some and easily divisible into a foot for volume calc)

 

[Binder Fred]

If you're playing indoors you probably wouldn't have enough room to use the full size of a large create.

Unless you go with the Thickness-based Toughness ruling in addition to the Fixed Density ruling - which, I believe, is your recommended course of action? - in which case it's entirely doable to get multi-tone weights in your classic room sizes by "thickening" a smaller barrier to get maximum Toughness out of it. Since players *always* go for maximum Toughness if they can, and understandably so, and since most players do not want, need or have ever worried about involuntarely collapsing the structures they're in under the weight of their defensive/utility Creates, I believe this is a point in favor of the Trivial Weight approach right there.

On another tack, I've been thinking about your Mazes.... If we were in Hero, I'd suggest taking No Normal Defense on the movement-based Affliction with "has 3D movement power" as the canceling condition. As it is, how about:

Environment Impede X (Resistible (the highest of either 10+Int or 10+Speed (with DM permission... could be more balanced with a 12+ instead of 10+ since most people have boosted Defenses?)), Quirk (does not affect targets with *active* 3D movement powers))?

This way you targets get a saving throw each round to try to either figure out the maze (int) or run out all the possibilities (speed), else they have to, slowly, make their way out. SFX would be: "wanders around the area of effect, bumping into invisible walls and not making much total headway in the direction they want to go".

 

[Jemal]

Unless you go with the Thickness-based Toughness ruling in addition to the Fixed Density ruling - which, I believe, is your recommended course of action? - in which case it's entirely doable to get multi-tone weights in your classic room sizes by "thickening" a smaller barrier to get maximum Toughness out of it. Since players *always* go for maximum Toughness if they can, and understandably so, and since most players do not want, need or have ever worried about involuntarely collapsing the structures they're in under the weight of their defensive/utility Creates, I believe this is a point in favor of the Trivial Weight approach right there.

Thats an assumption that I disagree with - and considering the rampant powergaming I usually have to deal with, that's saying something.

On another tack, I've been thinking about your Mazes.... If we were in Hero, I'd suggest taking No Normal Defense on the movement-based Affliction with "has 3D movement power" as the canceling condition. As it is, how about:
Environment Impede X (Resistible (the highest of either 10+Int or 10+Speed (with DM permission... could be more balanced with a 12+ instead of 10+ since most people have boosted Defenses?)), Quirk (does not affect targets with *active* 3D movement powers))?

This way you targets get a saving throw each round to try to either figure out the maze (int) or run out all the possibilities (speed), else they have to, slowly, make their way out. SFX would be: "wanders around the area of effect, bumping into invisible walls and not making much total headway in the direction they want to go".

Hmm.. something like that, or that COMBINED with another power, might work. I'll look into it.

 

[Shayuri]

Hm.

Not that the extended discussion on the nature of a power I've always viewed as a rather simple thing isn't fascinating...but have we heard from the GM lately?

How are we doing, sir? About ready to start?

 

[Binder Fred]

Well, we're missing backgrounds for... pretty much everybody but Baclava, but it *has* been a week to the day since SuperZero's last post, granted... Hope we didn't go through all that effort for nothing? (Talking about the character creation, not the Create discussion (which is always useful )).

 

[Jemal]

Yeah I was wondering about that myself. Last post Feb 5th, Last online Feb 8th.

 

[Shayuri]

Still nothing. He still hasn't been online since the 8th.

So...yeah. That was a lot of sound and fury, signifying...well, you know the rest.