| From: | Gurth gurth@******.nl |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Buildings, doors, maglocks, and magic |
| Date: | Mon, 12 Jun 2000 19:58:05 +0200 |
> > The player's argument was mainly that I had allowed spells like Ram Touch
> > to blast holes in walls or destroy doors without having to target (and
> > collapse) the whole house, so Turn To Goo should be able to do something
> > similar. Thinking about it quickly during the session, I decided that I
> > had probably been wrong in the past to let Ram Touch do that in the first
> > place. Was I?
>
> By letting him target a "Turn to Goo" spell??? No, you were not wrong...
> however...
I _didn't_ let him target Turn To Goo on the door, but had allowed Ram
Touch to do precisely that in the past -- that was the cause of the
discussion our group had in the first place.
> > The second problem, refered to above, is that if you make a building a
> > single target, BTB it becomes too easy to destroy one if you use the rules
> > for barrier ratings. Buildings should have a barrier rating that's higher
> > than that of their walls, as it's a "whole is greater than the sum of the
> > parts" type of deal, but how would you represent this in SR?
>
> Ah, yet another part of stuff. Actually, most buildings that I know of are
> at least Barrier-6 to Barrier-8 material. If you were to use the vehicle
> rules, as you were using as your basis earlier, then the target would be 8 +
> Barrier Rating + Half Armor rating (please note this last part).
What I would use here is the object resistance rating, and use the
Breaking Through barriers rules (SR3 p. 125) to determine damage to the
barrier when/if the spell works. For example, a weak concrete building
might have an ORR of 8 (which sets the TN) and a Barrier Rating of 6 (so
you'd have to use a Force 6+ manipulation spell or Force 12+ combat spell
to lower its barrier rating).
> However, you probably have a target number equal to the Object Resistance
> rating, and for some reason I seem to recall a threshold being equal to the
> barrier being used in many transformation type spells. You could arguably
> use the "threshold" type rules for "damaging manipulations" as
well.
See above.
> Now as for the "Turn to Goo" targetted at a door, NO, you cannot use that
> spell to do so. Remind the player that "Ram Touch" is specifically
designed
> against it's targets while a "Turn *DOOR* to Goo" spell would be required
to
> only nail/target a door and turn it to goo.
So what you're saying, basically, is that Mana Bolt cannot exist. You'd
have to have a Mana Bolt (Human Targets), Mana Bolt (Elf Targets), Mana
Bolt (Troll Targets), and so on?
Or did I misinterpret you there, and were you trying to say that to only
turn the door in a building to goo, you'd need Turn Door To Goo, which
would affect only the doors in the single target that is the building?
However, using the magic vs. vehicle rules again, you can't target the
building's doors, because you have to target the whole building. Which
makes a spell like that only useful for turning loose doors (i.e. not part
of a building) to goo...
Which is the essence of my question, as I see it: can doors or locks be
targeted separately from the building they are in? If you can, then you
can IMHO also target wheels or windows of cars. Unless a building is not
considered a single target, but then the question becomes: where do you
draw the line of what constitutes a single target?
--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
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