PowerBall and Floors!, And I don't mean the lottery. Options

[Erebus]

Am I missing something on the Object Resistance table, or does a mage who casts a Force 6 PowerBall at a group of security guards, and gets at least a single 10 take out the floor they're standing on to?

[BitBasher]

Yes you did, see attacks against barriers, you'll be lucky just to drop the barrier rating of the floor by one.

[Erebus]

Ahhh.. So assuming the lowest rating, the floor rates a 12, but thats doubled against combat spells to 24, and since the spell is only force 6 which is not greater than half the barrier rating, its nothing but cosmetic damage.... OK. I got it now. Thanks.

[Diesel]

Mm, melted tile.

Put plaster walls with gas lines in them. Nothing beats it.

[BitBasher]

Can't damage a gas line in a wall with a combat spell, you didn't have LOS to it when you cast the spell so it is immune. The wall itself however, is flipping toast.

[Lilt]

I don't know if I'd consider a floor structural material. Most floors in modern buildings are still wooden. I'd consider structural material to be something like concrete or granite. I'd consider most floors, unless they are designed to hold vehicles, to be heavy material (BR6). Even then the powerball would only lower barrier rating by 1 though.

[snowRaven]

Depending on the building of course, you might very well have a wooden floor - but between that and the level below you there might very well be armored concrete, or something similar.

[A Clockwork Lime]

I seriously doubt most facilities would have "armored concrete" floors. At most there might be some plasticrete girders in anything larger than a home somewhere, but they'd only be there for support.

Now structures such as military bunkers, hardcore R&D facilities, and prisons are another story.

[Lilt]

@snowRaven:
True, the surface might be pitted and wrenched though.. I'd make it count as difficult ground (just for fun).

The pic on P139 of MitS is one possible visual effect... I think that's supposed to be ball lightning though, so cut the lightning bolt and it's cool.

A F6 or so Ball Lightning spell could definately have that effect. They are vulnerable to the gas-main-behind plasterboard technique, but if you cast it at light damage it has no elemental effects so can't ignight the gas :wobble:.

[I Eat Time]

Still, do keep in mind, if the Red Samurai find you in a rickety lay-lowhouse in the Barrens, and you Powerball them, it may well take out the worm-eaten and water-damaged floor below them. :D

[booklord]

If a floor was covered with cheap plastic or industrial rubber substitute tiles wouldn't they provide the object resistance of cheap plastic or industrial rubber substitute even if underneath the tiles was wood? After all you can only effect what you can see, and you can't see the wood.

[Tziluthi]

[A Clockwork Lime]

You could always just target the entire building, too. There is no size limit for most spells. There's even a canonical reference for doing this somewhere in the Ritual Sorcery rules where they mention having a brick from a building is enough to target it through the process.

[RedmondLarry]

Floors are considered structural. Anything with a load rated of 100 to 200 lbs. per square foot should be structural. However, it is rare in an office building to see the structural material. Carpets, doors, door frames and plasterboard are all fair game for the first combat spell.

[TinkerGnome]

I think defining things into components only is rather... I don't know... unworkable. A floor is a floor. That includes the carpet, subfloor, supports, and any insulation that might be there. You might as well declare that you can't target a wall without first destroying the paint covering it, and then the plaster, and then the drywall, and then the studs and the same in reverse on the other side.

[Kagetenshi]

Someday I need to make a SuperBall spell.

I don't know what it will do yet. That's not the important part.

~J

[Jason Farlander]

How about a Happy Fun Ball spell?

[Kagetenshi]

Rule number one: you do not talk about Happy Fun Ball.

~J

Postscript: for those who care, rule number one was set down long before Fight Club hit the presses, let alone movie theatres.

[toturi]

Normal reinforced concrete used in usual civillian buildings is Grade 35.

You can use higher grades, but I do not see any city council accepting anything less than Grade 30 concrete in their buildings. Especially any city prone to earthquakes.

[booklord]

My thought on this ( and I don't have any house rules I'm just stating how I would handle it. )

You hit the floor with some really powerful powerball.
You take the object resistance of whatever is covering the floor.

If the powerball was strong enough to take out covering you move on to what was under the floor.

If what is under the floor has a greater or equal object resistance you use that, you recount your successes using that as the new target number.

If what is under the floor covering has a lesser object resistance you keep the object resistance of the floor covering and the number of successes you got against it when determining how much damage you do to that.

The force of the spell will decrease as it continues to blast its way through the floor. Keep going down until the spell no longer has the force needed to blast through the next layer of floor.

[Lilt]

@toturi:
I'm guessing you're talking about some form of concrete grading system rather than barrier rating... Otherwise most buildings will be off the barrier rating scale.

Does amyone have any canon examples of how strong particular materials are? There are examples of glass ratings, but no real idea about how that compares with wood, concrete, and building construction...

[toturi]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[toturi]

If BR 12 is 250mm RC, then 500mm RC would be about BR 14, IMO.

[Austere Emancipa...]

There's nothing wrong with deciding something like that, obviously, but you might as well say it's 13 or 15 or 16. 50cm of reinforced concrete might well be "Heavy Structural Material".