Force 18 Armor --> Help Please, Force 18 Armor --> Help Please Options

[Curugul]

How would you deal with a PC who researched rolled and now uses a force eighteen armor spell (Said PC is a troll full hermetic magician with 18 body and high combat pool). His total armor is something like 25+ with all gear on, and he has shielding metamagic (initiate grade force 3).

Our game is a Mercenary game, aka extremely combat heavy. What poses a serious challenge for this monster?


Thanks in advance,

Curugul

[Infern0]

How about Gas weapons?

[Klothos]

force 18? does he have a library/lodge @ force 18 and a spell design skill @ 18

[shadd4d]

Big deal. He's asking to take a 9M or so hit everytime he casts the spell. Okay, he researched it. Doesn't mean he'll cast it immediately or everytime. Getting a sustaining focus will be 1) expensive, 2) difficult, 3) cost 18 karma. He'd better hope he didn't learn it exclusively, cause you can't stick those in a sustaining focus. Even if he does pull off the magic, he's got some glow around him, aka shoot me, I'm a mage.

Sheilding does jack against physical threats with the exception of elemental manips. Has he calculated out how his armor reduces his combat pool? Factor that in. Also remember that hardened armor doesn't stack. The armor spell doesn't create hardened armor.

With a few rules from the basic book and CC, that cuts the character down to something more managable.

Check out the thread on how to rail against a mage. Make him deal with snipers or even drones. He still has to deal with vehicles and such, which might not be all that easy. He's got a magic of 9? Doesn't mean he's up against spirits, especially if they dogpile him or attack his foci.

When in doubt, there's always missiles, rockets, gernades, and whatnot that can hose his day. Has the opposition discovered the wonders of indirect fire? If that takes out his group, then your only opposition is this troll whom you're just going to x-team into a smear.

I like the Gas ideas.

Don

[CoalHeart]

A force 18 spell has a learning TN of 36. There's very very little chance he learned this spell legitly. And even if he did manage one success, he has to sit there without intteruption for 18 days straight learning it. Anything that interupts this forces him to start over with a new test.

[Arethusa]

[Misfit Toy]

Since the troll's existance is silly to begin with, just be silly in return. Put him up against a decent grade 3 melee adept with Pentjak-Silat 9, Improved Pentjak-Silat 9, Distance Strike, Killing Hands: Serious, and Aptitude: Pentjak-Silat. He's throwing approximately 27 dice with a base TN of 3 before his Centering: Melee metamagic technique is used.

It's now a ranged attack, meaning the troll can't counter the attack at all (at best he can dodge, but that gives him a higher TN anyway). The adept's Strength is irrelevant; at worse he's doing 2S damage and most likely 2D with a ton of extra successes the troll has to counter with his Body Test before he has a chance to stage the damage down.

But if that's too much trouble, just have a sniper make a Called Shot to bypass his armor with a high-Power weapon loaded with a Glazer round (+2 Power and +1 Damage Level against the now-unarmored opponent). Even the Armor spell is not immune to the asinine rule, and every single piece he has is completely ignored. And wouldn't you know it? Him shooting that one round before having to reload gives the rest of the team time to find cover and deal with the threat while the troll is rotting away on the street.

[Herald of Verjig...]

25 points of soft ballistic, but what's his impact? An opponent stealth adept with a tazer can do harsh things to any bum who thinks he's invincible. Especially if the stealth adept greets him right after said bum takes a shower at his own housing.

[Arethusa]

Toy, don't Glazers do +2 DL against unarmored/+1 DL against armored?

[Misfit Toy]

I'm not sure, but if memory serves its +2 Power/+1 Level against uarmored and armor is doubled against, well, armored opponents.

[FXcalibur]

CC, pg38

Glazers are +2 Power.

Against unarmoured targets, +1 DL.
Against armoured targets, Power is reduced by twice highest armour rating.
Against barriers and vehicles, double barrier/armour rating.

Looks like a pretty good sniper round.

[TinkerGnome]

[Arethusa]

Ah, my mistake. So, basically, they're EX-EX and flechette combined.

Regardless, problem still exists of everything short of an assault cannon with APDS not having enough power to even scratch this troll. But, as Doc pointed out, this is not a terribly sensible problem, and there's little reason to hold back the opposition.

[Eyeless Blond]

I'm just wondering how the guy managed to hit a TN 36 to learn this legendary Armor spell. He'd have to roll on average about 45,000 dice to hit such a TN, and even then the time it would take is non-trivial.

As for how to damage something like this, well if he's got 18 body and a force 18 armor spell his buddies are all deltaware zombiies or running around with custom-built MPCP-24 decks. This is superhero-level stuff you've got here; send them up against guys taken out of comic books. :P

[Jason Farlander]

[Nikoli]

Spell like that would attract lots of nasty attention. F-18 glows like the sun in most cases, astrally that is. Any and all manner of evil nasties would likely be attracted to the bum. imagine if everyone he drops suddenly starts getting up as a sheddim controlled thing-killer, and of course, since he brought it upon the party, there's no extra Karma awarded for the waste of resources.

And, I'm thinknig that witha glow like that, he's visible from space, so have fun the next time he pulls that spell on ares turf outside of a building. (orbital weapons platforms anyone?)

[Cain]

Gas weapons-- the Armor spell is ineffective against gas.

Knockback. Armor does nothing to reduce the knockback of an attack. (Use Gel rounds for best effect.) Even with his high body, a high power attack will knock him flat.

Astral attacks (aka the Watcher Attack Pack™). Have spirits start attacking his focus. Win or lose, he's got to go astral to deal with them-- but once he does, he then runs into 6 force-6 watchers plus whatever other force 8-10 spirits are appropriate for your game. His physical armor now does him no good, and the Friends in Melee modifiers will chew him apart.

The Chunky Salsa effect. Get him in close quarters with a high-powered explosive.

Naval-scale Weaponry. In a merc campaign, you better believe that the tank gunners will be pointing their main guns at the glowing troll. A Vaporizer round will eat him for lunch.

Background counts and mana warps. A minor mana warp will start damaging his sustaining focus.

Don't forget about drain, either. Unless he's got a Magic of 18, he'll be taking physical drain from the spell, that can't be healed magically.

[KarmaInferno]

If all else fails, I find that dropping an office building on them works.

:D


-karma

[Austere Emancipa...]

What I'd personally do is this:
In a routine run-gone-bad (these are bound to happen when a combat mage troll thinks he's invincible) someone happens to fire an ATGM at the runners, hitting the troll with a few successes. The troll stages the 7D attack down to a Moderate and is only mildly pissed off, much to the enjoyment of the player and disbelief of the missile gunners.

People hear stories of an unstoppable troll. A nearby reserve artillery battallion puts a missile launcher on 24-7 standby in case the troll is spotted. A few blimps or tiny surveillance drones hang high in the sky, following the troll's every move. The next time the troll is 25 meters away from anything people don't want blown to bits, they fire a rigger-ridden Sea Saber at him.

You can reasonably have about 30 dice against a TN of 2 for the attack roll (ramming), and there's very little the troll can do to dodge. He'll be facing a 120D + 40 Over-Damage or so Anti-Vehicular damage.

But then my group is currently in a war-zone, so I guess I don't count. Plus I'd never let a character have a Force 18 Armor spell, for reasons mentioned above.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Jul 7 2004, 05:40 PM

[Clank]

What's his Sorcery? The Force might be 18, but unless his Sorcery Skill is ungodly also, he's probably walking around with a tenuous 3-4 successes. Dispel the damn thing. If it's in a focus, he's gotta replace the spell and pay the Karma again.

If it's not in a focus, then he's got +2 to any other spell he casts anyway.

If he's breaking the game, tell him. If he prefers to be a munchkin, munchkin right back. Put him up against a force 30 Manabolt (he's obviously proven that super force spells aren't THAT hard to come by).

Want to be legal about it? Anything higher than Force 4 is Illegal, so get Lonestar after him (If he can survive almost anything, then he's gotta have a reputation). They can't stop him? He becomes public enemy #1. Lonestar requsitions the use of a battleship to stop the nation threat. Armor, Schmarmor; he can't soak 1L N. He should feel very proud to be the most wanted Man in SR history and you've given him a story to tell his children (b/c telling any hardcore SR fan will just get him a 'WTF? Force 18??? What are you, stupid?!' response).

Get him addicted to drugs/BTL. Oh how the mighty have fallen... AND you have an after school special. A game with a message... aren't you the quintessential GM. :)

Armor is a personal barrier around your body, but what does that mean? it stops combat stuf, but what if he tries to pick up a fork? Will it slide across the table? Will he ever eat again?

I'm assuming you're trying to find a noble, game response to a very ignoble action. You'll be hard pressed to find one. Your best bet is to tell the player they've broken the game.

[DarusGrey]

Send him up against a troll adept with maxed strength, bioware enhanced strength,
titanium bone-lacing etc, adept power strength..and strength boost.


15strength+4 lacing+5 levels of adept power + 4 of bio/cyberware and give him strength boost of 10 levels.

Don't forget Killing hands D!.

28-38D unarmed combat. Even that badass can't stop that.

[BenLarkin]

Send a Troll Go-Gang after him with some chains and a pack of stim and trauma patches!

The Troll gang tackles the mighty mage down and slaps him with patches until all of his Magic goes away.

:rotfl:

[Backgammon]

[Clank]

[Sammiel]

overwhelm him with successes. aside from using the asinine called shot to avoid armor rule, a physad sniper lightly cybered and highly initiated can achieve a TN of 2, skill 10, improved rifles 10, combat pool + whatever other blah that adds dice, avg 28 dice we'll say, 23 successes.

so 14D from a barret, +23 successes

23-15 is 8, so hes taking a Deadly wound + 8 overflow. alternatively, you could instead fire from a sport rifle.

Leaving him with a Deadly wound and 6 overflow

then fire again, which the barret cant do.

TN of 2 again cause of a customized grip, 21 dice

18 successes, -15 soak, leaves 3

11 more boxes of dmg

Assuming my math is right. now, admittedly, I didn't add the trolls combat pool for dodging or soaking, but good bet he would blow it all on the first shot, assuming he had a combat pool of 7, he would still take a deadly wound with 2 overflow, leaving him with no combat pool for the second attack. I assume he would choose to soak instead of dodge since the TN is lower.


Given that he managed to research a force 18 spell, I dont think an assassin that skilled is unrealistic for the game.

Although a simple sleight of hand or magic fingers will leave this troll sans his focus.