So critter power wise, 5th edition, Immunity to say, Fire comes at x2 Essence or presumably something like Force for spirits, and acts as a hardened defense. Tho apparently Spirits by default are not immune to their own element, so you can use a flamethrower vs a Fire Spirit just as well as if it were human.

Then you add Elemental Attack, which does x2 Magic with Magic rated Armor Piercing. So you also have situations where a Hellhound, immune to fire, can breathe on another Hellhound, also immune to fire, and reduce its Immunity to fire of 6, down to 1. (5 magic, 3 essence) And more often than not, do damage to the other hellhound with fire.

No idea what its going to look like for Dragons, tho base stuff give them potentially fire attacks of 20+ DV and 10 AP, and that's not even the 'legendaries'.

So if you were going to give immunity to fire, that was actually immunity to fire, what rating would it need to be? 30? 40? Elemental attack is a bit more potent in 5th, giving a bonus AP factor I didn't seem to see in the 4th, so roughly 50% stronger per given rating, assuming the target is armored.

Just fiat it. So "Immune to Fire" means it takes no damage from fire. No mechanics, it just is.

They really could have done well with splitting this into two powers. Resistance to X and Immunity to X, with the first acting as how the current Immunity works vs damage and the greater version of Immunity meaning just what the label says for specials.

Hey this is a very good catch on how immunity works and is implemented. It made me realize another detail (sorry if it's been brought up before, either when talking about spirits or somewhere else).

In Immunity, it states two contradictory things: 1) "effectively, the critter has Hardened Armor rating equal to twice its Essence against that particular kind of damage"; 2) "This means that if the modified Damage Value of the attack does not exceed the immunity's rating, then the attack automatically does no damage."

The contradiction comes from the definition of Hardened Armor, in which the rating is modified by AP. This greatly affect how immunity is applied in practice. Rating 6, for example, and rating 6 modified by AP are two VERY different things. This directly affects the example from OP.

Again, I have to say it, the verdict is: bad writing.

OTOH, depending on how the text is supposed to read (eg. 6 HA vs. 6 HA - AP) will have very different outcomes on the relative power of spirits.

6 HA (F3 spirit) makes the spirit take very little damage from most small arms (rolling 12 dice (REA + BOD + 6) to reduce damage + 3 auto-hits, av. 7 hits)
vs.
6 HA - AP (F3 spirit) makes the spirit rather weak to elemental attacks, like Stick n' Shock (rolling 9 dice (REA + BOD + (6/2) + 1 auto-hit), av. 4 hits) and good damage from anything that has decent AP (-3 and better). At F6+, elemental attacks end up being the Go-To method for dealing with spirits, despite the obvious WTF factor (spirits having no discernible anatomy to effect by high voltage shocks).

Draco18, you're spot on. That's also my feeling.

It really depends on what turns out to be the correct reading of both critter powers. Even better than a F6 flamethrower though, would be full automatic weapons with a -9AP and possibly more negative AP added from weapon or ammunition.

It blows my mind that AP-cancelling techniques would be one of the best way to get rid of nasty high force spirits apart from banishing, but it would be so if we apply the full hardened armor text to immunity, which, nevertheless, I doubt is the intent.

It's been a long time, and I've slept since then, but I think I floated something like this at one point in the writing cycle. I know at one point I had made Immunity just that, the way it had been in earlier editions, and I got slapped down. Hard. I had a tremendous sad going that day.


And it's probably my fault, but I'd have to go back and look at my drafts, and I've got a deadline that just whooshed past me.

You're too hard on yourself, Patrick.

I wouldn't feel too bad. Total immunity to something is always a touchy subject.

Plus I do not believe it should be too common. A Hellhound should be resistant, but not immune to fire. It's still organic and while tougher, I can still cook one with a spell or two.

With a hot enough flame going can even make my famous footlong HellDogs with Hellabrasdori, an awakened jalapeno, relish on top. Persons with Adrenaline Pumps or heart conditions may want to steer clear of this one.

One should never slap a sad-on.

/apologizes.

For the fire stuff, the other thing I was wondering was, "What is the usual range of a Fire for purposes of Immunity?" Basically fire is setup as a 'it gets worse until you dieeee', but say difference between hobo trash can fire vs 'spiderman rescuing people from building' fire.

The bad writing comment wasn't about immunity being full immunity or a resistance, or what have you, but rather about the ambiguity as to whether or not AP was applied to hardened armor and immunity in the same way. The text is quite ambiguous on the question and it would be great to hear what was the intended message here. I'm not sure you've noticed that important bit.

On further review, what would one say logical extensions of Immunity to Fire would include? Lets use "invulnerability" to the Element of Fire in this case. Would it defend against heat? What about smoke/breathing associated with fire? What about toxic fire/nuclear? Lasers?

This would have to be judged on a case by case basis. Heat from a blowtorch, gas fire, napalm all would be fire/heat based and protected against.

It would not necessarily protect from smoke inhalation as the damage is partially due to heat and partially just the fumes themselves or lack of breathable air.

However remember spirits do not need to breathe so smoke by itself would not harm an elemental.

For Lasers that is technically the Element of Light, likewise Toxic Fire/Radiation have other elements besides simple heat.

I would suggest for these special cases maybe cut the DV by half to represent how the Immunity to Fire protects against the heat side somewhat, but not the other elements involved.

That's kind of you. Not sure if it's accurate, but it's kind of you to say it, anyway.


I didn't overlook it, and either way, the "It's probably my fault" bit still applies because I wrote those particular powers. Matter of fact, barring a little bit of editorial change to a couple of them, I wrote all the powers. The vast bulk of the bad writing, if there is any, is probably my fault.

The intent is for both powers to work the same way. If it says something in Hardened Armor about AP, then the intent was for it to be applied the same way for Immunity. I've had a lot going on, so my original thinking is...cloudy. It's been a year since I actually wrote that, and there's been a lot happen to me and my family since then. I might not have thought that people really needed me to cut and paste the exact same verbiage in multiple places, and thought that they could read "works like Hardened Armor" and go and look at Hardened Armor. Perhaps I was mistaken; it happens a lot.

But yeah, the intent is for it to work just like Hardened Armor (including autohits for resistance). A remarkable number of things that Immunity works against don't have AP or its equivalent, so it's less of a big deal to me, but those things that do have AP or equivalent probably should, IMO, get a leg up, so to speak.

Of course, my ORIGINAL intent was for Immunity to be REALLY badass, but that didn't work out. I'm kind of pleased with how Hardened Armor came out, though; it's hard to deal with without it becoming an all-or-nothing resistance roll.

The only reason its confusing is that it's hard to tell the general rule / specific rule circumstances.

Is Hardened Armor the general rule and Immunity a specific rule? (No armor piercing applies)
Or is Hardened Armor the specific rule, and Immunity is just a(n incomplete) reiteration? (Armor piercing applies)

If it had just said, "See hardened armor, a critter gets Y amount vs. the immunity type" and stopped I think it would have been perfect. It would have been clear that immunity functioned exactly like Hardened Armor as well as indicating how much of it the critter gets.



Hardened Armor, I think, got a little more bad-ass from SR4, but it also kind of needed it. I also like how it turned out, for the most part. I think the only change I'd make is that armor piercing only applies "once" rather than the pseudo "twice" that it does now (that is, regardless of AP the critter always gets its full rating worth of auto-hits). Which would actually go a long way towards making Immunity more bad-ass, as a F3 fire spirit would have 6 hardened armor. Against a flame thrower (DV6 -half AP) it would still get 3 automatic successes on the damage resistance roll, plus 3 dice. So on average it'd take 2 boxes of damage from it, rather that the current 4 boxes (6 halved, halved again, round down: 1 auto hit + 3 dice -> 2 hits).

The new rules also make it stand out from vehicles and drones just being immune to stun. Vehicles don't get the auto-hits!

Very interesting!

Thanks a lot for clearing up unambiguously what the insight into the process of writing these rules was. If I sounded in any way rude in the critique (which nevertheless stands itself, imo), and I do understand that you must have been under a lot of pressure and can't think of every minute detail at the time of writing, I apologize.

Anyway, wow! Armor piercing applies! So stacking armor piercing is a great way to deal with spirits! Specifically elemental spells, as discussed before, which brings the issue that a flamethrower spell has suddenly become extremely powerful against... a fire spirit? Draco, I think your math might have been wrong: A F6 flamethrower spell has AP-6, thus the force 3 fire spirit has no armor against it, and rolls.. 4 dice for dmg resist.

Uh.

I meant a flame thrower, as in one of these.

Ohhh.. You mean the morning after Bean Burrito Monday.

Haha gotcha.. my bad

Anyone who claims that a thing is completely immune to fire simply isn't trying hard enough.





-k

Mmm...I'd have to say that water is pretty much immune to fire. On account of being the product of setting hydrogen on fire.

Black holes are probably likewise immune. For...other reasons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQMXzpTaIh4&t=1m10s


Not trying hard enough!





-k

That's a little different. You added something to what I said was immune.

I said "H₂O," not "H₂O+ NaCl"

If you're not cheating you're not trying.




-k

Alright alright alright.
Alright.
Here.

I put forth that "intangible" is immune to fire.

Eat ethereal fire, you intangible SOB!

Seriously, fire should be a viable solution to everything. Including long division.

Bacon.

I'm pretty sure fire improves the taste of bacon. Though I've never tried raw bacon, as I've seen pictures of Trichinosis. Ugg.

Actually that post was somewhere along the lines of "completely random" and "fire is also a solution to bacon."