Weakest chars to survive the following trials

[Sharpandpointies]

So, going back to Death Ward, I have to ask - No Limits Fallacy? What in the fluff prevents Death Ward from being an NLF by Rumbles' standards? How does the spell work? I'm not talking about the rules, I'm talking about the description, the fluff.

[Beadle]

The entire fluff is this:

You touch a creature and grant it a measure of protection from deat You touch a creature and grant it a measure of protection from death.

The first time the target would drop to 0 hit points as a result of taking damage, the target instead drops to 1 hit point, and the spell ends.

If the spell is still in effect when the target is subjected to an effect that would kill it instantaneously without dealing damage, that effect is instead negated against the target, and the spell ends.

So the only bit of fluff is that it protects against death… somehow.

As we’ve discussed elsewhere, it does kind of feel like an NLF.

The only argument you could have is that it doesn’t ‘limit damage’ as such, it just ‘moves’ the point of death to put it slightly out of reach. Usually, as dead as you can be is… Dead. You can also be unconscious and dying, or just unconscious. With Death Ward, the most dead you can be for that first hit is ‘Somehow Still Conscious’ - that is the bottom of the barrel.

But it feels a little stretchy and NLF-y in a Rumbles context.

[Sharpandpointies]

I saw it come up again on this thread, so I figured it would be good to bring this up in public as well. Don't want every single 'weakest person to withstand this' thread ending with 'Level X Cleric with Death Ward', when people are hauling out stuff waaaaay outside the capacity of stuff in D&D.

To clarify for others, Beadle and I have chatted about this. My concern with it being a NLF is this: there's almost no fluff for it at all - it doesn't describe how this spell works outside of 'the rules'; is it reality warping, 'divine shield', or what? So there's no way of considering it other than 'it's a spell that operates in the rules, how it works is an artifact of the D&D HP rules'. Which, to me, begs the question of 'within the D&D rules, what's the most powerful thing it can protect against? What's the Biggest Damage™ we see in D&D, in terms of something this spell works on (not 'save-or-die insta-kill effects' like 'death ray' or whathaveyou, if D&D still has that kind of thing)?'

This is what the whole business of 'Rumbles Doesn't Do NLF' is actually about.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

I saw it come up again on this thread, so I figured it would be good to bring this up in public as well. Don't want every single 'weakest person to withstand this' thread ending with 'Level X Cleric with Death Ward', when people are hauling out stuff waaaaay outside the capacity of stuff in D&D.

To clarify for others, Beadle and I have chatted about this. My concern with it being a NLF is this: there's almost no fluff for it at all - it doesn't describe how this spell works outside of 'the rules'; is it reality warping, 'divine shield', or what? So there's no way of considering it other than 'it's a spell that operates in the rules, how it works is an artifact of the D&D HP rules'. Which, to me, begs the question of 'within the D&D rules, what's the most powerful thing it can protect against? What's the Biggest Damage™ we see in D&D, in terms of something this spell works on (not 'save-or-die insta-kill effects' like 'death ray' or whathaveyou, if D&D still has that kind of thing)?'

This is what the whole business of 'Rumbles Doesn't Do NLF' is actually about.

I'd honestly probably treat it like the player briefly becomes the Black Knight from Monty Python, myself.

"You survive but that's like... also your whole arm off."

[Sharpandpointies]

I'd honestly probably treat it like the player briefly becomes the Black Knight from Monty Python, myself.

"You survive but that's like... also your whole arm off."

^_^

Whatever works for your GMing style.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

^_^

Whatever works for your GMing style.

They can't suffer if I let them die, you see.

[Sharpandpointies]

They can't suffer if I let them die, you see.

Oh, I know the kind of GM you are. No worries there.

^_^

[The MunchKING]

What does a weaponised beam of hyper concentrated gravity class as? Because that's in the mix.

"weird stuff that could be whatever type the developers need"

That said the times it's come up in the game; Seismic toss is "throwing you with the power of gravity" so more of a 'throw you high and let gravity drop you' thing (and is Fighting Type), Gravity is a psychic power that pulls Flying/Levitating Pokemon down to the ground so they can be hit by Ground Type moves, and Dark has a move called Black Hole Eclipse that doesn't SAY it's using Gravity but is a big black hole in space that pulls you in and crushes you.

So if it's Fighting or Psychic Shedinja is immune. If it's Dark it would actually faint a Shedinja.

I saw it come up again on this thread, so I figured it would be good to bring this up in public as well. Don't want every single 'weakest person to withstand this' thread ending with 'Level X Cleric with Death Ward', when people are hauling out stuff waaaaay outside the capacity of stuff in D&D.

I still remember when ChuckG argued with me that high level Vampire the Masquerade powers would let them walk off the galaxy blowing up.

[Sharpandpointies]

I still remember when ChuckG argued with me that high level Vampire the Masquerade powers would let them walk off the galaxy blowing up.

Exactly. Much as ChuckG was one of the old-timers hereabouts that contributed to this place, that sort of thing shouldn't fly (unless it's some kind of defense that physically removes the person from reality or the like, where it's less 'the defense withstands the attack' and more 'the defense gets the person out of the way of the attack').

.....

I'm actually straining to think of a power that would do that, and I know my VtM.

Anyway, the point is 'just because it can laugh off anything in this game system, due to rules, doesn't mean it works on anything'. Either have to look at the fluff (if there is any) and decide from that, or look at 'what's the biggest thing it CAN deal with in the game system, and how does that stack up outside of being a rules-based thing?'

Look at D&D. I know that there's likely more powerful stuff than Meteor Swarm - either in fluff or in high-level damaging stuff - but is pretty up there in the base books (9th level spell) and it isn't exactly a big deal to certain things in other settings. A bunch of 40' radius explosions? That do...well, a lot of damage, and I would be curious as to how much 'ground' that would destroy were the ground made of granite, to get an idea of the power of each impact. But compared to Class 100 level stuff (or even a step or two below that), it's chump change.

No shame there, just different genres/settings.

[Beadle]

That’s the hilarious thing about D&D damage levels. It scales REEEEEALLY badly with other systems.

At low-level, four bites from a weasel or scratches from a house cat would kill a commoner.

At high-level, the most powerful single attack Tiamat (a greater deity and god of chromatic dragons, and one of the most powerful statted-out creatures in D&D) can do is 26xD6 fire damage. If they fail their DEX save. Basically she can kill a commoner 39 times. She’s as dangerous as 156 house cats. Less so really, because they will always do 1 damage, whereas she only has a 1 in 170 quintillion chance of doing 156 damage with that attack.

It’s not great.

[The MunchKING]

Look at D&D. I know that there's likely more powerful stuff than Meteor Swarm - either in fluff or in high-level damaging stuff - but is pretty up there in the base books (9th level spell) and it isn't exactly a big deal to certain things in other settings. A bunch of 40' radius explosions? That do...well, a lot of damage, and I would be curious as to how much 'ground' that would destroy were the ground made of granite, to get an idea of the power of each impact.

Well I was curious, so I actually did the math. I used pathfinder, because I had the SRD already open. Meteor Swarm does 4 hits, that each do 2d6 bludgeoning damage before exploding into 6d6 fire damage each. Stone Walls have a hardness of 8 and 900 HP for a 5 foot think chunk of wall.

EDIT: or 15 HP per inch, which will be a more useful metric when we get into it.

Hardness is subtracted from each hit before damage is dealt. So because Meteor Swarm hit with 4 separate orbs, we deduct hardness from both the Bludgeoning damage and fire damage. So assuming max damage is rolled, that's 128 damage being dealt to that stone. Divide by 15 and the explosions will gouge out about 8 and a half inches of stone.

[Sharpandpointies]

That’s the hilarious thing about D&D damage levels. It scales REEEEEALLY badly with other systems.

At low-level, four bites from a weasel or scratches from a house cat would kill a commoner.

At high-level, the most powerful single attack Tiamat (a greater deity and god of chromatic dragons, and one of the most powerful statted-out creatures in D&D) can do is 26xD6 fire damage. If they fail their DEX save. Basically she can kill a commoner 39 times. She’s as dangerous as 156 house cats. Less so really, because they will always do 1 damage, whereas she only has a 1 in 170 quintillion chance of doing 156 damage with that attack.

It’s not great.

I'm unsure if it scales in a linear fashion like that - dead is dead, really, and it's not like the commoner 'absorbs' damage to save people behind him, does he. So Tiamat's breath basically kills anything incapable of withstanding 26d6 fire damage (assuming failed saves) out to the end of its range (which is...what?) is maybe a better way of looking at it. And is somewhat better than 'hey, does 100 times the damage of a housecat!' ^_^

I admit, this is a hilarious discussion that illustrates why RPG rules do not break down well into feats.

I mean, a nuclear explosion in Anima, if we go by straight maths, 'only' does 1100 points damage, on average, to a 'farmer' standing within the point-blank explosion range, killing him 'only' ~15x over (with some left over from #16*). Granted, I assumed he got a dodge roll and that did some good - upon reflection, I shouldn't have, and we end up with 1320 Edit: which is JUUUUUST under 19 farmers, last guy eats one hell of a critical.

But that 1320 points basically kills anything in the game that doesn't have some kind of weird existential protection (there is not a single thing in the game with that much health, aside from an insanely min-maxed, super-high-level Weaponmaster, but haha, yes, Garon could if he reached a high enough level), truly vast Encasement/Damage Resistance, etc etc. And I'll note that if it hits everyone's favourite Dragon of Gaira in the face (Manah R'azz), she takes some Edit; forgot her armor, it's 19 200 damage and dies instantly.

So maybe better scaling, there. Also, better for feats, because it IS a nuclear weapon, so there's some comparison.

.....

Actually, hang on. There's an argument to be made that Manah takes only about half of that, possibly less, because it takes the full explosion to cover her entire body. The 300' radius, point-blank area that does 300 base damage is probably enough to...I don't know, cover her head? Maybe?

Anyway, I'd guess that Manah would therefore 'only' take 1/3-1/2 of that (due to the varying damage of the weapon - it does 200 base damage out to 300-1000' as I recall, and 100 base damage after that out to 5000'), which means...she's still dead. O_O Edit: But it's close. Give her some time to throw up magical defenses, and she'll walk it off.

Solomon clearly did not mess around when making their technomagickal thermonuclear missiles.

Well I was curious, so I actually did the math. I used pathfinder, because I had the SRD already open. Meteor Swarm does 4 hits, that each do 2d6 bludgeoning damage before exploding into 6d6 fire damage each. Stone Walls have a hardness of 8 and 900 HP for a 5 foot think chunk of wall.

EDIT: or 15 HP per inch, which will be a more useful metric when we get into it.

Hardness is subtracted from each hit before damage is dealt. So because Meteor Swarm hit with 4 separate orbs, we deduct hardness from both the Bludgeoning damage and fire damage. So assuming max damage is rolled, that's 128 damage being dealt to that stone. Divide by 15 and the explosions will gouge out about 8 and a half inches of stone.

Thanks!

That's good for Pathfinder; I was thinking about the version Beadle uses, where it's 20d6 bludgeon and 20d6 fire, each. BUT that does tell me that Pathfinder's Meteor Swarm won't even scratch the paint on someone like Ben Grimm from the comics, much less an actual Class 100.

* Yes, farmers have 70 life points, everyone point and laugh at Serafyna.

[Sharpandpointies]

To paraphrase Pendaran, we're nerding the place up hardcore, now.

[The MunchKING]

Well that's because it's a multi-hit damage with non-changing amounts of damage.

That's why everyone's go-to spell when you want to clear out large amounts of inanimate material is disintegrate. It scales with level up to 40d6 damage, but when used on nonliving stuff it just straight up vaporizes a 10' cube of whatever it was.

[Sharpandpointies]

Well that's because it's a multi-hit damage with non-changing amounts of damage.

Absolutely.

That's why everyone's go-to spell when you want to clear out large amounts of inanimate material is disintegrate. It scales with level up to 40d6 damage, but when used on nonliving stuff it just straight up vaporizes a 10' cube of whatever it was.

Makes sense.