Aberrant RPG - Falling Damage Questions

[NFVD]

Does eufiber or armor (physical armor, not the power) count for soaking versus damage from falling? What about the Armor or Force Field powers?

The rules also specify that falling 30m mean you achieve terminal velocity and damage caps at 10d10 Lethal. Does this mean, lets say, if you toss someone at terminal velocity against a wall using Telekinesis you would cause this level of damage?

What do you guys think?

[Alex Green]

All the various soak increasing powers and megas (including eufiber) add to soak for everything. Artifical armor doesn't, but that's mostly for baselines, not novas.

Being slammed into a wall is by definition not a terminal velocity thing, including and especially by TK since it's not very fast.

[metaphysician]

Strikes me as insufficiently lethal, IMO. Probably should convert from dice to levels of damage at terminal velocity. That way, baselines don't have a better than even chance of surviving a terminal fall.

[Alex Green]

Strikes me as insufficiently lethal, IMO. Probably should convert from dice to levels of damage at terminal velocity. That way, baselines don't have a better than even chance of surviving a terminal fall.

In RL baselines already have a small chance of surviving a fall. They also can't soak lethal damage.

So they take 10d lethal and get hurt bad enough that they bleed out.

[metaphysician]

Point. OTOH, 10 dice lethal only averages 5 levels, which means there is a significant chance of only rolling 3 or even fewer. Whereas surviving terminal velocity falls at *all* is a freak occurance.

Its not like it makes *that* big a deal in game; most physically-buff novas will survive it without too much trouble, and you can always extra the baselines.

[NFVD]

All the various soak increasing powers and megas (including eufiber) add to soak for everything. Artifical armor doesn't, but that's mostly for baselines, not novas.

Why is eufiber different? And what is the rationale for force field to protect against falls?

[SkyLion]

Why is eufiber different? And what is the rationale for force field to protect against falls?

,,

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both force fields and eufiber disspiate energy, including the kinetic energy from falling.

[Alex Green]

Why is eufiber different?

Eufiber is less a suit of armor and more an organic-forcefield. Better still it has attune-on-steroids, i.e. it's own attunement rules, so it effectively gets all of your powers. I.e. if you have and use Hardbody, it's soak adds. Ditto Adaptability, ditto Health, ditto Mega-Stamina ability rolls.

Basically it can be assumed to get the best of all worlds

[ProfPotts]

Why is eufiber different? And what is the rationale for force field to protect against falls?

In terms of game mechanics Armour, Eufibre, or Force Field aren't 'body armour'.

Armour (the power) is simply a bonus to Soak: in essence it's no different from the rest of the character's 'natural' Soak - it could represent any number of things, from having internal organs made of steel, to a 'force field'-esque glow, to being made out of orange rock.

Eufiber may be 'an outfit' like armour, but the stuff itself doesn't provide any armour - each Quantum Point stored in it provides the Nova with extra Soak (so it's the raw power being kept in the stuff which adds to the Nova's toughness, not the physical material of the Eufiber). Unlike body armour, Eufiber doesn't have a 'destruction' rating - it'll last as long as the Nova wearing it does.

It's a similar case with Force Field - it provides extra Soak, it doesn't simulate body armour. As to why this protects you from a fall - well, Force Field can be described in many different ways, so there are many potential reasons. Mechanically the 'Force Field' power is 'a bonus to Soak which costs QP & has a limited duration' - so it could be anything from a classic 'glowing aura', to 'summoning' a suit of armour, to 'instant regeneration' (so fast the injuries have no effect), to an action star's 'never seems to get shot by the bad guys' luck. Just as the Telekinesis power in Aberrant isn't a 'mental power' (its dice pool is based on Dexterity), & doesn't have to appear like 'classic' mentally powered 'psychokinesis', but could be 'control of winds', or 'tractor beams', or 'a summoned genie', or myriad others 'special effects', the Force Field power doesn't have to be a 'force field' as such.

Point. OTOH, 10 dice lethal only averages 5 levels, which means there is a significant chance of only rolling 3 or even fewer. Whereas surviving terminal velocity falls at *all* is a freak occurance.

Statistically 10 dice average 4 successes (1 per 2.5 dice you roll), not 5 - so it's even more likely for a baseline to survive (a healthy character would be, on average, Wounded & could walk away from the fall). Of course, this presumes that the baseline in question is relatively important story-wise. As mentioned...

... you can always extra the baselines.

... & since an Extra taking 4 levels of Lethal damage is dead, then on average such characters will die from the fall.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you roll the dice before describing the result: if the baseline takes zero damage for a terminal velocity fall, then you probably won't want to described them as falling face-first onto concrete: maybe they lucked out & landed in the back of an open truck carrying feathers (or kitty litter)? ::wink

Does this mean, lets say, if you toss someone at terminal velocity against a wall using Telekinesis you would cause this level of damage?

The damage bashing people around with Telekinesis does is covered under the power itself ([power roll] successes worth of Bashing damage) - there's no good reason to change this based on the rules for falling. Of course using Telekinesis to drop someone from 30 meters+ could do the trick (so remember to take at least 3 dots of Telekinesis so you can move the target 30 meters+ in one action)... ::sly

[metaphysician]

Eh, honestly, if the target is tough enough that tossing him around isn't more than enough, you probably wanna do something more damaging than dropping him.

Like grabbing and holding him while someone else wallops him with a Q-Bolt.

[O-Sensei]

Also against terminal velocity damage all soak is halved....

[BlueNinja]

The damage bashing people around with Telekinesis does is covered under the power itself ([power roll] successes worth of Bashing damage) - there's no good reason to change this based on the rules for falling. Of course using Telekinesis to drop someone from 30 meters+ could do the trick (so remember to take at least 3 dots of Telekinesis so you can move the target 30 meters+ in one action)... ::sly

That is the profitable way to do things. The other fun thing is to hold them still in mid-air so that someone else can hit them. ::devil

Alternately, you can house rule so that "terminal velocity" isn't reached until you get up to 15 or 20 dice, or after ten dice start converting them into auto-levels instead of dice, or continue dropping soak, etc.

Also against terminal velocity damage all soak is halved....

Unfortunately, against a great number of combat novas, this doesn't mean anything. A number of them have more than 20 lethal soak (with powers), which is enough to drop it to ping damage. Or they have Quantum Leap, so they can drop 300 meters and not even flinch. Since baselines do not have lethal soak, dropping their lethal soak to half doesn't do anything to them either.