Aberrant RPG - Warp

[phoenix]

I've got a quick question about zee Warp power. It has a success count table for its results, but it doesn't give a dice pool to use (it only tells you to use Dex + Warp if you're doing a combat warp).

Am I missing something? If not, how do you guys work it? More specifically, Heritage, how do you work it? ::confused

[Bahamut810]

It looks like you just roll warp with auto-successes equalling your Q score. Considering you have to have 3 Q to have it...thats 200 KM right there, much farther then most people can TP or fly in an hour.

If you really wanted a combination roll (Stat+power) I would say have it be either INT or PERC.

[ProfPotts]

The Warp errata is in the APG, p.64.

Basically it works just like Teleport: the Dice Pool is Perception + Warp, each point of Quantum adds an auto-success. That's for range. To actually 'hit' something with a Warp portal (e.g. open it in front of an unsuspecting & speeding enemy) requires a Dexterity + Warp roll (& the usual Perception + Warp to determine how far it can go).

A Willpower roll is used to see how many turns you can keep the thing open for, with each additional turn beyond the number of rolled successes costing a Willpower point.

It also notes the (pretty obvious, but you never know...) fact that pressure & temperature don't equalise between the two 'sides' of the Warp - things need to travel through under their own steam, or be carried / thrown through. So, in other words, you don't get to open a Warp to the Sun & use it as a super-cheap, super-powerful flamethrower...

[ezekiel]

It also notes the (pretty obvious, but you never know...) fact that pressure & temperature don't equalise between the two 'sides' of the Warp - things need to travel through under their own steam, or be carried / thrown through. So, in other words, you don't get to open a Warp to the Sun & use it as a super-cheap, super-powerful flamethrower...

What if you buy the permeability extra? I always wondered about that...

[ProfPotts]

Yep - the 'Selective Permeability' Extra (APG p.118 for those who don't know what we're talking about) pretty much pushes the power into the realm of total BS. But then again, you'd need Quantum 6 to buy Warp + an Extra (unless your ST is daft enough to allow you to abuse the Strengths & Weaknesses rules that is... ::rolleyes ), & level 4+ powers are designed to be total BS anyway - it's kinda' the whole point.

If it was up to me, I'd base resulting effects on the power level that other Level 4 powers have - which means opening a Selectively Permeable Warp to the bottom of the ocean can produce a pretty hefty blast of pressurized water, or opening such a Warp to the surface of the Sun can produce a nasty spray of plasma. I'd also be merciless with the environmental side effects - since the Warp character isn't really controlling or creating the water or plasma (like a character with a similar effect Quantum Bolt might be). Opening such a Warp to the Sun may not be such a brilliant idea if you can't take a little heat yourself... ::wink

[Alex Green]

I don't think most people realize how bad it gets or how quickly. I vaguely recall from chemistry that the average air molecule moves roughly 600 miles an hour. We don't feel it because it keeps bouncing off other molecules moving in other directions.

Thus if you put a Warp into the vacuum of space, the local air rushes out with a 600 mph wind.

The surface of the Sun would be much, much worse. Basically you would have a massive, ongoing fusion reaction. The actual reaction from a fusion bomb takes place over a period of time that is something close to zero. An ongoing reaction would be a lot worse.

Just for starters, you have enough radiation streaming through the gate to kill anything in line of sight of the gate.

If you open a warp to the center of the sun to the Earth, the Earth basically just dies from multiple ways.

[ProfPotts]

Well, yes & no. With Selective Permeability you get to choose which 'bits' you let through. You could 'rad' the immediate area by opening that Warp to the centre of the Sun & just letting through the radiation - or even just one type of radiation (say, gamma rays, but not alpha or beta particles). Or you could let through the plasma, but not the rads. Either way, you'd not want to be too close yourself, but you could easily stop short of destroying the planet. In fact, I doubt you could destroy the planet - since letting through that much power is gonna' destroy you (& your Warp) long before the Earth goes bang (after all, it'd take a lot longer than the few seconds a Warp can be held open for to transport enough stellar mass for a self-sustaining reaction). Or, in other words, the ST is within his or her rights to kill off your character before you sod-up the entire game! ::tongue ::wink

On the other hand, such a use of Warp would be a fine special effect for a Quantum Inferno once your Warper gets that powerful.

This is one of the many reasons why the Strengths & Weaknesses system can be so abusive. Normally a level 4 power is way over the top, but it takes a huge effort for a character to get to a point where he can buy it. With the APG Extras & a few Weaknesses you can have a starting character who can spray stellar plasma about the battlefield - but not on Tuesdays, or if it's raining (or whatever '(non-)Weakness' you 'burden' the Warp with to get those three levels needed to buy the Extra). ::crazy

[Alex Green]

<<Either way, you'd not want to be too close yourself>>

Adaptability might make you immune.

<<You could 'rad' the immediate area by opening that Warp to the center of the Sun & just letting through the radiation>>

6 hours of exposure to the Sun's radiation gives us a sun burn, through the Earth's electromagnetic field (shield). That's from a distance of 6(?) light minutes. Light from this kind of source decreases by the square of the distance. 6 light minutes is a long way.

From Google, The distance between the Earth and Sun is roughly 150,000 million meters (or 1.5 x 10^11). In other words, the amount of radiation will increase by something like 2x10^22

The amount of radiation you would be warping in would be enough to fry everything in line of sight of the gate, regardless of distance. You may have even killed people who aren't in line of sight of the gate because some types of radiation can pass through various materials (neutrinos for example, they don't react with much normally, but I recall that if the Sun goes nova, neutrino radiation will kill everyone before the explosion vaporizes the planet).

<<it'd take a lot longer than the few seconds a Warp can be held open for to transport enough stellar mass for a self-sustaining reaction).>>

"Self-sustaining reaction" is the least of our worries. If the gate is open for a few seconds, you just...

1) Nuked, BIG time, that area of the planet.

2) You may have also set fire to the air (i.e. started that chain reaction that consumes all the air on the planet that the guys who built the atomic bomb worried about).

3) I think you also just gated in enough hydrogen and helium to poison the rest of the planet.

4) Fortunately, most people don't need to worry about it, because you also sent in a wave of radiation that will kill most people before they have a chance to die from everything else.

And finally, 'Selective Permeability' is a standard extra, so it is available to everyone with Warp with a powermax. ::wacko

[Sprocket]

That sounds suspiciously like what might've happened with Calvert Wycoff in the mid 2050's, although on a somewhat smaller scale. ::unsure

[ProfPotts]

And finally, 'Selective Permeability' is a standard extra, so it is available to everyone with Warp with a powermax.

Geez, yeah - I'd forgotten that! Ugh! ::crazy

I guess that whole thing is yet another aspect of the APG that wasn't playtested... ::rolleyes Still, it's better to think about this stuff outside of an actual game situation than to just be faced with it mid-game.

I guess my first reaction (if the Extra was allowed at all) would be to set some reasonable, power rating - related, limits on the dice pool of effect that such a 'stunt' could generate (like a maximum damage of Quantum + power rating or something similar), even though it's pretty illogical (not that logic features heavily in games like Aberrant, but still...). Actually I'd prefer to not allow it at all, except as a special effect for some other power (e.g. the Warper buys a Quantum Bolt + the Jet / Spray Extra with the special effect that he opens a permeable Warp to someplace nasty). I mean, apart from nasty destructive effects like this, what use is Selective Permeability anyway?

[Ayre el KaBeer]

I mean, apart from nasty destructive effects like this, what use is Selective Permeability anyway?

To flood an area and put out fires? To evac your pals and not let all those bullets, doberman's and 15 unwelcome "large big lads" forllow them through... it has it's uses.

[Heritage]

I've got a quick question about zee Warp power. It has a success count table for its results, but it doesn't give a dice pool to use (it only tells you to use Dex + Warp if you're doing a combat warp).

Am I missing something? If not, how do you guys work it? More specifically, Heritage, how do you work it?

Oops, didn't see there was a direct question here - as Potts pointed out, the APG errata straightens out Warp (I think - very little good comes out of the dreaded APG).

This also reminds me that we haven't yet introduced the Path radios into WJ IC yet, the primary method of calling for a warpevac in the field; Path radios are just a little creepy, as you will see....::devil

[phoenix]

What about targeting? I assume you don't have to have been to the place.. do you have to be able to find your way there, or what?

[Guest]

In one Trinity campaign I ran, one of my NPC Abberants had the Warp power, but was far more skilled with it than normal. To represent this I simply gave him Warping 5 (Psi Teleportation Mode) but instead of Transportal at lvl 5, he was able to generate a warp point through which people and equipment could be moved (very much like the Stargate in Stargate SG1). It saved a lot of time and effort trying to work out the minutia of how Warp works and maintained the cinematic feel that I was trying to prtray in the game.

JC

[Sphere]

Ahh, Warping. My Players were sooo disapointed when I told them they couldn't use it to cut invulnerable Novas in half. Bless em.

One point to consider with the theoretical case of opening a warp to the sun is the stability of the gate itself. The sun is a furnace of quantum energies many times that of your average Player's character. It would be quite reasonable for a GM to rule that warp gates cannot be opened directly onto or near the sun.

Of course that doesn't stop a Nova with a good head for maths opening a gate into orbit and dropping crowbars onto cities in the manner of the Thor orbital weapons system hypothesised in such books as Larry Niven's "Footfall".

Of course PCs that do this tend to become very unpopular in the Nova community very quickly ::smile

[metaphysician]

The way I see it, limiting it to doing about as much damage as an equal number of dots of Mastery 1 QBolt at best, except less controllable, would work fine. This isn't really much of a limit though. After all, a 5 dot Qbolt with Area and Mastery 1 does 50+ lethal to everything in a 50+ kilometer radius.

[Alex Green]

If you are going to put those kinds of limits on it then you should either give it "suite" limits {2d (dots of power) + 2[Q] lethal} or Matter Creation Limits (2d lethal per dot of power). Double those and increase the range if we also have Mastery.

Probably Matter Creation Limits work better.... so you still get to hose any baseline and the surrounding countryside.

[metaphysician]

If you are going to put those kinds of limits on it then you should either give it "suite" limits {2d (dots of power) + 2[Q] lethal} or Matter Creation Limits (2d lethal per dot of power). Double those and increase the range if we also have Mastery.

Probably Matter Creation Limits work better.... so you still get to hose any baseline and the surrounding countryside.

Ah, actually, I forgot about that for a second. Yeah, either of those would work better. MC limit is a tad low, but probably works fine for any usage *other* than "warpgate leading to sun."