Telekinetic lift

[TorgHacker]

Folks, we're not changing the top falling damage, even if it is unrealistically high. It's an edge case at best, and if we were going to change anything, the entire table probably would be re-examined, not just the top. If you toss someone out a window from the 2nd story, do you expect they'd take _no_ damage?

If you look at it as ramming the ground, the Earth's Toughness means that damage would be up even higher.

If you look at it as a collision, it probably should be lower.

The extent of injuries is also dependent on the surface you fall onto, whether there was anything to break your fall, and your orientation. Even then there's Possibilities in the mix, and even if you take 40 damage theoretically you could just be KO'ed anyway if you get an Outstanding success on your Defeat test. And that applies if you're sitting next to C4 exploding or falling from 30 meters.

We're talking about a cinematic game here and if you look close enough things are going to not jive with physics. The table as is has the benefit of being simple and easy to remember, and in movies falling generally is an 'end of scene' thing for that character anyways...either they're a mook and we don't even care what happens to them after they're thrown out the window, they're a major villian at the top of Nakatomi Plaza and the movie ends, and you hardly ever see a protagonist take a fall, and if you do somehow they survive anyway (see Temple of Doom).

[bchoinski]

Oops, meant "writes" itself.

P.S. Using TK and Portal like this is only on the players' radar in the first place because falling is the single most damaging thing in the game. I second the suggestion to reduce the upper limit of falling damage in order to bring it more in line with a TOW missile or a ground-zero C-4 explosion.

Presumably falling damage effect is proportional to the amount of kinetic energy. By the formulas, V = sqrt(2*g*h), and KE = 1/2*Mass*V^2, so it reduces to "KE= Mass*g*h". The old chestnut"

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
— J.B.S. Haldane, biologist

If the end result of a 10 meter fall for a 100kg man is used as the base (Mass value = 10), this results in the supposed 10+1BD base damage. At 15m it works out to x1.5 KE, so shouldn't this be +1 damage (11+1BD)? the entire workout:

Code: Select all

      Vel   KE      Mult      bonus
5   9.90m/s   4900      
10   14.00m/s   9800      1      0
15   17.15m/s   14700   1.5      1
20   19.80m/s   19600   2   
25   22.14m/s   24500   2.5      2
30   24.25m/s   29400   3   
35   26.19m/s   34300   3.5   
40   28.00m/s   39200   4      3
45   29.70m/s   44100   4.5   
50   31.30m/s   49000   5   
55   32.83m/s   53900   5.5   
60   34.29m/s   58800   6      4
65   35.69m/s   63700   6.5   
70   37.04m/s   68600   7   
75   38.34m/s   73500   7.5   
80   39.60m/s   78400   8   
85   40.82m/s   83300   8.5   
90   42.00m/s   88200   9   
95   43.15m/s   93100   9.5   
100   44.27m/s   98000   10      5
105   45.37m/s   102900   10.5   
110   46.43m/s   107800   11   
115   47.48m/s   112700   11.5   
120   48.50m/s   117600   12   
125   49.50m/s   122500   12.5   
130   50.48m/s   127400   13   
135   51.44m/s   132300   13.5   
140   52.38m/s   137200   14   
145   53.31m/s   142100   14.5   
150   54.22m/s   147000   15      6


150m is how far it take to reach terminal velocity (assuming flat-out belly down; if they want to cannon-ball that's on them). Now, one could say that the mult is times some fudge factor, say x5, to reflect damage increase. This produces a falling chart more like:

Code: Select all

1-5      5+1BD
10-14   10+1BD
15-24   15+1BD
25-39   20+1BD
40-59   25+1BD
60-99   30+1BD
100-149   35+1BD
150+      40+1BD


People still get hurt from 5 meter falls (bad dice explosion), but odds are won't. KE would be altered by the mass value of the fall-ee, so a falling horse at 1000kg (x10) would in theory have a bonus of +5 to the damage; a mouse at a 10th of a kilo would be at -15. If you wanted to "match the saying" perhaps multiply the mass difference by 2 (mouse gets -30, horse gets +10).

[TorgHacker]

It takes a human body falling like a skydiver (not, say... tumbling uncontrollably) 450 meters of falling before they reach terminal velocity.

The equations you have there ignore air resistance so you're reaching the equivalent of terminal velocity faster.

Plus it matters if they land feet first, or head first.

[Atama]

I wonder how well Grenade+Telekinesis+Stealth would work?

[Arcesilaus]

a lot of physics

I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum, as they say, but this sort of thing is why I have a hard time playing RPGs with a lot of folks. I get the idea of making your gaming world "realistic" but see no need to simulate the laws of physics perfectly in order to do so. I experience perfectly realistic physics every day in real life and don't require, or even want, my fictional adventure world to meet the same standards. The falling rule exists in the book because falling off of high things is bad and, rather than forcing a GM to make up consequences for it when it inevitably happens, a standard formula is provided. It may or may not actually simulate the results of falling off of a high thing, but it's no different than the damage value of the Hellfire miracle, at the end of the day. I assume no one would ever suggest that the damage of that miracle is totally unrealistic because the damage caused by a jet of fire shooting out of a person's hand would be "way higher than that." It's simply a consistent rule for the game we've chosen to play, and sometimes rules are just rules. As long as they're close enough, that's okay.

As for the original point of the thread, if you play with folks that don't understand that insta-killing every opponent that weighs less than 300 lbs isn't going to lead to a very fun gaming experience, then there's your problem. A PC in my group has Telekinesis and hasn't once even voiced the possibility of such an action. If he did, though, I know for sure that not only would he accept my rationale that "It simply doesn't work that way," he would agree that it's better that it doesn't. End of story. We took a couple minutes to work out a reasonable modification of the grappling system that uses his Unarmed Combat skill with his modified Mind score as his strength for the grapple damage. This isn't very realistic, really, as it doesn't make a ton of sense that his training in actual fighting would somehow translate over to moving people with his mind, but it seems fair and balanced and fun. Everyone's happy.

Portal hasn't come up in my campaign yet, but I imagine it will be handled similarly. A fun, but balanced, interpretation of the spell in order to maximize creativity and fun without instantly negating any and all challenge. In short, any sort of single-action use of the spell that did more than 13 or 14 base damage or automatically took out an opponent other than a mook (on an outstanding success) would be nixed.

Again, everyone is entitled to his/her own campaign and version of fun. I don't mean any offense. I just was surprised that this conversation has gone on for so long and figured I would share my thoughts.

[TorgHacker]

Okay, so after talking to Darrell and doing some thinking we've decided to go with this:

You can grab a target, using the Grappling rules (all of them...just with Mind instead of Strength). This means that you cannot actually move a grappled target.

Story reason: Telekinesis is weird.

Rules reason: Because that's how you end up with trivial defeating of opponents and it works just as well coming at the players. So let's not do that m'kay? M'kay.

[Atama]

It’s not that weird to me. I think of it like this...

Telekinesis isn’t a big tentacle that can reach out and grab things. It’s more like a big spatula. You can lift something into the air by “scooping” it up into the air but it’s trivial for the target to slip away from it. You can use it to push things around. And you can hold something down, like you’re pushing down on it from above.

If you think of it like that then it’s obvious why you can’t just pick someone up and lift them up into the air as an attack.

Also, the power says nothing about being able to use fine manipulation like “Mage Hands” so I think the Invisible Spatula analogy would work.

[Gargoyle]

It’s not that weird to me. I think of it like this...

Telekinesis isn’t a big tentacle that can reach out and grab things. It’s more like a big spatula. You can lift something into the air by “scooping” it up into the air but it’s trivial for the target to slip away from it. You can use it to push things around. And you can hold something down, like you’re pushing down on it from above.

If you think of it like that then it’s obvious why you can’t just pick someone up and lift them up into the air as an attack.

Also, the power says nothing about being able to use fine manipulation like “Mage Hands” so I think the Invisible Spatula analogy would work.

I like the spatula analogy. It makes picking up willing targets (like yourself and allies) reasonable, but not having that fine control allows unwilling targets to easily prevent being picked up or pushed; but you have enough control to grab them, that works well for me and jives with how I've ruled it so far.

[TorgHacker]

It’s not that weird to me. I think of it like this...

Telekinesis isn’t a big tentacle that can reach out and grab things. It’s more like a big spatula. You can lift something into the air by “scooping” it up into the air but it’s trivial for the target to slip away from it. You can use it to push things around. And you can hold something down, like you’re pushing down on it from above.

If you think of it like that then it’s obvious why you can’t just pick someone up and lift them up into the air as an attack.

Also, the power says nothing about being able to use fine manipulation like “Mage Hands” so I think the Invisible Spatula analogy would work.

That's pretty much it. "You can do what you can do with your hands...but with your brain. And fly. That's a bonus."

[Arcesilaus]

You can grab a target, using the Grappling rules (all of them...just with Mind instead of Strength). This means that you cannot actually move a grappled target.

So, does this mean a psi still uses the Unarmed Combat skill to actually start the grapple (while using Mind for the damage/difficulty to break free), or is there some other skill that should be used here?

Thanks.

PS: I like this solution a lot. "Doesn't work on people" just felt arbitrary to me.