Grrl Power #2 – Lawyerin’
The action’s heating up now! And by action I mean dialogue.
Hmm. Our hero seems oddly detached from her situation. What could the reason possibly be?
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The action’s heating up now! And by action I mean dialogue.
Hmm. Our hero seems oddly detached from her situation. What could the reason possibly be?
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If it was an invisible force field, the light would be redirected on the other side. Buuuut this is a see-through force field…
You make a good point. Now I’meven more interested in this comic… :)
Not really. A forcefield that limited the intensity of light passing through it could be transparent and fulfill Sydney’s requirements regarding sunlight, but still block damage-causing lasers. So the GM could have defeated Sydney’s lawyering by saying that the forcefield only passes 1 kW per square meter (approx. value for direct sunlight)
yes but he doesn’t know how to do that
His mistake was admitting that a force shield would not protect a vampire from the sun without buying that power separately. It gave her the grounds to argue the point that the shield does not sufficiently block photons to grant protection unless that advantage is purchased specifically.
Depends on ant powe stunts or disadvantages or modification made to the power….as Omni points out..
In the immortal words of Eli Wallich in “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly…” “If you’re gonna shoot….. SHOOT! Don’t talk about it.”
But what if you shot the guy, and your bullet went right through without causing damage, or veered to the side, or something?
Bricks would be shat
You posted two years after bman, and here I come 2.5 years LATER (archive dive #?), and your comment made me guffaw in the office.
And I’m here 9 months later. Just because I was researching stuff here at the start.
Greetings, from the world of tomorrow!
archive diving after reading the first time through is always fun with this comic.
Long live the thread!
Necropost, coz we all locked down, and looking for something in the early pages
It got better though!
Why do you always have to say it that way?
Same and I like this comment chain.
Mutants and Masterminds fan by any chance?
As with many RPGs, I’ve made characters for it, but the group never got around to actually playing it.
I also did that with many RPG’s. I have tons of D&D characters, Marvel Superheroes characters, Shadow Run, Rifts, Car Wars, even Vampire the Masquerade.
I love Kopy Kraut, that and trying to mimick (randomly put on a German/Russian accent) his voice. Also I love the line “Fine. But that shit’s gonna roll both ways.” and shall forever spam it. :P
Looking at this page, the next, and the cast bio pages…
The DM is arguing about how force-fields work with someone who actually has one. This does not sound like a good argument to get into…
Spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read up to #245
Someone who actually has a transparent forcefield that stops light attacks, including flash-bangs.
In a related note, as I’ve mentioned in a much later comment, vampires and the sun likely has much more to do with wide-spread, ongoing, and incredibly ancient practice of worshiping the sun as a holy symbol for banishing the evils of the night, than it does with UV: thus, the shield would be negating divine energy rather than light.
I really need to remember spoiler tags use [], not .
Remember whoes Force feild we are talking about! It may be on The LIST For not Protecting her from the sun.
And Ironicaly I’m one of the ones who needs to remember the spoiler tags.
I’m enjoying the comic and hope to see more.
That being said, the first three or four installments almost had me tapping out. Any DM/Keeper/GM out there can attest to this. You’re making the heroine the know-it-all “rules lawyer” – one of the least enjoyable player types I’ve ever encountered. It’s why I always threw out a “BTW, this is my game, my rules interpretation” disclaimer whenever I used to GM at cons.
Oh, and she’s wrong.
Example: I used to wear clear glasses that protected against UV. Also, I now wear see-through (always good in eye protection) laser protection at work when necessary. Both allow visible light to pass, but block certain other wavelengths of light. Also, it doesn’t have to be opaque in order to stop wavelengths of light (or other electromagnetic energy sent as directed photons) – when you put on sunblock, does it stay white, or does it appear clear? In a UV camera, it would appear black.
Anyone roleplaying about being a superhero in an alternate universe where force fields exist need to allow for certain flexibilities in their knowledge gaps. For example, is the force field a variable one, that quickly scans existing energies, determines safe limits, and deflects the remaining portions?
What you did was create a strong rules lawyer player, and a weak GM – one that couldn’t think on their feet, and only attack back in anger. It happens, I’ve done it myself when frustrated beyond belief by my PCs. Honestly, I would be kicking her to the curb after a couple sessions like this. Luckily, you quickly moved on and got off the rules lawyering…but it irked me so much I had to comment.
Oh, and just so you don’t think I think my stuff doesn’t stink…I’m a “Funny Guy” player that has trouble taking serious campaigns seriously, and a Monty Haul-ish GM.
I forget who wrote the original article naming all of these types. I still have the Dragon maqazine it was published in, though. I’ll have to look it back up when I get home.
Well every group has its dynamics, as you see later, Sydney’s got quite a forceful personality, so while the GM might have been able to argue or reason her down (I can think of several ways a transparent forcefield could reflect visible light other than the ways you listed) he might have figured it wasn’t worth the time. Also, as is established on the next page, we see that she’s already a superhero at this point, and to be honest I haven’t really figured out the relationships in this group yet, so it’s possible some or all of the players are a little starstruck. I mean if… I don’t know, Felicia Day came and sat down at a tabletop game you were manning at a con, you might not be as much of a hardass with her right off the bat. Maybe you would, I don’t know, but I guess my point is that not everyone is a tyrannical GM, some of them even hand out XP for coming up with logic like this.
Speaking as another DM, I’d roll with it. I don’t think it’s really “rules lawyering” but applying “sense” to a supers universe – of course this depends on the rules set. Aberrant ST wouldn’t make a distinction with a Force Field (as it does with Invulnerability) – in other games it depends. Of course, doing this all the time would end up disruptive and annoying, but this seems like a rare outburst. Anyway, I’d go with keeping the game moving as the main point.
To each DM to his own though.
What the Heck?
Sorry, screwed up the blockquote code.
Wouldn’t it look like a heat shimmer then?
Reminds me of an early X-Men when the Mimic, his power is to gain the powers of any who are near him. (So he had the muscles of Hank, power eyes of Cyclopes, wings of Angel etc) and they were doing battle with the Adaptoid. An artificial device that copies powers and appearance of those near it. The last ones it fought wer the Avengers so it was a mix of them from Captain America to Wasp. When they clashed they each tried to use their powers on the other. Do you know what happened? Since Mimi’s power is to reflect others powers it couldn’t do so with the Adaptoid. the Adaptoids synthetic powers couldn’t do so of the reflecte powers of Mimi’s so they short circuited each other! Wish I still had that issue.
If you have a force field can you alter its reflectivity? However making it opaque can be a problem if you keep it that way too long. You could overheat yourself. Does it cut off the air too?
I know next to nothing about RPG’s, but I find this really funny! Could I be recognizing too much of myself in Sydney’s trying to outsmart her opponent?
I’m going to sound like a know-it-all here, but most force field are filters, only allowing non-damaging amounts of energy through. Otherwise, the users would be blind, deaf, freeze to death in a matter of minute, and be hurdled off of the planet by the Earth’s rotation! :P
An example of this is Canadian Hero, Vindicator, who increases the filter on his force field to allow him to be launched 1,000s of mile away in a second.
(I also believe they explained this in the Marvel Heroes RPG. <3))
Marvel also used to have a villain who’s only power was a major class forcefield. Unis the Untouchable. In one issue his forcefield got ramped up in power to the point that it repelled air molecules and Unis suffocated.
Deutsche Übersetzung
Kopy Kraut: Äh, Hallo? Es ist ein Kraftfeld.” Omnigal: “Yeah, und man kann durchsehen, was bedeutet ein Laser, der aus Licht gemacht ist, würde direkt dadurch gehen.” Illumina: “Omnigal? Was machst du?”
Omnigal: ” Ich gebe ihm ein gutes Plädoye. Das tue ich. (nächstes Panel) Kraftfelder blocken Schaden. Ich meine Zee Schaden. Nicht gegen Gasangriffe. Das ist and… Was ist mit Sonnenbrand?”
(nächstes Panel) Kopy Kraut: “Was? Ich meine Vas?” Omnigal: “Diesen Schaden. Kannst du einen Sonnenbrand kriegen während ein Kraftfeld aktiv ist?” Kopy Kraut: ” Äh… Ich weiß nicht.” (nächstes Panel) Omnigal: “Könnte ein Vampir durchs Sonnenlicht gehen, wenn er ein Kraftfeld aktiviert hat?” Kopy Kraut: “Nein er müsste diesen Schaden seperat blocken.” (nächstes Panel) Omnigal: “Ah Hah! Also blokieren Kraftfelder keinen Lichtbasierten Schaden!” Kopy Kraut: ” Seufz” Omnigal: “…Wenn man durch sehen kann.” Kopy Kraut: “Ok.Aber diese Scheiße geht in beide Richtungen,” Omnigal: “Sorry Illumina. Ich hab dich sozusagen vor den Bus geworfen.” Illumina: “Wie auch immer. Ich kann meine Kraftfelder Strahlen undurchlässig machen wenn ich es muss.” (nächstes Panel) Omnigal: “Und du kannst es nicht weil du nur unsere Kräfte kopiert hast und du kennst keine Tricks mit unseren Kräften!” Kopy Kraut: ” Oh mein Gott, was auch immer! Roll einfach!”
You know I just came back to this for a re-read, and technically Kopy Kraut is correct. As a force field, it would act as a barrier to any exorbitant assaults, so constant barrage of solar energy would go through but a high energy photon bean would be dispersed, regardless of the shield’s transparency (in a similar vein this why gas works). A laser beam could go through, but it would have to be at an equivalent power threshold to a common laser pointer. Technically ‘Omnigal’ is using loophole abuse where there is in fact no loophole to abuse, but then it’s a poor DM who doesn’t know enough to allow such rules lawyering (or maybe he just doesn’t want to argue, but even still I’d only have allowed it with a significant penalty). A force field is just that, a field of force. It’s not a glass dome. It’s a selectively permeable energy barrier.
I just started another reread, as well, and, in this case, I agree with you, as it would seem that this would be an Illumina power, and thus light-oriented.
Normally, I would separate “force fields” from “energy barriers;” the former blocking or deflecting physical/force attacks (punches, blades, bullets, flechettes, Cyclop’s eyebeam, etc.) and the latter blocking, deflecting or refracting energy attacks (lasers, Superman’s heat vision, rayguns, Cyclop’s eyebeam, etc.). Both could have lower bounds (think the shields in Dune or gas attacks for the “force field”, and laser pointers or sunlight for the “energy barrier”), possibly as weaknesses/flaws.
To counter the vampire argument, I might also include a supernatural or mystical “field of protection” as an option.
Characters would select or purchase each option separately, but could specify that they were combined in use (a “force field” that also had the properties of a “field of protection”).
This is insane.
The vampires of the real lore, most of them are not bothered by sunlight or holy objects or much else. Blame “Nosferatu” (1922) for that bit of fiction.
To be fair some “historical Vampires” did avoid sunlight or were strictly nocturnal.
Comment of today made me scroll back to here.
Well working with laser myself (strong one’s, not those cute pointers but industrial ones that cut/weld metal and can still blind a person at roughly at 3 km distance)
i would go into a argument with sydney if she does not specify which spectrum her laser is operating then it is a random factor if that. Some laser glasses look perfectly clear for our eyes but actually block a full laser… Well not my work lasers if aimed directly it would absorb the heat and meld on the face but lets assume a forcefield does not meld… it would then be incapable of knocking of a object cause it only is a very focused beam of light which gives enormous heat. Knocking the crown off is physically impossible.
The most likely results would be a golden thrown as Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. Kinda beating the guy very fast.
Two pages in and I’m loving the artwork.
Probably way too late for this but… panel 5 – separately.
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Cleary, the forcefield affects light as a dempening field, only allowing photons up to a specific and harmless amplitude through, while also affect a diffusion on tightly focussed beams. It is possible that the field will fail if the photon weapon keeps it under barrage, but also possible that the field increases in power under photonic or electromagnetic bombardment.
Photon energy is determined strictly by frequency. Intensity is determined by the number of photons.
There’s an obvious workaround here…very few materials are transparent to *all* electromagnetic radiation. Also, this is a forcefield which, according to Illumina, can have its transparency adjusted. So what’s to stop CopyCap from simply making his forcefield opaque to whatever wavelength Omnigal fired at him?
Incidentally, such a forcefield would protect against sunburn; just set the transparency such that anything with a wavelength higher than the visible spectrum is stopped.
Panel five: “seperately” should be “separately”
… beautiful comic
What if the forcefield simply absorbs all incoming light then after a miniscule delay sends on only up to a certain limit of photons? Then anything too bright in one spot won’t get through… just like first gen star trek screens or like using a cell phone screen to see what its camera registers.
Actually it munckinism and bad science. A Laser light moves at a different frequency and the photon orderthen regular light for vision. This is the kind of player that tries to say the 3.5 spell Prestidigitation can cause a nuclear reaction by making something infinity warm.carlos