I hate having science buffs in my games...

[arothtook]

Ok so i was running a BESM game and one of my group is a university masters degree in nuclear physics. He chose a fairly standard character and went for water manipulation. Later he took a single rank in powerflux physics.

yesterday the party went rouge and killed each other due to the BBEG having minor illusion powers. Don't ask, it started with the bacon powered mecha dwarf and an (illusionary) off comment about his mother.

It ended with only the water manipulator and the BBEG remaining.

Thinking he stood next to no chance of winning the guy says "right stuff it! I destroy the planet!"

everyone: "what? how?"

"I manipulate the water around me into a rapid spin until i start to seperate the deuterium and tritium from the base hydrogen atoms."

me:"oh god..."

"i then activate my powerflux physics and expend ALL my energy points on starting the fusion reaction"

me:"how much water are you intending to do this with..."

"this is an ocean town right?"

5 rolls later it turns out that not only did he destroy the planet but would have in fact done so 7 times over.

anybody else got something from BESM to share?

[Kaun]

Good story,

As a side note, if you want BESM stories you may want to change the title of your thread. Maybe include [BESM] at the start of the title.

[tensai_oni]

Yeah, I'd tell him he can't do that. It's why stupid crap like the Commoner Railgun doesn't work - you either play by game rules or by RL physics. No mix and matching.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yeah, I'd tell him he can't do that. It's why stupid crap like the Commoner Railgun doesn't work - you either play by game rules or by RL physics. No mix and matching.

Yep. This is easily on par with using Prestidigitation to make an atom bomb.

[hiryuu]

"Ok, what's your range on that? How do you plan on containing the pressure of the reaction? What are you going to do about the fact that you're at the local epicenter?"


...I love having scientists in my games, my group is made up of a physicist, an engineer, a computer specialist, and a specfic writer.

[Grinner]

Well, seeing as it was basically a TPK already, I don't see the harm in taking the whole campaign world with him.

Still, if he had tried pulling the physics major card at any other time, it would have been prudent to point out that he was fighting alongside a "bacon powered mecha dwarf".

[hiryuu]

"bacon powered mecha dwarf".

That bacon armor is awesome and the only reason I lost mine was because I ate it. I need another one now and I would hope that means sees it someplace in his magnificent beard that another finds its way to my home.

I typically only see the physics major card pulled if it would be in-character to do so. And only then for the purposes of setting up experiments.

Though, I do run a supers game where knowing physics helps defeat villains. They fought a guy who could turn kinetic energy into heat. Their solution? Trap him in a tight alleyway filled with oil barrels they placed and just unload on the guy. Sure, he's immune to bullets and the heat he produces, but not loss of oxygen.

The PCs: one had the ability to inverse the square-cube law, one could move an object's center of gravity and "stick" it to someplace, and the third could amplify pressure on keystone locations. Together they made things explode.

[Nerd-o-rama]

The OP of this thread makes about as much sense physics-wise as Spider-Man 2. Leave nuclear fusion alone, people.

[Jay R]

There are ten thousand ways to prevent that:

1. "You know from your ability to manipulate water that it is one of the four elements, indivisible. Deuterium and tritium do not exist, and nuclear fusion simply does not work in a world with magic."

2. "Developing that spell will take years of full-time study. Until you spend the time, you can't do it."

3. "No knowledge from the Industrial Revolution forward is known. You don't know what protons and neutrons are; you certainly don't know about deuterium."

4. "The water is spinning at about 100 mph - an impressive achievement. Probably nobody in the world has done it before. You cannot generate speeds much higher, and as hurricanes have shown, that doesn't destroy the world."

5. "As it starts to spin, a dizzy and enraged water elemental appears in the middle of it. What's your armor class?

etc.

The last game I ran, I included the following paragraph in the campaign introduction:


A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

[BWR]

Some things that are perfectly possible given pre-Mediaeval knowledge:
- cheating some extra area out of 2E fireballs (fireball expands to fill total volume equal 20 foot radius sphere - just have it detonate on the ground into a hemisphere). Reasoning: basic geometry.
- Shrink Item on boulders+Dimension Door above target+readied Dispel Magic just before impact. Reasoning: big things hit harder than small things.

The biggest problem we've had with science geeks playing (and we have 3 of them in my main group) is long discussions about how the rules are inaccurate and what would be more likely to occur in any given cirumstance. OOC knowledge like relativity or atomic/quantum theory or whateever never showed up because our characters obviously wouldn't know about it.

[Raineh Daze]

I do not see the problem with someone using outside physics knowledge to destroy the world when it was a TPK anyway. Go out with a bang! :smallbiggrin:

[Mando Knight]

Yeah, I'd tell him he can't do that. It's why stupid crap like the Commoner Railgun doesn't work - you either play by game rules or by RL physics. No mix and matching.

Also, it doesn't even work by in-game rules, as far as I can tell. Don't let people take Power Flux until you read up on what it can actually do.

[Joe the Rat]

Though, I do run a supers game where knowing physics helps defeat villains. They fought a guy who could turn kinetic energy into heat. Their solution? Trap him in a tight alleyway filled with oil barrels they placed and just unload on the guy. Sure, he's immune to bullets and the heat he produces, but not loss of oxygen.

The PCs: one had the ability to inverse the square-cube law, one could move an object's center of gravity and "stick" it to someplace, and the third could amplify pressure on keystone locations. Together they made things explode.If you go back to the source material (superhero comics), a rudimentary (and sometimes inaccurate) understanding of physics and/or chemistry is the (second) most common superpower. Turning a villains powers against himself or exploiting unrealized weaknesses is classic. Corny, but classic.

[tensai_oni]

There are ten thousand ways to prevent that:

1. "You know from your ability to manipulate water that it is one of the four elements, indivisible. Deuterium and tritium do not exist, and nuclear fusion simply does not work in a world with magic."

2. "Developing that spell will take years of full-time study. Until you spend the time, you can't do it."

3. "No knowledge from the Industrial Revolution forward is known. You don't know what protons and neutrons are; you certainly don't know about deuterium."

4. "The water is spinning at about 100 mph - an impressive achievement. Probably nobody in the world has done it before. You cannot generate speeds much higher, and as hurricanes have shown, that doesn't destroy the world."

5. "As it starts to spin, a dizzy and enraged water elemental appears in the middle of it. What's your armor class?

etc.


You know he's playing BESM, not DnD, right?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'd make the point that "sure, you know theoretically how to do it, but are you really saying that you can manipulate that quantity of water on a molecular level?" Because as GM, you're the one who adjucates whether such fine control is possible with the level of the power acquired.

On the other hand, it sounds pretty awesome that things ended that way.

[Asmodai]

If it's the finale of a tpk, I'd be perfectly fine with that. I was expecting something like challenging the narrative with the laws of physics...

Oh and you try playing with three physicists (two doctors), astrophysicist, an energeticist and a compsci guy :P

[Ceiling_Squid]

The moment I heard "science" and being applied to BESM, I had to roll my eyes. It's anime. You get to adjudicate what's possible.

He can shove it. Because anime obeys few laws of reality, you as the GM get to decide what's allowable interpretation of a power and what's not.

World destroying shenanigans are certainly a thing that happens in certain types of anime. But you can curb that hard if it doesn't fit your setting.

As a capoff to a TPK, I suppose it's allowable, but really now...you can't let someone break the rules that badly with loose power reading. Especially when it's up to GM interpretation.

[Dogbert]

OP:

As GM I'd have called Shenanigans unless the character possessed either microscopic vision and enough ranks on the required Physics skill or matter manipulation powers (and ranks in physics).

...as a player, however, I can only say that, unless I misread your post, you narrated a TPK, which more often than not is a low blow. Your player simply trolled you back, and I applaud him. Send him kudos from me.

Still, kudos to you as well for rolling with it like a champ. :smallcool:

P.S: You are not your character. Just like I don't mind socially awkward players roleplaying silver-tongued charmers and just leave success to the roll of the die, I don't allow any players to try arse-pulls if their characters don't possess the necessary resources.

P.P.S: It was a TPK anyway so, does it really matter the way the campaign ended? All this player did was dictating the end on his own terms, so bravo! There's nothing I love more in a player than proactivity.

[Salbazier]

OP:

As GM I'd have called Shenanigans unless the character possessed either microscopic vision and enough ranks on the required Physics skill or matter manipulation powers (and ranks in physics).

...as a player, however, I can only say that, unless I misread your post, you narrated a TPK, which more often than not is a low blow. Your player simply trolled you back, and I applaud him. Send him kudos from me.

Still, kudos to you as well for rolling with it like a champ. :smallcool:

P.S: You are not your character. Just like I don't mind socially awkward players roleplaying silver-tongued charmers and just leave success to the roll of the die, I don't allow any players to try arse-pulls if their characters don't possess the necessary resources.

P.P.S: It was a TPK anyway so, does it really matter the way the campaign ended? All this player did was dictating the end on his own terms, so bravo! There's nothing I love more in a player than proactivity.

TPK is a low blow?

[Waar]

Ok so i was running a BESM game and one of my group is a university masters degree in nuclear physics. He chose a fairly standard character and went for water manipulation. Later he took a single rank in powerflux physics.

yesterday the party went rouge and killed each other due to the BBEG having minor illusion powers. Don't ask, it started with the bacon powered mecha dwarf and an (illusionary) off comment about his mother.

It ended with only the water manipulator and the BBEG remaining.

Thinking he stood next to no chance of winning the guy says "right stuff it! I destroy the planet!"

everyone: "what? how?"

"I manipulate the water around me into a rapid spin until i start to seperate the deuterium and tritium from the base hydrogen atoms."

me:"oh god..."

"i then activate my powerflux physics and expend ALL my energy points on starting the fusion reaction"

me:"how much water are you intending to do this with..."

"this is an ocean town right?"

5 rolls later it turns out that not only did he destroy the planet but would have in fact done so 7 times over.


While a fun way to end the life of a character, i think the player may be seriously overestimating the concentration of deuterium and especially tritium (very, very, very rare in ordinary water) in your fantasy world :smallwink:

[SaurOps]

In order to have a self-sustained nuclear fusion reaction, you would need about as much hydrogen as a star started with. Stars are much, much larger and denser than planets, so the amount of hydrogen acquired from cracking all the water in the world wouldn't get you there. Not even close, in fact.

You might get a thermonuclear explosion, but you certainly won't get world-destruction. You'd need to exert yourself for city-destruction.

[Jay R]

In order to have a self-sustained nuclear fusion reaction, you would need about as much hydrogen as a star started with. Stars are much, much larger and denser than planets, so the amount of hydrogen acquired from cracking all the water in the world wouldn't get you there. Not even close, in fact.

You might get a thermonuclear explosion, but you certainly won't get world-destruction. You'd need to exert yourself for city-destruction.

Exactly. The problem isn't a science buff in the game. The problem is a science bluff in the game.

[Khedrac]

Exactly. The problem isn't a science buff in the game. The problem is a science bluff in the game.
Exactly. His method of separating deuterium and tritium does not even work - a vortex as describe is almost the opposite of a centrifuge - the heavy stuff goes out and gets lost - he ends up with the light stuff in the middle. Etc. etc. etc. There are just too many things wrong with this.

Personally I normally take the position that in a world where alchemy works then physics and chemistry don't work - experiments are not always repeatable.

[Jay R]

Personally I normally take the position that in a world where alchemy works then physics and chemistry don't work - experiments are not always repeatable.

Yup. The introduction to my last game included this paragraph:


A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

[SpaceBadger]

The last game I ran, I included the following paragraph in the campaign introduction:
A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

Very nice! Copied for future reference.

[Jay R]

Very nice! Copied for future reference.

Thank you. One of the things I was proud of is that this paragraph contained the first two (extremely obscure) clues to the first quest. They were working for seven wandering heroes (about to die) who carried the Staves of the Wanderers, artifacts of large power that needed to be returned. The staves had powers based on change, heat, speed, love, combat, lightning, and time.

The two clues were that stars aren't gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion, and knowledge of Ptolemy would be useful. More clues were picked up over time, becoming more and more obvious. Eventually, it became obvious what the powers really were.

The Wanderers weren't the seven people carrying the staves - these were the Staves of the Wandering Stars - the planets. They had the powers from the moon, the sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

[Lapak]

Yup. The introduction to my last game included this paragraph:Excellent work. And the right approach, in my opinion; I try to make it clear to my players that if they try to pull something like opening a gate to the surface of the sun to destroy a city what they're likely to actually get is something along the lines of a pissed-off Apollo who wants to know what wise guy put a dimensional pothole in his chariot's path.

[undead hero]

I would have called Shenanigans and then bought the group a pizza for his awesome work.

Seriously, that is an awesome way to go out. Even if it isn't in the rules I would have allowed that to work ONCE and only once since when the world reformed itself it would have been made in a way that this power just doesn't work (I would figure it out somehow).

Campaign well done :D

[Slipperychicken]

"Hand me your sheet. I need to see something."

[Player hands his sheet over]

"I don't see anything about destroying the planet here. Do you?"

....

"Didn't think so. So don't try this crap in my games."

[The Rose Dragon]

They were playing BESM. I wouldn't doubt that the character sheet actually did have a combination that could destroy the world, and it was there unintentionally.

[Slipperychicken]

They were playing BESM. I wouldn't doubt that the character sheet actually did have a combination that could destroy the world, and it was there unintentionally.

Yeah, I mean that would likely be the reaction for a more serious game.


The "degree in nuclear physics" bit is basically a guarantee that you're going to get some attempts to cheese out with via SCIENCE!. Personally, I might say BESM physics are different enough from real-world ones that it isn't applicable. That, and the character doesn't have a degree in nuclear physics so s/he wouldn't know what to do.