How might you model a star wars/star trek style deflector shield in dungeon world? I’m asking because I’ve got a setting for my players were such things would be common on vehicles, and all the ideas I’ve had have been a bit on the overly complex side.
How might you model a star wars/star trek style deflector shield in dungeon world?
How might you model a star wars/star trek style deflector shield in dungeon world?
Well remember, fiction is mechanics in Dungeon World. If vehicles have deflector shields that absorb or deflect damage, then they just do. Simple as that.
It’s probably a good idea to set mechanics aside at first and figure out fictionally how these shields work. What powers them? What do they do? How do people get around them? Etc. After you’ve worked all that out, then go back and write mechanics.
Christopher Stone-Bush okay, fair point. They’re powered by a generator. They stop physical and energy attacks from penetrating. The only way to break them is to either make one huge attack/blow that completely shatters the shield, or hammer on it constantly with smaller ones until the constant stress causes it to fail after some time.
the one idea I had was maybe have a Shield Rating number – if damage is less than the rating, nothing happens. If it’s over the rating, no damage is dealt to the shielded thing but it reduces the rating by 1 for a few minutes. If it’s more than twice the rating, the shield collapses, and half the damage you dealt gets applied to the shielded thing.
I read the first line of Christopher Stone-Bush’s response and +’ed it. Fiction is mechanics. You can solve the entire ordeal with tags if you want.
Another solution, in line with what you suggest yourself, could be to give it an armor rating and a bunch of HP. Shooting at the shield damages it, and after it looses all of it’s HP it goes “offline”. After not getting hit for a few minutes it would regain all of its HP.
Thanks for this question though, it gives me a few ideas for my Abjurer class…
So basically, once the shield is on, any physical or energy-based object that tries to pass through the shield gets stopped. Is that right? How about something like this:
When something that’s shielded would take damage, compare the damage dealt to the shield’s rating. If the damage is equal to or more than the shield’s rating, the shield collapses; the target takes no damage, but the generator will have to be fixed before it’s operational again. If the damage dealt is less than the shield’s rating, apply a cumulative -1 penalty to the shield’s rating for the next minute. If the shield’s rating drops to zero, the shield collapses; the target takes no damage, but the generator will have to be fixed before it’s operational again.
Phew. That’s more mechanical than I’d prefer, but it’s a level playing field between PCs and NPCs. If only NPCs and monsters will have access to these shields, I think you can do it all with just fiction, monster moves, and GM moves.
Good suggestions, all. In this case, I’m assuming shields are mostly the province of vehicles… which can be used by PCs or NPCs.
I talked about it with Adam Koebel yesterday and he proposed:
““You erect a magical shield around yourself. This shield has 6hp. Whenever you take damage, it takes damage instead. When it is reduced to 0hp, it vanishes.””
After writing all that out, I agree with Kasper Brohus Allerslev; you can do that all with tags and fiction. Just give vehicles a really high armor rating, probably with the magic, energy. or technology tags. Then just note that if the generator goes down, so does the shield. You could even give the generator a separate pool of hit points if you wanted to.
Tags and fiction are nice, very nice, but a little codification is needed if it’s goign to come up several times a session. This is why PCs and NPCs have HP and armour, after all :p
saying that a shield has very few HP (say, 6) and huge amounts of armour (say, 8-10) could work. Constant hammering by weaker attackers is just the application of the multiple NPCs attacking one target rule, or PCs aiding each other.
This conversation made me think of this:
When you use the slow knife to penetrate your opponent’s shield, roll +INT. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7-9, choose 1.
– you get your knife through their shield, deal your damage;
– you prevent them from getting their knife through your shield;
– they don’t knock you off balance.
Christopher Stone-Bush
Sounds more like Dune…
That was the point, Wynand Louw.;)
I like Tim Franze / Adam Koebel’s suggestion. I would just add that (obviously) the number of HP could be adjusted up or down and there probably should be an open discussion about just what would constitute the sort of thing that would cause HP damage to a vehicle shield.
Might be in the Dungeon Planet PDF on drivethrurpg but a simple deflector array on Star Trek is just roughly a magic shield around a person or area as others mentioned but also can just apply a large creature strength number or tag to it only for pushing things in a certain direction.