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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Douglas on May 06, 2010, 01:02:45 AM
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I'm working on a pyromancer and am having trouble thinking of any defensive applications for his powers. I thought of something similar to Ramirez's shielding, but using fire to pump energy into objects and shatter them rather than using water to disrupt them. The other possibility I've thought of is using fire's purifying aspect to create an effect similar to hyperawareness (YS Pg. 294). Beyond that I'm stumped.
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Ideas for a fire base defense:
- wall/sphere/shield of fire that consumes all that comes at you
- Smoke and shadows to conceal & distract, kind of like a veil defense against awareness
- small fiery demons/spirits that swirl about meeting each incoming attack with distruction
- Haze about your body that lites up with fire when attacked to consume its force (more of an armor idea than shield)
- Heat wave shimmer that distorts thing away from you
Fire is big on the consumption and refinement, so consume/redirect the attacks energy to fire, could also give you some interesting way to say you are consuming the attacker energy and throwing back at them
hope that helps
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When I think fire, I don't normally think shatter... I think melting. But if someone shoots at you, melting their bullets might still hurt you. That is unless it burns hot enough to completely destroy said incoming object, either way if something living runs into it... should be interesting. :P
Another thought might be to suck the heat out of the air, creating Ice to block incoming attacks. But that might not be what your wanting. Fire has always been tricking in my mind on how to use defensively (apart from making ice or melting).
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You could also do things with fire manipulating the other elements.
You superheat the area around you causing a wind vortex that deflects attacks
or
the area around your feet is mostly melted, and pseudopods of molten material reach up and deflect attacks aimed at you
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Your heat shield could vaporize the front of incoming stuff such that it "explosively repels" the back end. [/logical stretch]
I like Troubles Third Son's idea of the heat shimmer causing them to aim at where you seem to be (but aren't).
What about having the heat cause an "updraft" which knocks incoming attacks off target?
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Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy. If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.
If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense. And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).
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Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy. If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.
If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense. And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).
Then you could tag the Hot Air to draw upon it's heat for fueling your fire attacks, or at least you could in my mind. :P
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Then you could tag the Hot Air to draw upon it's heat for fueling your fire attacks, or at least you could in my mind. :P
I'd allow it. Plus, the imagery is pretty cool. You could tie it in with a fire breath kinda thing. Like, make it seem that you breath in the generated heat and torch everything in the zone. 8)
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The Fire mage I came up with summons up a dozen white hot motes of flame that hover around him and intercept attacks in bouts of mutual annihalation.
There are really as many ways to do it as any other element.
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I'd go with a "reactive flame wall" - a veil of fire and heat that reacts to attacks by pushing fire/heat/force towards them to try and destroy them.
Fire isn't immensely defensey. :(
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My brother Arandmoor's character, The Archivist, has a fire shield rote. His take on it relates to his aspect, My Deep-Dark Secret.
His Fire Shield uses the Cleansing Power of Fire to cleanse away negative possible outcomes. it's an area of very3 Grey magic, but it relates to My Deep-Dark Secret
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My brother Arandmoor's character, The Archivist, has a fire shield rote. His take on it relates to his aspect, My Deep-Dark Secret.
His Fire Shield uses the Cleansing Power of Fire to cleanse away negative possible outcomes. it's an area of very3 Grey magic, but it relates to My Deep-Dark Secret
Sorry, my head isn't wrapping around this shield all that well. So its essentially a probability spell that uses fire magic to affect the probability of negative outcomes? That has a Scarlet Witch vibe to it, which is neat.
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Yeah, I'm betting his secret is Chronomancy.
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Yeah, I'm betting his secret is Chronomancy.
Heh. Ooh! A chronomantic shield would be fun. A disk of energy that sends objects that pass through it several seconds into the future. You'd have to move out of the way every time something went through, but it'd be neat. But if you add in some wind or force magic to displace space as well as time, it would be pretty damn effective. And probably really costly, energy wise.
On a more on topic note:
Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy. If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.
If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense. And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).
You could also take the heat you generate and dump it into the shield. So a) you stop the projectiles movements, and b) you burn up the projectiles, rendering them useless for future use.
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For anyone interested in monitoring how much heat it actually takes to stop stuff here's some math:
We'll use as our point of comparison, a coke can full of water (250 mL).
Since you have been holding it in your hand for a long time, the water is at body temperature (37 C)
The specific heat of water is 4.186 J/g per C, so it would take around 1046.5 Joules to heat up your can of water 1 C.
So how much energy is ~1000 Joules you ask?
A 9mm pistol bullet is around 500J, a big pistol bullet (~.44 magnum) is around 1000 joules, a rifle bullet (7.62 Soviet) is around 2000 joules.
So if our heat based shield is based off taking the energy out of the bullets (so they come to a complete stop in mid-air) and just fall down) and transferring that energy into our coke can.
So assuming our heat shield is 100% efficient, and some bad buy empties all 30 rounds of his AK into our heat shield, your coke can full of water goes to ~97 C, not even boiling yet. But certainly hot enough to burn you if you holding it. (Somewhere around 45-50 C is hot enough to scald your skin). A magazine full of fire from a pistol (15 rounds of 9mm) is only enough to raise the temp of our coke can is barely enough heat to raise it from body temperature to hot enough to scald you.
So what do we learn from this? Enchanted cans of Coke that provide you a fire based defensive shield that stops bullets can totally be tapped from cool and refreshing drink afterwards, as long as you don't get shot too much. ;D
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Sorry, my head isn't wrapping around this shield all that well. So its essentially a probability spell that uses fire magic to affect the probability of negative outcomes? That has a Scarlet Witch vibe to it, which is neat.
Better explanation: someone shoots a gun at you, there is an infinite number of possible outcomes. This shield cleanses away the possible outcomes of the event "someone shoots a gun at you" that lead to something negative like, "You getting shot".
The possibilities left are, "The shot misses" "The gun jams" etc.
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You could use fire in the form of energy to excite the atoms of the incoming attack causing them to break apart into energy as the electrons are released. Sort of radioactivity only problrm is the same as any fire shield God helps the fool that tries to go through it. Does it count as lawbreaking if they are stupid enough to charge into an abatoir?
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Does it count as lawbreaking if they are stupid enough to charge into an abatoir?
Yes. It says so in the rules.
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I like all the idea's here, but the really effective defenses, the ones that aren't just veils (which is not to say that veils aren't effective defense, just that they're in another category), seem like they would be super costly in terms of power and control. Fire is probably the lest defensive of all the elements, it's a destructive force primarily, and a cleansing force secondarily. Harry himself, who seems to use fire as his primary element, uses spirit/force for defense. Unless you're really restricted to one element I would pick something else for defense.
Still I really like the idea of converting the kinetic energy of bullets and other projectiles into heat, though there are some issues with that. Assuming your still human, your in danger from the heat your shield generates. If you have to stop incoming fire from fully automatic weapons, or, say protect yourself from an explosion, you might find yourself without body hair and your clothes on fire. And what if you need to stop a fire attack? Sure you can stop whatever is on fire, petroleum jelly or whatever, but converting the kinetic energy to heat little more than a foot from you may make the attack MORE effective, not less.
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Still I really like the idea of converting the kinetic energy of bullets and other projectiles into heat, though there are some issues with that. Assuming your still human, your in danger from the heat your shield generates. If you have to stop incoming fire from fully automatic weapons, or, say protect yourself from an explosion, you might find yourself without body hair and your clothes on fire. And what if you need to stop a fire attack? Sure you can stop whatever is on fire, petroleum jelly or whatever, but converting the kinetic energy to heat little more than a foot from you may make the attack MORE effective, not less.
I want to point out that Crusher_Bob's math illustrates how little danger you're actually in from this type of heat. Bullets have a fair bit of energy yes, but compared to the amount of energy it takes to heat up air (or water) it's a drop in the bucket. Course, if your shield is just trying to convert kinetic energy to heat, fire based attacks are a danger. But, you're a pyromancer, they shoot fire at you it shouldn't be that hard for you to think of ways to move that heat around to protect yourself.
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I want to point out that Crusher_Bob's math illustrates how little danger you're actually in from this type of heat. Bullets have a fair bit of energy yes, but compared to the amount of energy it takes to heat up air (or water) it's a drop in the bucket. Course, if your shield is just trying to convert kinetic energy to heat, fire based attacks are a danger. But, you're a pyromancer, they shoot fire at you it shouldn't be that hard for you to think of ways to move that heat around to protect yourself.
True, but notice how I used the plural on weapons? Multiple automatics are going to be trouble. And what about the wall of kinetic force in an explosion? Or if the monsters start chucking more substantial things at you, like cinder blocks? And if your maintaining the shield, can you split your attention enough to convert the heat into offense? I'm not saying it's not an effective, if limited, defense, I'm just saying that there are probably other, more effectual and efficient, tools in your kit that would be better at stopping attacks than fire magic.
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I'm not saying it's not an effective, if limited, defense, I'm just saying that there are probably other, more effectual and efficient, tools in your kit that would be better at stopping attacks than fire magic.
Not really. Designing a character to use the same element for attack and defense is vastly more effective than using two elements, since your specializations can apply both ways. And if you can't apply specializations, then you can't have other types of magic.
Conversely, fire magic doesn't really have too many offensive advantages over other elements, so there's no special reason why it should be disadvantaged defensively.
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How about using it as armor or a block self based? Sort of you burst into flames like the human torch and the bullets whatever melt or are destroyed?
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Not really. Designing a character to use the same element for attack and defense is vastly more effective than using two elements, since your specializations can apply both ways. And if you can't apply specializations, then you can't have other types of magic.
Conversely, fire magic doesn't really have too many offensive advantages over other elements, so there's no special reason why it should be disadvantaged defensively.
Not within the game rules maybe, but within the fictional world it does. That's what I mean, the things we're talking about, messing with probability, transferring kinetic energy into heat on the fly, maintaining fire hot enough to not only melt metal but dematerialize it, ect., are all incredibly taxing uses of magic where as compared to summoning a wall of spirit/force, or using physical material to intercept or deflect attacks (earth, water, air). Conversely fire is always dangerous to human flesh, whereas the other elements are only dangerous in certain situations.
But here's an idea, rather than converting the kinetic energy in the projectile to heat in the air, why not just convert it to heat in the projectile? That way your only changing the type of energy, not it's location, so the magic is less complicated. Of course if the monster throws a propane tank at you, that could be bad.
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>_> Magical Riposte
1. Shield goes up.
2. People shoot at you.
3. Heat level reaches a threshold.
4. Use accumulated heat energy to fire lasers. ( or alternatively, use the heat to make a haze and help avoid more bullets. I like the lasers more!)
5. ? ? ? ?
6. Profit!
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I was reading this thread and thinking, the best (fire) defense is a good offense (against the attacks).
Its rather fitting, I think, that all of the really good concepts for fire defense rotes are sort of attacking the attack, if that makes any sense.
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I just came up with a relatively cool idea for a fire based defensive rote. How about this, a magical Plasma Ball.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v15/Ramaloke/800px-Plasma_lamp_touching.jpg)
Your character sits in the middle, protected from the arcs of plasma by magic, and whenever a foreign object pierces the dome of the spell, the arcs all focus on the new conductive object, burning it to a cinder.
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Fire consumes oxygen.Suck the air out of the vicinity
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Fire consumes oxygen.Suck the air out of the vicinity
Wouldn't work; fire doesn't destroy the oxygen, it binds it to the fuel source and creates carbon dioxide and smoke. There isn't less air after a fire, just less fuel, and less oxygen. You could use this as a defense to a fire based attack though, burn all the oxygen out of a given space so no fire will be supported and you've taken away one of the three legs of the stool that support a fire (oxygen, fuel, and a heat source). Of course if your attack is a heat beam like Harry's, that could be just classified as a heat source.
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Wouldn't work; fire doesn't destroy the oxygen, it binds it to the fuel source and creates carbon dioxide and smoke. There isn't less air after a fire, just less fuel, and less oxygen. You could use this as a defense to a fire based attack though, burn all the oxygen out of a given space so no fire will be supported and you've taken away one of the three legs of the stool that support a fire (oxygen, fuel, and a heat source). Of course if your attack is a heat beam like Harry's, that could be just classified as a heat source.
Ahhhh, alternate oxygenation sources, how happy you make me... :-P
Now I'm going to spend my afternoon thinking about magical spells to summon or create oxydizing agents and screw around with fire-elemental evocations.