Void environment question

[Sanctu]

I've had a question come up on being in the Void, that hostile astral realm discussed in Between the Shadows. Accroding to the book, you take damage every minute. If you have some kind of shield -- magic or psychic force field, protection spell, protective talent, etc. -- the field will take damage. Further down it says "travelers protected by magic... wiill only suffer... damage every hour". This is on page 39 of _Between the Shadows_.

When I first read this long ago, I interpretted it as: if you have suitable protection, it takes damage at a rate once per hour instead of once per minute. In re-reading it now, I'm uncertain of this. I could interpret it that way, or that: if you have magic protection, it takes damage every minute instead of you, and you take damage every hour (assuming your protection lasts that long).

My question is: how would you interpret this? Does the field itself take damage every minute? Or is damage to the field taken hourly, allowing for longer stints into the void?

[Sanctu]

Gettin no reply, I've turned this into a poll.

[Sanctu]

Yes, this helps a lot, actually. Your description is how I read it initially.

There are probably two reasons they only list magical and psychic protections that help you in the Void. (1) That's all you have acces to. You are in the astral plane from the world of Nightbane, so your chances of having a force field are non-existant, since there are none in the world you are from and if there were you couldn't project with it anyway. (2) They might not actually work to protect you anyway. Think about it: you are in a magical place that drains energy from everything uniformly. Having a force field around you might not be able to protect you, since what is being drained isn't physical (or even energy) in anyway. Just like the field coudn't protect you from a psychic attack, so it can't protect your from the effect of teh psychic plane, Mind you, when that Shadow Mantis or Void Creature spots you, then it might help...

[drewkitty ~..~]

Other forms of (propable) acceptable protection would include the super powers Crate FF(body feild), Force Aura, personal FF, Create Force Constructs (force armor), super hibernation/stasis(only the guy in the pod). One super powers that Might, if streching the powers to almost breaking, Adapt to Enviroment.

[Marcethus]

sounds like a good theory on tech FF's not working to protect you against the Void's energy but it's up to each GM.

[drewkitty ~..~]

.... (1) That's all you have acces to. You are in the astral plane from the world of Nightbane,.....

If you re-read the discription of the Astral plane then you will come across in the discription saying that each dimintions' astral plane is set up the same manner as each of the others. ie: they are all the same so each will have its outer realms, innner realms, and part of them that conects to the void.

The void is a part of all astral planes conecting them all to each other, much like a grand dimentional anomaly that could be a better cross roads then rifts earth if it was more well known and more controlable.

[Sanctu]

Ben Quash, I didn't mean that in the Void there is no place to go, or that the Void is lacking entrances or exits or anything. I meant that in the Astral Plane in general you are unlikely to have a physical body with you, much less equiptment, and even less likely to have tech suffient to create a force field. Add to that that this is a suppliment for Nightbane, a game where high tech personal force fields don't exist.

Mind you, it isn't impossile. This is just why I think they didn't bother mentioning in the description. Stuff does end up there just like the other parts of the Astral Plane. Beyond the Supernatural talks about people in boats and planes traveling through the Astral Plane for brief periods of time -- and that's arriving solely by accident in a part of the Astral Plane far easier to get to (the Outer Layer). For the most part, though, we are talking about a place lacking any kind of matter unless it's been reconfigured, or it's fallen through a rift somewhere. I wll grant you that stuff from another part of the multiverse could wind up there as easily as from the Nightbane world, but realistically it isn't going to unless the GM puts it there and your chacarter gets wacked by it. You are far more likely to find an artifact that deals with astral things and can protect you -- and maybe your party -- from harm while traveling than you are to find a working, fully charge inertia screen from some SciFi world of the future.

Some Rifts cross-genre thing, or simply using this suppliment and adapting, could raise the issue, though. I'd personally still stand by tech force fields not helping as a general rule. They'd have to have been designed specially for something like that. The Mansion of Mad Professor Ludlow comes to mind, with the traveling sphere. Some kind of inertia or albido screen wouldn't, though.

Super powers, maybe. I'd evaluate those individually ahead of time, though.

Thank you all for replying.

Edit: Oh, and Ben Quash, very good point.

[Marcethus]

.... (1) That's all you have acces to. You are in the astral plane from the world of Nightbane,.....

If you re-read the discription of the Astral plane then you will come across in the discription saying that each dimintions' astral plane is set up the same manner as each of the others. ie: they are all the same so each will have its outer realms, innner realms, and part of them that conects to the void.

The void is a part of all astral planes conecting them all to each other, much like a grand dimentional anomaly that could be a better cross roads then rifts earth if it was more well known and more controlable.

Ben actually according to rifter 9 which as far as I have seen is the only thing that has Astral info (other than NB between the shadows) the only thing that differs between other dimensions is the Outer Plane. The Inner Plane and the Void are the same in all dimensions.