SOM & phaser question

[Greg Smith]

The portable force field generator (SOM p72) will take 200 points of damage before collapsing. But phaser damage for settings 9-16 is simply listed as 'Kill'. Can a phaser collapse a forcefield, and if so what setting would be required?

Doug or Jesse is there any official ruling on this?

[Publius]

I think that this is a holdover from LUG, when the upper reaches of the phaser chart had damage values associated with them. Didn't the portable force field have a 200 point maximum there too?

To adjudicate (sans official word) either dig up some of the old LUG stuff and use those numbers (which only works if you have the old books), or set the damage values for phasers on higher settings as you deem appropriate. Do you want the Portable to short out from one shot by a hand-phaser? Two in combination maybe? adjust your numbers according to the results you would like to see as a Narrator. Actually, you don't even have to mess with numbers, float the amount of damage one can take to account for the fact that the portable shield generator might have different power sources supporting it which will increase/decrease the amount of damage the thing can take before popping:

• "Set up with the base power's EPS conduit, the force field over the exit will only short out if three phasers hit it at the same time in the same spot on our maximum power beam settings, as there are only two of us we have to find our missing crewman and/or his phaser."
• "With nothing more than the onboard power cells, this thing will only take one sustained hit from those Cardassians disruptors. If you cannibalize one of the Phaser-IIs to boost power, you might sustain two or three hits before it goes down."

You could even bring it down to a "save value". The Portable Shield generator will fail as follows...
Setting 12: 1 on d6
Setting 13: 1-2 on d6
Setting 14: 1-3 on d6
Setting 15: 1-4 on d6
Setting 16: 1-5 on d6
Each additional phaser on the same setting adds +1 total (3 Phasers on Setting 12 amount to the same as a Setting 14 hit)