Limbo-class warframe
Sequence
This article is about a warframe fighter in the Warframe video game. Some other articles might be best read before it :
- The article presenting the Warframe setting, if you aren’t familiar with the game.
- The “base camp” article about what warframes are and how they work. This one is recommended even if you’re well familiar with the game. It has the design notes, for starters.
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Overview
Limbo-class warframes specialise in shifting between dimensionsOther realms of existence that are not our universe.. Their main asset is travelling into the Rift.
The Rift exists between the normal world and the Void. It is sort of, kind of like the Astral or Ethereal Plane in classic RPGs. What’s in the Rift is like a ghost, visible but largely immaterial.
This warframe is based on genius-level maths developed by somebody going by “Limbo”. It looks like complete gibberish. However, a sufficiently clever, open-minded and knowledgeable physicist may eventually realise that it does make sense.
The Rift has different physical rules, so parts of the calculations are only impossible if one assumes they’re about normal space.
Frame
“Limbo” was apparently slain during tests about the Rift. We know nothing else of them. But it would make sense if that person was the Archimedean (senior scientist) in charge of developing this warframe class.
The frame also has a clear Baron Samedi look (to my eyes, at least). So there might be a link to Voodoo cultures. Haitian, Fon, Yoruba, Brazilian… though in the far future of Warframe, little about those may be recognizable.
At least one Limbo-class warframe was developed by the project. Whether scale production ever started is unrevealed.
Capabilities
Limbo warframes can “push” themselves and others from the material world and into the Rift, or “pull” the other way. Limbo frames frequently operate from within the Rift.
A person in the Rift is visible, but cannot be harmed. They do look at bit translucent, but that’s easy to miss in the middle of battle. They’re not *quite* immaterial, though.
- Small objects and energy discharges will harmlessly pass through them. But attacks done in the Rift will also pass through targets in normal space.
- This doesn’t work with person-sized (or larger) matter and energy. So a person in the Rift cannot walk through walls or people or force fields.
- But they could intersect with something very hot, cold, radioactive, a live wire, etc. without ill effect. By the same token they can’t, say, press a button.
- Yet they retain some measure of mass and interact with gravity. This is one of the most glaring examples of Rift physics not making conventional sense.
- Some rare attack forms can affect those within the Rift. How and why is unclear.
Here are some typical use cases :
- Running around as a ghost across an enemy base, ignoring all gunfire and assaults.
- “Pushing” allies into the Rift. For instance, a person being rescued (so they can’t be harmed), or teammates (so they can accompany Limbo in ghost form).
- “Pushing” an enemy into the Rift. So Limbo can then become material (say, to hack a lock), without being harmed by the persons he pushed into the Rift.
- Creating a large, unstable interface between the two dimensions. This is kinda like an energy bubble, and everybody therein is shifted into the Rift (large objects aren’t affected). The bubble will gradually collapse on itself.
There are energy eddies within the “bubble”. These will likely not be enough to harm battle-ready units in the Warframe world, but fragile objects caught within will likely be shattered. Say, surveillance cameras. - Stopping time within the Rift for a while… but not for Limbo. Limbo cannot shoot at time-frozen targets (since the projectile or blast would be suspended as soon as it gets shot), but it *is* possible to deliver melee attacks.
(In the video game, Limbo’s allies can also act while the Rift is time-frozen. In a TTRPG, this version is simpler, and it’s an homage to players freaking out because they’re caught in a Cataclysm. I’m also sticking with the old limitation about ranged attacks in the Rift as it made more intuitive sense.)
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Tell me more about the game stats
DEX 08 STR 07 BOD 10
Powers:
Cling: 04, Damage capacity: 06, Gliding: 02, Invulnerability: 12, Jumping: 03, Radio communications: 16, Running: 06
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Cling can only be maintained for 3 Phases (if running) or 1 Phase (if stationary).
- Cling doesn’t work on surfaces at more than a 100° angle from the ground (such as ceiling, or protrusions along walls).
- Gliding can only be maintained for 3 Phases.
- Invulnerability – see below.
- Jumping has the Catfall Bonus.
- Radio coms includes video. It also allows The Lotus to anchor her Eye of Cat Power to a warframe. It usually links to the Orbiter and/or Landing Craft, which acts as a relay to the network.
Warframe-Specific Powers:
Bomb: 04, Flash: 10, Force field: 10
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Bomb has No Range.
- Bomb only triggers when creating a Force Field with an Area of Effect.
- Bomb takes place in the Rift, and only harms those within the Force Field. OTOH this means it can ignore cover, since large objects aren’t pulled into the Rift.
- Flash can only affect targets currently affected by Force Field. Its effects stop as soon as Force Field’s do.
- Flash has a +3 Multiattack Bonus.
- Flash must attack all targets affected by a Limbo’s Force Field, with the exception of Limbo warframes.
- Force Field is Self Only, and Cannot Attack Through. Targets also under the effect of Limbo’s Force Field can be attacked, though.
- Force Field is Useable on Others (who will also have it be Self Only and Cannot Attack Through).
- If Force Field is Used on Others, the Limbo warframe doesn’t lose their APs of Force Field.
- Using Force Field on Others is done by rolling the APs of Power vs. DEX/DEX. RAPs are the amount of time it lasts for. No roll is necessary if the target is willing, with the effect being maintained for as long as the Limbo warframe wishes.
- Force Field can have an Area of Effect (2 APs), though it only lasts for 3 APs of time and is Minimal Marginal.
- Force Field with an Area of Effect ignores cover (large objects cannot be pulled into the Rift). So it might affect stuff on the other side of a wall even if Limbo is unaware it’s there.
Skills:
Acrobatics: 07, Medicine (First aid): 05, Thief (Security systems, Stealth): 06, Vehicles: 07, Weaponry: 08
Bonuses and Limitations:
Medicine applies to warframes without penalty.
Advantages:
Area Knowledge (Real-time mapping and positioning), Leadership, Schtick (Paired weapons (all), Fast-Draw (all)), Misc.: Limbo has a cool hat.
Equipment:
SHIELDING [BODY 02, Damage Capacity: 08, Bonus: Damage Capacity has Instant Recovery].
Reviving
Invulnerability has Ammo: 04. The Hidden Messages quest in the game implies that it as a shorter range than most Transference functions, but there’s no other context. Maybe 100M kilometers (41 APs) – it’s a round, reasonable number.
If you are using our hypothesis that “revives” mean supercharging the Infestation within, each use would make the warframe visibly more overtaken by the Infestation. It would then have to be scrubbed and repaired in the orbiter’s “Infestation seat”.
Design notes
Yes, Force Field. Going with Dispersal, Intangibility or Spirit Travel is mistaking the rationale for the effect.
And it becomes a quagmire, since what Limbo does is transparency to attacks, without any other intangibility effects.
The trick with the Cannot Attack Through may be a bit abstract. But it does just what we want without innovation. If you’re affected by a Force Field you can’t attack the real world, and the real world will likely be unable to damage you.
The high resulting RV is still beatable with a big double. It’s an homage to Limbo warframes being damaged due to in-game bugs and oversights.
Flash is a bit crude to simulate the stopping-time-within-the-Rift power. But there isn’t much to gain by going with a more intricate take.
Source of Character: Warframe vidjagame.
Writeup completed on the 14th of May, 2019.