2026-09-06 21:36:43
Anonymous:
CMB101 r3: PMR004 corrections. Withdraws the claim that confusing a Crust with a spent Walker is harmless - a spent Walker still conducts and is still stunned, a Crust is neither. Glow and encrustation are now separate cues: glow says what is left to take, encrustation says whether current reaches it. The arc note is rewritten for the bounded chain now that R10 is withdrawn; the Spark is not this role's counter.
hold the flood/enemies/crust.md ..
@@ 1,6 1,6 @@
# Hold the Flood — Crust
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**CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new.**
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**CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new.**
Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat).
| **Threat** | It is the body still walking when everything around it has stopped. It stands unstunned inside a stunned crowd, in the exact place and second the player has committed to standing still and collecting, and it **ends an arc chain** where it stands |
| **Hit count** | Three. No more health than anything else — it is not armoured, it is *not conductive* |
| **Conducts?** | **No.** A coil discharge through the water it is standing in does not stop it. An arc chain that reaches it goes no further through it |
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| **Charge** | Killed by the cutter: drops a 1-unit mote, once, like anything else. It **cannot be made to shed by a stun**, so a district heavy in Crusts is a district where the coil harvest is thinner than the crowd size suggests |
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| **Charge** | Killed by the cutter: drops a 1-unit mote, once, like anything else. It **cannot be made to shed by a stun**, so a district heavy in Crusts is a district where the coil harvest is thinner than the crowd size suggests. **It glows until it is killed**, like any unshed body — it is non-conducting, not spent |
## Telegraph
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**Silhouette, not brightness.** Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), glow carries exactly one bit — has charge to shed, or does not — so the Crust cannot be signalled by being dim, because a merely spent Walker is also dim. It is signalled by a **broken, encrusted outline**: mineral scale from the sluice, dry and non-conducting, visible in a crowd as a change of shape rather than a change of colour.
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**Two independent cues, corrected in r3.** Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) as revised after [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004), **glow says what is left to take** and **encrustation says whether current reaches it**, and they are separate channels because the answers are separate. A Crust glows, like any unshed body; its **broken, encrusted outline** — dry mineral scale from the sluice — is what says the coil will not stop it. It reads in a crowd as a change of *shape*, not of colour or brightness.
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This is the one confusion in the roster that would cost the player real health, and R4 exists to make sure the strongest available cue carries it. A player who mistakes a Crust for a *spent* Walker loses nothing, because both mean "nothing to take here". A player who mistakes one for an *unspent* Walker walks into it during a stun.
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**Withdrawn in r3: r1 and r2 of this page claimed that mistaking a Crust for a spent Walker was harmless.** PM is right that it is not. A spent Walker still conducts and is still stunned; a Crust is neither. A player who confuses them commits to a collection window with bodies walking through it, and pays in health rather than in harvest. That error came from putting two facts on one cue, which is exactly what the corrected R4 stops.
## Counterplay, and what each costs
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## Machinery and equipment
- **Coil:** the counter-interaction. A discharge's value is now the *conducting* fraction of the crowd, not its size, and that fraction is readable in advance from the outlines standing in the water.
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- **Arc:** the Crust is a wall in the chain. Where the player stands decides which way the chain propagates, which is the first time in this design that arc *positioning* matters at all. Under [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) a chain travelling through energised water routes around a Crust rather than being stopped by it — so the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) is the Crust's counter, and a district that fields both is a district where the two roles argue with each other.
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- **Arc:** the Crust is a wall in the chain. Under the adopted bounded model ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc): at most three additional bodies per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight) a Crust in the chain's path costs the burst those hops, so **where the player stands decides which way the chain propagates** — the first place in this design where arc positioning matters at all. **Corrected in r3:** r1 said a chain travelling through energised water would route around a Crust and named the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) as this role's counter. That rested on R10, which is withdrawn; the arc never energises water, so nothing routes around a Crust and the Spark is not its counter.
- **Insulation:** the fiction and the mechanic are the same thing the player is wearing. That is the point, and it should be sayable in one sentence by any player: *it is wearing what I'm wearing.*
- **Panel and beacons:** ordinary. A Crust routes exactly like the mass.
