AVLD at +3/4

[Lord Liaden]

Hello, Steve. I hope life is treating you well on balance. ;)

The description of the AVLD Advantage says that it can be bought as +3/4 rather than +1 1/2 if the defense it applies to is "simply a limited form of the Power's standard defense." (5E p. 161) I'm trying to establish some benchmarks for what that "limited form" could be, and could use some informed opinions to help me decide. Some examples I had in mind include:

1) Killing Attack vs. Armor (not other resistant defenses);
2) Killing Attack vs. Hardened defenses;
3) Normal Damage attack vs. "innate" defenses (not through Foci, magic spells or technological implants).

I understand that campaign conditions would affect how advantageous the Advantage would be, so here are a few sample parameters:

A) Standard heroic level fantasy campaign. About half the opponents the PCs would encounter would have defenses enhanced through Foci or spells. The majority of opponents would have some resistant defense, and most of that would be Armor, but it would rarely be Hardened;

B) Standard heroic level futuristic campaign. Most of the opponents the PCs would face would have defenses enhanced through technology. Most of those opponents would have res. defenses, about evenly divided between Armor and Force Field. About half of them would have Hardened defenses;

C) Standard superheroic level modern campaign. About half of the super-level opponents the PCs would face would have defenses enhanced through Foci, technology or spells. The majority of their opponents would have resistant defenses divided about evenly between Armor, Force Field and Damage Resistance, and half of those with res. def. would have it Hardened.
Almost all "super-agent" level opponents would have some resistant defense, mostly Armor, almost never innate and rarely Hardened.

I would welcome your input, but would understand if you prefer to move it to another board. :)

[Steve Long]

This seems like a fun discussion for the group, so I've moved it.

The conditions you describe generally seem reasonable. The only one I might question would be #2, Hardened, but I can definitely see the case to be made for that in many campaigns.

[TheEmerged]

Personally, I've run AVLD itself at +1, with a "Does Body" option at +2 (and I don't allow NND Does Body) that I have been known to forget its "official" cost during discussions :)

[JmOz]

I would have a problem with the "armor" one you mention, as I feel it should come down to F/X.

Example, let say Rock Man and Rock Boy both have rocky exteriors that protect them from harm. Rock Man has bought his as OIHID Armor, rock Boy on the other hand finds it harder to stay in form, and as such he has bought his as a FF, end to activate (not sure if that is legal, but I would allow it). Same F/X (except how hard it is to keep the form), so by the armor version above Rock Boy suffers while Rock man does not.

Now Force Fields are interesting as they are both a F/X and a power, I would allow the above on the F/X FF but not the game ellement FF...

As for the hardened, ironicaly I would allow it, even though it is a game element, can't articulate why, but I would

And I LIKE the last one, makes for a good spell or something

[Arthur]

Originally posted by JmOz
I would have a problem with the "armor" one you mention, as I feel it should come down to F/X.


Exactly what I was thinking. "Armor" is a Power; "armor" is a special effect.

For instance, I have built characters with inherently tough skin with both Armor and DR. The cost is the same.

Example (assume a STR of 40 for a base PD of 8).

PD 20 (12 pts); Damage Resistance 10 rPD (5 pts): Total PD 20/10 for 17 points.

PD 10 (2 pts); Armor 10 rPD (15 pts). Total PD 20/10 for 17 points.

Both ways can reflect the exact same situation you are trying to simulate. An attack should never have different effects based solely on how I allocated my points, all else being equal.

I personally tend to prefer the Armor Power. It's a little cleaner for some setups (like a modifier on the resistant defense). The only time Damage Resistance is clearly better is when you want your rPD to be higher than Total PD - Base PD. That is (again assuming STR 40): If you want PD 20/15, DR is the only way to do it without buying your PD down.

[Lord Liaden]

As I think as my initial suggestions show, I have no problem with the concept of categorizing defenses, or other powers and abilities, either by game mechanic or SFX. There are times when doing it one way is cleaner than the other. Take a Suppress vs Flight, for example. You could have Flight based on, say, wings, jets or mental levitation. A Suppress vs Flight defined as a net likely wouldn't work on the latter two - in that case I'd prefer to assess a Limitation on the Flight Suppress, rather than dealing with individual SFX on a case-by-case basis. OTOH, if the Suppress was defined as a gravity intensifier, the SFX of Flight really wouldn't make much difference.

What I was actually looking for, though, was some sense of an appropriate cutoff on how "limited" a defense against an AVLD attack should be to keep it within the +3/4 ballpark. In the case of Armor, I was using that as a subset of Resistant Defenses and comparing it to the frequency of all types of defense that the specified attack would normally apply to. In my example of a Fantasy campaign, more than half the encounters would be with opponents with Resistant Defs., and one of the campaign parameters was that most of that would be defined as Armor.