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Naked advantage in power framework - enchanted blade


WistfulD

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6E1 advises against allowing naked advantages as part of a power framework. However, a player of mine has successfully argued that it is appropriate to be able to add armor piercing to any sword he picks up as a spell, akin to the D&D spell "magic weapon."

 

What do people think? Is this appropriate? Can someone help me figure out the build? His spells are part of a 30 point power framework, with RSR, incantations, and invocations (total -1). He wants to add AP to his sword, and preferably the 15 strength he weilds it with, and the martial art maneuver he uses (+1 OCV, +0 DCV, +2 DCs). I believe a fixed slot spell would be fine.

 

 

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Seems legit.

 

Here's one method:

 

20 Swords are sharper than you think!: Armor Piercing (Naked Advantage; +1/4) for up to 60 Active Points of Any Sword of Opportunity, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Constant (+1/2) (30 Active Points); OIF (Sword of Opportunity; -1/2) [Notes: Constant in this instance just makes the ability persistent until a framework reserve is moved to a different ability.] - END=0

 

Another option worth exploring is Differing Modifier.  Mechanically it's also a form of Naked Advantage that can be combined with Usable by Other to create abilities that have one set of Modifiers for the 'spell caster' and a different set of Modifiers that control the effect on the recipient.
 

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20 Swords are sharper than you think!: Armor Piercing (Naked Advantage; +1/4) for up to 60 Active Points of Any Sword of Opportunity, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Constant (+1/2) (30 Active Points); OIF (Sword of Opportunity; -1/2) [Notes: Constant in this instance just makes the ability persistent until a framework reserve is moved to a different ability.] - END=0

Some ways that avoid the Naked Advatange:

Transform.

It can add advatanges/Active Points to an existing powers. This use is more aprorate for a herioc game. It is also a bit more versatile.

 

HKA, Armor Piercing, 0 END, Usable by others, OIF (Sword of Opportunity)

That is the simplest approach. You just buy the power you are using, with a OIF limitation for "any sword". They you need to grant it to others.

A classical example is the HSMA throwing master (wich happens to use a Framework for normal and killing damage variants).

 

The biggest issues with allowing Naked Advantages in Frameworks is that both offer considerable savings in points.

A worst case scenario is that the player only needs 15 AP (the difference between 75 AP and 60AP) to use this. Wich are then greatly reduced by the Framework cost reduction.

Maybe just consider letting this power take up the "full AP value of the resulting power" for purposes of assinging slots in the framework?

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HKA, Armor Piercing, 0 END, Usable by others, OIF (Sword of Opportunity) is indeed the simplest option, but part of the reason for the desire for naked advantage is that my player wants to apply (paying for it of course) the Armor Piercing advantage to the sword, strength, and martial art damage as well as to any HKA power he buys. Why? Because my players hate the mechanic of 'okay, take the DCs you contribute from strength, etc., and divide them by 1.25 before you add them to this attack because it is armor piercing." Why? Because they say, "well then why have DCs or str at all?" They're not wrong about that.

 

Hyper, why did you choose 60 pts.?

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HKA, Armor Piercing, 0 END, Usable by others, OIF (Sword of Opportunity) is indeed the simplest option, but part of the reason for the desire for naked advantage is that my player wants to apply (paying for it of course) the Armor Piercing advantage to the sword, strength, and martial art damage as well as to any HKA power he buys. Why? Because my players hate the mechanic of 'okay, take the DCs you contribute from strength, etc., and divide them by 1.25 before you add them to this attack because it is armor piercing." Why? Because they say, "well then why have DCs or str at all?" They're not wrong about that.

 

Hyper, why did you choose 60 pts.?

 

60 Active is one way to account for the possibility of the base sword Damage Class being boosted by any extra STR, Maneuver and CSL bonuses.  So as long as the sword never does more than 4d6K this power will make it Armor Piercing. It just requires GM approval to avoid the prorating stuff you just mentioned.

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HKA, Armor Piercing, 0 END, Usable by others, OIF (Sword of Opportunity) is indeed the simplest option, but part of the reason for the desire for naked advantage is that my player wants to apply (paying for it of course) the Armor Piercing advantage to the sword, strength, and martial art damage as well as to any HKA power he buys. Why? Because my players hate the mechanic of 'okay, take the DCs you contribute from strength, etc., and divide them by 1.25 before you add them to this attack because it is armor piercing." Why? Because they say, "well then why have DCs or str at all?" They're not wrong about that.

 

Hyper, why did you choose 60 pts.?

It's also an option to ignore those rules they do tend to be overly complicated. They were placed in for game balance reasons but by using a little common sense a lot of groups decide not to use them.

I allow advantages to just modify with strength without having to worry about different strength levels but then I use common sense of the effect would be above the damage class For the game I just say no.

For example in a fantasy game with a 45 ap cap I would just allow it as long as it did not bring it above 2d6 HKA.

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I require it for relatively constant things like STR (and I was hoping for some help with martial arts), but not for situationals like haymaker or getting a beneficial spell cast on you.

 

For the martial art that gives +2 DC, how many active points is that considered for applying the naked advantage against? The cost of the maneuver, the cost of 2 DC (8), the cost of 10 str (10)?

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I completely understand the player's aversion to having to compute the extra Damage Classes that STR and Martial Arts add when there is an advantage applied to the base attack, although you might point out that he really only needs to compute that once and just write it down.  But in my experience naked advantages can easily go overboard if you don't enforce point caps, so you have to be careful.  The issue again is balance.  This is especially true in a fantasy setting where most characters don't pay any points for equipment, so a spell with a small number of active points can have a big impact; consider that for 5 points the character could buy a "phantom knife" spell that does 1 pip HKA or they could make their 1d6+1 HKA long sword armor piercing.  Which spell do you suppose will the character use most of the time?

 

If you allow the naked advantage in a power framework, I would suggest the following.  First, the base naked advantage can only affect one attack, in this case a single weapon.  If the character wants to be able to use it on any weapon, put a +½ Advantage "Useable on any attack", similar to the advantage applied to Aids that need to be used on different characteristics.  Second, the naked advantage should not be considered inherently Continuous.  The player can buy it as such if they want with the appropriate advantage, or they can recast the spell each phase they want their sword to be armor piercing.  That will allow the player to customize the spell to the way they want it without getting it too cheaply.

 

Just as a bit of background, a similar situation came up in a game I was running in which one player had a storm mage with a lightning bolt (straight RKA) and another had pyromancer with a spell that make his weapons flaming (RKA, only to add to other attacks).  Initially I didn't look too closely at it, and the flaming weapon spell was bought just as a vanilla RKA with the trivial limitation that it could only add to other attacks (including punches).  Since the player envisioned it as continuous, the character only cast it once at the beginning of a combat even though he didn't pay for Continuous.  It quickly became apparent the flaming weapon spell was more effective than the lightning bolt in most cases, which ticked off the storm mage player since he had paid more points for the lightning bolt spell.  Ultimately I made the pyromancer player recast the flaming weapons spell each phase, and he eventually bought it as Continuous to match his conception which mollified the storm mage somewhat, although the lightning bolt spell was still more expensive.

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I completely understand the player's aversion to having to compute the extra Damage Classes that STR and Martial Arts add when there is an advantage applied to the base attack, although you might point out that he really only needs to compute that once and just write it down.  But in my experience naked advantages can easily go overboard if you don't enforce point caps, so you have to be careful.  The issue again is balance.  This is especially true in a fantasy setting where most characters don't pay any points for equipment, so a spell with a small number of active points can have a big impact; consider that for 5 points the character could buy a "phantom knife" spell that does 1 pip HKA or they could make their 1d6+1 HKA long sword armor piercing.  Which spell do you suppose will the character use most of the time?

 

If you allow the naked advantage in a power framework, I would suggest the following.  First, the base naked advantage can only affect one attack, in this case a single weapon.  If the character wants to be able to use it on any weapon, put a +½ Advantage "Useable on any attack", similar to the advantage applied to Aids that need to be used on different characteristics.  Second, the naked advantage should not be considered inherently Continuous.  The player can buy it as such if they want with the appropriate advantage, or they can recast the spell each phase they want their sword to be armor piercing.  That will allow the player to customize the spell to the way they want it without getting it too cheaply.

 

Just as a bit of background, a similar situation came up in a game I was running in which one player had a storm mage with a lightning bolt (straight RKA) and another had pyromancer with a spell that make his weapons flaming (RKA, only to add to other attacks).  Initially I didn't look too closely at it, and the flaming weapon spell was bought just as a vanilla RKA with the trivial limitation that it could only add to other attacks (including punches).  Since the player envisioned it as continuous, the character only cast it once at the beginning of a combat even though he didn't pay for Continuous.  It quickly became apparent the flaming weapon spell was more effective than the lightning bolt in most cases, which ticked off the storm mage player since he had paid more points for the lightning bolt spell.  Ultimately I made the pyromancer player recast the flaming weapons spell each phase, and he eventually bought it as Continuous to match his conception which mollified the storm mage somewhat, although the lightning bolt spell was still more expensive.

 

Note that in post #6 I posted a link to an old 5e thread about creating a flaming sword spell.

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I know there is a way to do it but I've never bothered to figure it out.  I usually just note the prorated value that they add to the attack with advantages (see the VPP HA slots on my version of Flash for an example of this).

 

However, I am pretty sure the 60 active point method I used above should be equivalent to purchasing AP on the maneuvers and Martial DC's individually.

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Without looking at HSMA (but I think it gets to the same place), I would say that an added DC is 5 AP with some series of invisible modifiers applied to get the end cost, so an advantage to enhance those DC's is based on the same 5 point per DC cost.

 

A search of the Rules Question forum pulls up the exact question of how naked advantages are applied to martial arts http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/89119-naked-advantages-and-martial-arts/?hl=%2Bmartial+%2Barts+%2Badvantage.  The example even uses 12d6 being granted the AP advantage.

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I hate posting from a cell

I postal most exclusively from my cell phone and use voice to text because it's so much faster. Unfortunately some of the stuff that comes out a lot of times has me going to go back and correct it. While being embarrassed about it. That includes this post

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Thanks for the help on that. I'll look into it when I have my books around.

 

As to the naked advantage and power frameworks--what is it about naked advantage that is considered the overpowered part? I can create a power which adds base damage to my sword blows, which might violate perceived power levels and need GM arbiting. Why is adding advantages considered so powerful as to require the exclamation mark?

 

Again, I'm the GM, so I'm the one who has to look for abuses and I'm not afraid to do so. However, I'm curious as to the why of the naked advantage warning and if anyone else has meddled with it and how it turned out.

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Thanks for the help on that. I'll look into it when I have my books around.

 

As to the naked advantage and power frameworks--what is it about naked advantage that is considered the overpowered part? I can create a power which adds base damage to my sword blows, which might violate perceived power levels and need GM arbiting. Why is adding advantages considered so powerful as to require the exclamation mark?

 

Again, I'm the GM, so I'm the one who has to look for abuses and I'm not afraid to do so. However, I'm curious as to the why of the naked advantage warning and if anyone else has meddled with it and how it turned out.

The simple way without any problems and concerns is to just buy a power with the advantage and "Focus of Opportunity" into the power Framework. Aside from perhaps the limitation value, the GM would not even need to look twice at that.

 

People that choose the naked advantage, consider getting an advantage from that (no pun intended).

Naked advantages save a ton of points.

Naked advantages in a power framework save a lot of points twice.

The primary balancing factor of powers in power frameworks are the Active Points. Naked advantages have a very low Active Point Signature. So in addition to saving a lot of points twice it also counters the primary balancing system of power Frameworks.

Hence it is something the GM really has to look at to avoid issues with the balance.

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If you are playing in a Heroic game where equipment is free the HKA means you can do the damage of short sword with your bare hands (2d6+1 with a 20 STR). Pretty impressive. The Naked Advantage on the other hand can turn any weapon you pick up into an Armor Piercing weapon. If you are a battle axe swinging barbarian that could easily have you dishing out 3-4d6 of armor piercing Killing Damage for 15 points. Seems pretty different to me.

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If you are playing in a Heroic game where equipment is free the HKA means you can do the damage of short sword with your bare hands (2d6+1 with a 20 STR). Pretty impressive. The Naked Advantage on the other hand can turn any weapon you pick up into an Armor Piercing weapon. If you are a battle axe swinging barbarian that could easily have you dishing out 3-4d6 of armor piercing Killing Damage for 15 points. Seems pretty different to me.

You're not explaining why.

 

Again, using the 60 active point power example.

I can add 15 points of extra damage and it's okay.

I can add 15 points of armor piercing and it is not.

Why?

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