champions 6th Armor Piercing vs Penetrating

[Christopher R Taylor]

And for your friends: Mental Defense, usable by another 1 point.  Aid 1d6 impenetrable Mental Defense, fades 5 points per day; 20 points total, can give everyone you want mental defense of up to 5 points impenetrable, for a day.

 

Of course, your GM will probably beat you with a rubber chicken and rip up your character in front of you for cheesing the system so hard, but some sacrifices must be made

[Grailknight]

9 hours ago, Tom Cowan said:

it is the Penetrating (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Cumulative (384 points; +2) that make it good.  Hit once out of combat, pay the END for each action for 192 rounds (speed 2 not in combat type speed) or less then 40 mins then let the madness start (well, after a few days with no sleep).  Mental Defense is normally zero or good and Penetrating slips 1 point through even if the hero has 25 MD

 

8 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

You do realize that would take 10 phases to be able to affect a normal person with 6 points of mental defense with the most basic of effects (base EGO). Unless you are a speedster mentalist it will take you about two turns to have an effect. And they will know you are attacking them so they can nail you for a couple of turns before you have any effect. And if they manager to get you to stop your attack for even one phase, perhaps by stunning you or forcing you to take a defensive action, you have to start all over.

 

So, while it might look good on paper, for reality, it is pretty useless.

 

8 hours ago, Tom Cowan said:

hmm, that is way you have the IPE - inobvious to target

 

7 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

Still, the chances of you getting anything of value before something happens and ends your attack is pretty high, If the mentalist is distracted in any way, or loses sight of the target, plus a number of other things. And that 10 phases were only for the most basic of effects. If you want to have any high range affects you will have to spend two, three, or even four times as long. 

 

It's off topic, but you wouldn't use Penetrating or Armor Piercing for this type of effect. You'd use Damage Over Time with the target only gets Defense once bump.

9 hours ago, Tom Cowan said:

it is the Penetrating (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Cumulative (384 points; +2) that make it good.  Hit once out of combat, pay the END for each action for 192 rounds (speed 2 not in combat type speed) or less then 40 mins then let the madness start (well, after a few days with no sleep).  Mental Defense is normally zero or good and Penetrating slips 1 point through even if the hero has 25 MD

 

8 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

You do realize that would take 10 phases to be able to affect a normal person with 6 points of mental defense with the most basic of effects (base EGO). Unless you are a speedster mentalist it will take you about two turns to have an effect. And they will know you are attacking them so they can nail you for a couple of turns before you have any effect. And if they manager to get you to stop your attack for even one phase, perhaps by stunning you or forcing you to take a defensive action, you have to start all over.

 

So, while it might look good on paper, for reality, it is pretty useless.

 

8 hours ago, Tom Cowan said:

hmm, that is way you have the IPE - inobvious to target

 

7 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

Still, the chances of you getting anything of value before something happens and ends your attack is pretty high, If the mentalist is distracted in any way, or loses sight of the target, plus a number of other things. And that 10 phases were only for the most basic of effects. If you want to have any high range affects you will have to spend two, three, or even four times as long. 

 

It's off topic, but you wouldn't use Penetrating or Armor Piercing for this type of effect. You'd use Damage Over Time with the target only gets Defense once bump.

[Tech]

Always, always hated that Penetrating was too effective in one area.  It allows Stun Damage to get through defenses, same for KA - fine. However, my group has always thought that the advantage that gives it a bonus of doing BOD damage with it, bypasses the need to buy the advantage "Does BODY".  It should be rebuilt where all attacks do Stun Damage with an advantage that it does BOD damage. Our group just uses it at +1/2 for Stun Damage and never does BOD damage unless you bought the DOES BODY advantage.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Tech

[Hugh Neilson]

OK, if we're allowing unlimited advantage stacking, I'm bringing in Margarita Man (he should be putting in an appearing in honour of the late Jimmy Buffett anyway).

 

Quote

 

Margarita Man

 

1d6 Mind Scan, Cumulative (+1/2), 6 doublings of maximum (+1 3/4), Penetrating x 4 (+2), 0 END (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Invisible Power Effects: Not detectable by mental awareness (+1/4); Target Effect is Invisible to Target (+1/2) 34 AP

 

1d6 Mental Illusions, Cumulative (+1/2), Cumulative (+1/2), 6 doublings of maximum (+1 1/2), Penetrating x 4 (+2), 0 END (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Invisible Power Effects: Not detectable by mental awareness (+1/4); Target Effect is Invisible to Target (+1/2) 34 AP

 

1d6 Mind Control, Cumulative (+1/2), 6 doublings of maximum (+1 1/2), Penetrating x 4 (+2), 0 END (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Invisible Power Effects: Not detectable by mental awareness (+1/4); Target Effect is Invisible to Target (+1/2) Telepathic (+1/4) 35 AP

 

1d6 Telepathy, Cumulative (+1/2), 6 doublings of maximum (+1 1/2), Penetrating x 4 (+2), 0 END (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Invisible Power Effects: Not detectable by mental awareness (+1/4); Target Effect is Invisible to Target (+1/2) 34 AP

 

Margarita Man sits on the beach on a tropical island sipping margaritas. No one knows who he really is. He rolls Mind Scan to locate his target. He keeps rolling until he gets a '3', as he'll need it to weed out the target from the rest of the Earth's population. At his assumed SPD 2, he gets 10 rolls a minute, so this takes about 22 minutes on average. Call it half an hour.

 

Once he hits, he rolls 1d6 per phase to add to his effect of, say, Ego +100 (full effects and -20 to the breakout roll). If the target lacks mental defense and has a 40 Ego, this will average 40 phases, or about 4 minutes at SPD 2. If the target has mental defense, it will take about 14 minutes at SPD 2. If the target has quadruple hardened mental defenses, he's immune.

 

That makes about 45 minutes, tops. MM now selects from Telepathy, Mind Control and Mental Illusions, with a combined attack for two or all three if desired. Now he can attack the target with impunity (unless the target makes a breakout roll, which is not technically impossible - 3's happen on occasion. If so, he starts again, but first he orders another margarita).

 

He takes another half hour or so to roll a 3 and get a lock. After that, another 15 minutes or less places the target at Ego +120 for a combination of effect and penalties to the breakout roll. These hit a lot quicker normally, since they don't have the modifiers for scanning large areas, but take the same time to build up to the appropriate level of success. Longer if he wants to cover his tracks so the target thinks his actions were his own idea. The target already has no idea he was affected by a mental power thanks to Invisible Power Effects.

 

Maybe he wants to get the full 384 point maximum (so that 30 EGO master villain with Mental Defenses will be caught at Ego +50 and -60 to the breakout roll after 384 phases – that takes almost 40 minutes, though. He could, I suppose, use Rapid Attack to sped up the process, but that takes a full phase – that means he can’t sip his margarita!

 

No one can detect his attacks due to his Invisible Power Effects. Once he selects a target, it's only a matter of time. If the target has quadruple hardened mental defenses, he'll get someone else to go kill that brainshielded freak. Or spend some xp adding more Penetrating levels.

 

He's a pretty standard Mentalist, except that he's slow and lacks an Ego Attack to do direct damage. And he has over 250 points left to buy other things. I'm thinking perhaps a [tropical island] base and some very loyal followers [who have good margarita-making skills] might be useful.

 

Actually, he could spend some of those point to have a 140 point Variable Power Pool of Mental Powers so he could have an array of other abilities instead of his standard "slow but steady" power suite. That would let him have Mental Paralysis if he wants, or a big Mental Blast. He could be quite the powerhouse - if he weren't content to lay on the beach, sip margaritas and bend targets to his will slowly, but surely. Are you SURE he isn't in your head right now?

 

 

So, let's assume that we are not allowing unlimited advantage stacking, nor massive boosts to the typical AP/DC limits.

 

22 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I don't really feel like it but its probably worth doing a number crunch of comparison between normal, AP, and penetrating attacks to see how effective each is across a range of attacks. 

 

I'll do some basic math.

 

12 DC is 8d6 Penetrating and 9 1/2d6 AP compared to a 12d6 unadvantaged attack.

 

If my opponent has 25 defenses, I'll average 8 STUN penetrating, 20 STUN AP or 17 STUN normal.  If the target has hardened defenses, AP drops to 8 STUN.  This seems pretty comparable at average defenses.  Bump AP to +1/2 and it either does 15 STUN or 3 STUN.  Stick to the normal attack.

 

If my opponent has 35 defenses, I'll average 8 STUN penetrating, 15 STUN AP or 9 STUN normal.  If the target has hardened defenses, AP does no 8 STUN on average.  This seems reasonable as well.  Bump AP to +1/2 and it either does 10 STUN or nothing.  Stick to the normal attack.

 

If my opponent has 15 defenses, I'll average 13 STUN penetrating, 25 STUN AP or 27 STUN normal.  If the target has hardened defenses, AP drops to 18 STUN.  The normal attack ooutperforms at low defenses.  Bump AP to +1/2 and it either does 20 STUN or 13 STUN, a bigger advantage to the normal attack.

 

I haven't sold myself one way or the other on Penetrating, but if AP is to be useful, +1/4 is the right advantage.

 

22 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 I am going by instinct here but my guess is that it will be shown that without a lot of other advantages stacked on (some, like autofire being quite expensive due to the +1 advantage adder) its not really a very effective advantage even at +¼.  Which is why you rarely see it actually in any published or private builds, in my observation.

 

 

I think your instincts are accurate. If we dropped Penetrating to +1/4, would it matter?  Now it's 9.5 STUN on average except for low defense targets (15 in my example).  It lacks any volatility.  However, if you want to do BOD, a Penetrating KA is much more effective than any other possibility I can think of in any game with universal resistant defenses. It's also a nice advantage for agents, as already mentioned, so they can trickle a little damage with their lower DC attacks.  I'd call it a much more niche advantage.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Hugh Neilson

[Christopher R Taylor]

By the way I was mistaken about Autofire + Penetrating; the 6th edition rules don't require a +1 advantage surcharge for AP or Penetrating, only for attacks vs non-standard defenses (mental defense, etc).  There is a GM's cloak rule which might include AP for some builds:

 

Quote

Similarly, if the GM believes a Power with Autofire would be extremely useful or likely to unbalance the game at its normal cost, he may increase the cost by +1 (or more).

 

I think it was a 5th edition rule to kick up autofire with armor piercing and penetrating?

 

Quote

I think your instincts are accurate. If we dropped Penetrating to +1/4, would it matter?  Now it's 9.5 STUN on average except for low defense targets (15 in my example).

 

With your analysis, a +¼ for penetrating would definitely bring the damage up closer to just buying more dice (for normal attacks) but it would be probably too cheap for killing attacks which again suggests a two-part cost structure.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[BoloOfEarth]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

OK, if we're allowing unlimited advantage stacking, I'm bringing in Margarita Man (he should be putting in an appearing in honour of the late Jimmy Buffett anyway).

 

FWIW, I brought up Margarita Man about 6 posts prior to yours, albeit with a link rather than a quote.

 

17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Of course, your GM will probably beat you with a rubber chicken and rip up your character in front of you for cheesing the system so hard, but some sacrifices must be made

 

And now I need to add a rubber chicken to my GM toolkit.

Edited September 20, 2023 by BoloOfEarth

[Duke Bushido]

14 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

And now I need to add a rubber chicken to my GM toolkit.

 

 

Good luck!

 

Every one I have seen for the past 30 years has been either plastic or vinyl.   

 

 

[Gauntlet]

12 hours ago, Grailknight said:

It's off topic, but you wouldn't use Penetrating or Armor Piercing for this type of effect. You'd use Damage Over Time with the target only gets Defense once bump.

 

Oh, I definitely agree with you.

[Gauntlet]

6 hours ago, Tech said:

Always, always hated that Penetrating was too effective in one area.  It allows Stun Damage to get through defenses, same for KA - fine. However, my group has always thought that the advantage that gives it a bonus of doing BOD damage with it, bypasses the need to buy the advantage "Does BODY".  It should be rebuilt where all attacks do Stun Damage with an advantage that it does BOD damage. Our group just uses it at +1/2 for Stun Damage and never does BOD damage unless you bought the DOES BODY advantage.

 

One thing, Penetrating does not replace the Does BODY advantage. If your have an NND Killing Attack it still requires Does BODY to do BODY, the Penetrating advantage does not change that.

 

The other problem is with Penetrating doing only STUN is that you have to put 7.5 points on each die to get one stun, or you can pay 2.5 points on a normal attack and get one stun per die. 

[Hugh Neilson]

5 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

FWIW, I brought up Margarita Man about 6 posts prior to yours, albeit with a link rather than a quote.

 

 

 Infamous...wow, I like that!  Were it not for Jimmy, I probably would have used a link as well

 

4 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

 

One thing, Penetrating does not replace the Does BODY advantage. If your have an NND Killing Attack it still requires Does BODY to do BODY, the Penetrating advantage does not change that.

 

I believe the point is that Penetrating is an NND, Impenetrable Defenses, Does BOD, incorporated into a KA.

 

3d6KA, Penetrating costs 67 points and will get 3 BOD average 3 BOD through every time on average, plus the regular KA. A 1d6 KA, NND, Does BOD costs 60 and will average 3.5 BOD through.  Pretty comparable.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Hugh Neilson

[steriaca]

21 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Good luck!

 

Every one I have seen for the past 30 years has been either plastic or vinyl.   

 

 

Ask Sevnghoolie where he gets his.

[Gauntlet]

17 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I believe the point is that Penetrating is an NND, Impenetrable Defenses, Does BOD, incorporated into a KA.

 

I wouldn't go that far. Penetrating can do a little BODY Damage, average of 1 and maximum of 2, while NND Does BODY means the target takes whatever is rolled. Now if you want to say that Penetrating is like the unregistered infant of NND, then that would be more like it. 😁

[LoneWolf]

The real value of penetrating is on killing attacks.  If we take Hugh’s attacks and defenses against a killing attack and resistant defenses against a similar killing attack we get different results.  For defenses 10 resistant defense costs about the same as 15 PD, 16 is about 25 and 22 works out to be about the same as 35.   For the killing attack the normal will be a 4d6, the AP a 3d6+1 and the PEN will be a 2 1/2d6.   VS the normal attack does 4 points to the DEF 10, and no damage to the 16 DEF or 22 DEF.  The AP does 7 points to the 10 DEF,   4 points vs the 16 DEF and 1 point to the 22 DEF.  The penetrating attack will do 2 points of damage vs any DEF.  

 

 If we look at a low powered attack against the same DEF the PEN is the story is different.  At 30 points the normal attack becomes a 2d6, the AP becomes a 1 ½ d6 and the penetrating is 1d6+1.   The normal attack and the AP attack will on the average fail to get any BODY through.   The normal attack has a 5% chance of getting damage through the DEF 10 and no chance on the other two DEF.  The AP attack will get at least 1 BODY through as long as it rolls above average and about a 3% chance to get BODY through the DEF 16, and cannot harm the 22 DEF.   The PEN attack will usually get 1 BODY through on any attack.  This type of attack is perfect for delivering other attacks.  For example, a 1d6+1 penetrating killing attack could be used to deliver a poison to its target.   

 

Penetrating is a complicated advantage.  It is actually more effective at lower level and under specific circumstances.  In those cases it can become very effective, but outside of that it is not as efficient as other attacks.   Because it is not as efficient as AP under most circumstances impenetrable is probably going to be less common than hardened.   In a strange way the higher cost becomes justification for the higher cost.  If it was cheaper it would become more common which would mean the defense would be more common and its value would be less.  
 

[Gauntlet]

So you are saying that Penetrating needs to be a higher value advantage because they gave it its own defense type in 6e. I can understand that but also feel that Hardened should go back to being a defense against both Armor Piercing and Penetrating. 

[LoneWolf]

I would say that penetrating being more expensive and having its own defense makes it worth the extra cost.  It’s kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

 

Making hardened the defense against both actually makes penetrating worth less and almost worthless.  It also weakens armor piercing at the same time.  When it protects against both it becomes too effective and means that any player with at least moderate system mastery will probably end up hardening their defenses, which means if you want an armor piercing attack you are going to need to take it twice. 
 

[Opal]

I'm not that familiar with 6th, so just a tad shocked at AP being 1/4 

 

It does remind me of a very early realization, that, for attacks, there were two distinct types of advantages.  Those, like AP or NND that made them hit harder, and those like Explosion, Autofire, or even reduced END, that let them hit more.  And, that it wasn't quite right that it wasn't quite right that a 4d NND AE cost the same as a 6d N AE.  

Some edition made Reduced END a "power modifier" that was applied after all advantages.  Maybe AE & Autofire needed a similar treatment...

[unclevlad]

The reason AP is only 1/4 is because 6E wants you to think in DCs for damage...NOT dice.  For a 12 DC game, a 12d6 attack averages 42.  Total defenses might be 28 or so.  You'd take 14.  If it's AP, then you get 9d6 against half the defenses.  That's 31 against 14 DEF, or about 17 getting through.

 

Generally, somewhere around 1/2 to 2/3 of the dice are used to saturate the defenses;  whatever's left is what deals the damage to the target.  AP is lowering those defenses...but that's also being offset by losing dice from the actual damage dealers.

 

The tone of general comments is that the mindset for the earlier editions is limiting things mostly by the dice...not necessarily thinking 12d6 AP is too much for a 12d6 game.

 

Plus, hardened is cheap.  AP is probably +1/2 in 5E due to KAs.  We're noting that Penetrating is a Baby NND;  against KAs, so is AP, ESPECIALLY since the the implicit model for supers is NOT killing.  AP Killing attacks are *lethal.*

 

NNDs...always remember that they are, as they say, all or nothing.  In 5E, they're very, very badly defined;  there's no reason NOT to go to something exotic, since it's the same cost regardless of the frequency of defenses.  (I actually changed my 5E HD to use 6E AVAD rules.)

[Opal]

 

 

On 9/24/2023 at 1:09 PM, unclevlad said:

The tone of general comments is that the mindset for the earlier editions is limiting things mostly by the dice...not necessarily thinking 12d6 AP is too much for a 12d6 game.

That is absolutely bizarre.

 

And I dont see how, even if anyone thought an 18 DC attack was 12 DC because of the dice, that misperception would be helped by discounting it to the cost of a 15 DC attack. 

[Gauntlet]

I have always considered the limitation to be based on the points of the attack, not the dice.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

The reason AP is only 1/4 is because 6E wants you to think in DCs for damage...NOT dice.

 

The main reason is that they playtested out the cost, then crunched a bunch of numbers and discovered that at +½ advantage you were almost always better off buying more dice than the advantage.  It was only in very limited, specific kinds of builds that it was worth it at a half advantage.

 

Similarly, I believe that this thread has proven that Penetration is only worth +¼ with normal attacks and +½ for KA.  But it was never really examined when 6th edition was put out.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[Gauntlet]

49 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Similarly, I believe that this thread has proven that Penetration is only worth +¼ with normal attacks and +½ for KA.  But it was never really lexamined when 6th edition was put out.

 

I think that Penetration would only need to be a +¼ advantage with KA as well as while it does do BODY, it does it basically as 1 BODY for 15 points rather than 1 STUN for 5 points.

[Grailknight]

1 hour ago, Gauntlet said:

 

I think that Penetration would only need to be a +¼ advantage with KA as well as while it does do BODY, it does it basically as 1 BODY for 15 points rather than 1 STUN for 5 points.

 

Possibly true balance wise but remember this game is played, not scripted. There can be sessions with incredibly skewed die rolls and an unintentional character death could result. Remember, Penetrating does 1 BODY per die on average. Lowering the price ups the number of dice rolled, making it more deadly, and that is usually undesirable in Supers.

[Tom Cowan]

32 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

Possibly true balance wise but remember this game is played, not scripted. There can be sessions with incredibly skewed die rolls and an unintentional character death could result. Remember, Penetrating does 1 BODY per die on average. Lowering the price ups the number of dice rolled, making it more deadly, and that is usually undesirable in Supers.

Well, even a 10d Penetrating killing attack's max Penetrating BODY is 20.  At that point the max 60 BODY of the killing attack would likely be deadly too. (Got 40r def to lower the body to 20?)

Penetrating attacks are normally for low and slow, not one and done. 

Edited September 29, 2023 by Tom Cowan

[Gauntlet]

1 hour ago, Grailknight said:

 

Possibly true balance wise but remember this game is played, not scripted. There can be sessions with incredibly skewed die rolls and an unintentional character death could result. Remember, Penetrating does 1 BODY per die on average. Lowering the price ups the number of dice rolled, making it more deadly, and that is usually undesirable in Supers.

 

In over 20 years of playing hero, I have never seen Penetrating cause much damage to the target. Now Armor Piercing on the other hand...

[Grailknight]

42 minutes ago, Tom Cowan said:

Well, even a 10d Penetrating killing attack's max Penetrating BODY is 20.  At that point the max 60 BODY of the killing attack would likely be deadly too. (Got 40r def to lower the body to 20?)

Penetrating attacks are normally for low and slow, not one and done. 

 

Well, that's 37 DC if Penetrating is a +1/4 advantage and 45 DC if it is +1/2. The only genre I've seen that I might place at that level is anime akin to DBZ.

 

And yes, you want Penetrating to be a +1/2 advantage on killing damage at the low end of the power scale. Entangles give you some DEF against AP attacks but they are transparent to Penetrating. Barriers generally fall faster also. Since AP is only 1/2 the cost on Penetrating, Hardened is slightly more than twice as common as Impenetrable. I like the balance but YMMV.

7 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

 

In over 20 years of playing hero, I have never seen Penetrating cause much damage to the target. Now Armor Piercing on the other hand...

 

And there our experiences differ. I've seen STUN from AP and rarely BODY. Penetrating KA's have been the cause of far more BODY damage over that same span.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Grailknight