Cutting through a tree

[Steve]

How would one build the ability to cut through a tree in a single blow? Is it just having enough damage dice, or would it involve an advantage like Armor Piercing?

 

I was watching Blue Eye Samurai, and there are scenes where Mizu slices through a thick tree trunk (and others where bisecting armored humans happens).

 

Is this just a matter of having a lot of damage dice, or is something else going on?

[Ninja-Bear]

My initial thought was High DC with AP and maybe x2 AP for Hardened. Then I was going to suggest the ever unpopular and cheesy EDM-at least for  the tree only. But I think a reasonable build might be Drain Body as Drains bypass DEF normally. A high Drain should cut the tree in a punch. 

[unclevlad]

But you'd need a lot of Drain, and that's seriously expensive.  

 

I think a tree probably has 0 rPD...but give it 50 or 75% resistant DR.  Or possibly Negation.  You can take a chunk out, but not a BIG chunk...that's the fibrous structure, it doesn't allow damage to carry through.  Ergo...DR.

 

Note that this apples cutting *across* the grain, not so much with the grain.  It's also a lot higher when the wood's green, which obviously it is when it's growing.  Even using a chainsaw to cut through a 3-4" branch takes a bit...altho admittedly mine's a rather small one.  The big tank loggers' chainsaws make quick work of things.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Is this just a matter of having a lot of damage dice, or is something else going on?

 

You could in theory do it with tunneling, dig a hole through the tree the width of the trunk and voila, it falls. 

 

The thing is, the rules aren't precise about dealing damage to objects like trees.  You have two choices in the rules: things that break and are ruined, and walls that are breached.  For the ruined things, reducing the Body to 0 results in a broken machine that doesn't work any more.  For the wall, reducing the body to 0 creates a 2m x 1m ("human sized") hole.  

 

I interpret this to mean that you deal with objects by 2m square areas; you haven't knocked down the entire Great Wall of China by blowing a "human sized" hole in it, just this one section.  You can break a crane by damaging this 2m area where the controls or engine or the base of the crane arm, etc.

 

So if you want to knock down a tree, you have to do enough body damage to the section (or sections) of tree you're at to break it all the way through the trunk.  This might take a few attacks to take down a Sequoia, for instance, but for most trees, one 2x2 meter area is sufficient.  The entire tree hasn't been turned into wood chips, just that section, which causes it to fall.

 

But a tree definitely has resistant PD; anyone who has chopped wood knows this for certain.  Quite a bit of it, actually, given how hard you have to swing an axe (dealing killing damage) to cut though a log, even with the grain.  In the rules, a tree is given 4-5 rPD and 3-4 rED (fire bad).  The Body total ranges from 5 to 11 to get through a 2m area.  That might be a bit low, in my estimation.

Edited January 1 by Christopher R Taylor

[unclevlad]

You can call it rPD, you can also call it Damage Reduction or Negation.  

 

Thing is, if it's just rPD, then high damage blows through it.  Did you ever catch those ESPN lumberjack competitions?  Strong guys with axes, and with skills.  They'd go through that wood...pretty quickly, but most individual strikes didn't remove that much.  That's why I lean to Reduction first, as the main factor, then maybe with some rPD.  

 

When we were taking down a LOT of trees...with chainsaws, but the principle is the same...you don't cut through, you cut a wedge out of the side, and let gravity do the rest.  These were typically...gosh, probably 8 to 15 inch pines, and sometimes spruces...beetle or moth kills.

 

But I'm probably overthinking the real-world aspects.  Blue Eyed Samurai seems likely anime-inspired, so the spectacular and dramatic shouldn't be impeded by mundane reality.  As such, it may be primarily *narrative* rather than quantitative.  The SFX of slicing through something particularly solid, are typically that the weapon's moving MUCH too fast to see.  As such, the material literally has no time to resist.  So...hmm...

 

--combine Drain rPD (or apply Reduced Negation, if you want to go with Damage Negation instead of rPD) in combination with the KA.

--an odd take...use a Tunneling basis?  I've seen real-world videos where katanas cut bamboo...that's somewhat different, but perhaps a good model.  Similarly, in anime, the swordsman doesn't just cut the object...he cuts THROUGH it.  And the hapless minions.  It's HARD to do that, because at least in part, it's VERY hard to maintain blade speed through the object's resistance.

 

I definitely prefer the Drain rPD to Drain Body, conceptually at least.

[Steve]

Well, in looking at the basic numbers, a medium tree has 5 DEF and 8 BOD, so an attack of 4d6 HKA (average of 14) should be able to slice through its trunk, or maybe a 3d6 HKA (average 10.5) with Armor Piercing. She didn't seem to be pushing STR and was instead showing extreme focus in her skill.

 

Samurai armor is listed as topping out at 6 DEF in most locations (with sleeves and greaves only being 4), so mook samurai types in armor would be about as hard to cut through as a medium tree.

 

I don't recall her cutting through a really huge tree trunk or metal armored men during the series, so a purchase of one die of the Weaponmaster Talent would seem to suffice. Then either buy a second die or add in a Naked Advantage of Armor Piercing with a sword for up to 45 Active Points of attack would seem to work.

 

That would put Mizu in the Powerful Hero category at a bare minimum, but far more likely a Very Powerful Hero.

 

 

[LoneWolf]

Trees don’t have that much resistant DEF so a high enough attack will probably do the job.  DEF 5 is not that hard to overcome with a high dice attack.  A character able to cut through trees probably has martial arts, weapon master and skill levels to boost the damage. Most of the melee focused Fantasy Hero charters I have seen can usually get around 5d6 damage with a decent weapon.  They usually have to put everything to damage to do so.  Considering a tree is going to be DCV 0 that should not be a problem.  

 

For cutting people in half a critical hit on a high dice attack can probably kill a lot of characters outright.  When that happens, it could easily be narrated as cutting the target in half.   
 

[Ninja-Bear]

I would think to do this regularly and with your description of concentration, she has + XD6 of Set Effect (I might be mistaken on the correct thing here.) with Concentration as a Limitation.  Whoops, just remembered that most of the martial art sourcebooks would have this as an Aid. Still she concentrates on the tree and can do extra damage. It would be harder to do against soldiers but not impossible. 

[Steve]

I’m not sure if Aid would be needed, but I suppose it could be a possible way to write her abilities.

 

Even injured, she kept pushing her way through many enemy soldiers. Limbs were being hacked off and armored men had significant amounts of body mass sliced through.

 

Mizu is a character of extreme focus on seeking revenge, and I was reminded of John Wick or the Bride from Kill Bill in her extremely devoted pursuit of her revenge.

[LoneWolf]

The way I would build it would be to give her an offensive strike and add 2 HTH DC to the marital art.  Also take weapon mastery and 6 or more skill levels.  The offensive strike and weapon mastery will add 9 DC to the sword and the skill levels bring that up to 12 DC.  That adds 4d6 Killing damage to the sword.  A Katana should be doing at least 1 1/2d6 damage base.  A character like this probably has a magic or extraordinary weapon so is probably doing 2d6 damage.  That puts the damage to 6d6 killing damage. 

 

You don’t need to use Aid or drain or any other strange abilities.  The raw damage is going to mean on the average this character is hewing through a lot of things.    
 

[Ninja-Bear]

5 hours ago, LoneWolf said: 

 

You don’t need to use Aid or drain or any other strange abilities.  The raw damage is going to mean on the average this character is hewing through a lot of things.    
 

That’s the problem-on average. I suggest the Aid but really should be a +x Set Effect to avoid a low roll. 

[LoneWolf]

Why should this be completely reliable?  Does the character always cut through trees and people with each blow?  I have not watched the show so cannot say, but I don’t see something like this as being 100% reliable.  The probability of rolling less than 15 on 5d6 is about 22%, on 6d6 that drop to about 6%.  

 

This ability is supposed to represent a character so skilled they can cut down their foes with ease.  That should not be something that is automatic.  The character should have a chance to miss and also have a chance that they do not instantly kill their opponent.  As a GM I would veto any power that killed an opponent with no chance of failure.  
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

The way I would build it would be to give her an offensive strike and add 2 HTH DC to the marital art.  Also take weapon mastery and 6 or more skill levels.  The offensive strike and weapon mastery will add 9 DC to the sword and the skill levels bring that up to 12 DC.  That adds 4d6 Killing damage to the sword.  A Katana should be doing at least 1 1/2d6 damage base.  A character like this probably has a magic or extraordinary weapon so is probably doing 2d6 damage.  That puts the damage to 6d6 killing damage. 

 

I just want to go on record here as finding this horrific and shocking.  Anyone doing 18 damage classes in a heroic game has really lost the plot in my book.

[Ninja-Bear]

19 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

Why should this be completely reliable?  Does the character always cut through trees and people with each blow?  I have not watched the show so cannot say, but I don’t see something like this as being 100% reliable.  The probability of rolling less than 15 on 5d6 is about 22%, on 6d6 that drop to about 6%.  

 

This ability is supposed to represent a character so skilled they can cut down their foes with ease.  That should not be something that is automatic.  The character should have a chance to miss and also have a chance that they do not instantly kill their opponent.  As a GM I would veto any power that killed an opponent with no chance of failure.  
 

So… you don’t allow Super Stealth? Invisibility vs Hearing or Super Climbing? Clinging Power? And I never automatic neither. I said Aid (which is never absolute which is why the Martial books usually suggest it) to bolster a die roll to help eliminate low rolls. But then what’s the difference because as you say, buy up enough Killing DC and the law of Large numbers should eliminate missing a roll. I offered a different way to achieve what YOU are suggesting. So if I’m wrong then so are you.

[LoneWolf]

@Christopher R Taylor keep in mind that to achieve that they are putting everything into damage.  Chances are their OCV and DCV are going to be pretty low.  A starting character is not going to be able to achieve this but one with a decent amount of XP and good loot can.  I have seen a few characters able to achieve this in games that had been running for a while.  Sometimes the character who can do this is an NPC that the players are going up against.  

 

@Ninja-Bear.  I may have come off a little harsh, but my main point is that you don’t need to use gimmicks to achieve what the player wants.  It also depends on what exactly the player wants the ability to be able to do.  

 

If the ability is just about cutting down trees and will not be used in combat vs other creatures, I have no objection to it always working.  For that type of power, I would simply purchase a few extra dice of killing attack and apply the standard effect on those dice, and by special effect allow it to affect the normal damage of the sword.  On the other hand, if it is something they are going to use in an actual fight I think having a set damage would make the game less fun.  Part of the fun of the game is the uncertainty.  The most memorable events in the game are usually when you manage to do something risky.  The time you managed to roll max damage on the boss is likely or minimum on a minion is likely to be remembered for years.  Allow the power to always work means neither of those happen.  

 

I have no problem with super stealth or climbing.  Most of the time when I am building those, I put the limitation requires a roll, with the roll being the appropriate skill.  The limitation will in most cases pay for the cost of the skill even if you have to buy it up.   Requires skill roll reduces the cost of clinging by 3 points which cover purchasing climbing.  Chances are any character buy super climbing has a good DEX so that usually means they start off with a better than 11 or less.  The clinging does impose a -1 on the roll, but that is the only penalty the character has to worry about.  What would normally be a -5 on the climbing roll is still only or impossible is -1.  Higher point powers like invisibility save even more points from taking requires a skill roll.  
 

[Duke Bushido]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:31 PM, Steve said:

How would one build the ability to cut through a tree in a single blow? Is it just having enough damage dice, or would it involve an advantage like Armor Piercing?

 

I was watching Blue Eye Samurai, and there are scenes where Mizu slices through a thick tree trunk (and others where bisecting armored humans happens).

 

Is this just a matter of having a lot of damage dice, or is something else going on?

 

 

In the examples you cited- particularly with cutting through opponents- I am going to say it os a combination of damage, skill levels, and mook rules.

 

How would I do it?  In the words of Mr. Miyagi:  "Don't know.  Never been attacked by tree."

 

So here are rhe options that would run through my head:

 

Is this is any way _useful_ to the character?  That is, is he going to drop a tree on a Named Villain?  If so, either do your damage to the tree or perhaps- _if it is appropriate to the character_ (such as "master class samurai" or "brick with a massive battle axe") then possibly make this a Power Skill thing for those of you who use that.

 

If It isn't especially helpful, but is appropriate to the character-- let's say Samurai Jed is leading his party through the jungle, clearing a path through the expedient use of his skills as a master swordsman-- then I am just going to  let it happen: "the vines and scrub growth thwart your attempts to make haste, but still, you are making steady progress as tree after tree falls with devestating swing or your sword (then leave it to him to reconcile how that translates to drawing blood).

 

Similarly, _if it is appropriate to the character, but not _especially_ useful (slightly useful is okay; in the above example. I may have even reduced the movement penalty-  but not done away with it entirely), I have no problem,letring it be the SFX of a Presence Attack: your battle axe cleaved in twain the single oak between you and your sworn enemy, falling to each side to reveal you, smouldering with the raw hatred for the man who framed you.....

 

 

This is just one of those things:  it only,needs to be statted up if it is somehow regularly useful with consistent and cost-appropriate in-game benefits.

 

Trees are mooks.  Don't worry about building a power specifically to kill them until trees are sworn enemies.

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

On the drive to work I was thinking that the tree trick might be a training scene. So for that, that could just be a Hero point spent.

[Ermenegildo]

On 1/4/2024 at 7:03 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

I just want to go on record here as finding this horrific and shocking.  Anyone doing 18 damage classes in a heroic game has really lost the plot in my book.

The problem is that cutting a tree (tree trunk more than 20 cm) with a single sword stroke is not a heroic feat, is a super-heroic feat.

[Ninja-Bear]

2 hours ago, Ermenegildo said:

The problem is that cutting a tree (tree trunk more than 20 cm) with a single sword stroke is not a heroic feat, is a super-heroic feat.

The thing is dealing with the martial arts world, heroic and super heroic is muddled.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

The problem is that cutting a tree (tree trunk more than 20 cm) with a single sword stroke is not a heroic feat, is a super-heroic feat.

 

It kind of is, but that's the place a lot of fantasy martial arts stuff goes.  And I could see buying it as a special maneuver to cut through objects, but not than blanket "I just do enough damage" 

Edited January 7 by Christopher R Taylor

[LoneWolf]

I could see using Deadly Blow for this.  I would consider objects only a very limited circumstance.  While objects are fairly common the need to attack them is not that great.  At 12 points per die, it is somewhat expensive, but then again you probably only need one die.  The character can still use martial arts maneuvers, skill levels and even deadly blow with this.   

 

This would probably not be something seen on a beginning character.  They have enough stuff to purchase that affording this is hard to justify. 
 

[Steve]

Weaponmaster seemed the most appropriate, as her most impressive damage is done with a bladed weapon, either a katana or naginata.

 

In a battle on a cliffside against four pretty tough-seeming opponents, she bisected one of them (separating the top and bottom of an armored foe on screen with much blood shown). With a die or two in Weaponmaster and the right martial arts maneuvers, I’m thinking she gets up to 4d6 HKA or so. I’m also still inclined to go with 3d6 and an Armor Piercing naked advantage.

 

The tree cutting was something she did as part of her practice and focus training during one downtime scene. She didn’t cut through a tree every time. Most of her cutting was through enemies.

[Ninja-Bear]

Well @Steverhat clarifies things. That description would have been a little more helpful. 😉 Then go with Lonewolf though a few dice in Aid still won’t hurt imho.

[redsash]

Mizu had wicked trouble cutting through that tree while practicing focus; it took her several tries. The other ridiculously talented swordsperson in the story also spent some time mastering the same trick. Looked to me like a critical hit or a very high damage roll in the 2- or 3d6 range.

 

She made the sword herself from strange meteoric ore that her teacher -- a renowned master swordsmith -- could not melt. I'd have bought it armor piercing.

 

I long ago wrote up a version of Ogami Itto (Lone Wolf and Cub) with a 2d6 AP Dotanuki that he can get to 3d6 before pushing (+4DC Slashing Stoke). I figured that would be enough to cut through a ship's mast or a tree (5 PD, 8-11 BODY) ; feats he has canonically performed. (As well as cutting the tips from regular Katana and slicing heavy chainmail right off several opponents without drawing blood. Eep!)

 

Alert Readers may recall that Bruce Wayne kicks a tree down in Frank Miller's Batman Year One, although it does take him a couple of blows. Figure 8d6 from STRENGTH 20 and Offensive Strike +4DC would crack an 8 BODY tree in three hits.

[Grailknight]

Yeah, 4d6 HKA is enough to cut through your average tree and it's where I usually cap the DC's in a fantasy game. You could also go to an old school game rule that's not seen much today: types of damage. Trees are probably tougher against bashing than piercing and even weaker against slashing.