Balancing damage and defenses

[Steve]

3 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

I should have specified I was talking about damage negation in my comment on knockback.  While normal defenses do not reduce knockback damage negation does.  If I have -3 DC of damage negation the attacker rolls 3 less dice to determine damage on a normal attack.  That is going to reduce the knockback the attack does.     

I wonder if that could allow a further Limitation on Damage Negation (-1/4?) if it doesn’t affect knockback.

[unclevlad]

On 4/22/2024 at 1:34 PM, Steve said:

I wonder if that could allow a further Limitation on Damage Negation (-1/4?) if it doesn’t affect knockback.

 

Part of the system bloat problem in 6E is having so many hair-splitting limitations.  I'm not sure this'd be worth -1/4 on its own...and by and large, I suspect people would take it just to take it.  My favorite limitation is Limited Range, because once you get to an 8d6 base...that's 40 points, so full range is 400 meters.  The range mod at 100m is -8;  there's targets that *can* be hit, sure...area attacks in particular...but for most single target attacks?  That's Fat Chance time, even with some PSLs to offset range.  It generally does not limit.  Is that a character flaw, so that the limit should be disallowed?  Not IMO, it's mis-structured rules.  Doesn't Reduce KB feels like it'd largely be the same.

 

Note that STUN Only eliminates this...and the protection against the drains, because they're not STUN damage.  That's a significant package of benefits that get removed...or, perhaps we're realizing that Negation's total package is better than we realized.  2 dice negation gives 3 CP of rDEF, 5 CP of STUN reduction...it's too easy to layer the defenses to mostly eliminate BODY, so this is not worth a limitation, IMO...and effectively 2m of KB resistance.  THEN there's however much you want to assign to the special defense aspects.  They're worth something, no question about that, but...how much?  Eliminating the KB aspect, 2 dice would still mean 8 points in the base defenses, AND the special defenses, for 8 points, and quite often, the KB resistance just isn't that big a deal.  Figure:  did we realize this?  I suspect...generally, no.  Did people buy a few meters of KB resistance?  I've done it for specific concepts, where the character's body just deforms to absorb the momentum, it doesn't go flying back...but how many of us take this routinely?

 

Some of this is, we're also realizing how *complicated* DN is, as it's written.  Which is not a good thing, IMO.