Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

[Narthon]

It seems like every character I see made latley has a level or two of combat luck thrown in there to show his dodging ability, special materials in his armor, luck, or whatever. Being hardened defence, it counters penetrating and armor piercing. Doesn't this seem like a really cheap and easy way to counter some commonly used advantages? Uncle Samurai is really unhappy with it in the current game anyway, since it counters two of his major attacks.

 

What do YOU think?

[Old Man]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

You would only get the Combat Luck points vs AP damage. Your other defenses would be affected normally.

 

As a side note, "special materials in armor" are NOT Combat Luck.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

I think Uncle Samurai can still dish out a 3 1/2 d6 killing attack which is not bad for a street level campaign and has little to complain about as all his attacks are in a multipower.

 

If you did normal attacks then a few points of hardened defence would be far less effective. My views on killing attacks are well documented, so you'll be getting little sympathy here, I'm afraid.

[Narthon]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

As a side note, "special materials in armor" are NOT Combat Luck.

 

What if it was armor embeded with luckstones?

 

Anything is possible in hero.

[Lupus]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

It will, however, stop Penetrating dead in its tracks. But then, that's always been a problem: I remember a player wanting 1 point of damage resistance, bought hardened, to stop penetrating attacks.

 

I guess combat luck just allows for an official construct that gives a defence against penetrating. Makes it harder for a GM to justify saying no.

 

Personally, I restrict the full combat luck to Heroic games. Superheroic ones don't get Hardened (but also lose the 'luck-based' limitation, leaving the cost as it is).

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

The special effect of Combat Luck is usually that the character is narrowly missed or only lightly wounded by the attack. If the special effect of the attack logically says that even a near miss would cause the damage, then I would say it Penetrates, regardless of whether or not the Combat Luck is Hardened.

 

Of course, if the character is already hurting, or is not doing well Luck-wise, then I might let the Hardened stop the Penetrating. This is kind of a tough call, where a legitimate construct could be used abusively, and yet, the easy solution ends up screwing the character who bought it. This should really be a case-by-case call.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Say you use HERO to build Billy Batson, who can turn into Captain Marvel with his magic word, using OIHID. You don't want Billy to be a total chump before he says "SHAZAM!" so you give him Combat Luck. Now Cap Has it too IF he is really trying to get out of the way of an attack but if he is using Dive For Cover to intercept a death ray aimed at an innocent bystandard he does NOT get any of the benefits of the Combat Luck. This seems to be a pretty common tactic for Bricks IMO and would mitigate any minor benefits that Combat Luck would otherwise provide.

 

HM

[Sean Waters]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Presumably you are upset because these other monkeys have combat luck and scads of other defences, so it would be useful to be able to negate them, stick that katana straight through their armour, that sort of thing? Why? I mean, you have a katana not a mystical soul sword. Katanas didn't just cut through armour, so the penetrating is probably not justified, and the armour piercing probably isn't either.

 

Combat luck won't negate your armour piercing as combat luck is probably only a small part of the enemy defences: you sure you're applying that right?

 

Example: if the enemy has combat luck, 10 points of armour and 4 points of pd, against armour piercing attacks they apply defences of

 

3 for combat luck

5 for armour and

2 for pd against the stun of your killing attacks,

 

instead of applying 13/17 they are applying 8/10. That hardly counts as having your attack negated in my book.

 

In any event if your attack and defence values are typical, you don't need fancy advantages to cause damage. The basic killing attack will be doing body damage well over half the time.

 

Be honest: autofire penetrating half dice killing attack? You're only doing that for one reason - because it is a highly contrived construct that can cause a lot of damage in certain situations, and unfortunately those situations are not coming up as often as you'd like. One of the meta-rules is if you try it on don't break down if you don't get away with it. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote.

 

If you're still not happy, why not ask the GM if you can have the 1 point you spent on the penetrating killing attack back to spend on something else?

 

I'd like to apologise for the use of sarcasm in this post, but I just don't have it in me.

[Constantine]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

My .02....

 

I take it you are the game master, and this is one of your villians. It seems you dug this whole yourself by letting all your players take combat luck. If you knew this was one of the villians you wanted to use, you probably shouldn't have allowed all your players to take something that would defeat one of his attacks. Does it really make sense for all of them to have combat luck? Maybe you should reconsider that.

 

That said, IMO, a half-die penetrating, 0end, autofire attack, is pure cheese.

 

*sigh* I don't enjoy being negative, just some of the powers people discuss building on these boards really get to me...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

It will' date=' however, stop Penetrating dead in its tracks. But then, that's always been a problem: I remember a player wanting 1 point of damage resistance, bought hardened, to stop penetrating attacks.[/quote']

 

Possible house rule: 1 poiont Hardened stops 1 point minimum Penetrating damage. So if you have 3 DEF from combat luck, and are hit with an 8 BOD penetrating EB, you take at least 5 STUN.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

If you're still not happy' date=' why not ask the GM if you can have the 1 point you spent on the penetrating killing attack back to spend on something else?[/quote']

 

 

Rep earned and awarded!

[Trebuchet]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

It seems like every character I see made latley has a level or two of combat luck thrown in there to show his dodging ability, special materials in his armor, luck, or whatever. Being hardened defence, it counters penetrating and armor piercing. Doesn't this seem like a really cheap and easy way to counter some commonly used advantages? Uncle Samurai is really unhappy with it in the current game anyway, since it counters two of his major attacks.

 

What do YOU think?

I fail to see the problem. When you use cheesy methods to leak stun through to an opponent (½d6 + STR Autofire x5 PEN? Come on. ) then you don't have a lot of room to complain when the GM uses equally cheesy methods to counter your cheese. Any character with more than a few points of Hardened defenses will stop such a small Penetrating attack. It doesn't have to be Combat Luck, it can be just a few points of Hardened Armor or Force Field. And in low powered games characters are generally going to be more likely to have Combat Luck anyway.

 

If you want US to leak damage through with a Penetrating attack, then dunp the Autofire aspect and change it to a 1d6 RKA PEN x2. Same cost, and it'll ignore single levels of Hardened such as Combat Luck.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Doesn't this seem like a really cheap and easy way to counter some commonly used advantages?

No.

 

1. It doesn't "counter" Armor-Piercing. The characters defenses other than Combat Luck are still halved. Only the defense provided by Combat Luck is unaffected.

 

2. It doesn't necessarily counter Penetrating either. GMs are specifically warned in the rulebook to be wary of characters who buy a small amount of defense with Hardened just to exploit the ability to cancel Penetrating, and the rules FAQ offers possible restrictions to avoid that. Personally, I rule that Penetrating is only cancelled if at least half of the character's total applicable defense is Hardened.

 

3. Combat Luck is not as good as "real" defenses. If characters are relying on Combat Luck for substantial portions of their defenses, they're vulnerable to many other nasty fates besides Penetrating attacks.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Well, Combat Luck is there to represent how a character can only be "nicked" by an attack though otherwise would have been a solid hit, or turn a deadly impact into a minor wound. To me, this means that it shouldn't stack with other Resistant Defenses. If you have other rDEF, then you don't need the luck, and therefore, by definition of the Limitation "Luck Based" it won't apply against any attack in which other rDEF already applies.

 

That said, Penetrating attacks tend to ignore it. You only get 3 points of DEF from Combat Luck, though can can get more with more levels of it. Almost any Penetrating attack that hits the character is likely to do more BODY than the character has DEF in Combat Luck anyway. For those that don't, there's always the possibility that the character isn't lucky this time around, though most times he will be.

 

Ditto with everyone else concerning AP. Only the Combat Luck isn't halved, while other defenses are.

 

Now, if all of the players are buying up scads of Combat Luck (as if it were an an actual defense), that's just wrong and not appropriate to most character concepts or campaigns. If for some reason it actually is appropriate, then there's nothing wrong and the GM just needs to compensate for it.

[Narthon]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Actually guys, I'm a player, not a GM (In this campaign). We play in a deadly world where cheese is our best option. In this world, if a villian hits you, you are probably down for the fight. We look for ways to do the same thing they do.

 

All but 1 of our players has over 15 years of pen and paper role playing experience, and we play many types of games. An autofire penetrating attack is not unusual, as it is a technique which usually works. I usually say don't judge my play style, judge my techniques, I guess I should have here.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Actually guys, I'm a player, not a GM (In this campaign). We play in a deadly world where cheese is our best option. In this world, if a villian hits you, you are probably down for the fight. We look for ways to do the same thing they do.

 

All but 1 of our players has over 15 years of pen and paper role playing experience, and we play many types of games. An autofire penetrating attack is not unusual, as it is a technique which usually works. I usually say don't judge my play style, judge my techniques, I guess I should have here.

Fair enough. But if you're going to use a "technique which usually works" to get through an opponent's defenses, why is it wrong for him to have defenses that can counter a fairly common attack?

 

There have been several good discussions of Combat Luck on the boards, and if you examine these threads you'll see Combat Luck is far from being a great general defense. It simply has too many circumstances in which it doesn't work.

[Lanith]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

I won't get into the "cheese" argument. I'll just make a suggestion that you change the 1/2d6 killing attack, or just buy a new one with your next experience point earned.

 

Change that to a 6d6HA (just keep the sword sheathed), apply the same disads, add your MA's to that and you'll put a few STUN into anything except the bricks.

[Narthon]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Yes, I actually have added "the beating for the dishonerable" a HA that does no body. It works really well.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

Given the cheese factor...

 

What you need is someone with an Entangle to set the opponent up for you. Now they can't use that Conbat Luck to dodge, so no Hardened defenses. A Grab would also work, now that I think of it (and anyone can Grab).

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

I hereby dub thee "Sir Hugh, Champion of Cheddar".

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

I hereby dub thee "Sir Hugh' date=' Champion of Cheddar". [/quote']

 

Grabs and Entangkles are cheese? I didn't even suggest an Entangle Based on INT (or COM ) takes no damage from attacks (for those pesky Bricks).

[Dust Raven]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

If you want Cheeze, hit them with an NND or AVLD. Combat Luck doesn't apply to those any more then they would against an Entangle. Not so lucky now, huh?

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

This is why Area Effect, NND, Continuing Charges (SFX: gas attack) were invented.

 

Edit: Sorry, Dust Raven, I didn't read your message before I posted.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Combat Luck ruins Armor Piercing and Penetrating?

 

This is why Area Effect, NND, Continuing Charges (SFX: gas attack) were invented.

 

Edit: Sorry, Dust Raven, I didn't read your message before I posted.

'tis okay. And I've definately learned that ninjas don't like it when VIPER agents carry sleep gas grenades.