On Knockback and Shrinking

[Hugh Neilson]

This is a followup toyour reply below, specifically these statements:

 

For example, suppose a character with 60 Active Points’ worth of Shrinking (+18†KB) is hit with a Double Knockback attack that does 2 BODY. That doubles to 4 BODY for KB purposes. The dice roll is 7, meaning 0†of KB and 0d6 of damage. To that you add +18†(distance only, no damage), so the character takes 18†Knockback.

 

Now change the example so that the attack does 6 BODY. That doubles to 12 BODY for KB purposes. The dice roll of 7 reduces that to 5†(and a maximum of 5d6 damage). To that you add the +18â€, for a total of 23†KB.

 

The second statement was how I would have envisioned it working. The first, however, raises a question I had not previously considered, being under what circumstances the extra 18" add to knockback done.

 

From your response, I think the answer is that if any strike does BOD, such that dice must be rolled to determine knockback, the Shrunk character will fly back, at a minimum, his "bonus inches" in kncokback.

 

Carryiing on the example above, then, if our 6 levels shrunk character is now hit with a 1d6 KA, which rolls 1 BOD, we don't actually need to roll the knockback dice, since we know the result will be 0" + 18" for no knockback damage. Is that correct?

 

In effect, the Shrunk character will always take at least the "bonus inches" from any attack which had the potential to do knockback, plus whatever knockback would be taken by a normal-size character (with damage equal to what the normal-size character would take).

 

Thanks for clarifying this.

[Steve Long]

Re: On Knockback and Shrinking

 

If a character has Shrinking, the extra inches of Knockback that Shrinking imposes on a character have to be added to any Knockback done to the character, even if that Knockback total is reduced to 0” by the dice roll. As noted on 5ER 218 in the example, the extra inches of KB are added after the dice roll to reduce the KB, so the roll can’t counteract them — a roll that reduces the KB to less than 0” does not reduce the KB “taken from” being Shrunk. Thus, a Shrunk character is always going to take a minimum amount of KB from an attack equal to the KB bonus from Shrinking (though of course this doesn’t affect the KB damage taken, as noted on 5ER 218).