waiting for a good roll

[Foxx!]

Heroes!

 

I want to make a character who can know the effect roll of an attack before making an attack roll. If the effect is going to be lower than she wants, she can cancel the attack, but she still wastes her action and the END. The SFX is that she feels how much energy built up in the attack. She doesn’t know if the attack will hit or how much defence the target has.

 

Cheers!

[ghost-angel]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Sounds like precognition to me. in some form or another.

 

And metagamish.

[philnicau]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

I would not permit a power like this in any campaign i was running, its blurring the line between what the player knows to what the character knows.

[Edsel]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

You could simply make an SFX that says if the attack roll less than X damage, it does no damage. I think that would be the easist way to handle it. It wouldn't be an advantage or limitation. Since the action and END are still used it should not cause any sort of imbalance in the game. It could actually be disadvantageous to the character since there is no chance for knockback. It gets a little more tricky if the character can adjust that damage threshold at will. In that case I'd call it a Variable Special Effect (+1/4) or more. Lot's of people seem consider it to be meta-gamming and disallow it. I'd be a little reluctant until I saw what effect it had on game balance.

 

BTW Foxx, the rep contest you had about identifing your avatar, that you did many months ago, got me hooked on reading Ken Akamatsu's Negima (thanks for that).

I think, in Japan, it was called Mahou Sensei Negima.

[prestidigitator]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

How about a +2 version of Delayed Effect (plus maybe Precognition)? Just throwing it out there. I probably wouldn't allow it myself, but for a way to do it....

[BNakagawa]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Play Marvel SAGA. Essentially, every character has that power, whether they want it or not.

[archermoo]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Somthing similar I've done in the past. I had a character that never missed. He had levels in ranged combat, but also had a perk that the Ref and I worked out. If he failed to hit with a firearm of any time, he didn't actually make the shot. He used the action and ended his phase, but didn't actually waste the bullet. The idea was that he could tell that the shot was going to miss, and so wouldn't actually pull the trigger, but for play balance it still counted as him having performed an attack action. As I recall it was a 10 point perk, since he was not using charges of his main weapon that would otherwise have been wasted.

 

As a note, with missile deflect, it depended on how it was defined whether he would waste a shot or not. Actually deflecting the shot? Yup, wasted. Defined as just a really good dodge? Nope. All decided by the ref at the time it came up.

[Fedifensor]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Somthing similar I've done in the past. I had a character that never missed. He had levels in ranged combat' date=' but also had a perk that the Ref and I worked out. If he failed to hit with a firearm of any time, he didn't actually make the shot. He used the action and ended his phase, but didn't actually waste the bullet. [/quote']

That sounds like a great idea for a game with more 'absolute' characters. I think there was a character in Ultraverse like that - she never missed her target. It even extended to things besides combat. She managed to successfully land a plane in zero visibility because she could 'hit' the runway...

 

I think Precognition, special effects, or a combination of the two is a good way to handle this.

[archermoo]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

That sounds like a great idea for a game with more 'absolute' characters. I think there was a character in Ultraverse like that - she never missed her target. It even extended to things besides combat. She managed to successfully land a plane in zero visibility because she could 'hit' the runway...

 

I think Precognition, special effects, or a combination of the two is a good way to handle this.

 

Personally I'd disagree with precog being appropriate. They aren't looking for a glimpse into the future. They are looking for the ability to tell before firing how much energy is in a particular attack, and if it doesn't measure up, aborting it. It isn't seeing the future, it is seeing the present quickly enough. From a metagaming POV it is seeing into the future, since normally you don't roll the dice until after you check for a hit. But if the character was seeing into the future they'd not just know how much energy the shot had (something they could also know just before they fired) but also if it hit, and how much damage it did to the target.

 

Obviously the effect mentioned by the OP would also only work if the only variable controlling how much damage the attack did was how much energy was in it. Rather than how clean a shot it was and other factors having a "say" as well. So personally I don't think the ability as described makes much sense, and I probably wouldn't allow it.

[McCoy]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Take 1d6 with activation 8- plus

1d6 with acitvation 9- plus

et cetera, then standard effect for all of them. When you roll your activation, you know how may dice are going to get, and that you will have 3 STUN and 1 BODY per die.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Take 1d6 with activation 8- plus

1d6 with acitvation 9- plus

et cetera, then standard effect for all of them. When you roll your activation, you know how may dice are going to get, and that you will have 3 STUN and 1 BODY per die.

Well...are you talking rolling the Activation Roll once and seeing how many dice you got with it, or making the Activation Roll on each die seperately?

 

In any case, McCoy, a pretty spiffy idea. I was going to post something about using Standard Effect, but I like your idea better.

[McCoy]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Well...are you talking rolling the Activation Roll once and seeing how many dice you got with it, or making the Activation Roll on each die seperately?

 

In any case, McCoy, a pretty spiffy idea. I was going to post something about using Standard Effect, but I like your idea better.

Roll one activation roll. Each part of the power with an equal or greater activation to the number rolled activates. Let's say you have 1 die each with activations 8- through 15-, you rolll an 11, you have the dice that activate 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-, and 15-. Five dice for 15 STUN and 5 BODY. Damage still varies on a bell curve, but damage is determined before the "to hit" roll is made. END is paid before the activation roll is made, and after the activation the character can decide to hold her fire, or not.

 

Seems to fit how the power was originally described.

[Sean Waters]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Sounds like pure sfx: as you suffer the loss of the action and END anyway: you make the attack but the sfx is that you don't actually do anything if it misses. I'd also buy a couple of DCV CSLs limited to offset the DCV penalty of any manourvre that doesn't go off (if relevant).

 

You may also need a triggered teleport to put you where you started if you are doing a Fmove attack.

 

Or you could just buy 10 levels with OCV and agree to ignore 18s....

 

...otherwise, as Ghost-Angel says, it is somewhat metagamish.

[Brainstorm]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

As I see it some form of precognition or luck (though not necessarily an actual Precognition or Luck Power) is the only way to go with this. After all, "how much energy" is in an attack is but one of many factors that determine how much damage it will do to a target. Is it a direct hit or a glancing strike? Does it injure a vital area or damage less vulnerable body parts? Did the victim brace in advance or take a hit while unbalanced? Did the target experience the full force of the attack or was its effect reduced by energy going to ground/involuntary recoil on impact/a dove flew through the line of fire at just the right moment/whatever. Damage dice reflect those and other factors beyond the actual amount of destructive power in a specific attack. Without foreknowledge of those aspects of the attack event, a character simply would not know the amount of damage dealt by a particular hit yet to occur.

 

On the lighter side, I could see defining this as an SFX and allowing a Limitation like "power does not work if damage roll is less than X." Basically, it seems like it would be right to treat this as an instance where a character attempted to use a Power without being aware that a Limitation would prevent it from functioning. Just as with powers that do not work at night or powers that only work under a full moon, it seems to me that any END cost should not be incurred when the Limitation applies since the Power did not actually function, yet the action (and any Extra Time) would still be lost since an attempt must be made before the damage dice can be thrown. SFX-wise, the lost actions could represent the character taking especially careful aim or exercising some special mental ability or even waiting for a guidance system to get a proper lock.

 

However, there is one big caveat (and this could be a test to sort the sleazy players from the honorable ones.) While the Limited Power text does specify values for losing one-fourth effectiveness, one-third effectiveness etc., those thresholds do not occur in a linear way along the damage curve. To take an overly simple example, look at a 2D6 Power for a moment. Here are the possible outcomes of those effectiveness dice . . .

 

1:36 chance of a 2

2:36 chance of a 3

3:36 chance of a 4

4:36 chance of a 5

5:36 chance of a 6

6:36 chance of a 7

5:36 chance of an 8

4:36 chance of a 9

3:36 chance of a 10

2:36 chance of an 11

1:36 chance of a 12

 

With that in mind, "Power does not work if damage roll is less than 7" would only be worth a -1/4 Limitation. While 15:36 throws will be less than 7, all those outcomes together only represent around 27.8% of the potential damage yield of the Power. The Limitation does negate the power nearly half the time it is exercised, but it negates the least significant range and preserves all of the most important results. Because the probability curve will tend to have a big hump in the middle while being narrow toward the extremes, little actual effectiveness is lost by excluding only the low end.

 

To understand further, consider that the sum of damage produced by all possible outcomes is 252. While excluding everything <7 only eliminates 70 of that 252 (or 70/36 of that 252/36 for the retentive among us) also excluding 7 eliminates much more of the Power's potential damage. The "Power does not work if damage roll is <8" Limitation amounts to a loss of 112 out of 252, or 44.4%. Whether that is a -1/2 or a -1 Limitation (the text for Limited Power indicating that loss of half effectiveness is worth a -1 Limitation) is a judgement call, though I would be inclined to be allow the -1 since that 44.4% of damage yield also means the Power will do nothing 21:36 instances when it is invoked. Over a sufficiently large sample of attempts, the character with the Limitation will actually inflict a hair more than 55.5% as much damage as a character with no such Limitation, but it feels close enough to justify the -1. Likewise, if we gobble even more of the damage curve's juicy center, a "Power does not work if damage roll is <9" could merit a -1 1/2 Limitation since now we are talking about losing 152 out of the 252 sum of all possible outcomes. This exceeds 60% and feels closer to two-thirds than half.

 

Of course, with more dice the problem becomes more complex. For informal gaming, guesswork may be acceptable. However, it is crucial to remember that dice results do not produce even distributions. They do follow curves, and eliminating a fractional span of outcomes may be wildly different from eliminating the same fraction of a Power's actual effectiveness. For example, a 10D6 Power has a range of outcomes from 6-60. However, that 6 is only going to occur about once per 6,000,000 throws. Likewise, a 7 will occur only about once in 600,000 throws. Though there are 55 distinct numerical values possible from 10D6, results in the 30-40 range will tend to occur more frequently than once in 55 throws, since for each middling value there is a huge number of ways ten dice can add up to that sum. Someone who takes a "Power does not work if damage roll is <19" on a 10D6 Power may be giving up about one fourth of the distinct numerical outcomes, but that 6-19 range is nowhere near one fourth of the Power's effectiveness since it focuses on the rarest and weakest numerical values.

 

I believe an earnest player who has respect for the game would try to sort out just where in the damage curve a given Limitation fell and then build a Power discounted appropriately. On the other hand, a weasel at the table could well focus on a linear arithmetic range instead of the probability curve, thus arguing for a bigger Limitation modifier than the actual loss of effectiveness warrants. For people intimidated by (or too lazy to deal with) the math involved, a good rule of thumb is that the middle of the curve will also fall in the middle of the range of possible values. However, that method alone still amounts to substantial distortion, since the result would be to exclude the weakest half of potential results. Using the logic outlined above, Limitations that exclude only a little from a broad damage range should be worthless, moving up to -1/4 when there is a real dent and -1/2 near the midway point. -1 would also be near the middle, though it should be clearly on the high side of halfway up the range since cutting at the true middle retains the strongest half of the possible outcomes.

 

Ultimately, it seems to me that Precognition is necessary in any situation where a player wants to be able to take an alternate course of action based on foreknowledge of the outcome of an attack. However, it feels highly consistent with the rules to allow for this sort of Limited Power where, rather than rolling Activation dice, the Power simply does not manifest if the effects dice fall below an appropriate threshold. Even then, this does introduce the uncomfortable mechanic of tossing damage dice after a missed attack (although it is not a truly novel mechanic since that is an appropriate response to misses that continue onward to strike an unintended target.) Also, I did not begin to address the "Power does not work if attack misses," but I believe that should be excluded that as a Limitation altogether. There may be exceptional cases, but generally a missed attack is definitively ineffective. As such, Power failure in those instances does not constitute a loss of effectiveness. In fact, it may be advantageous to the degree that END or Charges are involved. For those situations I do like the idea of a "does not miss" Perk, and 10 points even seems like a fair cost considering that those points could instead be used to obtain +5 with a single attack or +2 with a broad category of attacks.

 

Regards,

Brainstorm

[Doc Democracy]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Sounds like pure sfx: as you suffer the loss of the action and END anyway: you make the attack but the sfx is that you don't actually do anything if it misses. I'd also buy a couple of DCV CSLs limited to offset the DCV penalty of any manourvre that doesn't go off (if relevant).

 

You may also need a triggered teleport to put you where you started if you are doing a Fmove attack.

 

Or you could just buy 10 levels with OCV and agree to ignore 18s....

 

...otherwise, as Ghost-Angel says, it is somewhat metagamish.

 

Dagnabbit Sean - why do you always ruin the answers I was going to type. Talk about precognition!

 

I think that Sean has nailed the necessary. All those people saying that precognition is necessary - you are wrong on two counts in my opinion. The power precognition as written in the book is not necessary, the SFX of precognition would only be necessary if the ability to hit was being defined. This is simply getting an idea of whether enough damage potential is being generated before firing the shot.

 

If the character wants to abort the attack (ie not actually fire the shot) before he rolls the to hit dice but is willing to accept the manouevre modifiers for getting into a position to shoot then what's the big deal. There is no player benefit from that at all, the action is still burnt, even the END is spent.

 

The way I see it working is the player rolls the damage dice - sees how much damage the attack will generate and then decides whether to roll the to hit dice. Slightly different in how it normally works but, as Sean pointed out, unless there is a desire to nullify manouevre benefits and disads the only power that is required is Energy Blast.

 

All IMO obviously.

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Dagnabbit Sean - why do you always ruin the answers I was going to type. Talk about precognition!

......Doc

 

Invisible effects mind link.

 

It is on your character sheet, but it is invisible

[Zed-F]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

There is a small advantage to not actually firing the shot if it doesn't have sufficient power. It doesn't reveal your abilities, and it won't have negative consequences on the scenery. I'll agree that that's not even worth a +1/4 advantage, and certainly not a separate power -- i.e. that it's just SFX -- but you should get GM permission first.

 

Another way to do it would be to just take Standard Effect on the attack. She always builds up to a certain threshold, whereupon she releases the attack. This just means she never fails to reach that threshold, and she can't go measurably higher than that threshold without pushing.

[ghost-angel]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

There is a small advantage to not actually firing the shot if it doesn't have sufficient power. It doesn't reveal your abilities, and it won't have negative consequences on the scenery. I'll agree that that's not even worth a +1/4 advantage, and certainly not a separate power -- i.e. that it's just SFX -- but you should get GM permission first.

 

Another way to do it would be to just take Standard Effect on the attack. She always builds up to a certain threshold, whereupon she releases the attack. This just means she never fails to reach that threshold, and she can't go measurably higher than that threshold without pushing.

You can also ruin surprise, reveal your location or alter the defenders tactics if they now percieve a different threat.

 

Those can all have significant effects on not only combat but the story and should not be ignored consequences of the requested Power.

 

Which is the reason I call it meta-gameish.

 

On the otherhand, your call to use Standard Effect instead is a very good one and worth consideration.

[prestidigitator]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Sounds like pure sfx: as you suffer the loss of the action and END anyway: you make the attack but the sfx is that you don't actually do anything if it misses. I'd also buy a couple of DCV CSLs limited to offset the DCV penalty of any manourvre that doesn't go off (if relevant).

 

You may also need a triggered teleport to put you where you started if you are doing a Fmove attack.

 

Or you could just buy 10 levels with OCV and agree to ignore 18s....

 

...otherwise, as Ghost-Angel says, it is somewhat metagamish.

That makes sense. However, I just thought of another idea. How about a maneuver somewhat like a combination of pulling a punch and rolling with a punch? Cost it similarly to a Martial Maneuver, but a pretty maxed out one. Just an idea. If I were to use it myself I would have to put a great deal of thought into it. (I would want to cost it in a logical manner, extrapolated from other parts of the combat system.)

[prestidigitator]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

You can also ruin surprise, reveal your location or alter the defenders tactics if they now percieve a different threat.

 

Those can all have significant effects on not only combat but the story and should not be ignored consequences of the requested Power.

 

Which is the reason I call it meta-gameish.

 

On the otherhand, your call to use Standard Effect instead is a very good one and worth consideration.

Hmm...or a variant of Invisible Power Effects....

[ghost-angel]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Hmm...or a variant of Invisible Power Effects....

hrm... this is still a bit metagameish perhaps (the whole construct is, why avoid it) ...

 

Naked Advantage: Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) for up to 60 Active Points of An Attack, Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action to reset; +1/2) (180 Active Points) Trigger is: Attack fails to penetrate the targets DEF.

 

perhaps... huh, suckers expensive.

[Dust Raven]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Heroes!

 

I want to make a character who can know the effect roll of an attack before making an attack roll. If the effect is going to be lower than she wants, she can cancel the attack, but she still wastes her action and the END. The SFX is that she feels how much energy built up in the attack. She doesn’t know if the attack will hit or how much defence the target has.

 

Cheers!

 

I would not allow something like this, as it is really nothing more than metagaming. The damage roll represents much more than the power behind any given attack. It also represents how solidly it strikes the target, what location of the target was struck, motion of the target in relation to the attack, angle of impact, etc. Think of a bullet. For the most part, each and every bullet fired from the same gun will have the same power, but will due different degrees of damage based on dozens of factors clearly out of the character's control.

[Vanguard00]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

As I see it... [snip]

Regards,

Brainstorm

That is one helluva first post, dude.

[prestidigitator]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

Hmm. Actually, Precognition could work if the GM's take on Precognition is to see (aspects of) one or more (selected?) possible futures. Meaning the character could see how the attack lands on the target (not necessarily how it damages them after defenses if the SFX are as described) if the attack is made this Phase and if the target is hit. Then it would actually be a pretty limited form of Precognition. This would be a very Dune-esque version of sensing the future. Like EDM/Transdimensional and such, the functionality of this would depend very greatly on the GM's view of the setting; the makeup of the, "universe," itself.

[mattingly]

Re: waiting for a good roll

 

How about a special effect of Find Weakness? "Aha! Now I know that this next shot will be a good one."