Autofire Find Weakness

[Dust Raven]

I was talking with some of my players and the idea of putting Autofire on Find Weakness came up. We determined that if allowed, the result would be that for every 4 points the Find Weakness roll was made by, the target's defenses would half again.

 

So, before I rush right off and actually allow my players (or villains) to buy such a thing, I thought it'd be a good idea to pass it by the boards and we what you all think of it.

 

[Edsel]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I kinda thought the rule on this was that only the first shot, in the case of multiple hits, got to halve the target's defense.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I kinda thought the rule on this was that only the first shot' date=' in the case of multiple hits, got to halve the target's defense.[/quote']

 

Well, the official rule (unless I'm mistaken) is that Autofire can only be applied to Attack Powers. What I present above is a possible alternative.

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I was talking with some of my players and the idea of putting Autofire on Find Weakness came up. We determined that if allowed, the result would be that for every 4 points the Find Weakness roll was made by, the target's defenses would half again.

 

So, before I rush right off and actually allow my players (or villains) to buy such a thing, I thought it'd be a good idea to pass it by the boards and we what you all think of it.

 

You scare SCUBA.

 

Okay, from 5ER page 176, it specifically states that Autofire cannot be purchased for Find Weakness. So we're into house rule territory - which you already knew - so that's not an issue (just want to make it clear for other thread readers).

 

So what you're doing, in essence, is allowing a character to make multiple Find Weakness rolls (although with only one roll). House ruling it, I'd be inclined to take the 5ER page 252 text '... if the GM believes a Power with Autofire would be extremely useful or likely to unbalance the game at its normal cost, he may increase the cost by +1...' and make the Advantage +1-1/2.

 

You're doing two things with this Advantage: (1) saving time - instead of a Half-Phase action for each Find Weakness roll, it's only one roll, and (2) by making it dependent on only one roll instead of a series of rolls, making it more likely that one low roll will quarter, (forth, eighth, and so forth) the target's defenses. At first glance, without running any math, that seems in line to me with the benefit gained.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

You know, I hadn't given much thought to the cost of Autofire yet. Now that you mention it, +1 is probably a good value for it, considering it's versus a limited defense (and it technically always hits).

 

My rationale for the halving every 4 points is thus: Autofire means you score an extra hit for each two points you make the attack roll by. Find Weakiness has a cumulative -2 penalty for each successive attempt until a roll fails. I figure these meld together, so if the roll is made, the target's defense is halved. To halve it again on one role, you need to make it by two for the Autofire, and another two for the additional attempt penalty, for a total of -4. So if you have a Find Weakness with Autofire (x3) on a 16-, you halve the target's defense with a roll of less than 16, quarter them with a roll of 12- and eigth them with a roll of 8-.

 

Thinking cost, for a single attack, a roll of 16- would cost 35 points. For AF3, that's a +1 1/4 Advantage for a total cost of 79 points. Is that a reasonable cost for the possibility of cutting a target's defenses to an eigth with a half phase action?

[Alex1]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If you fail with Find Weakness, you lose all.

With Autofire, players must hit with all shoot or they don't halve defenses.

(Hope you understand, english is not my primary language)

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Hmm. It's a difficult one. Obviously it isn't the fact that you are cutting the defences to an eighth that we need to think about - buying the power straight provides that ability.

 

What the autofire does is give you the extra time in combat to achieve that advantage.

 

Lets take an example:

 

AnalystGuy has a SPD of 5 and a 6D6 attack and 16- Find Weakness. To make his attack useful against an opponent then he really has to get to 1/4 defences. Under normal circumstances this means that on segment 12 he has a 98% chance to half defences, on segment 3 over 90% chance to quarter them and, on segment 5, almost 80% chance to eighth them.

 

He has to survive until segment 5 before he begins to be a threat and this should happen most of the time.

 

SuperAnalyst has a SPD of 5, 6D6 attack and 16- Autofire Find Weakness. On segment 12 he analyses his opponent and has the same 98% chance that he will half defences, 80% of the time he will quarter them and about 25% of the time he will eighth them (the beauty of the bell curve huh?). Obviously he automatically fails in his roll as at some point the penalties will kick in.

 

AnalystGuy takes time but will 50% of the time go beyond the eighthing of defences, SuperAnalystGuy gets his benefits straight up but will rarely achieve eighthing and almost never anything beyond that.

 

I think that the element of time is useful but it does have a detrimental effect on the Find Weakness skill (enough that I think I might increase the autofire cost by +1/4 rather than +1).

 

What I would say is that part of that +1/4 autofire would be that it is a one-off shot - they have to fire it that way - no firing two shots and then trying another two shot salvo - all or nothing. Otherwise I think that I would bump the cost up to +1/2 or +3/4.

 

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If you fail with Find Weakness, you lose all.

With Autofire, players must hit with all shoot or they don't halve defenses.

(Hope you understand, english is not my primary language)

 

I disagree. As I see it, the character fires off his Autofire FW, and counts the successes. If his roll succeeds by, say, 6, then he has Found Weakness once for the base success, again for the second success, and missed the third and any subsequent attempts. Thus, the target's defenses are quartered, but canot be further reduced because one attempt has already failed.

 

So, if 16- would cost 35 points, and maiking it Autofire costs another 44, the character could instead have had FW 16- and +4 Speed to give him more opportunities to use it, or FW and +9d6 to his EB. Gut feel - the proposal seems workable. One lucky roll will reduce defenses a lot, but 9d6 or +4 SPD would get a lot of damage in pretty fast every time.

[Cancer]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

"Autofire Find Weakness" is explicitly listed as the favorite power of Munchkins here, which seems like adequate reason to prohibit it from any game I'd want to play in.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Arguably, if you allowed it - and personally I wouldn't - it should be half every -6: -2 for a second halving, -2 for a subsequent attempt and -2 as you are, in effect, going UP the time chart on the basis that taking longer gives you +1 per blip down the chart, going from phase to segment to several actions simultaneously.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Also one potential headache is carrying over previous attempts to subsequent ones - if you get 2 successes on your first roll, presumably you have to apply at least a -4 on the second attempt?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Also one potential headache is carrying over previous attempts to subsequent ones - if you get 2 successes on your first roll' date=' presumably you have to apply at least a -4 on the second attempt?[/quote']

 

In my view, unless you had two shot autofire, two successes on the first roll ends the chain. I would consider each shot in the Autofire series as an attempt. The third (and subsequent) attempts failed. One failed attempt means no further attempts can succeed, so he's done.

 

If it was 2 shot autofire, so they both succeeded, I agree there would be a -4 penalty on the next attempt (-8 to the second shot).

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I don't think I would allow an Autofire Find Weakness myself, but then I can't see any rationale for it. Obviously you do or you wouldn't be considering it. What SFX are you trying to build here that you would come up with this power?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If a character makes a high enough Find Weakness roll with this method enough times isn't the net result about the same as buying an NND, Does Body as a Naked Advantage for the character's strongest attack?

 

Would anyone allow this build into a game? Even if limited by RSR?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If a character makes a high enough Find Weakness roll with this method enough times isn't the net result about the same as buying an NND, Does Body as a Naked Advantage for the character's strongest attack?

 

Would anyone allow this build into a game? Even if limited by RSR?

 

No real difference from a high enough Find Weakness skill - would you ban that too?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

No real difference from a high enough Find Weakness skill - would you ban that too?

 

Normally a character with a high Find Weakness roll still has to take multiple phases to accomplish the same effect unlike what is being suggested in this thread which is nearly instantaneous.

[OzMike]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

At work so no book access to check on legality but...

 

Couldn't you duplicate a multiple find weakness effect by applying the trigger advantage to find weakness with all the appropriate modifiers to make it so that you just keep rolling the dice until you fail? Expensive, yes, but quite nasty in thought.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I imagine that Lack Of Weakness OIF trenchcoats will be poping up in DR's games some time real soon...

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Normally a character with a high Find Weakness roll still has to take multiple phases to accomplish the same effect unlike what is being suggested in this thread which is nearly instantaneous.

 

So the issue isn't about the lowering of defences but the speed at which it is done?

 

As it was presented, I think that the same Find Weakness skills are more potent without autofire most of the time even taking the extra time into consideration. Autofire Find Weakness is not likely to achieve the same drop in defences as the equivalent level of the skill without autofire.

 

As I said, I think it gives enough of a boost to warrant costing more but I don't think that it is inherently unbalancing unless Find Weakness is also unbalancing.

 

 

Doc

[Vestnik]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If you fail with Find Weakness, you lose all.

With Autofire, players must hit with all shoot or they don't halve defenses.

(Hope you understand, english is not my primary language)

 

Just out of curiosity have HERO products been translated into French (or any other non-English language), or do you use the materials in English.

 

Merci pour l'information! Je serai bien reconnaissant.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

Normally a character with a high Find Weakness roll still has to take multiple phases to accomplish the same effect unlike what is being suggested in this thread which is nearly instantaneous.

 

The same thing could be said for attack powers.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

The same thing could be said for attack powers.

 

Let me clarify,

 

I was just pointing out a possibly better way to judge the cost/effectiveness of this build with as close to an "apples to apples" comparison as the rules allow. A Drain vs. the appropriate defenses would also be a good alternative build to judge against.

 

Find Weakness boils down to a very very specific Naked Advantage with Limitations. And its use generates some of the most complicated calculations for applicable defense in the game.

 

Example:

What happens if a character with Find Weakness (who normally uses killing attacks) attempts to use Find Weakness vs. the resistant defenses of a character with the power Damage Resistance (which provides all his resistant defenses)?

 

Nothing! (The result of the FW roll is meaningless)

 

According to the 'standard rules', 'resistant defenses' provided by the power Damage Resistance are still considered 'normal defenses' with respect to Find Weakness.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

In my view, unless you had two shot autofire, two successes on the first roll ends the chain. I would consider each shot in the Autofire series as an attempt. The third (and subsequent) attempts failed. One failed attempt means no further attempts can succeed, so he's done.

 

If it was 2 shot autofire, so they both succeeded, I agree there would be a -4 penalty on the next attempt (-8 to the second shot).

 

Good call. But only if all the declaired shots succeed, meaning that a 3 shot Find Weakness attempt that succeeds by 8 (dividing the target's DEF by 8), could then be used next Phase, starting with a -6 penalty (to 16th), with a second hit (to 32nd) at -10. If not all 3 shots succeed (only succeeds by 7), a shot has failed and no further attempts may be made that combat.

 

One thing occured to me though, Find Weakiness does not use END, should that be an issue? And how much of an issue?

[SteveZilla]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

If a character makes a high enough Find Weakness roll with this method enough times isn't the net result about the same as buying an NND, Does Body as a Naked Advantage for the character's strongest attack?

 

Would anyone allow this build into a game? Even if limited by RSR?

 

I know I would never allow it in a game I might conceivably run. Nor would I let the player take +4 SPD - Only W/ Find Weakness, or +9d6 EB - RSR -- unless their EB were only about 3d6 to start with. A partially limited power still has it's full Active Points, and Damage Classes to count, after all.

 

Autofire Find Weakness is IMO an attempt to do an "end run" around campaign Active Point or Damage Class limits. Yes, you could get the same fractioning of defenses with Armor Piercing, but then you have either gone way beyond the AP/DC limits, or the base attack is proportionately smaller.

 

The time spent doing FW is one of it's limiting factors. So it the range mod when the target is at a distance. But the GM still needs to consider how much damage on average this (and any) character build will get through defenses, on average. If it's too high (regardless of it being the 24d6 EB, or the 12D6 EB and 18- Autofire Find Weakness), it's a problem.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

 

I've said it before....I don't like find weakness. What I have not said is this - because I've only just thought of it.

 

Armour piercing halves defences at a +1/2 cost - the active points of the attack increase substantally to reflect the utility.

 

Matching a 12d6 EB against an 8d6 AP EB yields 42 Stun v 28 STUN against halved defences. the break point on defences is 28 - anything below that and the 12d6 EB is better, anything above and the 8d6AP EB is better. The result, in other words, is reasonably transparent. You could make the AP element 11- activation or whatever and it starts to look like Find Weakness (a bit), but the active point level still does not change.

 

Now even if you take into account the cost of FW as part of the actice cost of an attack power, a FW for a single attack is 10 points for 11- (the same, in fact, as 11- AP on a 8d6 attack.

 

Now 2 problems arise:

 

1. FW does not necessarily stop at a single halving. OK, each additional halving is of less utility, but it still does not balance well witht he cost of AP, and

 

2. FW is a fixed cost and even if you count that cost towards the AP limit, you can afford a bigger attack if the campaign average is over 8d6 in attacks and you pay attention to AP limits. The more active points in the campaign attacks the bigger the bargain FW becomes.

 

Anyway, like I said before, I would not be keen on an autofire FW, but good luck with that.