New Adder: Killing Attack

[schir1964]

Killing Attack

This adder is applied to Normal Attacks that do body damage. The body damage of an attack with this adder is reduced by resistent defences only. Also, if the target has no resistent defenses, the stun damage is not reduced by normal defenses.

 

Cost: 10 Points

 

Concept developed by Tom McCarthy.

Reposted here for easy reference.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[bwdemon]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

As I've mentioned in previous threads, I think it should be a new, lower-priced variant of AVLD. Price it as a +1/2 modifier and you're done. It has similar effectiveness to Armor Piercing, so I'm comfortable with the modifer chosen.

 

The potential effect is too great to leave it to an adder, I think.

[The Main Man]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Actually, cost-wise, shouldn't "Killing" as a Power Advantage be a +2 Advantage?

[jtelson]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Actually' date=' cost-wise, shouldn't "Killing" as a Power Advantage be a +2 Advantage?[/quote']

 

...and that only works if no other advantages are applied.

[Vondy]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

I can understand an advantage that scales the price with the DCs, but an adder?

 

This is way to cheap. You pay 10 points once no matter what.

 

And why doesn't this break the "defenses are (meaningfully) cheaper than attacks" principle?

 

------------------------------------

 

10d6 Normal EB (50 Points)

10d6 Killing EB (60 Points)

 

20 Defense Normal.

 

Average Attack: Normal - 15 Stun/0 Body.

Average Attack: Killing - 35 Stun/10 Body.

 

So that's 20 more stun and 10 more body for 10 points.

 

And the disparity get worse the higher higher the DCs go.

 

What was the mathematical:scaling rationale for this?

[The Main Man]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

The problem with making Killing a modifier for a Normal attack is that the methodology is drastically changed.

 

According to the core book, that means a new power should be created.

 

But we already have a power for that, called Killing Attack.

[Rapier]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

I can understand an advantage that scales the price with the DCs, but an adder?

 

This is way to cheap. You pay 10 points once no matter what.

 

And why doesn't this break the "defenses are (meaningfully) cheaper than attacks" principle?

 

[---snippy von math-----]

 

What was the mathematical:scaling rationale for this?

 

Yep, sums it up nicely for me. As an Adder is wholely and completely inappropriate.

 

Again, I don't see ANY point in taking a gaming concept or power (eg Killing Attack) and replacing it with a different mechanic (most frequently more involved, difficult to understand or complicated) that performs the same basic function.

[bwdemon]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Though I can't speak for the original poster, my reason for going with the lesser-AVLD method is to consolidate damage systems in the game and remove problematic irregularities. The killing damage mechanic is a complication for complication's sake. It introduces the STUN Lotto problem and uses a mechnic not used anywhere else in the game. The game is improved through its removal.

[Rapier]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

The killing damage mechanic is a complication for complication's sake.

 

I think you are reaching pretty far with that comment. Somehow I sincerely doubt they sat around one day and said "Hey, lets see how complicated we could make something" and invented Killing Attacks.

 

It introduces the STUN Lotto problem and uses a mechnic not used anywhere else in the game. The game is improved through its removal.

 

A great many people are fond of the "STUN Lotto." The "STUN Lotto" also parallels the interaction with the Hit Location Table.

 

To say that Killing Attacks were created simply to add a complication is out-right ridiculous. While the room is divided on the "STUN Lotto," there is still (IIRC) a majority that support it. The game would be weaker, according to that majority, for its lack.

[Gideon]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

There is a way to reduce the "problem" of the Stun Lotto, without changing the rules of the game one bit.

 

In the game I play the GM does not use hit locations. He feels it makes the game easier, and players don't complain.

 

He does however use the hit location chart to determine the multiplier for the stun portion of a KA. The multipliers on the chart and the ratios are different from those you get by simply rolling the stun die.

 

The result is a "stun lotto" that has a more even spread of possibilities, and often leads to lower stun multipliers.

[bwdemon]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

I think you are reaching pretty far with that comment. Somehow I sincerely doubt they sat around one day and said "Hey' date=' lets see how complicated we could make something" and invented Killing Attacks.[/quote']

 

No, but they clearly decided to have one rule for every other attack in the game and then a separate rule for only one type of attack. That adds a complication that is unnecessary, a different mechanic just for the sake of having a different mechanic. Additional mechanics add complication to a system, which is how I got to my statement.

 

there is still (IIRC) a majority that support it. The game would be weaker, according to that majority, for its lack.

 

There is a majority that would prefer the STUN Lotto to a single consolidated mechanic? Did I miss a poll? Is the reason anything more than habit?

[Rapier]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

No, but they clearly decided to have one rule for every other attack in the game and then a separate rule for only one type of attack. That adds a complication that is unnecessary, a different mechanic just for the sake of having a different mechanic. Additional mechanics add complication to a system, which is how I got to my statement.

 

There is a majority that would prefer the STUN Lotto to a single consolidated mechanic? Did I miss a poll? Is the reason anything more than habit?

 

You might as well say 'there is a different mechanic for Flash so it should be gotten rid of.' There are different types of attack. Each of them is adjudicated in a different fashion (thus the different types of attack). To single out Killing Attacks (and claim some kind of willfull purpose to muddle the rules) is simply silly.

 

Killing Attacks are (roughly) the same mechanic that is used for Drains, Suppresses, Aids and a few other powers. You roll the dice and the total you rolled on the dice means something. That's not THAT unusual is it? If there is anything that is odd about combat damage, it is the BODY rules for normal attacks. 0 BODY is you roll a 1, and 2 BODY if you roll a 6? Now THAT's weird.

 

I know there have been numerous polls regarding Killing Attacks (do a search), IIRC the overwhelming response is that there is nothing wrong with the manner in which Killing Attacks are adjudicated.

 

Although this IS one of the hot topics along with the price of STR, DEX and SPD.

[bwdemon]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

A damage-causing attack should use a mechanic similar to damage-causing attacks. Any melee maneuver and any energy blast result in use of the same mechanics. Killing attacks are the only damage-causing attack that don't conform to this.

[The Main Man]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

I understand bwdemon's concern, but what can be done about it?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

There are probably more threads on killing damage than just about any other topic. Lots of options have been presented in the past. My favorite?

 

KA's cost 5 points per d6.

 

1d6 does its number rolled, -1, stun.

 

It does 1 BOD on 1 - 5 and 2 on 6 (or 0 on 1, 1 on 2-4, and 2 on 5-6).

 

BOD damage is resisted only by resistant defenses. No rDEF means no defense against STUN. Subtract an extra d6 from Knockback.

 

Similar averages to a KA at present, but vastly reduced volatility. Apply Hit Locations as for any normal attack.

[Lucius]

NOT Such a New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Killing Attack

This adder is applied to Normal Attacks that do body damage. The body damage of an attack with this adder is reduced by resistent defences only. Also, if the target has no resistent defenses, the stun damage is not reduced by normal defenses.

 

Cost: 10 Points

 

Concept presented by Tom McCarthy. Post

Reposted here for easy reference.

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

As far as I know, _I_ was the first person to propose that Killing be an Adder (of sorts.) See the following thread “Killing Epiphany” dated 31MAR2006 (over a year ago)

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43202&highlight=killing+epiphany

 

I still remember WHERE I was when it hit me. I said out loud "It's an Adder" and someone standing by me started looking around for the snake.

 

I did so because of the revalation that the defense against Killing Attacks, Resistant Defense, works like an Adder (of sorts.) That is, it increases the BASE rather than ACTIVE cost of the power, thus not “stacking” with Advantages, but it is scaled like and Advantage to the regular Base Cost – instead of a flat “+10 pts” or something it is a “+50%” to Base Cost.

 

I can understand an advantage that scales the price with the DCs, but an adder?

 

This is way to cheap. You pay 10 points once no matter what.

 

And why doesn't this break the "defenses are (meaningfully) cheaper than attacks" principle?

 

 

“Why doesn’t this break the ‘defenses are (meaningfully) cheaper than attacks’ principle?”

 

That is EXACTLY the question I’ve been asking for a long time about the Rules As Written on Killing Attacks. And the answer is, it DOES break that principle – no wonder it leads to so much contention, it violates one of the basic principles of the game!

 

Of course you’re right that the solution proposed here is still in violation of that meta-rule, but the Rules As Written are obviously in even worse violation of the same principle.

 

So whatever we assign as a value to the Killing Adder, it must scale to the damage classes in the same way Resistant Defense scales to the total of Defense being made Resistant.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary seldom sleeps at both ends at once…

[schir1964]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Updated.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[schir1964]

Re: NOT Such a New Adder: Killing Attack

 

As far as I know, _I_ was the first person to propose that Killing be an Adder (of sorts.) See the following thread “Killing Epiphany” dated 31MAR2006 (over a year ago)

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43202&highlight=killing+epiphany

Although this shows that you suggested that mechanic should be an adder, you didn't actually post any construct as an alternative. And what this thread was doing is simply reposting a mechanic proposed by Tom McCarthy at one point. If you have a thread where you supplied an actual mechanic, please post it and I'll add it to the list.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[GAZZA]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

As I've mentioned in previous threads' date=' I think it should be a new, lower-priced variant of AVLD. Price it as a +1/2 modifier and you're done. It has similar effectiveness to Armor Piercing, so I'm comfortable with the modifer chosen.[/quote']

Mm.

 

I don't oppose the idea of "Killing Attack" as an advantage per se, but I think +1/2 is way too high. You bring up Armour Piercing, which is a very good comparison.

 

Judging by the HERO list of suggested campaign guidelines, it seems that on average characters are expected to have about 1/2 their defences as resistant. That makes a KA "AP-like" only for the purposes of BODY (you get your full DEF against the STUN, presuming you have at least 1 point of resistant DEF). IMHO, this is at best half as effective as Armour Piercing would be. On the other hand, Hardened is cheaper than Damage Resistance (typically; ignoring other advantages, DR can be viewed as a +1/2 advantage while Hardened is +1/4).

 

Given that any advantage at all will make Normal Attacks average more BODY than an equivalent AP Killing Attack, there'd have to be a corresponding drop in resistant defences to actually make Killing Attack "worth" buying. There has been a suggestion (tongue in cheek originally, but it is worth considering) to instead make Normal Attacks into Killing Attacks (ie a 12d6 Energy Blast, by default, pits the BODY against rED) and have a limitation of some sort for "Normal Attack". A fairly drastic change, though.

 

The potential effect is too great to leave it to an adder, I think.

I'm of two minds.

 

If you restrict yourself to "normal" AP ranges (say about 75 active points maximum in an attack), then you're only looking at a difference of 2 BODY and 7 STUN, and it's in favour of the attack without the adder; you'd need to have resistant defences of less than about 13 or so to have the advantage go to the Killing Attack.

 

On the other hand you could crank up the AP to say about 150. At that point you're comparing a 28d6 Killing Attack against a 30d6 Normal Attack. But I'd imagine at that sort of rarified "beyond Galactic Champions" power level, most defences are going to be resistant and quite possibly Hardened as well, since defences are comparatively cheap.

 

To be honest I'm not convinced that a mechanic that lowers the average BODY for Killing Attacks is "correct", as the BODY of Killing Attacks is not what is currently "wrong" with them.

[Lucius]

Re: NOT Such a New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Although this shows that you suggested that mechanic should be an adder, you didn't actually any construct as an alternative. And what this thread was doing is simply reposting an actual mechanic that proposed by Tom McCarthy at one point. If you have a thread where you supplied an actual mechanic, please post it and I'll add it to the list.

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

You're right. I read the thread and I don't find where I proposed a solid "Let's do it exactly this way" mechanic. I could have sworn I had, but apparently not.

 

I believe that I did at least imply that the cost should scale with the power, just as it does for Resistant Defenses. I made notes on some proposals but never posted them it seems. The problem is that there are two different ways that Killing Attacks are better than Normal, and I was trying to seperate out the two effects.

 

However, I'll go ahead and post a proposal soon.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is helping me find some notes.

[Lucius]

New Adder: Killing Attack

 

New Mechanic: Killing Adder.

 

Killing Attack

This adder is applied to Normal Attacks that do body damage. The body damage of an attack with this adder is reduced by resistant defences only. Also, if the target has no resistant defenses, the stun damage is not reduced by normal defenses. The cost to make a Normal Attack into a Killing Attack is 5 pts per 2 dice of Normal Attack, which cost is added to the Base Cost of the power before applying any Advantages.

 

Cost: 5 pts per 2 dice of attack.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

This post approved by the palindromedary

[GAZZA]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Since a "scaling adder" seems to be a unique mechanic not used anywhere else, I'm curious as to why you don't just propose it as a +1/2 advantage (which costs the same)?

 

In any case this still suffers from the same "problem" - it lowers the BODY of a Killing Attack relative to a Normal Attack.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Since a "scaling adder" seems to be a unique mechanic not used anywhere else, I'm curious as to why you don't just propose it as a +1/2 advantage (which costs the same)?

 

In any case this still suffers from the same "problem" - it lowers the BODY of a Killing Attack relative to a Normal Attack.

 

Well , there is the point that the "base" defence for Killing Attacks is Damage Resitance, which essentially works as a scaling adder just like this does.

 

And I repeat what I said (with my tounge only very slightly in cheek) in another thread....

 

Forget making Killing attacks an Advantaged Normal Attack.

Make Normal Attacks a Limited form of Killing Attack.

No more Stun Lotto because everyones on the same page, all damage inflicting attacks use identical mechanisims, it gives a clear price break in exchange for reduced utility etc.

 

The big difference is it makes large attacks less predictable in effect, which I like, whereas converting the system to entirely use the Normal Attack mechanisim increases the predictability.

[GAZZA]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

Well ' date=' there is the point that the "base" defence for Killing Attacks is Damage Resistance, which essentially works as a scaling adder just like this does.[/quote']

Fair enough, it does work out like that. Though really, the same argument applies: a +1/2 "resistant" advantage for PD and ED (etc) would be functionally the same as the Damage Resistance power, and if they were to ditch DR I suspect it would become an advantage rather than a scaling adder - but anyway, we're only talking semantics.

 

Forget making Killing attacks an Advantaged Normal Attack.

Make Normal Attacks a Limited form of Killing Attack.

No more Stun Lotto because everyones on the same page, all damage inflicting attacks use identical mechanisms, it gives a clear price break in exchange for reduced utility etc.

It could work. However, I foresee a few problems - mainly, what level of limitation to set it?

 

Many supers buy the majority of their defences as resistant (often via Armour or Force Field), so it would be very little limitation (-1/4 might be too high; it might work out no more than -0 similar to STUN only).

 

On the other appendage, heroic level games often have half or more of their defences as non-resistant, so it's about half as effective as Armour Piercing there; might be good for as much as -1/2 or higher.

 

I guess I'm just a little suspicious of a core rule that would have to vary by genre. Rules that vary by genre aren't bad in and of themselves (for example, "works vs EGO, not BODY" for Transform or some Entangles is usually an advantage in a supers game, but might be a limitation in a mystic oriented game), but they tend to be a little obscure. Killing Attacks don't really fall into that category, IMHO.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack

 

 

It could work. However, I foresee a few problems - mainly, what level of limitation to set it?

 

Many supers buy the majority of their defences as resistant (often via Armour or Force Field), so it would be very little limitation (-1/4 might be too high; it might work out no more than -0 similar to STUN only).

 

On the other appendage, heroic level games often have half or more of their defences as non-resistant, so it's about half as effective as Armour Piercing there; might be good for as much as -1/2 or higher.

 

I guess I'm just a little suspicious of a core rule that would have to vary by genre. Rules that vary by genre aren't bad in and of themselves (for example, "works vs EGO, not BODY" for Transform or some Entangles is usually an advantage in a supers game, but might be a limitation in a mystic oriented game), but they tend to be a little obscure. Killing Attacks don't really fall into that category, IMHO.

 

Erk?

 

Suppose for a moment EVERYTHING in the rules stays according to Hoyle & Long, except this single point of deviation.

 

Normal PD and ED will still exist, as figured stats. Everybody on the planet has them to one level or another. No one needs superpowers to increase them, at least a bit. This is a cheap and plentiful defence. A Limitation on an attack power that allows everyone (and their little dog Toto, too) to resist the Body Damage of the attack with a universal defence isn't a Limit that I'd consider all that genre dependent, nor only worth a -0 or -1/4.

 

If I had the players and time I'd be sorely tempted to try and playtest the idea the old fashioned way... with a one-off game. I'd probably start the Limit at (-1/2) for baseline testing, because it "fits" the current structural assumptions.