Blasting Mental Blast

[Sean Waters]

Re: Blasting Mental Blast

 

That doesn't jive with my perspective on it. Like I said earlier' date=' if we are going to forget about BoECV because it's simply an attack with a different basis, then I believe we should drop AVLD (and thus Does Body for the EB) for the same reason. Remember that the Ego Attack is STILL not going to work against something without an Ego score or of a different Class of Minds, and it's not going to do Knockback (EDIT: oops; not that one; realized Does Body adds Knockback also).

 

That is an odd abritraryness. Targets without DEX are affected by OCV based attacks, so it doesn't make a lot of sense that targets without Ego are not affected by a Does Body Ego Attack, still I take your point. However, given that 'does Body' is not making Ego Attack equivalent to an advantaged EB, I'm not sure if it is a helpful comparison.

 

Well, perhaps not an aritraryness as such - after all other types of mental power can not affect things without minds, but damaging powers are usually in a different class and it is a specific rule for Ego Attack rather than a general rule for mental attacks.

 

 

Neglecting those things for the moment, best I can tell a fair comparison of "equivalent" powers comes to:

Energy Blast: 1d6, 5 points

Affects Desolidified (+1/2)

Indirect: any location, any direction (+3/4)

Invisible Power Effects: invisible to one Targeting and one Non-Targetting sense group (+3/4)

Range: Line of Sight (+1/2)

[17.5 Active]

Versus:

Ego Attack: 1d6, 10 points

Does Body (+1)

[20 Active]

which looks awfully close as far as I'm concerned. We could mess with the other piddly little details like I mentioned above, but I think it covers the main stuff.

 

(Also note that the Line of Sight range advantage covers No Range Modifier already; see 5ER p. 266.)

 

Good point on LOS - I'd missed that. Also Indirect should be +1/2 not +3/4, which reduces the cost to 15 points BUT I'm not taking your point on leaving out AVLD and BOECV.

 

You seem to accept that mental defences are less common and usually at a lower level than PD or ED and so, to my way of thinking, there must be some advantage connected with attacking mental defences, and so you should be paying more to do that - i.e. it involves an advantage. I accept that attacking Ego rather than Dex is much less of an issue but IME it is still some advantage because it gives you an unusual attack form that many opponents will not be geared to avoid. In fact if we stick in BOECV that gives effect against mental defence and includes LOS all for +1, so the cost would then be 20 points for 1d6. Of course you need to add 'Does Body' back in, which kind of defeats the point of putting it in to balance, and throws it off again. Of course it is worth noting that 'Stun Only' for EB is a -0 limitation (even if I think it should be -1/4 at least).

 

I accept that if you pile on enough advantages the costs balance and eventually the EB build becomes cheaper, but I'd suggest that is a very artificial way to compare the powers.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Blasting Mental Blast

 

Neglecting those things for the moment, best I can tell a fair comparison of "equivalent" powers comes to:

Energy Blast: 1d6, 5 points

Affects Desolidified (+1/2)

Indirect: any location, any direction (+3/4)

Invisible Power Effects: invisible to one Targeting and one Non-Targetting sense group (+3/4)

Range: Line of Sight (+1/2)

[17.5 Active]

Versus:

Ego Attack: 1d6, 10 points

Does Body (+1)

[20 Active]

which looks awfully close as far as I'm concerned. We could mess with the other piddly little details like I mentioned above, but I think it covers the main stuff.

 

(Also note that the Line of Sight range advantage covers No Range Modifier already; see 5ER p. 266.)

 

60 ap of your power will do no damage to any named target in the CU/CKC.

 

60 ap of the second power will do BODY damage to the majority of named targets in the CU/CKC.