Stacking Damage Reduction?

[Mathew]

Say you have a character with innate Damage Reduction (75% resistant ED), then they get ahold of a laser reflective suit that has 50% resistant ED vs. lasers. How do you cover this? Do they get the highest only? Apply one than the other?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

I'd say apply them separately one at a time.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

That'd probably be a good question for Steve Long. It seems awfully potent, but that IS a lot of points....

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Well, if the total reduction % was <= 100% you could just add them and be done.

 

Applying them separately is almost as good and lets you stack reductions that total to 100% or higher without becoming 'invulnerability'.

 

Say 80 Stun gets past regular defenses and a character has 2 sources of 25% Reduction:

75% of 80 = 60, 75% of 60 = 45

vs.

50% of 80 = 40

[randian]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Say you have a character with innate Damage Reduction (75% resistant ED)' date=' then they get ahold of a laser reflective suit that has 50% resistant ED vs. lasers. How do you cover this? Do they get the highest only? Apply one than the other?[/quote']

In 6E the answer is clear: "If a character has two or more Damage Reduction powers that could apply to the same attack, he can only apply one of them (he chooses which one)". 6E1 184, last paragraph.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

In 6E the answer is clear: "If a character has two or more Damage Reduction powers that could apply to the same attack' date=' he can only apply one of them (he chooses which one)". 6E1 184, last paragraph.[/quote']

 

Ah. Yes. Cool. I had a feeling it might be something more like that.

[dmjalund]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

if one wanted it to work the other way you could form it as a multpower, with one slot as 50% Damage reduction, and the next as (75%-50%) Adder to Existing Damage reduction

 

 

(or something like this)

[pinecone]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Say you have a character with innate Damage Reduction (75% resistant ED)' date=' then they get ahold of a laser reflective suit that has 50% resistant ED vs. lasers. How do you cover this? Do they get the highest only? Apply one than the other?[/quote']

 

I'd go with the highest counts.....though you could aply both, aply def, reduce by 75%, reduce by 50% 2or 3 get through....seems like a lot of math, but if you really dig math...why not?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

So for 90 points, I get 87.5% Physical damage reduction (25% x 50% leaves 12.5% getting through). For the same price, I could buy +60 rPD, or +75 PD, 30 of which is resistant. Which one seems more cost-effective?

[GAZZA]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

This is a problem right across the board though.

 

Hero has always said that you should treat someone who has bought (say) 50% rPD as if they'd spent 30 points on defences. But that's always been a bit questionable. If you're in a 12d6 game, then you'll take 21 STUN from the average blast if you've got 50% DR, but only 12 or so if you have 30 PD. Against big dudes that have 16d6, you'll take 28 instead of 26 or so. It's a pretty inefficient use of points - if you ignore the fact that it can also affect some NNDs and so on of course.

 

And I'm even less enthused about Damage Negation. To me that seems like spending 5 points to negate (on average) 3.5 points of damage, which is just totally breaking the whole "defences are cheaper". Again, there is the fact that it also affects some NNDs, but it's still clearly not as easy as X points on DN and DR should be considered as X points of defences.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Damage negation is an odd one. It would cost 3.5 to buy +3.5 PD, say. Making 1 point Resistant (since Damage Negation reduces killing attack DC's) costs an extra 0.5 points = 4. It reduces AP attacks and Penetrating attacks, albeit as pro rated DC's, so it's partially Hardened and Impenetrable. It reduces relevant ND's and AVAD's.

 

On the negative side, only 1 of those PD (on average) defends against BOD from a normal attack, and only 2 (on average) defends against STUN from a KA.

 

Since it reduces DC's, it also reduces Knockback, so add the cost of Knockback Resistance to the tally.

 

I'd like to hear some comments from people who have playtested DN in live game conditions before drawing any conclusion on whether it is priced in accordance with its utility.

[GAZZA]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Yes, all good points. Hadn't thought of that.

 

I admit, I discourage players from taking Damage Reduction primarily because it means they have more arithmetic to do when they get hit, and generally speaking you're often better off just buying higher defences. It had seemed to me that Damage Negation was of the same sort of thing, but you're right - my analysis was over simplistic.

 

It seems a bit overpriced against mental powers though. I presume since it knocks off DCs that you only get 1/2 a dice off of Mental Blast for every 5 points, and mental attacks are rarely killing attacks or knockback capable. Of course it will work against AVADs, but generally so will Mental Defence. NNDs are very rare for mental powers. However, for physical and energy defences I am sold on it being a lot better than I'd thought - thank you!

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

In my experience defenses work like this:

 

Static DEF (resistant protection) works to keep you from being nickle and dime'd down. Many small hits are worse if you have a high DEF. A character definitely needs some of this. If you take larger sized hits, you will take significantly more damage than if you had a combination of less DEF and DR though.

 

Damage Reduction excels at mitigating the effect of large hits. You do get taken apart by many small hits, but larger hits will have much less of an effect. I usually build any super heroic character with some amount of DR. It is also useful against weird AVADS. Mental Damage Reduction will cripple all EGO+X powers. Suddenly an EGO +30 effect means EGOx2 + 60 (if you have 50% DR). The way around that is either removing it from your game, or using mental powers with +0 and +10 effects in creative ways.

 

Damage Negation is best for dealing with really oddly advantaged attacks. At least that's what I've found. That's been my only experience and I wish I could comment more.

[randian]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

Mental Damage Reduction will cripple all EGO+X powers. Suddenly an EGO +30 effect means EGOx2 + 60 (if you have 50% DR). The way around that is either removing it from your game, or using mental powers with +0 and +10 effects in creative ways.

That's great, as long as you don't care about taking plenty of stun from Mental Blast. If you do the math I believe you will find that a combination of high EGO and Mental Defense to be much better. That is, both cheaper and more effective. The high Ego gives you a high Ego roll against EGO+X powers, and the Mental Defense takes care of stun. This wasn't the case before 6E, when EGO cost you 2/point.

Damage Negation is best for dealing with really oddly advantaged attacks. At least that's what I've found. That's been my only experience and I wish I could comment more.

How so? Since DN is the only defense that gets less effective the more advantages an attack has, I don't see why you would want it as a defense against advantaged attacks. You wouldn't want Mental or Power DN either, at 10/DC it's absurdly overpriced.

 

Don't forget the other design-breaking feature of DN: Reduced Negation at 2 points/DC. Compare with Piercing, a defense-reducing power a lot of people (irrationally in my opinion) think is too good, which costs ~10 points/DC. DN is not only weak, it's absurdly cheap to ignore.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

I won't argue on EGO +mental defense, both are effective, and it just matters what exactly you want.

 

The DN thing is mostly for stuff like "NND: Defense is something you don't have" (like "does not breath, is a dwarf, being left handed). DN still works on those, just like DR. I didn't think about "Reduced Negation", that does make DN rather sad.

[Mathew]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

As I phrased in the question, this isn't about points, in the game the character had one Damage Reduction he paid for, then added a Damage reduction from a device he gained in the course of the game. I was wondering if they stacked.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

 

In 6E the answer is clear: "If a character has two or more Damage Reduction powers that could apply to the same attack' date=' he can only apply one of them (he chooses which one)". 6E1 184, last paragraph.[/quote']

 

That's the official answer.

 

You are free to house rule as you like