Resistant mental defense?

[Mickael]

Hi!

 

Is there a reason to buy resistant mental defense (and the same question could apply to resistant flash and power defenses) other than resisting to a NND [Defense is having some resistant mental defense]?

 

Mickael

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Well, not just NND itself, but AVAD's set to Resistant Mental Defense as well. Granted not very common so not sure i would buy it personally, but that's the only real use for it

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Also you can buy an advantage to make Mental Blast do Body. Resistant mental defence would help there.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Back in the day, it was mainly used for KA - BOECV (which were also usually Does Body, since the intent was to kill with a thought... )

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Actually, 6e1 247 states that DOES BODY for mental blast does not make it killing damage, so you DO NOT need resistant Mental Defense to defend against them.

 

And evidently they changed that, BOECV is now ACV, and in and of itself that does not change the type of defenses your attacks are applied to (Normal Attacks targeted with OMCV still affect PD/ED. AVAD is needed to change the defense.)

 

And guys, not trying to be a jerk, point fingers, or be superior, just trying to stop the spread of any misinformation.

 

To Whit: All the info i have provided is for 6e, things worked differently in prev editions.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Also you can buy an advantage to make Mental Blast do Body. Resistant mental defence would help there.

 

No, that's defended normally by Mental Defense. It just Does Body too.

 

But -

 

Killing Attack built to work as a Mental Power (AVAD, ACV, w/ or w/o Does Body) would normally be built to work against Resistant Mental Defense. Though technically you could switch the AVAD to any defense, Resistant Mental seems the most appropriate.

 

On that note, you can define AVAD for any Power to work against Resistant Mental Defense, assuming GM Approval and all that.

 

It's ultra-rare, and likely not appropriate in most games. But this being Hero, it's an option on the table, just in case.

[Mickael]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

OK, thanks for your answers (I already had eliminated the "does body" advantage as a cause, but hadn't thought about AVAD other than NND).

 

So I think I now can save a few points on my latest character...

[Matt the Bruins]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

It's probably a good idea to have at least a little in a mystic heroes campaign - I know at least one spell invoking an otherdimensional entity in the Champions setting works against rMD.

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

In my opinion applying resistant (or any of the other defense modifiers) to any defenses other than PD/ED is strictly for concept. Now I am ALL about concept characters, so if it's important to your character concept, go for it. But on a cost efficiency basis they are almost always a waste of points. Unless your GM TELLS you ahead of the time that you should be prepared for some kind of oddball attacks like that, you are likely to never encounter something for which those defenses apply. And if you did, it should be so rare that the cost should STILL not be worth it. Because frankly, if your GM is sending guys at you with oddball AVAD's like that all the time, he is basically trying you kill you (which is a sign of a BAD GM). And I mean, if that's his goal... he can, there is no way you can prevent it honestly.

 

Not to mention the fact that if you DO take those defenses, and he DOES spring someone on you who they are good against... be prepared for some dark, suspicion-filled glares from the rest of your party

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

A couple of points possibly worth making:

 

1. It is not necessarily expensive to make your mental defence resistant, because you do not have to make all of your mental defence resistant (unlike the, for example, hardened advantage). Assuming that you have 12 DC/60 AP attacks, you'd need AVAD (very common defence to rare defence PD>Resistant mental defence) at +1 1/2. For 62 points you could get a 5 dice 'blast attack, or a 1 1/2 dice killing attack that works against rMD. Now that only does STUN, of course, and will do less than 20 Stun: that will cost 10 points to completely protect against by making 20 points of MD resistant. You might want to go for far less though: if the attack is to do BODY damage you need an extra advantage (Does BODY), which is an additional +1, making your attacks more like 3 1/2d6 blast/1d6+1 killing(although that would cost 70): you don;t have to protect against more than 6 or 7 points to be completely 'Bodyproof', which costs 3 or 4 points. 8 points of resistant MD means you will not be taking Body damage AND you get 8 point sof STUN protection from rMD targeting attacks that do not do BODY.

 

I'm not suggesting everyone should go spend their points on that, I'm just saying it is actually not expensive to do.

 

2. I do like to use AVAD Does Body attacks against players occasionally. I'm not trying to kill them, I'm trying to shake them up. You are not going to kill half the party (or any of the party unless you have an inappropriate mean streak) with an attack that does 4d6 or less even if they have no defences against it, but you are going to make them feel that they are in real danger: nothing is quite so scary to an invulnerable superhero as taking Body. The other advantage of AVAD Does BODY attacks is that mundane but theoretically dangerous things, like tanks, which can actually be quite difficult for superheroes to damage, are suddenly melting as they do not have the right defences. That can also make players think, and make a villain look to be far more dangerous than they actually are.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I tend to see "vs Resistant Exotic Defense" and "Resistant Exotic Defense" as an arm's race. "Oh yeah? Well this attack is only defended by TRIPLE hardened resistant smell flash defense"! I'm inclined to take the approach that exotic defenses work against all forms of attack targeting that exotic defense, such that there is no differentiation between "resistant" and "non-resistant" exotic defenses. Either you are defended against the form of exotic attack, or you are not. "resistant" exotic defenses are enough of a corner case that dropping them from the game entirely works fine for me.

 

As for that "really hard to defend against attack", just come out and say "I want an attack that no one, or virtually no one gets defenses against". The GM can either allow it (and set a price he considers appropriate for that advantage) or deny it.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I tend to see "vs Resistant Exotic Defense" and "Resistant Exotic Defense" as an arm's race. "Oh yeah? Well this attack is only defended by TRIPLE hardened resistant smell flash defense"! I'm inclined to take the approach that exotic defenses work against all forms of attack targeting that exotic defense, such that there is no differentiation between "resistant" and "non-resistant" exotic defenses. Either you are defended against the form of exotic attack, or you are not. "resistant" exotic defenses are enough of a corner case that dropping them from the game entirely works fine for me.

 

As for that "really hard to defend against attack", just come out and say "I want an attack that no one, or virtually no one gets defenses against". The GM can either allow it (and set a price he considers appropriate for that advantage) or deny it.

 

Same here. The only time in my life I'd ever even heard of the idea of Resistant Mental Defense was in reference to a game of the powergamiest powergamers that ever powergamed a game of power. A 4e game where 250 point characters could, and would, drop the high-end write-up of Dr. Destroyer. And that's solo, not as a team.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Highly advantaged exotic attacks that do Body are not a real problem unless you build in a continuing effect or autofire or somesuch to boost the damage levels: usually, even if the target has no defences they take less stun than a normal attack against normal defences and, whilst they may take Body, it is usually only a bit. For that reason they never bothered me on their own - only when you had all sorts of other advantages to make them particularly nasty.

 

The biggest problem with highly nuanced attacks is the framework. NNDs are nasty, but if the NND is your only main attack, it makes you think a lot more tactically than if you have half a dozen other options, depending on what you are facing. Whilst having a lot of (pretty cheap) alternative attacks makes you tactically very versatile, there are not that many examples of characters with obvious multipowers, or, if they do have them, they tend to be pretty themed: Cyclops can vey his beam width from AoE to normal attack to (either) killing or AP: he does not have a 'affects desolid' slot in there, or an AVAD, because it makes no sense to have it in there.

 

Off topic, but...we played a game one time where anyone with the 'meta gen'e was considered (as a campaign rule - no need to pay for it) to only take half damage from 'non-meta' attacks, and meta-attacks were considered to do double damage against non-meta defences. It really made the characters feel a lot more powerful, without having to re-write the whole world, or doubling the build points. Normals and normal equipment were easy targets for superheroes and supervillains, but they were still balanced against each other. They were effectively living in a paper world with the only truly solid objects being other meta-individuals. Not for everyone, but it made for a high powered campaign without having to have a lot of points involved.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Same here. The only time in my life I'd ever even heard of the idea of Resistant Mental Defense was in reference to a game of the powergamiest powergamers that ever powergamed a game of power. A 4e game where 250 point characters could' date=' and would, drop the high-end write-up of Dr. Destroyer. And that's solo, not as a team.[/quote']

 

The RKA, BOECV, Does Body back in 5E never seemed like anything out of the ordinary to me. It was even an example in the books.

 

So Resistant Mental Defense wasn't all that uncommon in my games. We have several characters that have it.

 

By contrast, I have never seen a build that would target Resistant Flash Defense that didn't trigger my GMing Danger Sense...

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

The RKA, BOECV, Does Body back in 5E never seemed like anything out of the ordinary to me. It was even an example in the books.

 

So Resistant Mental Defense wasn't all that uncommon in my games. We have several characters that have it.

 

By contrast, I have never seen a build that would target Resistant Flash Defense that didn't trigger my GMing Danger Sense...

 

Strobe lights triggering fatal epileptic seizures?

 

No, you have a point: just because you can do it does not necessarily mean you should, but it does depend on the game and the group. Ultimately, trying to find increasingly esoteric ways to hurt each other becomes laregly pointless, and you might as well go back, as Joe Haldeman suggests in The Forever War, to just hitting each other with sticks and bits of pointy metal.

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I didn't mean to insinuate that if the GM uses exotic attacks on occasion he is trying to kill the players, but for exotic defenses (like rMD) to be cost effective they need to be useful fairly regularly. Spending 8 points for a defense that will only be useful against an opponent on a very rare occasion is not a good buy (unless it is part of character concept, like I mentioned earlier.) Especially since unless your GM allows advantages to NOT affect campaign caps your much better off spending those points on base defenses (which will apply much more often.) In order for the exotic defenses to be cost effective you would need to be facing enemies using them fairly regularly, and if a GM did that without warning his players, i'd have concerns about that GM.

 

However, after some thorough checking in the rule books, I'm not exactly sure how AVAD works with killing attacks. If you apply an AVAD to a killing attack, and switch it to MD, with the Does BODY (for a total +2 advantage) would it then work like PD/ED? IE MD protects the STUN, but only rMD protects the BODY? If you instead did AVAD as rMD (for +2 1/2 total) would that only change it so that the stun requires rMD as well? (and rMD would still protect against the BODY damage? if not what applies to the BODY damage?) That may be one for Steve, I'm going to check the archive and see if its been asked before.....

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

A good point - AVAD vs rDEF means both STUN and BOD are resisted by rDEF only. Given that, why would a killing attack with AVAD Mental Defense require resistant mental defense? AVAD segregates defenses and resistant defenses into separate categories and does not, unless I am misrecalling, provide any options for one defense against STUN and another against BOD. [APG 3, here we come!]

[ghost-angel]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Interesting point.

 

Though I think the intent might be the Body is resisted by rMD and the Stun by MD - which how I might normally rule it. But I think by RAW, switching AVAD to a defense means that, and only that, defense applies, to both the Stun and Body of an Attack.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I can certainly see using BOD = rDEF. Killing attacks suffer a loss of STUN damage, gain a bit of BOD damage and get BOD applying against rDEF, for the same 5 points per DC paid for a Blast, so the RAW already imply that those changes are, overall, a wash.

 

That said, rPD and rED are pretty much universal, while rExotic Defenses are far less common.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Blast with +1 1/2 AVAD will convert the defecne from ED to rMD, and only works against STUN. Add 'does Body' and it also does Body, which is resisted by rMD. For the same points you do a LOT less damage: I think it is reasonably comparable to a normal or killing attack against normal/killing defences.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Also Killing attack stun works against normal defences (Very common defences) and the killing damage works against resistant defences (common defences). If you move two steps down the table you do AVAD at +1. That means that Very Common Defences works against > Common > Uncommon defences, such as Mental Defence. The same +1 moves the Common defence down two levels too > Uncommon > Rare, such as Resistant Mental Defence.

 

So +1 AVAD on killing attacks makes a killing attack that works against MD and rMD as an unmodified KA works against ED and rED. Least I assume it does.

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I am actually asking Steve about this in the rules questions boards because it's not spelled out and I could easily see either interpretation as being correct (and as intended). Edit: Also dont forget, AVAD's do STUN only so you ALREADY have to add an extra +1 advantage (Does Body) in order for any of this to actually matter.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I am actually asking Steve about this in the rules questions boards because it's not spelled out and I could easily see either interpretation as being correct (and as intended). Edit: Also dont forget' date=' AVAD's do STUN only so you ALREADY have to add an extra +1 advantage (Does Body) in order for any of this to actually matter.[/quote']

 

Even an AVAD that only does Stun can take a resistant defence: you don't necessarily need to do Body for it to matter.

[psyber624]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

Right, but thats not the issue here, The question is if a KILLING attack is bought AVAD to a non-resistant defense (this discussion is about MD but the same could apply to FD or PwD) and then buys the Does Body advantage, will the non-resistant defense protect against the BODY damage? I get that it will prevent STUN, and that if the avad was bought as (+1/2) more it could be made to apply to rMD/rFD/rPwD for both stun and body, but Killing Attack is somewhat of a strange beast, because part of it is normally protected by non-resistant defenses, and part of it requires resistant defenses. The question is does a Killing Attack AVAD lose this benefit (if AVAD'ed to a non-resistand defense) or does it still apply. Both arguments are supportable with statements made in the books. Both are supportable by common sense and dramatic sense. So it's not a clear cut case which is the RAW interpretation of what happens here.

 

To boil it down to examples: If i have

3d6 RKA, AVAD (MD), Does Body

And i hit someone with 10 MD, 0 rMD, and I roll a 13 for my BODY damage, would this person take 13 BODY (BODY from Killing attacks is only resistible by resistant defenses), or 3 BODY, (AVAD applies all the damage to MD, the RKA BODY "loses" its standard ability to ignore non-resistant defenses). In either case the target will take STUN -10, that much i know.

 

If i instead changed the AVAD to (rMD) i get that he would have 0 defenses, it is the other corner case that concerns me.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Resistant mental defense?

 

I would say that you move down the 'rarity' levels, so, if you wanted to make a Killing Attack AVAD (+1) to work against Mnetal Defence, well, defence for the stun of a killing attack is normal PD or ED (Very Common) and +1 takes you through common to uncommon (for example mental Defence). If you buy 'Does Body', the question is whether the Body damage is defencded against by MD or (as it starts as a Common defence anyway i.e. rPD/rED) whether it also moves 2 levels down and is resisted by rMD.

 

I like the idea of different starting points so different ending points, and would probably do it as described above BUT the official answer will probably be that the KA Stun works against MD, so the Body will too.