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Extra Damage Only For Stunning


Uthanar

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I think it's a great concept.

 

My question is, "Are you after Effect, or Game Effect?"

 

Do you want a power appropriate to being more sudden, invasive, pervasive or otherwise than an ordinary attack of its type, as represented by being able to overwhelm the CON of those it normally would not, and leave them disoriented for a moment?

 

Or do you just want whomever you hit to lose an action?

 

I'd almost suggest any of the balanced, tried and true ways to get the Effect you're after:

1. Can a Mental Illusion, Only to Believe They're Stunned (-1) serve the purpose, in effect substituting EGO or Mental Defenses for CON & Damage Reduction?

2. Is it really a very short-term Entangle or Force Wall (Invisible), with the special effect that the target is briefly 'stunned', not 'Stunned'?

3. Do you want Armor Piercing, Only For Determining If Target Stunned?

 

What exactly do you want to take away from the target?

 

Concentration on continuing effects, a Recovery, their Held or next Action? All of them? That's a really potent set of Game Effects to have from what you're calling a limited power/advantage.

 

If it truly exceeds game limits, it's likely not something that will in the long run be a balanced mechanic.. And your GM may arm 5-teams with it. ;)

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"Please!"

 

Not harming the target other than Stunning it (w/ all your might) would be a blessing at times.

 

Only For Stunning takes the moral high ground over Stun Only. This is impressive as Stun Only already does this over Normal Damage.

 

It implies a tremendous amount of control.

 

-

 

Is the APG CE: Stunning stop power the only other way to trigger CON Stunning w/o doing STUN damage?

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And of course, a linked PRE attack will often have similar effect, under game rules, and it's more or less free other than what you pay for that very useful characteristic. Plus, built in mechanic for diminishing returns when used more than once, a nice way to prevent abuse.

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When I think of Stunning attacks I remember the Justice Lords episode of Justice League Unlimited and the trap that the Justice Lords set for the Justice League.  It sure seemed like a super-taser-like effect was being used especially since Hawkgirl's mace seemed to be able to block it. 

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Did I mention it could also be done as a special effect of a Martial Hold?

 

Also, while I think I meant not only Game Effect Linked, but also just a monologue at the same time with the "Extremely Violent Action", and "Showing Power" adders, I like your way better. Especially the 1/4 limit on the 0 point cost. ;)

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Only for stunning is -1/2 for me.  Doesn't do knockback, doesn't do body, doesn't actually damage, that's clearly a limitation.

 

I would very much rather have suppress the way it was, there are several clever and useful builds that can't be done any more with the present rule set.  Until then though, gotta work with what we have.

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Some people (at least one) will.

 

"My hero!"

 

On a -0?  Then they don't understand points.

 

The power as described is very heavily limited, almost to the point of uselessness.

 

A 10D6 EB will average 10 Body and 35 Stun.  The "Does no Body" limitation of -0 is generally accepted because in superheroic games the number of occasions where you don't want to do Body to someone are as common as the times when you do, and because it's mostly academic anyway since a target actually taking Body damage is quite rare.  The 10D6 EB gets the great majority of its value from the Stun damage it does.  If you don't do any Stun at all, and you do no knockback, you're left with only the very rare instances where you roll awesome and manage to stun your opponent.  But if the average defenses are 20 and the average Con score is 23, you've only got a 5.8% chance of stunning the opponent with your 10D6 attack.  (source for statistics: http://anydice.com/)

 

A 10D6 attack can be very useful as an attack because you're still doing Stun damage to the target.  With 20 Defense, if your opponent has 40 Stun or something, you only need to shoot him 3 times to drop him.  But now you can shoot him a million times and he will never drop, and you have less than a 6% chance of achieving the effect your power was designed to do.  That is absolutely worth more than a -0 limitation.  It's probably along the lines of a -2.

 

Now, that only applies until you get up to higher dice numbers.  If you have a 30D6 attack and the campaign averages are still the same for defense, then you've got a good power because you can spread and stun like 5 guys at once with one blast.  Definitely worth more than 50 points.  But it's also clearly inferior to a regular 30D6 attack, because next phase those guys are totally fine.  They don't even have to take a recovery.

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