Applying Advantages in HtH Combat - Point Count

[g3taso]

A character has an Offensive Strike (+4DCs), STR (+2DCs) and brass knuckles (+3DCs) that add to base damage. Lets also assume that the brass knuckles have a Penetrating (STUN) advantage.

 

If this is all bashing damage and I want to apply the Penetrating (STUN) to all the damage and not just the fist-loads, how much does it cost? I thought some of it was free.

 

If we do this all HKA lethal damage and I wanted the fist load (and everything else) to have Penetrating (BODY) instead, how much does it cost? Again, I thought some was free.

[Tholomyes]

I'm going to try to answer to the best of my ability, but I may need some clarification on some aspects: I'm assuming 6e, because that's what I know best, but if that's not the case, the answers may be different. I'm assuming by 3 DC, in the brass knuckles, you mean 2d6 penetrating (which calculates to 3 DC) and not 3d6 penetrating. I'm assuming, because you're asking how much it costs, that you want to have it be 8d6, all penetrating, not simply add DCs using the DC with advantages rule, and I'm assuming that this is a Heroic (as opposed to superheroic game), where you don't need to know the costs for the brass knuckles part (and/or, you already know the cost for that the brass knuckles portion will be)

 

In the first case, it's simply a naked advantage, which is calculated by determining the difference in cost of the non-advantaged ability and the advantaged ability. In this case it would be applying penetrating to 6 DC of Hand-to-Hand attack (the brass knuckles, as they already have penetrating, do not need to be counted). 6 DC HtH is normally 30 active points (even though some of it was bought through martial arts), so it would be (30*(1+0.5)-30) = 15 points. From there, if you only wanted it penetrating to be used with brass knuckles, you'd apply a focus limitation (Typically OIF: fist-loads of opportunity, which would bring the cost down to 10 points)

 

In the second case, it's largely the same, though there is a fairly common house rule of not being able to exceed the base HKA's DC in added damage, so if that rule is in place, the cost would be for only however many DCs you could add to the attack (generally the greater of 6 and the number of DCs in the fist load). This is ignoring the cost of the fist load (assuming the cost needs to be factored in; additionally, while your wording is a bit vague, it seems like you're implying the brass knuckles are to be used for both the HA and HKA, which is not typically allowed unless the knuckles are bought as a multipower which includes both HA and HKA as slots)

 

 

In the event that I was wrong in my earlier assumption that you were looking to add penetrating to all 8d6 damage, but instead were looking to simply add damage onto a 3DC penetrating attack, this is how it would add: since penetrating is one of the advantages listed as counting towards DC, you count the added DC based on that: Offensive Strike, STR and Brass Knuckles together are all 9 DC. Penetrating is a +1/2 advantage so 9DC corresponds to 9/(1+0.5)d6 = 6d6. (If you intended to mean a 3d6 attack with penetrating, that would be 5 DCs, corresponding to 11 DCs when added with Offensive strike and STR, which corresponds to 7d6)

[g3taso]

Thank you! By explaining those 3 cases I get what I had missed

 

A 2d6 Fist Load with Penetrating advantage is used with +2DCs of STR and +4DCs of Offensive Strike to yield an 8d6 HtH attack. A Naked Advantage calculated on the 6d6 of damage not having the Penetration of the weapon damage can be calculated.