"Drain Actions"

[Guest Usagi]

I want to build a character with a power that essentially drains actions.  I want it to work like Flash, where you roll a die and the target loses the ability to take actions for that many phases. Specifically the idea is that the character performs a magic trick and the target stands there baffled for a few seconds.  I thought about building it as a Mental Paralysis but its really complicated and not really what I'm looking for.  Also, the hit roll is...weird.  It really shouldn't require a hit roll, since the target can't really dodge it.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

[dmjalund]

Why can't they dodge it?

[Guest Usagi]

20 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

Why can't they dodge it?

Because it's kind of like a PRE Attack.  The character does a magic trick which distracts and befuddles the target.  It's not like you can dodge out of the way of me pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

 

I suppose I could just treat it as a PRE Attack...

[Doc Democracy]

I don't see why you are dismissing mental paralysis.

 

I would make it mental paralysis using OCV versus MDCV (your prestidigitation capturing their attention completely), I would reduce the range (close up magic), not allow it to be used after combat starts (too many distractions), make it All or nothing (the target is either fascinated or is not) and allow it to be broken by the first point of STUN received by the target (nothing breaks fascination more than pain).  I might think about bundling it up with some levels against people recently affected (as they are distracted, still trying to work out how it worked), and in that case I might go with area effect, no range for the mental paralysis.

 

Doc

[sentry0]

How about an AoE Flash with invisible power effects?

[IndianaJoe3]

This sounds like a Presence Attack.

[Duke Bushido]

Yep. 

 

Sound to me like Flash is what you want.  Magic trick or phosphorous grenade?  Those are just the special effects. 

[steriaca]

Well Actions in Hero are a function of Speed. What about Drain Speed, Only To Remove Actions (+0)?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah speed or DEX drain would do it, flash effectively works for most actions, Mental paralysis or mind control (do nothing), a sufficiently huge presence attack, even the APG Change Environment option to stun a target all would work.  But aside from "magic just works" there's no justification for lacking an attack roll.  And there are ways around that, you just gotta pay for em

[massey]

First, you've got to understand that what you're describing is incredibly powerful.  With even 1D6 of such an ability, with one action, your character can take out an opponent for up to 6 phases.  For most characters that's an entire Turn.  It's not quite a one-shot knockout, but it almost is.  You can incapacitate opponents for a huge amount of time, and you want it to auto-hit.

 

In other words, it's going to be very expensive.

 

So what you're really looking at is building a power that takes an opponent out of a fight with one shot, but has a limitation on it so it operates according to your "roll a D6, lose that many actions" system.  Because basically the guy is hosed for however many phases you roll on the dice.  So you build a power to completely take him out, and then limit it from there.  So let's go over some possibilities (to give a sense of scale, this is assuming a standard 12D6 game, and I'm using 5th edition rules):

 

The blasty way to do it

30D6 Energy Blast, area effect accurate (+1/2), no knockback (-1/4), only to "KO" to prevent target from taking actions (-1), target recovers automatically in XD6 phases (-?)

You knock the target unconscious with your mega-oversized attack.  You knock him to -40 Stun or something and he's in the GM discretion range.  But the limitation means that he's not actually "unconscious" -- he didn't actually lose any Stun, he didn't take any Body, he didn't fly backwards from knockback, he doesn't take x2 Stun if he's hit by someone else, he's still aware of what is happening, etc.  He's only "unconscious" in the sense that being at negative Stun prevents you from acting, and that's the game mechanic you want to duplicate here.  The value of the last limitation of recovering in XD6 phases depends on how many D6 you roll.  10D6 would not be a limitation at all.  1D6 might be somewhere between a -1 and a -2.

 

The flashy way to do it

20D6 Flash vs Sight, Hearing, Radar, Touch, Mental, Smell, Spatial Awareness, etc., area effect accurate (+1/2), target still peripherally aware of surroundings (-1/4), target recovers automatically in XD6 phases (-?)

It's the same general idea.  They get Flashed enough so that they can't sense anything, and therefore can't target anything.  So they can't shoot, can't fight, can't really even move around.  While they could technically blindly fire off energy blasts or something like that, they can't sense their environment in any way.  There's a "peripherally aware of surroundings" limitation which means they won't blindly run into a fire, or fall off a cliff, and if somebody says something to them they might remember it once they can take an action again.  But the power is intended to stop them cold when it comes to actual useful actions.  The final limitation on automatically recovering will be lower than in the first example, because being at -40 Stun recovers far more slowly than does a 20D6 Flash.  Since you're "waking up" faster anyway, you get less of a limitation for a rapid recovery.

 

The scary way to do it

+100 Presence, only for presence attacks (-1), only to make target stand still (-1/4), target recovers automatically in XD6 phases (-?)

Again, we're taking a power that can totally eliminate a target from play, and limiting it so he isn't as removed as he would normally be.  The limit of "only for presence attacks" might actually be too high -- it's in a book somewhere, but you generally don't need +100 Pre to defend or for skill rolls, so it's clear that the only purpose here is for attack anyway.  The XD6 limitation will be very very small, as Pre attacks don't tend to last more than a single turn anyway.

 

The go-away way to do it

Extra Dimensional Movement, usable as attack (+1), ranged (+1/2), area effect accurate (+1/2), target can still be seen (-0), target comes back XD6 phases (-?)

You make them go to a different dimension where there's really nothing for them to do.  The upside to this method is that it's a lot cheaper, as you only need the base level of XDM before advantages.  The downside is that unless you have Transdimensional attacks, you can't hurt them while they're looking at your magic trick.  The "target can still be seen" represents the fact that they haven't really gone anywhere, and it doesn't make sense for them to vanish from view.  Effectively they haven't gone anywhere, but since they've technically been moved to another dimension, they aren't a legal target until they come back.  For some reason nobody shoots at them during this time.

 

The grabby way to do it

12D6 Entangle, area effect accurate (+1/2), takes no damage from attacks (+1/2), target released after XD6 phases (-?)

I think you all get the gist of it by now.

[Guest Usagi]

I ended up going with this:

• Baffling Tricks:  +10/+10d6 Striking Appearance (vs. Intelligent Beings); Only to Make PRE Attacks to Delay Actions (-1), Requires A  Sleight of Hand Roll (-1/2) Real Cost: 8 points

With a base PRE of 20, this gives the character a 16d6 PRE Attack.  Using the extended duration rule, he can declare a +20 effect and with an average effect roll of 56, on a target with a PRE of 10, his magic trick will baffle them for 8 phases.  And obviously it doesn't work against things like wild animals, mindless undead, golems, robots, etc.

[IndianaJoe3]

8 hours ago, steriaca said:

Well Actions in Hero are a function of Speed. What about Drain Speed, Only To Remove Actions (+0)?

 

I thought about that, but Speed changes are overly complex for the power as described.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I ended up going with this

 

You should not do it this way, because Talents are not base powers.  They are a shorthand for a power write up in the back of the book.  In this case:

 

Quote

 

Striking Appearance: +5 PRE (5 Active Points), Only For Interaction Skill Roll And Presence Attack Bonuses Where Appearance Might Be A Factor (-1) (total cost: 3 (rounded up to allow for difference between “all characters” and “limited group of characters”); or also add Only Among Specific Group (-1) (total cost: 2 points).

 

 

As you can see, the base cost is 5 points per 5 Presence, not 3 points per 5 presence.  You're taking the result of a power build... then building something off that, treating the real cost as the active cost to use limitations on.  In other words, its basically breaking the rules.

 

its like a character building Energy Blast with limitations on it like "only at night" or "only vs werewolves" at -1 limitation, then using the resulting 2 points per d6 to then build a power around.  As you can easily see, that will give you very broken results.

[Guest Usagi]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

As you can see, the base cost is 5 points per 5 Presence, not 3 points per 5 presence.  You're taking the result of a power build... then building something off that, treating the real cost as the active cost to use limitations on.  In other words, its basically breaking the rules.

I get that.  So instead, like this:

• Magic Tricks:  +50 PRE; Only for PRE Attack (-1), Must Achieve +20 Effect (Delay Actions) (-1/2), Requires A Sleight of Hand Roll (-1/2), IIF (Cache of Hidden Tricks, -1/4) Real Cost 15 points

[Doc Democracy]

16 hours ago, Usagi said:

I ended up going with this:

• Baffling Tricks:  +10/+10d6 Striking Appearance (vs. Intelligent Beings); Only to Make PRE Attacks to Delay Actions (-1), Requires A  Sleight of Hand Roll (-1/2) Real Cost: 8 points

With a base PRE of 20, this gives the character a 16d6 PRE Attack.  Using the extended duration rule, he can declare a +20 effect and with an average effect roll of 56, on a target with a PRE of 10, his magic trick will baffle them for 8 phases.  And obviously it doesn't work against things like wild animals, mindless undead, golems, robots, etc.

 

As GM I would also disallow the extended duration, PRE attacks are cool and in genre but they are apart from the whole power building mechanic, no END no to hit roll, free area effect.  In my game, stretching the PRE attack in this way would be too effective.

 

Massey was demo-ing 100 point powers and you are getting possibly more effect from a 20 point power, 8 real points?  That should show you this construct is broken in some way.

 

Doc

[Duke Bushido]

EDM: AoE, UAA, Persistant, Time Limit: (targets return to the land of the living in Xd6 Segments)

 

And as others have noted, a Talent is sort of a stand-alone thing.  While you're the GM and all that, it's not recommended to go around tossing a bunch of modifiers on them to make a new talent.  Pick a power or a characteristic and do that as well.     I've managed to stop myself before suggesting a characteristic you might have considered to create a similar build.  I'm very proud of myself.

 

Thus far, there are comments that what you want is very power, and comments that what you want is very expensive (and strangely, tons of the "tiny neat trick" ideas are     ).   Yet there are no comments that this implies the mythical mathematical balance.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

The best way to help determine how much something should cost is to ask how much you would think it should cost if it was used against you.  You're playing a superhero, fighting bad guys, and one of them pulls out an ability that literally negates 8 phases of your actions.  That's more than one turn.  

 

How much do you think that should cost them to use against you?

[mallet]

To me it sounds like a Drain Intelligence attack, powerful enough to take most people down to 0 INT.  

 

Quote

At INT 0, a character must succeed with an
INT Roll to make any decision or else continue
doing what he was doing. Performing any sort of
Action at all requires a successful INT Roll.

 

And at 0 INT the INT Roll will be 9- on 3d6 or a 37% chance of doing anything that Phase. So while the characters might make their roll and be able to take an action some phases, for the most part they will be "distracted" by what they saw the Magician do and can't stop thinking of it. So they might stare in wonder on their first Phase (failed roll), then force themselves to move the next phase (made their roll), then stop again and ponder what they saw the next phase (failed roll) and the phase after that (failed roll). And so on, until they slowly recover from the drain and their INT score returns to normal over a few turns and they get over what they witnessed. 

 

So maybe built like this: 

 

Befuddle: Drain INT 7d6 (standard effect: 21 points), Area Of Effect Nonselective (12m Radius Explosion; +1/4) (87 Active Points); OAF (magic tools) (-1), Target(s) must be watching/looking at Player (-1), Gestures (Requires both hands; -1/2), Requires A Roll (Skill roll (Magic tricks); -1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Incantations (-1/4); RC: 18

 

(The area of effect (radius) with Explosion, is to simulate that the further away a target might be the less effective the power is because they can't see what is happening in detail)

[dsatow]

You could use also

1. mind control set effect "Do nothing".
2. Suppress (drain costs end to maintain) ego to make them make a roll to do anything. Ego also works as well as Int.
3. Suppress speed, lowering the number of phases they can go.
4. Mental Illusions, if you get +30 (IIRC), the target is off in its own world.
5. Transform, minor or major change.  Transforms back after 6 seconds or something snaps them out of the daze.

I usually avoid using striking appearance as a power as most of my villains use a multipower and PRE in a multipower is just plain scary.

[ScottishFox]

You might also pull this off with a large area Mental Paralysis of 2d6 to 3d6.

[Tech]

On 10/27/2019 at 6:24 AM, Doc Democracy said:

 

As GM I would also disallow the extended duration, PRE attacks are cool and in genre but they are apart from the whole power building mechanic, no END no to hit roll, free area effect.  In my game, stretching the PRE attack in this way would be too effective.

 

Massey was demo-ing 100 point powers and you are getting possibly more effect from a 20 point power, 8 real points?  That should show you this construct is broken in some way.

 

Doc

 

There are always multiple ways of creating the same thing with different effects. This is simply one of them. Personally I don't think it's broken but I'd build it via Mental Paralysis myself. Mallet's INT drain is interesting.

[Surrealone]

On 10/25/2019 at 11:52 PM, Usagi said:

I want to build a character with a power that essentially drains actions.  I want it to work like Flash, where you roll a die and the target loses the ability to take actions for that many phases. Specifically the idea is that the character performs a magic trick and the target stands there baffled for a few seconds.  I thought about building it as a Mental Paralysis but its really complicated and not really what I'm looking for.  Also, the hit roll is...weird.  It really shouldn't require a hit roll, since the target can't really dodge it.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

I feel that steriaca called this correctly when recommending a SPD Drain … as changing someone's SPD is technically what would be required to Drain away someone's actions. 

[dmjalund]

 It a drain would reduce the persons speed for every turn. I think they OP only o[wants a one-off removal of actions

[Surrealone]

So, use a Limitation to the SPD Drain, for that...