Killing Attack restructure

[Christopher R Taylor]

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Is Mechanon an "inanimate object"?

 

Only after he's been destroyed and is no longer, you know, animated.  But I agree with your theme here, what defines an inanimate object?  Is a corpse of a human inanimate?  Does a focus qualify?  Usually the intent when built is good enough to figure things out like this, until Johnny Munchkin decides to redefine things mid-game and an argument arises.

[Grailknight]

8 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I think I need to consider whether this is one of the fundamental books HERO is missing.  The book that helps the GM set up the game he wants to run.  Guidance on how to tweak the fundamentals to deliver a range of core gaming experiences.  Maybe I should be thinking of getting that into the new marketplace

 

THIS. This is the main thing missing from every version of Hero, a GM manual to guide the setup of the genre being run. There should be different optional rules in effect that make the tone and play unique or at least varied. 

 

[Duke Bushido]

9 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

Only Duke says he is going to brief and means less than 15 paragraphs...  😬

 

 

 

You, Sir, are awesome.

 

 

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I understand what you mean when you say you don't like mook rules but I think your rhetoric is crooked. 

 

I don't think "crooked" so much as different ideas on "rightness.". (In quotes because I do t want to suggest an "I'm right; you're wrong" situation: clearly there exists plenty of interpretive room here-- several hactares of it in places. 

 

The example:

 

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🙂 Your example of two brothers, PI and gang member being treated differently in the rules  requires a twisted application of the rules,

 

Not exactly.  It requires either a twisted rule- one that makes some people inderiir

 

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you are not a mook because of your occupation, you are a mook because of your importance to the story.

 

Which requires a special rule that applies only to the little people (with apologies to the Celts and Native Americans). 

 

If "lethality is a dial we adjust for each campaign," why is that not enough?  It's like I just sat down from changing the channel, but now I've got to walk back across the room and turn the big knob because the picture is fuzzy, and when I sit back down, the focus is only on part of the screen.  (DAMN but I'm old....) 

 

Now to be fair to you, I _totally_ understand where you are coming from, and I am not arguing that this is unacceptable, only that I don't like it.  I don't like Brussel's sprouts, either, but if I'm hungry enough, I'll eat 'em and _like_ it. 

 

But why bother?  If you're going to second class the majority of your citizenry, even if they have speaking parts, why bother rolling damage at all?  Why not just "roll to hit twice and he drops?  Or once.  We've all done it, if o ly to speed things up or make it more dramatic (though I generally let the player roll damage; turns out it makes them feel good.       )   

 

Why waste the time and add the complexity--if you are going to do it at all? 

 

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I was essentially showing that, in HERO, it is easy to dial up the lethality or dial it down to suit the needs of the game, and it should not all depend on how killing attacks work.

 

I can see a street level game where the default 'everyman' has 2x BODY from killing attacks.  I can see that game also having +3D6 to PRE attacks by default if using a killing attack.  Suddenly the presence of men with guns makes a room of people stop and do as it is told.

 

You might want the PCs to be fragile and allow them to buy off those everyman limitations.  You might decide the PCs and their 'named' opponents buy those things off for free.  It might be that, of the brothers you mention, only one is a PC and the other a DNPC, in which case their susceptibility to killing attacks could be significantly different.

 

It all requires the GM to have a laser-like focus on the rules of the game he (or she) wants to run. 

 

In some genres, I want mook rules, I want the players to be able to go into the bar in downtown Hong Kong, machine guns blazing, kind of knowing they will be OK

 

See?  That's not only the sort of place where you could just as easily say "every 1.5 hits, someone drops,  UT it's also an excellent example of why" Mook rules" aren't always a solution. 

 

Christopher Taylor and I had a brief discussion about Western HERO things a couple of weeks ago; you may have seen it.  Mook rules would, I think, work fine in his game, as a normal with the PD of a thousand ton dinosaur from the Bestiary was acceptable in his campaign, whereas in my own, I shoot for a much more (but not completely) realistic level where guns are both lethally dangerous and lethally dangerous to _everyone_).  Yes: I can change the amount of damage weapons do; I can go all Oprah and give away "Mook rules for everyone!" 

 

The goal of the discussion, though, wasn't how to make it easier to kill the untouchabke castes, though; it was how to bring KA more in line with the Blast mechanic and still maintain similar results. 

 

For anyone whose just curious--and I know it's not at all where the rest of this discussion is going, for my youth group, I've been trying using Blast (or hand attack), counting Stun as normal, then rolling a D3.  This is both the BODY multiplier and the Stun divisor.   It makes is scary dangerous to use on a living thing, and totally eliminates anyone think "but I could get so much Stun damage!   Currently it's priced at 10 pts a die, but ahain: it's just playtesting. 

 

I like the results, but I need to tune the costing. 

 

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for bloodless games, I too tend away from grimdark, even in my reading material 

  Don't blame you a bit.  It's tedious even when it's well-written.  All this pages of gore description that could be used to advance the story...... 

[Hugh Neilson]

33 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

For anyone whose just curious--and I know it's not at all where the rest of this discussion is going, for my youth group, I've been trying using Blast (or hand attack), counting Stun as normal, then rolling a D3.  This is both the BODY multiplier and the Stun divisor.   It makes is scary dangerous to use on a living thing, and totally eliminates anyone think "but I could get so much Stun damage!   Currently it's priced at 10 pts a die, but ahain: it's just playtesting.

 

So for the same 60 AP which would average 42 STUN and 12 BOD, I will average 10.5 STUN and 12 BOD, but I might score 18 BOD (and 7 STUN) on an otherwise average roll, or I  might get 6 BOD and 21 STUN.

 

A bit (not a lot) more volatility than I would aim for, but definitely an attack which is only truly useful if the goal is to inflict BOD damage.  Lower average than the 14 BOD for 12 DCs under the present model, but a bit more upside as well.  I wonder how different the averages are from the current KA with a 1d3 multiple - how often would I roll 18+ on 4d6?

[Christopher R Taylor]

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This is the main thing missing from every version of Hero, a GM manual to guide the setup of the genre being run.

 

Well the Genre books do a good job of that: Champions for superheroic games, Fantasy Hero for fantasy, etc.

[Duke Bushido]

If you'd like, Hugh, I'll try to keep a track of it from in-game rolls (since I'm having no luck at all figuring out how to use any dice), but let me point out a few things up-front:

 

1) It's not that would not prefer to have done this more scientifically than seat-of-the-pants; I simply don't have _time to really sit down and analyze it (which is why I have enjoyed this thread so much: I read quickly; I type quickly, and people with more time / better grasp of any dice.com are all tossing out some interesting ideas, all of which give me things to muddle over during the brief moments of "nothing is on fire" at work.  I thank everyone here for that; it's been an absolute Godsend to me, and I deeply appreciate it.

 

2) I don't think Killing Attack as-written is fundamentally broken.  I just liked the idea of "count everything the way you normally would, then the special die tells you what to do with the results.  (for the record, I'm not crazy about the divisor idea, and less keen on it being the same number as the multiplier, but I really wanted to keep it simple, so this was my starting point).  I _did_ however, want to make the emphasis "Kill/Destroy" as opposed to "mega taser attack," and I have to admit that the divisor _does_ accomplish that, as well as still leaving the "you can buy a Stun multiplier" option open as "you can buy a -1 to the divisor" for those who see their definitely-made-for-killing/destroying-things attack as doing a good bit of system shock / pain and agony / STUN damage.  Even then, it still prevents STUN damage from becoming an enticement for buying the power.

 

3) I like the volatility of the multiplier in actual gameplay.  As noted, this was just a seat-of-the-pants "let's try _something_," and while it's as good a starting place as any other, I'm actually pretty please with the ranges of BODY damage yielded, how often they come up, and most importantly,  the no-doubt-about-it lethality of it thus far.  As noted, I'm still playing with the pricing.  I'm hesitant to go lower because of the _potential_ of six BODY per die, but as that requires cooperation from two separate dice, it _feels_ less likely.  Again, if I can figure out how to set up any dice to some calculating for me, I may change it.  The easiest "tweak" I have open is to make the divisor and the multiplier separate dice, but I don't want to really add any more extra rolls, etc.

 

4) at the time I did this, it was either the thing I'm testing now, or the thing I mentioned earlier of counting BODY as 1,1,1,1,2,2  (ones and sixes  being 2 because I thought that just remembering the bookends are 2 would be a quick easy thing to grasp and remember).  I tossed a grickle (bronze one) and it came up tails, so I opted to test this one out and see how it played. 

 

 

Other than that, I have no science or hard numbers except that "it feels right, but I'm not delighted with the direct proportions resulting from using the same number as a multiplier and divisor.  I am toying with-- not soon, but perhaps next campaign (the youth group campaigns are on the short side, making them great for testing something and sticking with it from one end to the other) I may go back to a flat "Stun = Stun"  or "divide STUN by 2."  Not one hundred percent.  Let me shoot up thread and see how the main discussion is going.

 

Thanks for the comments, Sir!  

 

 

Duke

 

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

THIS. This is the main thing missing from every version of Hero, a GM manual to guide the setup of the genre being run. There should be different optional rules in effect that make the tone and play unique or at least varied. 

 

 

It would also have the nice side-effect of raising the number of blue-backed rules books to an even ten, and I think we can all appreciate that.  

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

I think you'd be pretty safe removing the divisor - it's already doing half the STUN of an equivalent normal attack, and either 50%, 100% or 150% of the BOD.

 

As I said, perhaps a bit more volatile than I would target, but not hugely more volatile.

 

What are typical DCs and rDEF in your game?

[Duke Bushido]

Hard to answer: typically rDEF runs 15 to 25 percent of DEF total: killing attacks are generally in one of two categories:  small and deadly to normals / most building materials and large and deadly to other supers.

 

However, the campaign in which I'm testing this has a strange variety of DEF-- not type, but amounts.  I didn't discourage this (and I admit, I am a bit mindful of it when coupling them with villains and building scenarios) because this is their second campaign: they are really just learning.  The first campaign was short (two to four hours on Sundays during school vacation), and this one just kicked off a few weeks ago and hasn't many sessions behind it yet.  As the returning players wanted to use their previous characters, I allowed it.  We've tweaked them some, but not much.

 

The extremes:  the Superman pastiche (Magnus) is currently running a whopping _40_ PD; twenty-five  points of which are resistant.

 

The police liaison is running normal human and a bullet proof vest worth 8rPD on top of his ---  I think it's five?-- PD.  He's got the special "I work with super heroes" vest, so it's "insulated" to provide the same in ED.

 

Everyone else is falling in between that.

The Speedster (Kinetica: an insanely old character from my days as a player that I only got to use for _one_ session, so I'm glad to see someone finally using her)  just spent a huge chunk of her saved-up XP from the last campaign to learn how to manipulate her "Kinetic Wave" (Energy Blast, 8d6, area affect Line, no range (meaning that the only "range" it has is based on the length of the line, and the power "starts" directly in front of her), "must make at least a 1/2 move to use this power") into  a "Kinetic Hammer:"  Killing Attack (using the above-detailed test design for Killing Attack) 5d6 (again: AOE: Line, no range, must be moving, etc,) as she was less than happy with her previous attempts at breaking through things  and breaking her teammates out of Entangles (which I submit that if we can Tunnel through doors, tables, etc, we should be able to tunnel through fishing nets as well).  She wants to buy this up as she can afford it.

 

(the original Kinetic Wave was meant to be an essentially non-lethal "room broom" of sorts to clear a path in which she could do her super speed thing, and so it featured double-knockback (not currently used, but still on the sheet.  It just never came up, really), but the player has come to rely on it as surpass distraction against flying or otherwise out-of-reach villains.  Her DEF is also on the low end as, in Speedster tradition, her primary defense is "you can't hit me!" and that old favorite, Desolidification (2e version, when it was essentially a movement power).  If I recall, she is currently sporting a PD of around 20 (?) with ten points being resistant.

 

Red Cloak's PD is 25, with a Sorcerous Deflection spell (missile Deflection / Reflection, old editions style) he throws up when the need arises.  He has wisely decided to bullet proof his cloak, giving him about 10 rPD.

 

I'm going from memory, as the players have their sheets, and to be honest, I didn't think these kids would 1) have enough fun to finish he first campaign and 2) get parental permission to pester me in my front yard so they could keep playing, so I kept none of the notes from the previous campaign once it was concluded: I gave them away (along with the figures they were using to represent themselves when we used maps) as "mementos of their time as super heroes."  I'm sort of guessing here.  I know Magnus's defense's outclass everyone else's (at least right now), but that's sort of his schtick, and it's countered by the fact that his player is _eleven_, and makes horrible tactical decisions.     Still, he's having fun, and upon realizing his general durability, enjoys playing "meat shield" for the innocent bystanders.

 

Unfortunately, that's the current "test area."  I intend to sow in concepts like matching defenses to the offenses they are experiencing, etc, if they stick around and show interest in continuing  (well see what happens after they all get various electronic gee-gaws for Christmas     ) and want to learn the game.  For now, I make it my responsibility to select villains that are challenging and appropriate to what the players are running.  

 

Getting back to Kinetica and her new Kinetic Hammer:

 

 It was actually her specific desire to have this power that made me start to really thing about the pricing.  Going barebones (ignore all power modifiers), an 8d6 EB runs 40 points and can do BODY from 0 to 16 (expected average is 8)   while her current KA can do BODY from 0 to 30, with an expected average of 10.  an 8d Energy Blast is 40 points base while her KA (experimental version) of 5d is 50.   Had she spent 50 pts on EB, she would get a typical average BODY of 10 and a  max of 20.  The trade-off, I felt, was the gain / loss of STUN damage between the two formats, and of course KA's "ignore non-resistant defenses."   10/die seemed reasonable at that time, but I'm starting to think it might be bit high.  The only reason I haven't changed it yet is because there is no drawback to not doing a lot of STUN in anything but four-color (super _and non-super are all available in 4-color.  There's a freaking "Dark Champions the Cartoon" genre now), and in those cases it seemed a reasonable price for the increased potential of BODY damage, particularly at the lower levels that my groups and I prefer for our non-supers stuff.

 

But I am going way off topic, so I'm just going to have to quit now.  

[Hugh Neilson]

Duke, I think it would be challenging to use your games as a playtest, both based on your comments above and on other threads in the past.  My sense is that you balance on the fly (above you refer to who gets which opponents), and have a considerable variance in character power levels (such as the wide range of defenses in the game you note above, and probably a wide variance in attacks/damage classes as well).

 

I think your KA model is reasonably priced at 10 points per 1d6, although I would remove the divisor.  Comparing 60 AP, an average of 21 STUN is no big deal anyway.  BOD averaging 12, but hitting 18 a third of the time, seems pretty comparable to the 15 AP/1d6 KA's we see as a baseline.  4d6 rolls 18 or higher a bit less than 16% of the time, so your model will have a bit higher BOD, but not by a huge model, and it delivers less STUN with no chance of an unusually high STUN roll.  It will  be a bit bloodier, but not by a huge margin.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

Numbers and graphs!

At 60 AP and no Advantages, Duke's method generates about the same average BODY against 13 rDEF.  Higher rDEF values give the lead to Duke's method, lower gives the lead to the existing method.   Additionally, Duke's method has noticeably higher variance than the old method. 

As Hugh notes, 10AP per 1d6 STUN is generally going to result in little to nothing past defenses even without a divisor. 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Duke, I think it would be challenging to use your games as a playtest, both based on your comments above and on other threads in the past.  My sense is that you balance on the fly (above you refer to who gets which opponents), and have a considerable variance in character power levels (such as the wide range of defenses in the game you note above, and probably a wide variance in attacks/damage classes as well).

 

An excellent observation, Hugh, and I freely admit that with this particular group, I am doing just that.  They are not only new to HERO, but new to roleplaying, period, and I didn't want to cloud their minds with all sorts of abstracts right away, such as campaign limits, figuring what those limits mean in terms of averaging damage and defenses, etc, etc.  I pushed "make what you want to make" as the big fun thing, and I am now paying for it.  Granted, it's a very small price, and after all these on the other side of the screen, it's an extremely simple thing to do, but if they stick with this, then I intend to ease additional concepts to them.

 

Unfortunately this is the only group in which I can actually play test something without spending a couple of years doing it, as the others meet once a month, period.  Takes time to get feedback off of that sort of thing.  

 

In general, all my campaigns start out small (250pts max, per 2e) and we tend to ease into retirement or new characters when we start throwing around 30DC attacks (or taking said attacks on the chin and laughing!)  We've gone higher than that in special "save the universe" type games, but really, it's diminishing returns on fun after about 20 DC or so: your spending lots of points and rolling lots of dice, but you're no more effective against your opponents than you ever were before (which I guess is absolutely true to the comic books, isn't it?    ).  In fact, the only thing you're really better at is collateral damage!    Once you hit a certain power level, the fun just seems to drain away.

 

 

But with your observation, you have forced me to take notice of something:  We have always had more fun in games that featured a real mixed bag of DCs and DEF.  Not only does it feel to us to be more source-material accurate (tell me, just _try_ to tell me that "arrow flinger" guy can take Ironman's punch to the face the way that Hammer God can?  You just _can't_ make that work.  You can use _alternate_methods of defense:  he ducks real fast! or something along those lines, and we do that same thing: low DEF guys have other ways to avoid getting hit or taking full damage (we use the Hell out of some "roll with the punch," for example).  Low DC guys (looking at you, pretty much any bare-knuckled non-super martial artist) to make themselves effective: skill levels, coordination, sneaky tricks-- whatever.  It brings us _way_ more joy (and really brings out the teamwork) more than "you can all have between 12 and 14DC attacks, and your DEF should be 25 with 17resistant.

 

Because we're going to get six or eight nearly identical characters.  It's the Legolas Conundrum in spandex.

 

Now we don't _usually_ do it.  But now that you point it out with the youth group, I have to admit that we tend to have a lot more fun when we _do_.  

 

 

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I think your KA model is reasonably priced at 10 points per 1d6, although I would remove the divisor.  Comparing 60 AP, an average of 21 STUN is no big deal anyway.  BOD averaging 12, but hitting 18 a third of the time, seems pretty comparable to the 15 AP/1d6 KA's we see as a baseline.  4d6 rolls 18 or higher a bit less than 16% of the time, so your model will have a bit higher BOD, but not by a huge model, and it delivers less STUN with no chance of an unusually high STUN roll.  It will  be a bit bloodier, but not by a huge margin.

 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.  As I noted earlier, I am leaning hard on dropping the divisor, and you clearly agree.  It was initially just a knee-jerk "be damned sure there is _no_ "potential big STUN payoff!" to tempt players to use KILLING attack casually" kind of thing.  Well, that, and the way that Kinetica's player saw her "new use of her power" working:  she learned how to modulate her Kinetic Wave to make it more focused, etc---   some sort of lose "sliding scale" between BODY and STUN seemed to fall right into that.

 

Still, that's more a _character_ thing than a power thing, and I should have separated that from the get-go.  After all, switching from normal dice to killing is precisely that same simulated sliding scale, when you get right down to it (using the test version of KA, that is)

 

 

Thanks for your thoughts, Hugh.  They are deeply appreciated.

 

 

 

Good night, all.

 

[Hugh Neilson]

11 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Numbers and graphs!

At 60 AP and no Advantages, Duke's method generates about the same average BODY against 13 rDEF.  Higher rDEF values give the lead to Duke's method, lower gives the lead to the existing method.   Additionally, Duke's method has noticeably higher variance than the old method. 

As Hugh notes, 10AP per 1d6 STUN is generally going to result in little to nothing past defenses even without a divisor. 

 

Thanks.  That's about what I would expect.  Volatility becomes more valuable the higher the defenses go as attacks below defenses do nothing, whether they exactly equal defenses, or fall well below them.  In a game like D&D, where there are no real defenses, volatility is not as valuable.

 

9 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

An excellent observation, Hugh, and I freely admit that with this particular group, I am doing just that.  They are not only new to HERO, but new to roleplaying, period, and I didn't want to cloud their minds with all sorts of abstracts right away, such as campaign limits, figuring what those limits mean in terms of averaging damage and defenses, etc, etc.  I pushed "make what you want to make" as the big fun thing, and I am now paying for it.  Granted, it's a very small price, and after all these on the other side of the screen, it's an extremely simple thing to do, but if they stick with this, then I intend to ease additional concepts to them.

 

This illustrates, to me, a challenge of Hero system discussions.  If the system is managed well, it will work well and any mechanical issues can be smoothed over.  But it takes a lot of experience with the system to be able to manage it that way. 

 

Sometimes, it's a group thing.  I spent years not understanding the fuss about KA's, mainly because my group rarely or never used them on living targets.  The math doesn't lie, but the players did not use, or abuse, the math.  I recall agents with KAs, though, because large numbers of attacks would result in some STUN as some would get high multiples, where equal AP/DC normal attacks would just bounce off defenses.

 

However, a group just picking up the rules will reasonably expect attacks will be balanced at the same point or DC level.  Their GMs will not know what they should manage, and players will  not restrict themselves to lower point attacks because their selected attack power is extra-effective.

 

Put a team of heroes with wide damage and defense ranges up against a published team of opponents, and the results are not likely to be fun.  Managing the variance takes a lot of work, a lot of experience and a lot of thinking on the fly.  Your experience meant you picked a pretty balanced cost for your revised KA without a lot of conscious analysis.  That's not a reasonable expectation of a good player, or even a good GM, IMO. It is an expectation at the game design level, if we want new gamers to be able to pick up the system and play it, not analyze and revise it.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

It is an expectation at the game design level, if we want new gamers to be able to pick up the system and play it, not analyze and revise it.

 

Never gave it much thought before, but that is an interesting point. 

 

Thank you for the brain food. 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Still pondering what to do with penetration.  I've never been particularly fond of it as an advantage in the first place so I rarely use it.  It seems somewhat useful for normal attacks, but not at +½.  Perhaps it should just not be used with Killing Attacks at all.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

9 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Still pondering what to do with penetration.  I've never been particularly fond of it as an advantage in the first place so I rarely use it.  It seems somewhat useful for normal attacks, but not at +½.  Perhaps it should just not be used with Killing Attacks at all.

It's the underdog Advantage.  It's really good for anyone way behind on AP. 

Guy throwing 60 AP at 30 DEF?  Penetrating's a bad pick. 

Guy throwing 45 AP at 30 DEF?  Penetrating doubles his expected damage. 

Guy throwing 30 AP at 30 DEF?  Needs Penetrating to matter. 

 

It's generally great on mooks and terrible on big single villains, with heroes sometimes wanting it but often not.  On KAs it tends to trickle tiny bits of BODY through and get people scared despite not being that dangerous. 

Edit: Forgot that it's also absolutely broken on a KA for smashing Foci, since Focuses have DEF but not BODY so even a 1 pip Penetrating KA instantly destroys them. 

[Duke Bushido]

22 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Numbers and graphs!

At 60 AP and no Advantages, Duke's method generates about the same average BODY against 13 rDEF.  Higher rDEF values give the lead to Duke's method, lower gives the lead to the existing method.   Additionally, Duke's method has noticeably higher variance than the old method. 

As Hugh notes, 10AP per 1d6 STUN is generally going to result in little to nothing past defenses even without a divisor. 

 

 

Thanks, GBI(i)!

 

I was considering finding time to do it by hand, I was getting so irritated at myself trying to fumble through that site.  

 

It's interesting that in both models there is only one step above "around 50%," and several below that.  because of the multiplier, I rather expected some of what I see on the lower end, but it's still interesting to see it spelled out.  Evidently there are a couple of totals on the low end for which there is only one possible roll.  I hadn't thought about it, but it makes sense.

 

Thanks again.

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Still pondering what to do with penetration.  I've never been particularly fond of it as an advantage in the first place so I rarely use it. 

 

Not trying to sound like a jackass here, but not using it _is_ a solution of sorts.  I can't recall the last time I used it (which is odd, because I use "reduced penetration" with some regularity: as long as you're within campaign limits, it's a nice way to simulate burst fire at a single target without spending all night rolling to hit).

 

 

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

It seems somewhat useful for normal attacks, but not at +½.

 

Change the cost.  Re-price it as appropriate for the utility you see it getting in your games.  I think it was yesternight that Surrealone commented he preferred everything to spelled out in the rules books making it possible to exchange GMs and keep characters-- and I _completely_ understand where he's coming from.  I don't see it working as universally as he might hope, though, simply because values and relevance change from campaign to campaign under the _same_ GM; I expect no less when moving from table to table.

 

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Perhaps it should just not be used with Killing Attacks at all.

 

Theoretically, it _does_ make them a bit killy-er...

 

But like I said: I'm probably not the guy to help you cypher through this, as we played with it when it was first introduced, and then just stopped playing with it.  We found it served as a wonderful annoyance, but the cost and the bookkeeping weren't worth the small pleasure of irritating a particularly well-defended foe (or installation), and it takes a _long_ time to irritate your way into a well-fortified bunker.  

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I can't recall the last time I used it

 

The effect is so minor its nearly worthless in most cases.  Great, I get 1-2 points per d6 through your defenses?  Maybe?  For +½?  Who priced this, the Pentagon?  For 50% greater price I can get 50% more dice and probably punch THROUGH your defenses.  I mean, yeah I get it, active point maxima etc but seriously its a poorly costed effect you rarely see.  Even for killing attacks its petty weak.

 

I use this kind of thing on magical items, a weapon with penetrating is kind of nifty but paying for it with points is just not a good deal at all.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think (and this is purely guesswork) that Penetrating was initially priced to match AP, and was overlooked when AP was repriced to -1/4.

 

The rationale could have evolved to "this passes BOD through against most opponents so it should be expensive", but we can look at, say, 60 AP.  4d6 KA vs. 2 1/2 d6 Penetrating KA - 2 or 3 BOD trickle through.  Make that 3d6 and it's still only 3 BOD trickling through on average.

 

Normal attacks?  12d6 is an average roll of 42.  8d6 Penetrating is an average of 8 Penetrating, so the break-even point is 34 Defenses.  9 1/2d6 is not a ton better - still 32 - 33 defenses.

 

Penetrating seems to show up most often on "this KA will burn through pretty much everything, but may take a long time" powers, or high advantage, low DC powers.

 

Now, what if we bought NND, does BOD instead?  1d6(+1) KA averages 3.5 BOD  past defenses.  4d6 Normal averages 14 STUN, or we get rid of Does BOD and get 6d6 that averages 21 STUN.  Penetrating is looking like a pretty poor choice (other than providing a defense that will stop my NND, I suppose).

[Christopher R Taylor]

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I think (and this is purely guesswork) that Penetrating was initially priced to match AP, and was overlooked when AP was repriced to -1/4.

 

That is my supposition as well, although even at -¼ its questionable in its utility as you show, above.  Really the only way it is going to be somewhat useful is in campaigns with an absolute active point cap where characters are trying to find away to hurt very tough guys that their AP cap won't reliably achieve.

 

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Forgot that it's also absolutely broken on a KA for smashing Foci, since Focuses have DEF but not BODY so even a 1 pip Penetrating KA instantly destroys them. 

 

Yeah but that's a flaw with the current rule set which doesn't apply body the same way to inanimate objects as it does people.

[Grailknight]

I got quite a bit of use out of Penetrating by using it for the weapons of agents.

 

A Multipower 3-shot Autofire Blaster with a 1/6+1 AP RKA and and 4d6 Penetrating was standard agent gear. Clearly better than what the cops have, good at property destruction, able to be used against normals without  a high kill rate, annoying to PC's since very few  were hardened and all for a reasonable Active Point cost.

[PhilFleischmann]

On 11/26/2019 at 8:50 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah but that's a flaw with the current rule set which doesn't apply body the same way to inanimate objects as it does people.

Is this a change in 6e?  Do inanimate objects no longer have BODY?  I remember way back in 1e, when they didn't have DEF.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

11 minutes ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Is this a change in 6e?  Do inanimate objects no longer have BODY?  I remember way back in 1e, when they didn't have DEF.

Inanimate objects have BODY and DEF. 

But Foci don't, Foci just have DEF.  Instead of BODY, Foci lose a power everytime they would have lost BODY, or all their powers if they would lose more BODY than their DEF.  Which means that "cheap pings" such as Penetrating KA 1d6 Autofire 3 will obliterate Foci that a KA 3d6 would bounce off of. 

 

And this leads to some cheesetacular constructs.  For example, RKA 1d6 (Standard effect) Penetrating Autofire 5 AoE 1".  52 AP to remove all Foci from a target, unless those Foci are Unbreakable or the target has a Hardened Force Field (Or bought Hardened RDEF for their Foci, but who does that?).  When that should be slowly chipping away at but not breaking them, the way it would any other object. 

[PhilFleischmann]

I see.  So a wooden stick has BODY, but a magic wand doesn't.  A metal pipe has BODY, but the barrel of a gun doesn't.  And a gun doesn't have BODY, but if it's mounted on a vehicle, such as a tank, then it does?

 

This sounds like a job for... COMMON SENSE!  Yeah.  This seems like a good rule to ignore.  It does make sense for a damaged focus to be less effective, but there's no reason for it to be all-or-nothing.

 

If a focus loses one power every time it would have lost BODY, then maybe the solution is to just build all focuses with a lot more powers.  Buy a one-point power multiple times (or different ones), or even a half-point power, if the GM lets you (like points of END, or even like END in an END Reserve).

 

Wand of Conflagration, with one power:  4d6 RKA, Area Effect, 0 END, Affects Desolid, Armor Piercing x2.  This wand becomes a stick with 1 BODY past defenses.

 

Wand of Detection, with several Detect powers, each costing 10 points or less.  This wand remains useful after several hits.

 

It seems to me that a much better rule would be for the focus to have BODY, and lose some % of active points, based on the % of BODY taken.  The Wand of Conflagration has lost half of its BODY, so now it's only 2d6.  Maybe it loses power in incremental chunks, so that 1 BODY doesn't impair it in any way, but 1 BODY at a time adds up to a 5-point chunk being lost.  Similar to how a living character with 10 BODY can lose 9 of it and still do everything he could do normally, assuming he still has positive STUN and END, and isn't Impaired or Disabled.

 

Or maybe it can gain a Limitation, like an Activation roll, or Increased END Cost, or a penalty to a required Skill Roll.  EDIT:  Or an OCV penalty if it's a weapon, or possibly even a DCV penalty.  Whatever is appropriate for the particular focus, and the genre and setting.