Aberrant RPG - Claws + Agg Claws

[metaphysician]

Okay, I've been thinking a bit about Dominion, including ways to upgrade Radu if you were to decide he should be a Q6 nova supervillain ( if perhaps a low end one ). Related to this, I've been contemplating how to rework his Claws power into something thats actually as deadly as they make it out to be.

My idea is this: Claws ( AP, Mastery ) 3, plus Claws ( AP, Agg, Mastery ) 3, used simultaneously ( possibly with a weakness on the latter that it can only be used simultaneous with the first ). The net effect is that every melee attack does +6 lethal damage, as well as an additional 6 dice of agg damage, all armor piercing.

My question is: would this in fact work?

Issues that occur to me:

-Multiple attacks: normally, you have to split your action to attack with two powers. However, your not attacking with either construct, but with Dex+Brawl or Dex+MA.

-Double dipping. Taking multiple Claws powers leads to questions of which gets the Strength damage. Inapplicable here, however, as Agg Claws doesn't benefit from strength anyway.

So, thoughts?

( speaking of which. . . has anyone figured out what the special effect of Radu's Claws is supposed to be? )

[Alex Green]

RE: Multiple Attacks

Not an issue, Claws is a maint power and you never actually attack with it.

RE: Radu's upgrade.

Personally I'd like to stay away from giving him Q6 and Mastery, he doesn't need it.

Solution #1: Give him Immolate + Agg, say 5 dots worth. Now he can make a normal attack, do his M-Str 3, and also pile on [5] in agg. He already has Eufiber, he can choose to just not let his boots do damage so he won't leave foot prints or fall through the floor (or he can take some attune). This goes a long way towards making him as nasty as he is supposed to be, even Totentanz would have serious problems.

Solution #2: With the APG you can link Claws+AP to Claws+AGG and have them be one (soaked seperately) attack... but I'm not a fan of this in general because I don't like linking attacks to other attacks (it's less of a big deal here because of the errata for Claws+AGG).

Solutions #3: Give him 5 dots of Claws+AP+Burning. Assuming 2 succ in hitting he does 21 dice in agg damage, per attack, with a Maintenance power.

RE: His Special effect

I'm guessing there's a reason why he's called "the impailer'. Pop, his hand goes through your chest leaving 'nothing' behind.

[metaphysician]

Thats kind of what I was figuring, too, regarding his special effect. No obvious claws, he just messily dismembers anything he strikes.

The only mechanical difficulty I can think of is: if both Claws powers have AP, which one does the attack sux apply to, in terms of reducing soak?

[Alex Green]

The only mechanical difficulty I can think of is: if both Claws powers have AP, which one does the attack sux apply to, in terms of reducing soak?

Why do they both need AP? Agg already ignores soak, adding AP isn't going to do much. If I were Vlad I'd go with...

Claws+AP+RQC linked to Claws+Agg+RQC... for a Q-cost of zero.

Which is kind of the entire issue with "linked". It's an advantage more than a disadvantage but it's treated like the later and not the former.

But seriously, if I were going to rebuild him I'd drop the Agg entirely and (if the PCs were tough) add in Immolate+Agg.

[metaphysician]

Why would you want AP Agg? So that against targets with defenses against agg, the soak can be potentially greatly reduced. OTOH, with only about 5 dice of agg tops, its probably not worth it, yes.

[Alex Green]

The only targets that have defenses against Agg are going to be novas. The only Nova defenses against Agg are going to be INV, Hardbody, and Impervious.

1) Impervious negates AP as well as Agg.

2) INV supplies 6 soak per dot, so if we assume 2+ dots you're unlikely to lower his defenses below 5.

3) So *if* they have Hardbody, and *if* they also have lethal soak that fairly low, then it's *possible* that you might lower them to the point where you can do Agg damage. Maybe.

I don't ususally bother getting Hardbody unless I've already got a 12+ soak. Because if I need to worry about bullets then that's a lot more common. For that matter Disin maxes out at 13 levels of agg damage, if my soak is less than that there's no point in getting HB.

[metaphysician]

Does Impervious work on both AP and Agg at the same time, though?

[Alex Green]

Does Impervious work on both AP and Agg at the same time, though?

It totally negates AP and converts Agg into normal damage. Those are different effects, and if they both apply I see no reason they wouldn't both work.

[metaphysician]

I was thinking of it like Hardened in Hero System. It can only negate either Penetrating or Armor Piercing, not both at the same time.

[Alex Green]

Ah! I remember that, good times those. Hero lets you buy levels of attack, say Penitrating with double AP, and then you'd need three levels of Hardened defenses to block it. But Abby just checks to see if you have the defense or not.

Shifting the conversation back to Vlad, IMHO the power scale he's supposed to be functioning at would be best represented by attune plus 5 dots of Imm+Agg. That's an extra 26 nova points on an already very expensive character, but it does make him legal. It'd also make him a true horror in combat any HTH attack he makes (or any that is made on him) would get [5] Agg on top of it.

Wait, he'd save 6 nova points by dropping Agg from his claws so that's only an extra 20 nova points.

[metaphysician]

Hmm. . . a matter to ponder. Immolate has no inherent defensive ( soak ) element. However, how does Immolate interact with weapon attacks? Say your swinging a tree at Radu. Would the fact that the tree takes 5 levels agg effect its ability to do damage to Radu?

Logically, it seems that an immolate that does enough damage should "pre break" a weapon before it strikes, but I'm not sure if there's any good way to adjudicate the matter, or if it wouldn't introduce undesirable complications.

[Alex Green]

The tree takes [5] Agg (and probably breaks), but it doesn't reduce damage as far as I can tell. Although if the ST wanted he could say bullets don't work for that reason... but that seems a hair unbalanced to me.

[metaphysician]

My gut instinct is that, mostly, it should really only come into play in cases where it doesn't really matter much. Baselines shooting ordinary small arms at you, a strong nova swinging a comparatively flimsy object that wouldn't work with his strength efficiently anyway, that kind of thing.

And for a more mechanical options, there's taking "Invulnerability: Things my Immolate Can Destroy", with a Weakness: linked to Immolate. Or perhaps just outright "Invulnerability: Physical (BC)", with the same link.

[Alex Green]

Now *that's* a clever way to do that...

[metaphysician]

You could use Force Field or Armor instead, but the mechanics would range from somewhat to much uglier than an Invulnerability.

[Alex Green]

Solutions #3: Give him 5 dots of Claws+AP+Burning. Assuming 2 succ in hitting he does 21 dice in agg damage, per attack, with a Maintenance power.

I wrote this wrong. It should read

"5 dots of Claws + AGG + Burning".