Aberrant RPG - Max soak and Max damage

[crapulaxxx]

I'm curious to see how much soak you can get with 5 in quantum and 5 in power rating or mega att.

And to see the difference, how much damage you can do ?

mega strengh 5+5 succes on hit = 30 damage

QB = 15 quantum +20 power rating = 35

armor 5 = 15

inv 5 = 30

force field 5 with 10 succes =25

So you can easily reach 60 soak but you can make only 35 damage max.

Is there a problem or i misunderstood something ?

[Singularity]

Nope, you've got the right of it. The mechanics of the game favor defense and social interaction. The former is an unusual change for White Wolf (Potence vs. Fortitude often ends in a red splotch) but the latter fits White Wolf perfectly. So their logic, I'm thinking, was that if they want to encourage as much interaction as possible while dialing back the combat then they decided to make harming a person far harder than convincing a person.

[Noir]

And don't forget that you get your full soak total all the time (barring use of like Armour Piercing or something) whereas damage is Damage adds (autosuccesses) + damage dice, and the soak total is subtracted from the adds first and then what is left from your damage dice.

On average you will get 2 successes for every 5 dice.

The game heavily favours defense. And then you have defense extras like impervious that essentially cancles two offensive extras (Aggrivated and Arour Piercing).

~Noir

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Max Damage

Mega-Strength 5 with 5 succ + Claws 5 + AP + Bodymorph (HS) + Smackdown

Damage is 5[25] + 5d + 5 + 2 + 6 => 23[25] and the other guy loses 10 soak unless he has Impervious defenses.

And note your conditions stripped a full level of Mega-Strength since we were limited to M-Str 5 while the Q5 limit is 6.

Nova cost to build this monster would be something like 30, meaning he'd have a one bullet lifespan and would have to run from the police and small children with rocks.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Noir:
The game heavily favours defense.

Iffy. Oh, granted, at the extremes this is true. But it's cheaper to buy offense so most characters have more offense than defense.

Just for example, if you have a Q5 nova (who has Q5 for other reasons), tacking on Q-Bolt (3 nova points) is pretty easy. Tacking on the Defenses to deal with that Q-Bolt is much harder, and takes more of a commitment in nova points.

[kestrel404]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
And note your conditions stripped a full level of Mega-Strength since we were limited to M-Str 5 while the Q5 limit is 6.

Huh? I thought the max on mega-stats was 5 until you hit Q6, just like everything else.

[Singularity]

Mechanically, defense has the most advantages. crapulaxxx also neglected to add on soak from Mega-Stamina and Eufiber, giving another 25 bashing soak or 15 lethal soak (not including any additional soak you might get from the merit that makes Eufiber more efficient for the character). Additionally, if we're talking about rolls being pushed to their limit, the Force Field would've received more successes... plus, if you put Impervious on Force Field and Superheavy on Armor, you can pick up another 5 soak.

So you're looking at a soak approaching 100 for bashing and a "mere" 10 less with lethal. Sure, it's cost prohibitive to buy all of these things, but no attack from a character with a quantum less than 6 will break through those defenses.

,,

Quote:

Originally posted by Alchemist:

I thought the max on mega-stats was 5 until you hit Q6, just like everything else.

There's an extra for Density Increase that let's you get up to Mega-Strength 6 depending on the roll.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Singularity:
[QB]Sure, it's cost prohibitive to buy all of these things...

Now there's an understatement.

I've yet to see a game that gave out the kind of points you need for this without also allowing Q6.

You could do something similar (say, buy 1 dot of Armor, 1 dot of INV, etc) on a much more reasonable number of points, but then you quickly find that you're vulnerable to a wide range of things. Ping damage from baseline armies, bricks, etc.

As a rule of thumb, all defense or all offense does not a combat machine make. Decide what you want to beat, what you can live with being beaten by, and build accordingly. If you decide you want to be a match for Totentanz or others like him, then plan on spending hundreds of nova and/or experience points.

[Zhavric]

Hello. New here, but an old school Aberrant player. I haven't played in a few years so apologies if I'm a little rusty with the rules.

As for damage vs defense a few things to remember:

1) Armor piercing. It's all well & good to have soak in the lower 60's. The problem is that someone with a decent quantum and a good mega-dex is going to wipe away a lot of that soak. Let's say the attacker with AP quantuam bolt gets oh say... 7 successes on their attack roll. That's FOURTEEN less soak. It may not sound like much to someone with a 60 soak, but believe me it can add up quickly.

2) Aggravated damage. Again, all the soak in the world is nothing if you don't happen to have the Hardbody or Impervious extra.

3) As I recall, there was an extra in the player's guide that allowed powers to be combined. I once saw a regular quantum bolt get combined with an armor piercing quantum bolt. The result flattened one of the biggest baddest tanks in our party.

Finally, our Storyteller had an NPC who boasted TRIPLE DIGIT soak WITHOUT the mastery extra on any powers and BEFORE turning on force field.

[Amped]

If your talking about linking to seperate quantum bolts with #3 right there, I think that's rather cheesie, and I don't think I'd let it fly in one of my games, just because it would be out of hand. It might still go as two seperate power pools as well.

Now if you're talking about merged, that's a different story.

[Zhavric]

I believe it was "merged".

[Zhavric]

Remember also that there's more than one way to skin a nova.

Take, for example, the character we had in our group called "Syphon". Syphon had all the powers that rob novas of their powers (again... rusty on the rules so I don't remember all their proper names). He could steal mega-strength, turn off powers, steal powers, and steal quantum pool. What made him a force to be reckoned with?

He also had clone.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Zhavric:
3) As I recall, there was an extra in the player's guide that allowed powers to be combined. I once saw a regular quantum bolt get combined with an armor piercing quantum bolt. The result flattened one of the biggest baddest tanks in our party.

There is, and it is called Merged, but it only combines succ, not power. It's really built for the mental powers.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Max Soak:

This is hard because there really is no such animal. Most of the Suite powers have a "gives a little soak" technique. If you assume you can have Multiple Elemental Anima or Elemental Masteries, then the upper limit depends on how many nova points you have to throw around.

The irony here is it's been my experience that with a reasonable amount of nova points, soak maxes with Q3 (meaning that you'd have no EA or EM).

[Bobson]

Quote:

Originally posted by crapulaxxx:
I'm curious to see how much soak you can get with 5 in quantum and 5 in power rating or mega att.

I'm more interested in the question of how much soak you can get with the starting 30 nova points. With enough experience to spend, you can probably get up into the triple digits without too much trouble. Right out of chargen is a more interesting problem.

Of course, the thread linked above does a pretty good job of answering that question.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

The pure soak machine is rare because it's a very limiting concept from several view points. First, it's expensive. Second, above a certain point it isn't useful since you are already applying puny human to most of what you run into.

Worse, the pure soak machine loses in combat to an aweful lot of other attacks. Mental stuff, Aggravated, gases, running out of q (see thread above) and you also need an attack you'll get no respect.

To answer your question, mid to high 30's is as much as I've seen right out of the box in a 30 point game. That included a FF so not all of it was long lasting.

[Rorschach]

Well, this is not really the subject, but I emphazise the fact that an "average" 25 lethal soak already's something unbearable (for a GM).

The strongest guy in my players team, Surtur, is at 25, and almost nothing is strong enough to scare him, especially not missile-throwers and nova punches. Moreover, the hulking man can also REgenerate and soak aggravated damage.

So, when fights occur, I must create NPC strong enough to match him... BUT when he's not here, well... This is quite dangerous for the other characters, with their "poor" 3 to 12 lethal soaking capability.

GM should make sure PCs never get too resistant or too powerful too soon, especially when others characters are not so battle-oriented.

Personally, I don't think an impressive 30+ soaking can do any good to the storytelling, and drama : PCs should be vulnerable, even physically, without the need of Little Boy.

[Login]

If a character wants to be physically invulnerable, then he should be able to be so. It's a character concept, and a valid one. However, he WILL get pwned by a. social situations and b. mental attacks. That's vulnerable enough. Let him be the one that defeats the thugs, but have him in deep shit when something comes along that is NOT a punch in the face.

[Rorschach]

Arguable.

Anyway, I don't think this "Invulnerable guy" stuff IS a character concept

[Singularity]

Tell it to Andy Vance.

[Rorschach]

You mean this NPC guy whoisn't played by anyone?

[Wakinyan]

When is a NPC character concept invalid?

[Rorschach]

Pfff... A PC concept based on ONLY ONE POWER sucks a lot.

[Singularity]

That's quite a general statement that goes beyond "Invulnerable Guy sucks," especially considering that's been your focus in two of the threads. ; Granted, everyone would agree that a character who's sole focus, hook, and purpose is a power is rather... lacking in creativity and one-dimensional.

[Neil Preston]

Also read up on Warp as an attack power. It moves someone a good way away from a fight, no matter what their soak is. Unless the person teleports, or moves really, really fast, they've been rendered irrelevant for several rounds.

[Noir]

Quote:

Originally posted by Neil Preston:
Also read up on Warp as an attack power. It moves someone a good way away from a fight, no matter what their soak is. Unless the person teleports, or moves really, really fast, they've been rendered irrelevant for several rounds.

Or a mental based Immobolize...

[Rorschach]

This is exactly what I meant Sing.

Of course, an invulnerable guy is probably interesting to play, ONLY if it's not the sole purpose of the character.

Think Andy Vance: in fact, his Amp Room affiliation is the concept, not his powers

[Fae Dreamweaver]

Well, but then we can agree that the problem here isn't the high soak, but the character concept. Any character based on just one power is boring per se. It's not any problem with the rules, because I even think there is a "don't make boring characters" rule somewhere in the book.

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fae Dreamweaver:
Any character based on just one power is boring per se.

Oh, really?

[Fae Dreamweaver]

Quote:

Originally posted by Flicker:

Quote:

Originally posted by Fae Dreamweaver:
Any character based on just one power is boring per se.

Oh, really?

...I can't leave anything up to context and interpretation here, can I? I meant any character whose sole focus, point and point of development is one power, as is the case being discussed here. In one way or another, all characters are roughly centered on one power, and are obviously not automatically boring.

[Mithril]

Thanks for the clarification.

[BlueNinja]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fae Dreamweaver:
In one way or another, all characters are roughly centered on one power, and are obviously not automatically boring.

I think what you mean is that all characters are centered on one concept which helps to define them. "Invulnerable boy" isn't just limited to Invulnerability, but probably also has armor, high levels of mega-stamina ... and is still boring to play if that's the extent of it. Hopefully he comes with a personality in addition to waltzing through lava floes, bombing runs, and the entire ordinance of a US Army battallion.

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

And to complete this chain of logic... That concept may have little to do with the actual powers the character possesses because they were designed to be something more than a combat arsenal with legs.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Rorschach:
Well, this is not really the subject, but I emphazise the fact that an "average" 25 lethal soak already's something unbearable (for a GM).
The strongest guy in my players team, Surtur, is at 25, and almost nothing is strong enough to scare him, especially not missile-throwers and nova punches. Moreover, the hulking man can also REgenerate and soak aggravated damage.
So, when fights occur, I must create NPC strong enough to match him... BUT when he's not here, well... This is quite dangerous for the other characters, with their "poor" 3 to 12 lethal soaking capability.
GM should make sure PCs never get too resistant or too powerful too soon, especially when others characters are not so battle-oriented.
Personally, I don't think an impressive 30+ soaking can do any good to the storytelling, and drama : PCs should be vulnerable, even physically, without the need of Little Boy.

We had a character built like that and he was indeed truely impressive. He also lost more fights than he won. He even lost against a large group of baselines (i.e. an army). Taking ping damage 5+ times a round seriously slows anyone down.

Assume for a moment that the nova is famous. Assume people don't start fights they don't think they can win and they won't behave as punching bags. Assume most people know more or less what he can do, and won't match their weaknesses against his strengths.

[Rorschach]

Ok, everytnink you say makes sense.

All I want to say is : when a guy can soak 25+, you need a pretty tough nova to cratch him. This sort of nova is ABSOLUTELY deadly to other PC (because many of them don't even soak 9+).

I can't figure how to handle this, and I need some advise.

Please

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Not enough information to process specifics, but I'll say this.

1) Low soak characters shouldn't be going toe to toe with people with Mega-Strength 5.

2) Every nova can’t beat every nova. Often it comes down to a “Paper covers Rock” type situation.

3) Using Rock against some else’s paper isn’t a good idea. You’re better off running before that happens. I.e., examine what your PC is designed to do and then stick with that. I’ve seen a great many characters get hurt because they were “Social God” and then their action was to throw the first punch. That’s attacking someone else’s strong point with your weak point.

Much of the “what do I do with a high mega-soak character” is a false question. How did you end up in this situation? What is he trying to do? What are you trying to do? What are your assets? Do you have a drainer of q or strength? A disrupter? A social god? A brick? A mental dominator? Can you run away?

[Soames]

It's also about who goes first. Somebody last night in chat brought this up (Ashnod?). You got lots of peeps here that take time manip powers not because its got anything to do with their characters but because who goes first gets the free shot and that might end the fight. What's your soak guy do when he's suppose to be stopping somebody that can go ghost on him? What's he doing when some nutjob erupts and decides to build a nuke out of radio shack parts and blow up the city? What's he do when somebody decides to make a cult and are tearing up Manhatten with their army of peeps that are just doing what he says?

Change the situation on him and then you don't have to worry about who can soak what.