Aberrant RPG - Immolate

[Rorschach]

How does it work?

1)is Immolate activation an action?

2)Example : a nova with Claws and Immolate strikes an enemy. He makes damage for his claws AND his Immolate capability, but are the 2 of them added, or the two dice pool are soaked separately. I thought the last one was the correct answer, but it makes Immolate a bit weak I'm afraid.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

1) Immolation activation is an action to the same degree that all maintenance power activations are.

2) Since Immolate damage is from a difference source, and can be of any type, it doesn't stack with other attacks.

RE: Immolate being weak.

It depends. Immolate lets you walk through walls as most walls aren't built with the soaks novas are. Immolate hoses low soak characters so badly they effectively can't make HTH attacks. Immolate also does knock back so it can break up attack sequences built off of quick and the like.

These are not small things, but immolate does tend to be more of a speciality power than a generic, 'will help pump any attack' type of power.

[Hugin]

I think Troll makes a good point. The whole "What would you do with the power of a god" describes novas versus baselines, not novas versus novas.

Some powers may seem weak when compared to other nova powers. But in the world at large that power is pretty impressive. With Immolate Baselines can't touch you, walls crumple away at your touch (unless you have low Quantum AND low Immolate) and you probably look pretty damn impressive too.

[Noir]

with Immolat anybody touching you (or who you touch) will at least takes a dice of damage.

If you are HTHing them, then you get your HTH damage pool and your Immolate pool, which means even though the target gets to use thier soak for each seperately (if the soak is applicable), they will be taking 2 dice of damage (1 from each pool). When you only have 7 (possibly more) Health levels, tick damage (especially double tick damage) can go a long way.

~Noir

[Rorschach]

Noir, I think you're right.

And I think all of you see Immolate as what it really is. But I think it should be a level 1 power anyway, 'cause it makes less damage than Claws, and that's just stupid.

Anyway, as you said, Immolate is more useful, that's a damn fact!

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Actually it does quite a lot more damage, claws only does one die per dot (although it stacks with strength which is huge).

And the reason it is level 2 is two fold.

1) Allowing two extras on it leads to the Immolate+AGG+Area (or ranged, etc) which is absurdly nasty.

2) It's existence is pretty game altering already. For example, Immolate + Agg comes pretty close to shutting down Totentanz or other "attack multiple times" types.

[Sphere]

It's existence is pretty game altering already. For example, Immolate + Agg comes pretty close to shutting down Totentanz or other "attack multiple times" types.

Although I personally wouldn't allow it to act as a force field so there's nothing to stop Totentanz ramming one of his trademarked spears through an Agg-Immolate Nova's face. If they don't have the appropriate protection.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Sphere: Although I personally wouldn't allow it to act as a force field so there's nothing to stop Totentanz ramming one of his trademarked spears through an Agg-Immolate Nova's face. If they don't have the appropriate protection.

The problem isn't immolate works like a forcefield. The problem is the spear breaks on that first attack.

Mind you, smart money still says "T" wins and it just takes longer.