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Aberrant RPG - Aggro claws


BlueNinja

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An Acid Fist is a good example on why they shouldn't stack. In the above example the acid does *no* extra damage at all, the entire damage is in the strength effect. I'm a 50 soak nova without agg defenses. Normally I'd take a die or two from the acid... but because it's on the fist of a Mega-Str 5 nova (which is an effect I'd normally soak totally) I take more damage?

If the acid is burning through whatever outer defenses they have (armor, hardened skin, etc.) to let the mega-strength attack hit a softer spot then yes, it would do more damage. Not only that, but if the acid is being pushed through their outer defenses by mega-strength, the acid is going to go much deeper and therefore do more damage. It's like the lightsaber example, a lightsaber swung with weak force isn't going to cut as deeply as quickly as a lightsaber swung with much more force, so even though the lightsaber has the ability to quickly burn through most matter, the amount of force behind it still determines how quickly it burns through. The mega-strength isn't doing the damage, the mega-strength is ensuring that the acid/lightsaber/etc. goes deep enough to do its full damage.

Maybe, in this case, the mega-strength shouldn't be adding to damage, but instead reducing whatever agg soak they have? So each success on the strength roll reduces their agg soak by one and ensures that whatever agg attack you're doing hits for the full amount?

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Like I said - this is just the version I'm going to try. If it turns out to be too strong, then I'll nerf it further. I have already used this on an NPC against the party; the NPC however did not have mega-strength. All but one PC in the party has Regeneration (the newest one), and the NPC novas they've had to face in combat have also had Regen, so it's not going to be something overwhelming as an attack, unless someone manages the one-shot kill.

It's much harder coming up with good justification to give antagonist NPCs dots in Psychic Shield so that the Surrepitious Telepathy can't walk all over him. ::laugh

You do realize that Regen can't work on Agg damage, right? And Hardbody only allows you to use lethal soak, not change the agg damage to lethal?

Honestly, I'm not too fond of agg as a damage type in Aberrant. Defense based characters are hard enough to build as is(I know, I have one), and even with Hardbody, Agg is impossible to heal with Healing or Regen, it takes five times as long to heal as lethal, so any agg damage is going to take characters out for a good chunk of time. And that's a brick. If you want something that's sidelining non-brick characters for weeks/months of game time or dead, agg is a good choice.

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You really think defense type characters are that difficult to build? Invulnerability adds huge soak even if the attack is aggravated, armor is pretty cheap, mega-stamina with resiliency adds a pretty good amount of soak plus extra health levels, density decrease 5 can make you invincible to almost anything but mental attacks, throw on a few dots of psychic shield and now you have to get no successes on a roll so you don't get the extra successes from psychic shield for any mental attack to hit you. At some point, almost any nova becomes rather difficult to kill.

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RE: Light saber

It's an energy field, not a solid object. If I have one dot of INV, then I shouldn't be subject to damage by it no matter who is using it.

RE: Acid

What we need to look at is surface area exposure. Strength *isn't* adding to surface area, nor is it making the acid more potent. So if I'm taking more damage from a fist made out of acid then it's NOT acid damage, it's purely kinetic. Ergo that's two attacks, not one uber attack.

Example: I have a very hot metal bar. I have special gloves to hold it, I hit you with it, it does 6 dice of fire and 6 normal dice. Baselines already don't soak fire, so are you taking more fire damage from being hit with the bar?

Now make you a nova and give you 6 lethal soak... as you're totally immune to both effects separately, why should you take 6 dice in damage?

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You do realize that Regen can't work on Agg damage, right? And Hardbody only allows you to use lethal soak, not change the agg damage to lethal?
As per the errata, Aggravated can be healed with Regen for 3qp/level. I have already had this covered in the game when they went up against that NPC.
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