Death Spell conversion to RPM

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Humabout

Id call that a major cheese, Varyon. It's there by RAW perhaps, but I wouldnt allow that. If you want four times the damage, pay for four times the damage. If theres an accessibility limitation, slap it on the damage per normal rules.

One issue here is that tacking on Fragile: Unnatural is doing something very similar - it's functionally tripling damage, but only for purposes of hitting the Instant Death threshold. That being said, I can certainly see ample reason to not allow the exploit I posted to fly.

I should note, however, that an "only to affect death thresholds" or similar Limitation on the damage is typically going to be useless, as in RPM a net Limitation doesn't actually drop the price of damage.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You'll be wasting energy on the Altered Trait - Fragile: Unnatural means you instantly die at -1xHP, bypassing that Death Check, not that any possible Death Check (such as that from Heart Attack) instantly kills you.

The idea of tacking on Fragile: Unnatural to make the spell more capable of killing you brings up another question. Would Vulnerability: This Ritual (or perhaps just the damage type of the Ritual) be acceptable to most GM's? It's a way to double, triple, or quadruple the damage of your ritual for a fairly small added amount of energy (doubling costs between +2 - for Rare (This Ritual) - and +6 - for Common (Damage Type) - which with Internal Damage would only be enough to buy +2 or +1d+2 to damage).

If it's an option, something like Greater Transform Body (8) + 3d Internal Crushing (8) + Altered Traits, Fragile: Unnatural (10) + Altered Traits, Vulnerability x4: This Ritual (4) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3) would cost 99 energy and would on average instantly kill anyone with up to 21 HP (and if you're incredibly lucky, or spend some Destiny Points or whatever to maximize your damage roll, you can instantly kill a foe with up to 36 HP). Greater Destroy Body would be better, provided you're willing to drop the "turns your heart into that of a horse" bit (have it explode your heart instead), as it would drop cost to 90. If you're required to use a Common category of damage instead, that would be +24 to total energy - but a 114-123 energy ritual that instantly kills pretty much anyone that fails to resist is a pretty solid ritual.

EDIT: For those that find this game-breaking, one alternative to outright disallowing it (which is perfectly acceptable - it's an exploit, particularly with the This Ritual version) would be to make the Vulnerability only apply for purposes of Death Checks. That is, if I rolled only 6 damage on 3d, and the target had HP 12 or lower, the x4 would increase my damage to 24 and kill them instantly. If, however, the target had more than HP 12, the x4 wouldn't be enough to get them to their first death threshold, so they'd actually only take 6 injury.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I wouldn't allow it as part of the same ritual - otherwise I can't help but think of a ritual effect race condition and then my programer brain explodes trying to debug it.

Cast the Vulnerability ritual then target them separately with a damaging effect.

Originally Posted by Varyon

One issue here is that tacking on Fragile: Unnatural is doing something very similar - it's functionally tripling damage, but only for purposes of hitting the Instant Death threshold. That being said, I can certainly see ample reason to not allow the exploit I posted to fly.

I should note, however, that an "only to affect death thresholds" or similar Limitation on the damage is typically going to be useless, as in RPM a net Limitation doesn't actually drop the price of damage.

Yeah, I thought about this some more and I'm not sure if I'd allow the damage from the spell to activate embedded effects like this. Maybe successive castings.

[Nexahs]

Thanks to everybody for the info! I think for what I'm trying to accomplish the flavor of that spell just requires too much energy, so I'll be using a more basic heart attack spell. I'll likely post it in this thread for any who are interested.