Dodge and Bombardment

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Can be Blocked is only -5% so Dodge being no better sounds right to me.

Can be blocked is for attacks that can already be dodged and are already affected by shield DB. It should be more than -5% for area attacks.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Can be blocked is for attacks that can already be dodged and are already affected by shield DB. It should be more than -5% for area attacks.

And yet Can Be Blocked is still -5% for Area effects. *shrug* Good place for a houserule though.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Bruno

And yet Can Be Blocked is still -5% for Area effects. *shrug* Good place for a houserule though.

Going from "No Defense" to "All Defenses Possible" is arguably -75%, based on the price of Irresistible Attack, but that's clearly not right for Area Effect, which already includes Irresistible Attack at a fraction of the cost (with the caveat of being able to Dodge if you're at the very edge of the radius, but only if you move and end up Prone; it also allows for more exotic Power-based Dodges, which Cosmic doesn't). -20%* to go from "No Defense" to "One Defense" doesn't seem too bad for Area Effect or Cone - this would allow for a Bombardment that could be Dodged, or dragon breath that could be Blocked. After that, -5% per additional defense (so -25% for two defenses, -30% for all three) seems about right.

*Mostly stolen from Anthony's earlier comment, but felt like it was in the right ballpark already.

[Sdrolion]

Lot of good arguments here...I think for my purposes if I go this route I will probably end up houseruling it at 10% (perhaps with the additional 5% each for adding block and parry as well, styled after the Can Be Blocked limitation).

I can see arguments for it being higher or lower (some good ones here), but that feels pretty right for my purposes. I definitely feel like it should have a benefit since it is weakening the power, and Dodge, while it may often be set on lower skill than Block, is also far more common than Block - just about every character can at least attempt it, and even if they're at the standard level (8), that's still...correct me if I'm wrong, but about a 25% chance of success?

For my perspective, then, "Can Be Dodged" is opening you up to a more general weakness than "Can Be Blocked," but also one that probably won't be as high a skill level as Block would end up being. That feels like it should be worth more than Can Be Blocked (general weakness rather than pretty specific) but not much more (lower chance of defense succeeding).

Thank you to everyone for helping me brainstorm on this.

[Sdrolion]

Hrm...actually, that's another interesting facet that might lean me towards it being worth more as a limitation - if you're effectively giving yourself a failure roll that's going to hover around skill 8 or so, that's theoretically similar to Unreliable at skill 8...which is -40%. I don't think it should go that high, since there's situations you can set up where someone can't dodge but there are no situations you can set up where your Unreliable ability is suddenly Reliable, but that does bear thinking about as a comparative price. I'll think about this some more. :-P Might end up at -20% eventually after all, but right now -10% still feels right.