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Old 09-14-2010, 01:19 PM   #1
Talonos
 
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Default Help creating life-draining touch ability?

One of my players would like to have a specific sort of life-draining touch for his character, and I'm having a hard time trying to model it. Perhaps I could have some help?

He wants to be able to touch people and drain their life force (likely an innate attack dealing toxic damage.) He could then use the life he drained to heal others. (Healing advantage?) He wants to have a pool of energy that carries over, where every time he drains life, it is added to the pool, to a max of some number. When he heals, he subtracts from that pool. As GM, I also want to say he can only heal people of the same race he drained life from. (No going to the pet store and draining puppies to refill his pool.) He cannot heal people using FP, but he can drain his own life using his innate attack and heal people with it.

How would this best be represented?
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Old 09-14-2010, 01:25 PM   #2
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talonos View Post
One of my players would like to have a specific sort of life-draining touch for his character, and I'm having a hard time trying to model it. Perhaps I could have some help?

He wants to be able to touch people and drain their life force (likely an innate attack dealing toxic damage.) He could then use the life he drained to heal others. (Healing advantage?) He wants to have a pool of energy that carries over, where every time he drains life, it is added to the pool, to a max of some number. When he heals, he subtracts from that pool. As GM, I also want to say he can only heal people of the same race he drained life from. (No going to the pet store and draining puppies to refill his pool.) He cannot heal people using FP, but he can drain his own life using his innate attack and heal people with it.

How would this best be represented?
Leech + Energy Reserve + Healing

Edit: More specifically

Leech 1 (Accelerated Healing, +25%; Heals ER, +30%) [38.75 + 6.22/level]

Healing (Only FP from Energy Reserve, -5%) [29]

Energy Reserve (Special Recharge, Leech, -70%; Only to power Healing ability, -20%) [0.6/level]

I would figure a ER of 4 would do it bring the ability set up to a nice even 70 points

As for the one race only, that would cause extra bookkeeping on your part (no you have 3 FP you drained from a bird-monster so only bird monsters can be healed, so your fellow PC dies). If your serious about it though I would use a accessibility modifier of about -30%. The later would be just flavor text, he's absorbing his own HP to fuel his ER, 0-point feature at best.


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Last edited by Christopher R. Rice; 09-14-2010 at 01:40 PM. Reason: added a note
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Old 09-16-2010, 05:16 AM   #3
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
As for the one race only, that would cause extra bookkeeping on your part (no you have 3 FP you drained from a bird-monster so only bird monsters can be healed, so your fellow PC dies). If your serious about it though I would use a accessibility modifier of about -30%. The later would be just flavor text, he's absorbing his own HP to fuel his ER, 0-point feature at best.
A simpler solution is, as a feature, have physiology modifiers apply to the Healing roll. Also limit the Leech to Sapients only (probably -10%-ish).
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Old 09-16-2010, 05:52 AM   #4
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
A simpler solution is, as a feature, have physiology modifiers apply to the Healing roll. Also limit the Leech to Sapients only (probably -10%-ish).
Much more than -10%, as written, you can drain life from plants, which avoids lots of moral issues and trouble. Taking that away is significant!
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Old 09-16-2010, 05:56 AM   #5
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Much more than -10%, as written, you can drain life from plants, which avoids lots of moral issues and trouble. Taking that away is significant!
Except that most foes are sapient, more than 50%, and abilities are basically priced for most likely adventuring use. If this was "Only on Women" that would be -20% and be vastly more limited.
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Old 09-16-2010, 06:04 AM   #6
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Except that most foes are sapient,
Who said you are only going to drain your foes? Remember default Leech also functions as Regeneration: Very Fastish (anywhere there are plants), losing that is significant!

Last edited by NineDaysDead; 09-16-2010 at 06:10 AM.
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Old 09-16-2010, 06:13 PM   #7
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Who said you are only going to drain your foes? Remember default Leech also functions as Regeneration: Very Fastish (anywhere there are plants), losing that is significant!
Who says you are only going to attack people? Yet Innate Attack is modified in this way. Affliction (Growth) would be very useful on plants as well, yet "Only on Women" is still -20% there too. How would you limit Leech that only works on 50% of people?
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Old 09-16-2010, 06:35 PM   #8
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Yet Innate Attack is modified in this way.
It doesn't matter how an Innate Attack would be modified, because Leech isn't an Innate Attack. A big portion of the cost of leech is in the healing. Going from "Can heal from any living thing" to "Can only heal from 50% of a specific species" is a massive reduction in utility.

Edit: And now that I think about it, an Innate Attack that only worked on female humans would also be a nasty limitation. Being attacked by a bugbear? Alien squid? Blob monster? Angry poodle? Sorry. No good. Really, any situation other then "Only threats are humans" that kind of limitation should be worth more then 20%.

Last edited by Tuoni; 09-16-2010 at 06:39 PM.
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Old 09-17-2010, 02:58 AM   #9
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Who says you are only going to attack people?.
It's not about the attack, it about the healing. Plants are everywhere, don't fight back or defend themselves, can't move or run away, have a high HP to mass ratio and the social penalties are much less for killing them.

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Yet Innate Attack is modified in this way. Affliction (Growth) would be very useful on plants as well, yet "Only on Women" is still -20% there too.
Page references? You're not refering to the rules for Accessibility are you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Basic set page 110
If your ability can only affect certain targets, the limitation depends on how common the target group is. “Only on women,” “Only on men,” or anything else that covers about half of the population is worth -20%.
In this context, "women only" does not cover half the possible population, it's not even close.
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
How would you limit Leech that only works on 50% of people?
First I'd work out what the limitation "only on people" would be worth. It's a very small subsection of "only on living things", smaller than "animals only".

EDIT: Or looking at Healing I might reverse engineer the cost. People only = default cost, all living things +80%; so all living things = default cost, People only -45%.

Last edited by NineDaysDead; 09-17-2010 at 03:12 AM.
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Old 09-17-2010, 09:17 AM   #10
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Default Re: Help creating life-draining touch ability?

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Originally Posted by NineDaysDead
Much more than -10%, as written, you can drain life from plants, which avoids lots of moral issues and trouble. Taking that away is significant!
Is there a link to a ruling which made this explicitly legal? It seems overpowering to me, and the rules example, Leech(Mechanical), suggests that plants should be another such variant.
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