An attack that pierces everything out to range

[oneofmanynameless]

How would you build an attack that pierces everything it strikes out to maximum range? Is this just Cosmic: Irresistible Attack? Do attacks that have that and are capable of over-penetration always over-penetrate everything? (presumably doing however much damage they would do to an object they over-penetrate on their way through it.)

I'm looking to build an attack that will ignore all DR and cover DR, but do no more damage then a pistol. Like, if someone ducked behind a 900 DR heavy tank and you succeeded your attack on them the shot would pass through the tank doing 2d+2 damage to it as it went (or per hex it passed through) and then hit you doing 2d+2 and keep going out to it's maximum range doing it's damage to everything it passed through as it went.

[AlexanderHowl]

Cone or Jet with Cosmic (Irresistable Attack) would probably be thematically equivalent, as each target would not serve as cover DR for each subsequent target, though the attack must be piercing, impaling, or tight-beam burning.

[Anaraxes]

Build it an an Area Effect attack where the area just happens to be a straight line (like a one-hex-wide "Cone"). You might also want Overhead to represent the fact that the cover in front of you doesn't help.

[Rupert]

Simply giving it the cosmic infinite penetration multiplier as you suggest should do the trick. B408's example of overpenetration makes it clear that damage after going through something is reduced by that thing's effective DR, not by the damage done. Thus a magic bullet doing 2d+2(∞) pi will do 2d+2 damage to everything it passes through.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Simply giving it the cosmic infinite penetration multiplier as you suggest should do the trick. B408's example of overpenetration makes it clear that damage after going through something is reduced by that thing's effective DR, not by the damage done. Thus a magic bullet doing 2d+2(∞) pi will do 2d+2 damage to everything it passes through.

B102 prices Armor Divisor 10 as +200%. 2/3/5/10 is a 50% increment each time...

B47's "Hardened" enhancement for DR lists /100 as the next step above 100 so I would think it could be reasonable to allow "Armor Divisor 100" for +250% if someone wanted to save on points.

B103 lists Ignores DR as +300% and that's what comes after 100 in Hardened.

B378 says to round down fractional DR that results from Armor Divisors, so the +200% version is probably all you need to go through an average modern sedentary ST 9 human... but maybe not two humans?

Do we consider consecutive cover DR collectively? If you have 3 humans with 10 HP lined up, the middle target enjoys 9 cover DR from the 1st target, but does the 3rd target enjoy 18 cover DR, the cumulative cover DR of the first two targets?

In which case a /10 would reduce 9 to 0 (0.9 rounds down) but 18 to 1 (1.8 rounds down) meaning you might see cover take effect with 2 humans in the way.

In which case you really DO need 'ignores' (infinity divisor) I guess. Though /100 for +250% (if GM allows, seems reasonable based on Hardened pricing) should do the job as long as there's not more than 99 HP of flesh in the path.

In case some of the bodyguards had hardened DR you might need to apply the divisors differently to some of the cover DR.

Conversely: if you really want to avoid "friendly fire" (say an ally is behind an enemy) but want to do high damage to kill stuff, Armor Divisor limitation is a good idea as that would improve the cover DR of your first target's HP

[Andreas]

Even the +300% Ignores DR enhancent is affected by hardened DR (see the description for hardended DR in the basic set), so that is not enough to guarantee that the attack will pierce through everything.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Even the +300% Ignores DR enhancent is affected by hardened DR (see the description for hardended DR in the basic set), so that is not enough to guarantee that the attack will pierce through everything.

I'm trying to remember if you're allowed to buy the +50% Armor Divisor tiers on top of the +300% for ignoring them for the purpose of canceling out hardened... like +500% total?

Hardened actually doesn't seem to have any upper limit though, so even if you buy enough 50% enhancements to cancel out TEN tiers of Hardened, they always might buy 11 tiers of hardened for +220% ?

[transmetahuman]

Originally Posted by Plane

I'm trying to remember if you're allowed to buy the +50% Armor Divisor tiers on top of the +300% for ignoring them for the purpose of canceling out hardened... like +500% total?

Hardened actually doesn't seem to have any upper limit though, so even if you buy enough 50% enhancements to cancel out TEN tiers of Hardened, they always might buy 11 tiers of hardened for +220% ?

There are concepts that do need DR to be effective against any attack, so I would put a hard limit on Armor Divisor engagements at +300%. That still requires defenders to spend +120% on their Hardened DR.

Cosmic DR +50% seems to be useless for most concepts; it's only effective against Cosmic (Irresistible) as far as I can tell. I can't think of many situations where someone's super duper DR would be proof against a god's irresistibly sharp blade but vulnerable to a soldier's armor piercing ammunition.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by transmetahuman

Cosmic DR +50% seems to be useless for most concepts; it's only effective against Cosmic (Irresistible) as far as I can tell. I can't think of many situations where someone's super duper DR would be proof against a god's irresistibly sharp blade but vulnerable to a soldier's armor piercing ammunition.

I don't like the idea of using it against Armor Divisor at all, given Hardened already covers that.

Cosmic (Defensive) seems like it ought to be used for other means of neutralizing DR such as Neutralize or Affliction: Negated Advantage or maybe Corrosive Attack