[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Innate Attack

[martinl]

Originally Posted by johndallman

What have you done with Innate Attacks?

I once made a "Good" PC that had an Innate attack that did damage based on the number of points the NPC had in "Evil" advantages/disads, up to a max.

Based it off the max damage with a small (-20%?) limitation since obviously the bad guys were the main target.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by martinl

I once made a "Good" PC that had an Innate attack that did damage based on the number of points the NPC had in "Evil" advantages/disads, up to a max.

Based it off the max damage with a small (-20%?) limitation since obviously the bad guys were the main target.

It's more likely to be -25% or -30% because 'objects only' or 'animate only' are good cutoffs for 50% of possible targets and thus -20%. Which reminds me, I did make 'Animate Erasor*' once that was a 3d cor attack with I think Area 4 that took 'animate only' (and I think it was cp powered) so I could kill things without worrying about loot or the GM worrying about me cheesing mazes, dungeons, prison cells, etc.

[awesomenessofme1]

I built a fun ability based on Innate Attack for a video game-themed character a little while back.

Red Barrels [50]

Crushing Attack 5d (Explosion, +50%; Follow-Up (Universal), +50%; Fragmentation 2d (Hard containers only, -10%), +27%; Incendiary, +10%; Accessibility (Only vs containers that aren't obviously non-explosive), -30%) [50]

You can target any container that isn't in some way obviously non-explosive (so an empty oil drum would be fine, but a jug of milk wouldn't be). If you hit with whatever attack you're using, in addition to the normal damage you would deal, it creates an explosion dealing 5d cr ex inc. If the container is hard (metal, glass, etc), it additionally includes [2d cut inc] fragmentation damage.

[ericthered]

One of the more interesting things I've done with toxic damage is to make it apply to undead rather than living creatures, and stuck it on a sword for a fairly cheap attack.

Innate Attack 5d (magic -10%, gadget modifiers -40%, sword followup -20%, undead only +0%) [6]

[AlexanderHowl]

Strangely enough, Toxic Attacks without Blood Agent, Contact Agent, Follow Up, or Respiratory Agent can damage anything, so Undead Only would probably be -40% (unless undead are more than 6% of the population). If you are not using Cyclic though, Crushing Attack is probably better.

A possible version of an undead destroyer would be Crushing Attack 8d (Accessibility, Undead Only, -40%; Affects Insubstantial, +20%; Damage Modifier, No Blunt Trauma, No Knockback, -30%; Magical, -10%; Melee, 1-2, -20%) [8]. At that point, you have a rather potent weapon against undead, material or immaterial, though it does not do anything against non-undead.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Guilty. For hostile Afflictions, it's almost always markedly more cost-effective to buy an Innate Attack and toss an appropriate Side Effect on than it is to do the same with Affliction, .

This would be because Innate Attack is out of whack with the rest of Gurps. Fix Innate Attack and get rid of its' unique cost effectiveness or fix the rest of Gurps but I'm of the opinion that something needs to be fixed.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Strangely enough, Toxic Attacks without Blood Agent, Contact Agent, Follow Up, or Respiratory Agent can damage anything, so Undead Only would probably be -40% (unless undead are more than 6% of the population).

I'm rereading toxic. It says it "normally" doesn't effect machines, without saying anything about undead, or the weird edge case of golems or animated statues.

I usually stick a +0% modifier on toxic, indicating what sort of being it effects. Usually if its unmodified, its a magical attack assaulting the nature of the target rather than doing physical damage.


In the campaign the weapon above is intended for, undead make up at least half the enemies, so -20% is probably more appropriate.

If you are not using Cyclic though, Crushing Attack is probably better.

From a choice between x and y, sure. But the justification and form of the two damage in an innate attack is quite different. Crushing is Mechanical and Kinetic, whereas toxic tends towards chemical and mystical mechanisms.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm rereading toxic. It says it "normally" doesn't effect machines, without saying anything about undead, or the weird edge case of golems or animated statues.

From what I put together in a thread specifically about Toxic Attacks, "normally" seems to be there for the implication that Toxic Attacks will "normally' have the modifiers that make it not work on machines, unliving, etc. and that toxic attacks that don't have those modifiers are rare and likely not natural.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168202

That's my interpretation, anyways. Otherwise Toxic seems pretty expensive if it's that easy to become immune to it, especially when Toxic has other downsides (or, more accurately, doesn't have the various upsides damage types normally have, including pi-).

I also personally don't like Leech being it's own trait that overall seems worse than other combinations of self-healing and damage and instead made a new trait based off of Power-Ups 1 to make it so you can convert Innate Attacks you have into draining attacks (I think it's a base 30pts? I know it's not perfect yet).

Oh, and I don't round costs until after all modifiers. Namely, this is to make it so, say, 0d+1 crushing isn't the same cost as impaling.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This would be because Innate Attack is out of whack with the rest of Gurps. Fix Innate Attack and get rid of its' unique cost effectiveness or fix the rest of Gurps but I'm of the opinion that something needs to be fixed.

Well, it seems like repricing IA would be the easier of the two options, but what would you suggest? Additionally, should we increase the price of DR to match (maintaining the current ratio that 1d cr is worth the same as general DR 1), or will DR become more affordable relative to IA? I could see IA costing anywhere up to around [20] per 1d cr - roughly comparable to buying Striking ST +7 (Single Attack -60%) [21], which would increase thrusting damage by roughly +1d - but that seems a bit excessive.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

It also has the nice side effect of making it harder to use on massive creatures. I always found it a little silly how effective Side Effect is against massive HP pools with little DR (such as, say, SM+6 giants with 100HP and DR3).

I always use the "High HP and Shock" scaling (B419) for things like this.