Affliction VS Toxic attack

[Vlaarith]

Hi eveybody, its me again, so I was building npc for my campaign and while talking about a particular npc I stumble on something I find curious.


Its the cost of affliction vs toxic attack, roleplay wise they all do their job, but my player is whinning because he said I should build the ray of stupidity of his sorceress npc with a toxic attack because it would cost less points, so i started thinking, and he is right, even if this is not the basic purpose of the advantage, toxic attack would cost at least half less and would only required an roll for touching from the attacker and a defence roll from the opponent.

But if I use an affliction, it cost more, and the victim can do a ht roll on top of everything to shrugg off the IQ penalty....

So that's what I am trying to understand, in term of points it doesn't make any sense at all! Yet the gameplay wise part clearly state that the attack I want to build should be an affliction.

Am I missing something?

[Nereidalbel]

Toxic Attack causes injury. Nothing more, nothing less. Affliction causes any effect other than injury, and Malediction allows you to ignore DR and active defenses.

[Anaraxes]

Are you using a nominal Toxic Attack just to enable a Side Effect to carry the "stupidity" part of the ray of stupidity?

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Are you using a nominal Toxic Attack just to enable a Side Effect to carry the "stupidity" part of the ray of stupidity?

That changes it from ray of stupidity to ray of dain bramage.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Toxic Attack causes injury. Nothing more, nothing less. Affliction causes any effect other than injury, and Malediction allows you to ignore DR and active defenses.

Yes, but it means that wounding someone is cheaper than inconveniencing them.

I once created an alien species inspired by the komodo dragon with the idea of this terrible bite that had a venom that inflicted pain on you, but even moderate was more expensive than a short, low damage toxic attack. I eventually went with that because what I really wanted was "Dude, don't get bit by them!" and that served its purpose well, but I was always surprised that inflicting harm was cheaper than inflicting pain.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Yes, but it means that wounding someone is cheaper than inconveniencing them.

I once created an alien species inspired by the komodo dragon with the idea of this terrible bite that had a venom that inflicted pain on you, but even moderate was more expensive than a short, low damage toxic attack. I eventually went with that because what I really wanted was "Dude, don't get bit by them!" and that served its purpose well, but I was always surprised that inflicting harm was cheaper than inflicting pain.

Hurting people is easy. Subduing them without causing harm is hard. For your pain snakes, Extended Duration x60 would have forced an HT roll, with failure resulting in margin of failure hours of pain. You could do days, if you really wanted to be evil, without actually killing a PC...

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Hurting people is easy. Subduing them without causing harm is hard. For your pain snakes, Extended Duration x60 would have forced an HT roll, with failure resulting in margin of failure hours of pain. You could do days, if you really wanted to be evil, without actually killing a PC...

I don't see how that's relevant to my point. I mean, a year long coma is way more powerful than 1d6 toxic damage too! But that's not really relevant to the discussion.

Let's picture a bite that inflicts moderate pain for the next few minutes if you fail an HT roll. That's a basic Affliction (Moderate Pain +20%, Follow-up (Melee Attack) -30%) [9]
Not bad, it's fairly cheap and good as a flavor for a race. It's not particularly overpowering, but it's decent enough.

But what would it cost, instead, to have a toxic attack that also comes after the bite, and is resistable with an HT roll? A 1d Toxic attack (Follow-Up (Melee) -30%, Resistable (HT+0) -30%) comes to 2 points, or 1.6 to be precise. If we add an additional +9 cycles at one minute each, we come to a modifier worth + 180% (+40% * 9 * 0.5 (Resistable)). So our total becomes 1d tox (Follow-Up (Melee) -30%, Resistable (HT+0) -30%, +9 cycles, per minute, +180%) [9] (8.8 to be precise).

So, here are your choices: You can have an attack that, if the person passes their HT check, they endure no pain, OR if they fail by 10, they suffer a -2 to all their rolls for the next 10 minutes OR you can inflict an attack that if they pass their HT they endure no damage OR if they fail by 10 they suffer 10d6 toxic damage (~35 damage). The one is irritating, the other is lethal, both cost the same.

We could even take this a step further:
1d toxic (Follow-Up (Melee) -30%, Resistable HT -30%, Symptom (Moderate Pain, 1/3rd HP) +60%, +6 cycles per minute, +120%) [9]. So we can give up three cycles, and from the moment you're down 1/3rd HP, you'll ALSO suffer Moderate Pain until you heal, and all I had to do was give up three cycles to do it (If you're really bothered by that, you can give up a single cycle to afflict them when they're down 2/3rd HP). For the average person, a single cycle, the initial one, will inflict Moderate Pain (because ~3.5 damage is more than 1/3 of 10), and then it'll keep cycling to inflict more damage, and even if the person makes his roll after on the third cycle, he's still taken an average of 7 damage, and he'll need to go ~3 days before he's freed of that moderate pain. Three days.

For 9 points.

I'm not sure about at the high levels, but I expect inflicting a heart attack is also more expensive than simply dumping like 10d of toxic damage all at once on someone's system.

Affliction is generally a mess and needs to be revised. We already know that the leveled cost is too much (which is why I didn't bring it up: If I made both HT-5, then the Affliction would cost around 72 points, while the innate attack would barely increase in cost), but I'd argue that the base cost is a bit high too.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I'm not sure about at the high levels, but I expect inflicting a heart attack is also more expensive than simply dumping like 10d of toxic damage all at once on someone's system.

Heart Attack would cost 40 points with no other modifiers, which is exactly the same price as 10d Tox.

Also of note, Follow-Up is a 0% enhancement when teeth or fangs are the carrier.

In general, Affliction is best when you spend the 10/15/20 extra points to make it a Malediction, and when used to cause pain, it's only another 15 points to last until the victim consumes an antidote, whether that takes them 10 seconds or 10 years to find.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Heart Attack would cost 40 points with no other modifiers, which is exactly the same price as 10d Tox.

Also of note, Follow-Up is a 0% enhancement when teeth or fangs are the carrier.

In general, Affliction is best when you spend the 10/15/20 extra points to make it a Malediction, and when used to cause pain, it's only another 15 points to last until the victim consumes an antidote, whether that takes them 10 seconds or 10 years to find.

You have a habit of addressing minutia when you should be addressing the core point. You have both the OP and I pointing out a genuine problem, and you respond by picking on individual aspects rather than addressing the core concern. If someone told you your house on fire, would you really respond with "Technically, it's an apartment," or would you address the fact that the house is on fire?

To wit: You are correct, a heart attack and 10d of toxic damage are identical. My bad. Second, I checked the follow-up rules very closely, and "Melee" innate attacks apply a -30%. If that doesn't apply to teeth or claws or strikers, fine, but in that case, Affliction gains +3 points, and the toxic attack gains +1, which makes it even worse for affliction.

Finally, did I ask for a malediction? No. Do my pain-snakes gaze angrily in people's eyes to make them feel eternal pain? No. They bite them, and when they do, they cause a small amount of pain, something minor. The problem is, though, that evidently inconveniencing someone is much more expensive than mauling them. Likewise, making someone temporarily stupid is much more expensive than killing them outright with gobs of toxic damage. Please address these points. Please point out how THESE are wrong, and how we can get the effects we want for a reasonable price.

I'm not THAT invested in my pain snakes causing pain. The real thing is that I wanted their bites to be problematic to people. But I'm bothered by the fact that GURPS calls a few d6 worth of toxic damage more of a small, cheap "flavor power" than causing someone a few minutes of moderate pain. That's not right.

[zoncxs]

To me, the problem with Affliction vs Innate attacks is not that Affliction is over priced for what it does, but that Innate attacks are too cheap for what they do.

My house rule for innate attacks is to treat them like TK, the level of the attack does damage equal to the same level of ST.

so a lvl 10 innate attack would do the same damage as ST 10 (pretty expensive!).

to modify this for more cinematic games, make the damage equal to the same level of ST+10


of course I also have a house rule for damage in general being equal to ST/4 (for swing, thrust is (ST-2)/4, and DR cost is lowered to 2cp/lvl and HP is figured with ST*2.5 and cost 1cp/lvl).

just my 4 halfpennies.