Cosmic: ST-Based + Cone + Corrosion + Weapon
 

A player wants to emulate an attack from one of my favorite games (Holy Explosion in Final Fantasy Tactics) and I came up with a simple solution, just do a Corrosion Attack with ST-Based, Overhead, and Cone. However, there are complications;

A) ST-Based can't be on corrosion attacks (or many types)
2) ST-Based can't take Cone (or many other effects)
C) ST-Based doesn't take into account of equipped weapons

The first two seem like something you can solve with Cosmic. At first I was just going to use the +50% because it neither seemed too strong and I'm not even certain why damage type matters for it.

The latter I could see being a feature; Instead of using your thrust or swing, you must use a muscle-powered (melee?) weapon and you use any of it's damage modes, including how you use the weapon (if you had a polearm, you'd need room to swing it). The downsides of requiring not just a weapon but needing to use the weapon probably evenly weigh the extra damage (and MinST further keeps you from using absurdly powerful weapons).

Any thoughts? I'm entirely aware I might be low balling it, I tend to. Thank you ahead of time.

Re: Cosmic: ST-Based + Cone + Corrosion + Weapon
 

aka Divine Ruination?

聖光爆裂破
Seikou Bakuretsu Ha
Holy Light Explosive Break

are you emulating the "Confuse" effect because "acid is eating my face" is distracting? I don't think it actually lowers armor class in game...

I figure best bet is to use Crushing as carrier and make Corrosive a Follow-Up, but then that makes me wonder if it would still be able to deplete DR.

PU4p10?

Having the weapon doesn't cost you anything, but being able to enhance it in some way is at least a perk, even if you take enough limitations to otherwise make it 0% net modifiers.

This is one case where I think it's important to split up the "Insubstantial Only -30%" enhancement into "Affects Insubstantial +20%" and "Not Substantial -50%" because of how Modifying Existing Damage: Melee Weapons works

1/5 value on limitations would reduce -50% to -10%, so the net in this case would be +10% to be able to stab ghosts at will, not a perk! The net -30% only seems right if the limitation applies to all attacks, making you incapable of harming anything but insubstantial foes with all ST-based attacks.

Re: Cosmic: ST-Based + Cone + Corrosion + Weapon
 

That might be the War of the Lions version, I only know the original translation. Divine Ruination does sound awesome.

Wow, I totally forgot about the confuse side effect, not sure how that would translate over (maybe symptoms with Berserk and Delusion: I don't know who isn't an enemy?). I chose Corrosion because looking at how it works it seems to make the most sense to me as that type of damage.

There's all sort of oddities that would bring. I guess I could make it Cutting with Corrosion? Maybe the cool bonus effects of Corrosion damage can just enhance the cutting attack. Still feels off to do that. And I still can't add Cone.

That's not quite the same thing and it makes it hard to add damage to it. The part I was trying to emulate is that the attack does regular sword damage plus some amount to its targets. I could see this being a special case of Follow Up: Any Weapon where the base damage is the weapon's damage and the IA adds onto that.

Re: Cosmic: ST-Based + Cone + Corrosion + Weapon
 

PU4p14's "universal" perhaps?

You normally can't take range modifiers if you took Follow-Up... you need to just take whatever package comes with a carrier...

But in this case I'm wondering if maybe allowing "reduced range" or "melee" would be appropriate, to limit the circumstances of weapons which your follow-up benefits.
(and maybe even further like 'requires components' if only a certain type of weapon worked at that range, like staffs only, swords only, etc)

Maybe in the other direction too, if you're able to apply them to really long-range mundane weapons like sniper rifles?

It's not a huge concern since x3 for +20% at 300 yards or x10 for +40% at 1000 yards covers a lot of weapons as we currently know them, but +50% (added to ANY range) is going to get super powerful in Ultra-Tech settings.

The 1986 world record for longest object toss is over 1200ft (300 yards) for an aerobie so that would also lead to some funny situations, namely the 'free delay' you're going to get for the travel time of your slow weapon attack.

Makes me wonder where we draw the line on what a "weapon attack" is. Like you can add your attack to spitballs, snowballs, pies, tomatoes?

Re: Cosmic: ST-Based + Cone + Corrosion + Weapon
 

Yeah, that doesn't quite work, which brings me back to thinking some sort of cosmic might be best. It can even be the same +50% but instead of following the rules of Follow-Up, it modifies and improves the base attack.