Rule Mixup?
 

On DF11:31 the Water Blaster water elemental has an attack with Double Knockback. In the text it says that:

B104 says that Double Knockback:

I'd always interpreted Basic to mean that with Double Knockback the damage was doubled (in the example of the water elemental 6dx2) and then Knockback applied. Have I been wrong all this time?

It makes a big difference in an upcoming game, my PCs are likely to attempt a lake crossing in a raft with a hostile water elemental trying to prevent them from getting across. If they build a small raft (HP 58 according to LT139, knockback threshold 56), and it gets hit by the blaster the maximum damage is 36 points - insufficient to cause a single hex of knockback. If the damage is doubled (as I had thought) then the maximum is 72 which could knock a raft about enough to force some control rolls.

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

No... I don't know what the "official ruling" is on this, but your ruling is surely the best one...

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

Gurps power p 101 seem to imply that doubling the distance is the standard way, and doubling the damage for knock-back calculation only is an alternate rule, especially useful for low damage attack.

power-up 1 - Imbuement suggest using double damage
df-9 summoners : double the distance

So, it seem both reading of the rule are used in various gurps book.

Either it is a feature of each individual power, to be decided at creation, or it is a rule mixup...

Hope this help


Celjabba

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

Thank you Celjabba, I have no idea why I didn't take a look at Powers to see if there was some discussion there. And CTRL-F is so easy to find on my keyboard.

In thinking about this some more it might be even easier to picture the Double Knockback (variant) as "Halve target Knockback Threshold." Thus illustrating the smoother knockback effect (1 hex increments more frequently, vs. 2 hex less frequently). It would also suggest the possibility of paralleling Armour Divisor for even more dramatic knockback effects.

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

It's basically like the "convert dice + adds to more dice" optional rule: produces different results, but "close enough" for a game.

Some people like rolling lots of dice, some people can take for-ever to add up lots of dice and drive the other player crazy (I'm the last type ;).

But I'll note that the Imbuement ISN'T the enhancement. Embuements are obviously very closely related to their parent enhancements, but they can easily be tweaked to fit the specific environment.

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

just in case you did not know : ctrl-shift-f is ever more powerful: you can search (and navigate through results) in every 4e gurps book on your computer with one search. And its fast. faster than the simple search, in fact.

Celjabba

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

Holy mackerel! I did not know that. You have increased my enjoyment of pdfs by an order of magnitude. Thanks greatly. :)

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

I did. But then I forgot the shortcut and have been using the pull down menu to do it. My mouse and I thank you for the reminder.

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

GURPS Powers, p. 101, "Double Knockback: To make this meaningful for low-damage attacks, double the basic damage of the attack, for knockback purposes only, instead of doubling yards of knockback."

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

Any problems with allowing it for high damage attacks?

Re: Rule Mixup?
 

jack rolls and deals 6pts of damage to jill who has ST 10.

if jacks attack did double knock back then it would have done 1 yard of knock back since = 6*2 > 10-2 (12 > 8)

thats using the double damage for weak attacks. (well that hurt still)

if jack rolls and deals 12pts of damage to jill who has ST 10 then:

using the double damage rule you get: 12 x 2 = 24 which is 3 times greater than 8 (jill's ST-2) so jill would fly back 3 yards!

using the double distance rule Jill would fly only 2 yards since 12 is only greater than 8 by 1 so she flies 1 yard which is then doubled to 2.

lastly, using double distance ONLY wold result in weak attacks (like the 6 in the beginning) to never cause knock back.

hope this helps.