Variant Quintessence, requesting feedback

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Edit: I think I should figure out something more elegant than the "In combat, each 5 QN you have above your opponent [..."] I wrote though. It does the job of making vampires and such deadly to humans (and random furniture), but makes the math a bit annoying.

One potential option would be to simply have set thresholds rather than doing a comparison. Say, a character with effective QN 1-3 is at -2 with QN-based damage, 4-8 is at -1, 9-13 is at +0, 14-18 or lower is at +1, 19-23 is at +2, etc. You subtract the defender's modifier from the attacker's, to a minimum of 0 if you don't want high QN to make characters more resilient, then multiply by 50% to see what the damage increase is (if you do want high QN to make characters more resilient, follow SSR - -1 is x0.7 damage, -2 is x0.5, -3 is x0.3, etc).

So, with your three examples, Joe Averageson is at -1, Vampire Punk is at +0, and Carrie is at +2. When Vampire Punk attacks Carrie, that's 0-2, which ends up +0, for +0% (or -2, for x0.5). When Carrie attacks Vampire Punk, that's 2-0, which ends up as +2, for +100%. When Carrie attacks Joe, that's 2-(-1), which ends up as +3, for +150%. When Vampire Punk attacks Joe, that's 0-(-1), which ends up as +1, for +50%.

You do lose some resolution - now QN 14 is +50% to damage against QN 13, due to them being on opposite sides of a breakpoint - but it's much simpler to use in play.