[Psionics] Why do Mental Stab 1 and 2 have Malediction?

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Contact Agent is not a penetration modifier. It's a limitation that means you have to make skin to skin contact in order to do damage. The Malediction just means that native DR provides no protection while the Contact Agent limitation means even the thinnest covering provides complete protection.

But maledictions aren't ranged attacks—they don't have Range, 1/2 D, RoF, Rcl, Malf, or Acc, and they can't be aimed. They're not Melee Attacks either—melee attacks have Reach and benefit from Evaluate maneuvers. Maledictions aren't really attacks at all; none of the rules on pp. B369–377 apply to them. They use a different mechanic altogether: the Quick Contest.

The problem with putting Melee Attack and Malediction on the same ability is that that means, both by RAW and diegetic common sense, the user should need an attack roll and the target should get a defense roll before the Quick Contest even happens, and this major drawback is completely unrepresented in the ability's point cost. Melee Attack (−30%) alone can't possibly cover the difference. Does a malediction without Melee Attack require a roll against Innate Attack and allow the victim to defend? No, it goes straight to the contest. Does a Melee Attack (−30%) without Malediction require a Quick Contest? No, it's just an attack and a defense!

The −30% to turn a ranged attack into a close-combat melee attack does not represent two additional single-point-of-failure die rolls; it represents the fact that you have to be in close combat in order to make the attack. The user is getting shortchanged significantly here, if not on the DR-ignoring malediction, then certainly on the, "Oh, but you can't even activate the malediction unless you can hit with a melee attack!"

And at level 1 with Contact Agent, the anti-DR benefits of Malediction don't even apply. Basic Set very explicitly says that Contact Agent is a penetration modifier, and that it is blocked completely by any DR at all:

Originally Posted by B111

Your attack must touch bare skin or porous clothing to have any effect at all. DR always stops it … This is a “penetration modifier”; you cannot combine it with other penetration modifiers, such as Follow-Up (p. 105).

What it doesn't say there, at least not explicitly, is that contact agents—even the limiting, non-cone, non-AoE ones—ignore DR with the Thick Skin limitation. Thick Skin is effectively Flexible (−20%) plus Accessibility (Not Against Contact Agents, −10%) and Accessibility (Does Not Stop Follow-Ups, −10%). DR without Thick Skin assumes chitinous plates or something, and is as good as DR from an equally durable artificial source. Touching that kind of DR isn't making "skin contact" and shouldn't activate contact agents in the first place. So what we have is a Malediction that ignores DR if and only if there is no DR to ignore.

If anything, I think this calls for a new modifier altogether—Resistible, Contested (−10%), or something.