Is this ability legal?

[Bustard McDastard]

This is an ability for an angel of death

“Peace Be Upon You” (277 points)

Azrael simply commands everyone in the area to die

Consists of an affliction and linked innate attack

Affliction 5 (195 points) (50+290%)

Secondary heart attack (+60%)
Malediction. (+100%)
Linked (+10%) (linked to soul attack see below)
Area Affect 8 yard radius (+150%)
Emanation (-20%)
Costs 2 fatigue (-10%)

Linked Innate Attack 5d toxic “Soul attack” (82 points) (20+310%)
Cosmic (ignores DR) (+300%)
Linked (+10%)



So to make sure I understand correctly, when Azrael uses Peace Be Upon You, everyone within an 8 yard radius makes a HT-4 roll in quick contest with Azrael’s will. Azrael has a penalty to his will roll of -1 for every yard of distance to the target. He also has a penalty if he can’t see his target.

If Azrael wins the quick contest(s), his victim(s) are stunned and take 5d toxic damage. If a victim fails his HT roll by 5 or more, he also has a heart attack.

Did I do this right?

[Pursuivant]

Stats and rules interpretations look good to me. In any case, it's good enough for a GM-designed NPC.

The min/maxer in me makes me shy away from purely damaging Afflictions because pricing is broken for multiple levels of that trait.

Instead, consider Innate Attack with one or more of Follow-Up, Side Effects and Symptoms. If done right, you get the Secondary Heart Attack as a Symptom of a toxic attack.

[Bustard McDastard]

Thanks!

Yeah I’m not worried about min-maxing really hard because I don’t want to kill the party THAT much

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Instead, consider Innate Attack with one or more of Follow-Up, Side Effects and Symptoms. If done right, you get the Secondary Heart Attack as a Symptom of a toxic attack.

Neither Side Effect nor Symptoms is compatible with Heart Attack - the choices for the first are Stunning, Attribute Penalty, Disadvantage, and Incapacitation (Irritant should probably be an option, seeing as it's a lesser effect than Incapacitation, and so should Negated Advantage, as that's really just a special case of Disadvantage); the choices for the second are Advantage, Attribute Penalty, Disadvantage, Irritant, and Negated Advantage. Additionally, Side Effect is incompatible with Malediction, and the books suggest limiting Symptoms to 1d and lower attacks.

Personally, I'd be fine with expanding Side Effect to cover more, including Heart Attack (although part of that is that I'd rather use Side Effect than Affliction, as I like the way the former works a lot better). Symptoms shouldn't be, however, considering passing the injury threshold causes the effect with no chance for a save.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Bustard McDastard

So to make sure I understand correctly, when Azrael uses Peace Be Upon You, everyone within an 8 yard radius makes a HT-4 roll in quick contest with Azrael’s will. Azrael has a penalty to his will roll of -1 for every yard of distance to the target. He also has a penalty if he can’t see his target.

The potential victims would like to draw the GM's attention to the Rule of 16, on p. B349. They suspect that Azrael may have enough will to make that meaningful after range penalties.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Neither Side Effect nor Symptoms is compatible with Heart Attack - the choices for the first are Stunning, Attribute Penalty, Disadvantage, and Incapacitation

You are correct, of course. I was was thinking in general terms about a cheap Innate Attack as a carrier, with the Affliction as Follow-Up.

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by Bustard McDastard

If Azrael wins the quick contest(s), his victim(s) are stunned and take 5d toxic damage.

I believe that the 5d damage would happen regardless of whether they lose the contest, since Link doesn't require the other attack to actually affect the target.

[Flowergarden]

But linked attack should have area of effect too. Right now it's you shoot a projectile for 5d damage at the same time you use an affliction.

Edit: I think so, at least. As book says: you can use two abilities at the same time, you need same rof, acc, range etc to hit with them as one attack.

And malediction too. I suppose you want a follow up attack, not a linked. Linked is for damaging rocket exhaust from flight

Because the other way around would be:
Innate attack, crushing; no wounding, no knockback, etc for -310% with area of effect 5 for 2 points and that innate attack with huge damage linked to it.
So I suppose it's shouldn't work like that

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

But linked attack should have area of effect too. Right now it's you shoot a projectile for 5d damage at the same time you use an affliction.

Edit: I think so, at least. As book says: you can use two abilities at the same time, you need same rof, acc, range etc to hit with them as one attack.

And malediction too. I suppose you want a follow up attack, not a linked. Linked is for damaging rocket exhaust from flight

Yeah, it needs Area of Effect as well if it's also affecting an area. However, the way it's described, the HT roll is meant to resist both the Affliction and the Toxic damage. For that to be the case, you need to have the Toxic attack have Malediction instead of Ignores DR, then toss on "Resistance Roll Based on HT +20%." Unfortunately, that in turn means the characters are actually at base HT to resist the toxic damage and base HT-4 to resist the Affliction (which means they only get hit with the Heart Attack if they also get hit with the toxic damage, which negates the whole point of the toxic damage). I'm not certain what a fair Enhancement value would be to make a Malediction start out with a penalty, but I suspect +10% per -1 wouldn't be too bad of an option, so +40% for HT-4 would work.

Follow-Up could potentially work, although if keeping things RAW-legal, you would require the toxic attack to be the carrier (Follow-Up requires the carrier be a natural weapon or Innate Attack). Oddly, you wouldn't need to factor the cost of Area Effect into the Follow-Up, as this isn't one of the modifiers listed (although considering you have to factor in Cone, I suspect this is an oversight).

I'll also note having Heart Attack as a Secondary Affliction, then negating this effect by taking 5 levels of the trait, really doesn't make much sense - just taking 1 level of the above Affliction, with the Heart Attack being a primary Affliction, costs [63], rather than the [195] of taking 5 levels of it with a Secondary Heart Attack, and still results in "Roll against HT or die." Since you need to figure out a way to have the resistance roll for the toxic damage take a penalty anyway, just build it as 1 level of a Heart Attack Affliction Linked to a Toxic Malediction with the above +40% modifier.

[Stormcrow]

Don't forget: if it's an NPC, you probably don't need to write up the ability in detail. It just does whatever you want it to do. NPCs mostly aren't governed by character points; that's for player characters.

Even for the ones that are tied to point cost, Allies, Patrons, Enemies, Dependents, you only actually need to know approximately how many character points they total.

I'm not saying you can't fully stat out an NPC. Just don't give yourself more work than you need to.