[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Innate Attack

[johndallman]

Innate Attack [variable] is an exotic physical advantage. You have a natural or built-in attack which is not based on your ST. This can be used to represent many kinds of attacks, from stings to super-powers but they’re always ones that do damage, as opposed to Afflictions. This advantage appeared at GURPS 4e, as a generalisation of a variety of abilities in 3e.

Innate Attacks are levelled advantages, doing 1d damage per level, and by default are ranged attacks, although they can be limited to form melee attacks. Many other enhancements and limitations are applicable, allowing you to model almost any attack.

Creating this advantage at 4e clearly required tidying up GURPS’ damage types, since that’s what its cost is based on, from small piercing [3/L] to corrosion or fatigue, both [10/L]. You can also buy partial dice, or just a single point of damage. Diseases and poisons are modelled with fatigue and/or toxic attacks, and require modifiers, although you have several choices. The Damage Modifier enhancements are particularly applicable. Innate Attacks are also where Alternative Abilities started, as Alternative Attacks.

Using a ranged Innate Attack requires the Innate Attack skill, which is DX/Easy, and requires specialisation in a form (Beam, Breath, Gaze or Projectile). You don’t need to roll to target a Binding on yourself, and melee Innate Attacks use Brawling (or, presumably, another bare-handed striking skill if that’s higher and available in the circumstances).

While this advantage is universally used on creatures that have intrinsic attacks, few supplements add much to it … as far as I’ve researched. The subject is complicated by the huge number of references in GURPS supplements to Innate Attack skill, intended for use with spells rather than the advantage. Furries adds the Spray form for skunks, and Horror builds several genre-appropriate attacks from this advantage. Martial Arts has chi-powered Innate Attacks, and Power-Ups 1 rules out using them with Imbuements. Power-Ups 4 provides Storms based on this advantage, and allows you to add ST-based damage to it. Powers has too many examples for this advantage to summarise, while The Weird adds Cosmic, Intensified, +200% for corrosion, and Requires Grapple, -10%.

This is another advantage I’ve never used as a player. I’ve used afflictions, imbuements and Kai, but doing damage has always been muscle- or gun-powered. As GM, I held back Zeus’ thunderbolts in a fight on Mount Olympus, because they weren’t all that selective, and Athena’s plan worked.

What have you done with Innate Attacks?

[kirbwarrior]

I've always been on the side of things that Innate Attack is the proper pricing and Striking ST might be wrong.

As for the trait itself, all the time. Sometimes there's no better way to make someone's weapon, other times I want to emulate something that is mechanically an attack but not necessarily 'from you' (such as summoning a meteorite or your demon friend that isn't an Ally), sometimes the character in question doesn't have good or even passable ST, sometimes the character has too much ST and can't use anything available in the setting as a weapon and would get much better mileage out of something ST-Based, and sometimes you. And that's not even getting into the very bizarre builds that require a ton of modifiers to pull off.

Plus, I prefer Advantage-based magic (and powers in general) over the other systems, so IA is the go to trait for 'I do damage at the thing'.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Innate Attack

What have you done with Innate Attacks?

In the World of D'y'r't game the great god Ra sent a Divine Minion to be the bodyguard of his favorite priest. Said Minion took the form of an ostrich who shot laser beams out of his eyes and this of course was an Innate Attack.

[AlexanderHowl]

If you have used weapons at all, then you have used equipment-based Innate Attacks. When it comes to Innate Attacks, I believe you choose one combat skill as the attack skill (Brawling/Innate Attack are just the default skills), though which attack skill depends largely on the theme of the attack. For example, you would use Guns (Pistol) for a pistol that gives Innate Attack or Rapier for an Innate Attack that manifests as a rapier made of light.

[ericthered]

I love this advantage.



I haven't seen a ton of use on PC's, but I've used it on a lot of monsters. Characters with innate attacks I've seen in play include:

• The Death of small pox, who had a magic scythe for harvesting souls. 6d6 toxic or something like that.
• The Ward of the Vale, who had a really nasty sword for killing exotic foes
• A number of Monster Hunters Witches got a fireball or some other cheap repeatable spell on the side
• An explosive attack of a super with transmutation powers.

If we move into NPC's, I tend to see innate attack used a lot in the following places in my games:

• Dragon's breath
• Alternate Attacks for Telekinetic psis
• Poisonous bites

Somehow my players have never had a game featuring them, but I have a LOT of magic as powers innate attacks built and laying around in my files (and blog). Plus a few faux light sabers.



a lot of information for innate attack is actually in the modifiers section of advantages. A lot of them apply mostly to innate attacks, though they can be generalized in weird edge cases.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If you have used weapons at all, then you have used equipment-based Innate Attacks.

For some weird reason, about half of the damage type information for gurps is kept in innate attack. Because of this, most games end up looking at that section at one point or another.

[Overheat]

I love Innate Attack because it is the perfect example of GURPS's using the GM as a way to stop character builds that don't fit with the setting.

It is easy to build an overpowered Innate Attack that would crush whatever campaign the GM had for remarkably few points (especially at lower TL). The GM always has final say, of course, but here it is obvious (to me at least) that the advantage is priced assuming strict GM oversight. Innate Attacks are often central to a character concept, and having the price be reasonable is probably a good thing.


My main gripe with Innate Attack is that having an advantage and skill both named Innate Attack has caused many, many questions in the campaign I GM for.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Overheat

I love Innate Attack because it is the perfect example of GURPS's using the GM as a way to stop character builds that don't fit with the setting.

It is easy to build an overpowered Innate Attack that would crush whatever campaign the GM had for remarkably few points (especially at lower TL). The GM always has final say, of course, but here it is obvious (to me at least) that the advantage is priced assuming strict GM oversight. Innate Attacks are often central to a character concept, and having the price be reasonable is probably a good thing.

From what I've seen over the past decade, the attack powers (IA, Binding, Affliction) and a few others seem like traits intended for the GM to make based on what the player wants with some back-and-forth. I even have one GM friend who has the explicit rule "If you want to make your attack power, it will come with an Unusual Background after I approve it".

Originally Posted by Overheat

My main gripe with Innate Attack is that having an advantage and skill both named Innate Attack has caused many, many questions in the campaign I GM for.

"Power Attack" could probably work for the skill name. It's a list of skills for using powers instead of tools, after all.

[ericthered]

I've seen a few people advocate using innate attack with side effects as an alternative to using affliction.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've seen a few people advocate using innate attack with side effects as an alternative to using affliction.

Guilty. For hostile Afflictions, it's almost always markedly more cost-effective to buy an Innate Attack and toss an appropriate Side Effect on than it is to do the same with Affliction, and you get the side benefit of damaging the foe even if he/she passes the HT check. If the GM allows No Wounding to be compatible, it's also more cost-effective for beneficial Afflictions (and hostile ones when you favor capture over killing). The main benefit Affliction has is that, even if you don't have enough punch to get through the target's DR, Affliction can still come into play (albeit resisted at a sizable bonus). Personally, though, I prefer the idea that armor can outright stop the death ray or whatever instead of just giving you a better chance to resist.

Personally, I favor using "20% HP wounding" (or at least what wounding would have been, in the case of No Wounding) over "2 penetrating damage." Using % Wounding instead of absolute Penetrating Damage means hit location can have an effect, makes things scale with target toughness, and prevents munchkinism like using pi- (while making pi++ viable). Overall, with these modifications, I think the game effects of Innate Attack with Side Effect (with or without No Wounding) are more interesting than those of Affliction.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Personally, I favor using "20% HP wounding" (or at least what wounding would have been, in the case of No Wounding) over "2 penetrating damage." Using % Wounding instead of absolute Penetrating Damage means hit location can have an effect, makes things scale with target toughness, and prevents munchkinism like using pi- (while making pi++ viable). Overall, with these modifications, I think the game effects of Innate Attack with Side Effect (with or without No Wounding) are more interesting than those of Affliction.

It also has the nice side effect of making it harder to use on massive creatures. I always found it a little silly how effective Side Effect is against massive HP pools with little DR (such as, say, SM+6 giants with 100HP and DR3).