[Powers] Leech (Steal Other Score)... Unfair?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

It's a fun thing to play around with, but combining Side Effects with No Wounding and keeping track of "phantom damage" to track it's effects isn't an approach taken in any of the RAW is it?

Not really, but it could have been. Apparently in the playtest there was proposal to have a single attack ability that would combine Affliction, Innate Attack, and Binding in one package. It's certainly doable.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

It's a fun thing to play around with, but combining Side Effects with No Wounding and keeping track of "phantom damage" to track it's effects isn't an approach taken in any of the RAW is it?

The thing is, with No Wounding, you do have "phantom damage". That's how you can have a crushing attack with double-knockback, no wounding, and no blunt trauma, or a pi- attack with no wounding + armor divisor and a follow-up attack for a poisoned dart that's incredibly fine and punches through unexpected amounts of armor, is too fine to do significant damage, but still carries a poisoned payload.

That's the whole point of no-wounding.

I can't recall an official example in Powers of the build, but there's a lot of enhancement combinations that haven't been officially published that are still valid.

[vierasmarius]

Note that "phantom damage" only needs to be tracked for an attack with a Symptom (ie, an effect that kicks in at a certain relative injury level). If you're using Side Effect, "damage" only matters per attack, determing the HT penalty to resist the effect and thus its duration. Multiple small hits could still overwhelm a moderate-HT individual, but for hardier targets a single high-"damage" attack can more efficiently beat their HT. Also, Side Effect and Symptom have slightly different valid afflictions; Side Effect can cause Stun, Attribute Penalty, Disadvantage or Incapacitation, while Symptoms can include Advantage, Attribute Penalty, Disadvantage, Irritant and Negated Advantage. (That's right - with Symptom, you can shoot someone with a regeneration gun!)

[the_matrix_walker]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The thing is, with No Wounding, you do have "phantom damage". That's how you can have a crushing attack with double-knockback, no wounding, and no blunt trauma, or a pi- attack with no wounding + armor divisor and a follow-up attack for a poisoned dart that's incredibly fine and punches through unexpected amounts of armor, is too fine to do significant damage, but still carries a poisoned payload.

That's the whole point of no-wounding.

I can't recall an official example in Powers of the build, but there's a lot of enhancement combinations that haven't been officially published that are still valid.

Actually, No Wounding attacks still have Basic Damage, which knockback, blunt trauma and Wounding (HP Loss) are based on.

So I shouldn't have said "Phantom Damage", I should have said "Phantom Wounding" Since no wounding attacks still have damage, it just doesn't translate into Wounds (HP or Fatigue loss) which is the important part!

And since Symptoms involve effects brought about by cumulative wounds, and "no Wounding" precludes there being wounds. With no HP Loss, there can be no cumulative HP loss of any fraction of HP. I can't imagine this being acceptable to the RAW on it's own.

I would require some Cosmic to get it to keep track of "Phantom Wounds" for this kind of ability, or maybe a new 'Phantom Wounding' limitation to replace/suppliment "no wounding" for this sort of thing. But as is, I don't think this is valid.

[vierasmarius]

Requiring a +50% enhancement to allow an attack to take a -50% limitation feels wrong. I know we've had this debate before, about whether removing a damaging component of an attack (thus making it less-lethal) is a net enhancement or limitation. I come down solidly on the side of limitation.

[the_matrix_walker]

I was thinking "Phantom Wounding" might be -25% actually.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

I was thinking "Phantom Wounding" might be -25% actually.

Yeah, I suppose that would be fair. It would certainly cut down a bit on the useage of No Wounding + Symptom as a cheap Affliction substitute. Would you require the same "Phantom Wounding" to replace No Wounding for Side Effects?

[JCurwen3]

Honestly, I think this is one of the things we need an official ruling about.

On the one hand, it seems totally reasonable to me to use Symptoms with No Wounding, esp for those GMs willing to track phantom injury from a specific attack... this will include the sorts of GMs that track injury by damage type and hit location and thus allow limited Regen of these types, not those unwilling to do such accounting.

On the other hand, the system seems to have forbidden absolute Affliction-like effects (anything that doesn't chip away at FP and HP). I mean, except for the accursed Leech.

Back to the much-maligned (by me, IMO appropriately) Leech issue, I see a strong general consensus that if an attack had some kind of defense (like Leech) then its effects could be applied without resistance, perhaps with an enhancement. This seems totally reasonable to me, but again, always nice to have a ruling.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Honestly, I think this is one of the things we need an official ruling about.

On the one hand, it seems totally reasonable to me to use Symptoms with No Wounding, esp for those GMs willing to track phantom injury from a specific attack... this will include the sorts of GMs that track injury by damage type and hit location and thus allow limited Regen of these types, not those unwilling to do such accounting.

The Phantom wounding thing might be a good way to simulate the mark the stealth cat captain uses her sword. This from the Bleech Animae. It leaves a mark and if you hit the same location it leaves another mark and at a certain point it has full effect.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Refplace

The Phantom wounding thing might be a good way to simulate the mark the stealth cat captain uses her sword. This from the Bleech Animae. It leaves a mark and if you hit the same location it leaves another mark and at a certain point it has full effect.

You mean, the effects of the damage aren't felt at all, but then at a certain point it kills you? Hmm... that sounds like an attack that causes no Shock, Stun or Unconsciousness, but still triggers Death Checks as normal. That's a bit different from the Phantom Wounding we've been discussing, but might be worth about the same amount.