Short Question: Pyramid 3/65: Natural Weapons

[Yako]

Hello everyone, this is just soemthing that slightly confused me since it seemed odd not to state it:

Natural Weapons, while referring to GUPRS Power-Ups 4 Enhancements, does not say anything about enhancements on ST based damage (like armor divisior and such).
Power-Ups 4 gives us the "pay for the enhancement on your ST based crushing damage and on your strikers, claws, etc. too" model. Natural Weapons does not seem to refer to it unless I somehow managed to overlook it.
There are many sample write-ups using modifiers though which usual would work that way (armor divisor in particular), so has it only been left out because it was taken as a given that people would do it or do Natura Weapons actually dispense with it?

If the letter, I would be a bit confused because it seems very odd that Natural Weapons would not use it while Claws had to have it... ^^ ;



And as a little aside, is there really any reason left with Natural Weapons where ST based innate attacks would be better (offer more options or the ability to model things Natural Weapon can not)?

[Erling]

Originally Posted by Yako

Hello everyone, this is just soemthing that slightly confused me since it seemed odd not to state it:

Natural Weapons, while referring to GUPRS Power-Ups 4 Enhancements, does not say anything about enhancements on ST based damage (like armor divisior and such).
Power-Ups 4 gives us the "pay for the enhancement on your ST based crushing damage and on your strikers, claws, etc. too" model. Natural Weapons does not seem to refer to it unless I somehow managed to overlook it.
There are many sample write-ups using modifiers though which usual would work that way (armor divisor in particular), so has it only been left out because it was taken as a given that people would do it or do Natura Weapons actually dispense with it?

If the letter, I would be a bit confused because it seems very odd that Natural Weapons would not use it while Claws had to have it... ^^ ;

And as a little aside, is there really any reason left with Natural Weapons where ST based innate attacks would be better (offer more options or the ability to model things Natural Weapon can not)?

Natural Weapons is a tweak, and it provides alternative way. You don't enhance your ST-based damage if you bring this article into play. It refers to Power-Ups in order to highlight diversity between these two approaches, not continuity.

Article lists special enhancements, that's why general attack modifiers like Armor Divisor are included in listed examples of natural weapons.

[Yako]

Originally Posted by Erling

Natural Weapons is a tweak, and it provides alternative way. You don't enhance your ST-based damage if you bring this article into play. It refers to Power-Ups in order to highlight diversity between these two approaches, not continuity.

Article lists special enhancements, that's why general attack modifiers like Armor Divisor are included in listed examples of natural weapons.

Okay, that is what I thought was the intention, but frankly, I think strikers and the like should not use it then either... ^^ ;

I mean, it basically does make a big departure from the previous approach, it may be fine that way, but I think it is worth discussing the whole enhancing strength based attacks then in general...

[Wavefunction]

The thing here is that there is a kind of double-standard going on.

The argument for modified ST-based damage is that you're getting full value for whatever enhancement you're getting, it effects all your damage, so you should pay points based on the amount of damage you have. Makes sense.

However, Striker already breaks this rule, and to a lesser degree so do almost all the other 'natural weapon' type advantages. They change your damage type, which changes your wounding multiplier, which multiplies the injury you inflict, for a flat cost you get something that effects all the damage you do. Striker goes a step beyond this, it gives you +1 damage per die, so regardless of what you're base damage is, it's now gone up by roughly +30%, again for a flat cost.

So you can make an argument for or against modified ST-Based damage. If you're using Natural Weapons it adds a bit more weight to the against argument, since it gives a flat base cost regardless of the natural weapon. In the current system if you ignore modified ST-Based damage then you can have teeth that do cutting damage and ignore DR for 4 points (Sharp Teeth (Cosmic, Ignore DR, +300%)).

To address your side-note, I don't think there are any situations where ST-Based Innate Attacks would be better. Perhaps if you wanted to model a weird situation where only part of the damage is modified?

I personally really like Natural Weapons, I've used them for actual weapons bought as advantages in one of the games I'm currently running.