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Old 10-28-2020, 11:12 AM   #1
Sam Baughn
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and some other bits.
Default Help building an attack (blinding venom spray).

I'd like to build an attack to model squirting blinding venom at someone. As it happens, this isn't for a PC or Ally, so I could just arbitrarily make up rules, but if possible I'd like to figure out how to do it with advantages and modifiers. It's quite possible that at some point someone might want to play a character who can do this or (more likely) take an ally who can.

Ideally, I want the attack to work at about 2-3 yards, have a chance of causing loss of sight in one or both eyes (or, better yet, a variable number based on target anatomy), which would usually persist for a couple of days, but could possibly be permanent, with medical attention (washing the venom out of the eyes) giving you better chances of recovery. The target should be able to block or dodge, but not parry the attack. Resistance to poison should help. Goggles should provide complete protection and even an unsealed barrier in front of your eyes (glasses or a visor) should give some protection.

The simple way would seem to be just making it an affliction which causes blindness and pain. If you fail to defend, you get a HT roll, and if you fail that you are blind and in pain. That models the immediate effects of such venom fairly well. Unfortunately, I don't know of an easy way to make it usually only temporary, but sometimes permanent blinding. The only way to do that I can think of is having several afflictions, which would mean a lot of rolling, which I want to avoid (my reading of secondary effects is that they can only apply to the special enhancements for Affliction, not other enhancements like extended duration). Hitting one or both eyes could be done with secondary effects, although I'm not sure that I like the idea of HT determining how many eyes get affected, and the interaction with characters who only have one eye to start with seems problematic.

Another big issue is that as far as I can tell, an affliction doesn't allow any way for the attack to bypass armour anywhere except the eyes, while being totally stopped by anything on the eyes. Adding cone and blood agent gives the former, but not really the latter (since you need eye and airway protection to stop it). I guess I could add Accessibility (not against anyone with eye protection). Just blood agent on its own would work, if afflictions were allowed to target eyes (I guess Cosmic, rules exemption could cover that, although it seems like a high price to pay for a minor effect).

Damage would solve the sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent issue quite neatly. Crippled eyes work pretty much exactly how I want; if damage exceeds a threshold, you lose sight in that eye. Healing usually takes a few days, but you could be permanently blinded depending on your HT roll. It also allows things like regeneration to work as you would expect them to. Stun for having a body part crippled models the pain OK.

The problem is, how to actually get the damage into the eyes? The obvious way to model a venom spray would be toxic damage with blood agent and jet. But only impaling, piercing and tight-beam burning attacks can target an eye. A corrosion attack to the face can blind the eyes (and conveniently even has a rule for sometimes blinding one and sometimes both) but I don't want to have the venom melt the target's face off!

So, my options for using damage would seem to be:
  • Modify corrosion so it doesn't damage anything except the eyes.
  • Use an inappropriate damage type and modify it to remove any weird effects.
  • Use an inappropriate damage type, modify it to remove everything and use it to deliver a follow-up toxic attack (apparently toxic attacks can damage eyes, since there is a rule for that, they just can't target them).
  • Use Cosmic (Rules Exemption) to allow a toxic attack to target the eyes.

The first option requires reducing the wounding to the face while keeping the crippling of the eyes and somehow making face protection irrelevant while making eye protection effective. That is a bunch of different things which don't seem possible with existing modifiers.

The second and third options look more promising. A non-incendiary burn can represent tissue damage (it has been used canonically for ultra-fast freezing damage, I believe) and small piercing with no wounding could just about get away with being described as fast-moving liquid droplets, I suppose. The fourth option is almost certainly fine, I just object to paying the cost and using a cosmic modifier to do something so mundane.

I guess I need to add resistible to the damage, since resistance to poison should work on it.

So, if I can come up with a way for the attack to hit the eyes, it could work. Unfortunately, the obvious solution of just making a standard ranged attack doesn't seem to allow hitting both eyes at once. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any mechanic for hitting two eyes with one attack roll, even using rapid fire (which seems weird; surely a load of birdshot in someone's face could blind both eyes?) The only possible mechanic seems to be making two attacks, which requires either buying the ability twice, or using jet and either All-Out Attack (Double) or Rapid Strike. Since a spray really should use jet anyway, I think the latter is the better option.

Of course, that only works if you can actually target your attack. A spitting cobra does actually aim at the eyes (something of a feat when you've got a snake's eyesight and a snake's brain) but some animals that spray venom just seem to blast away randomly. Since bombardment and rolling for random hit location can never get the eyes, I guess they would have to use an affliction.

This seems like it is far too complicated for a conceptually simple attack. Is there a better way?
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Old 10-28-2020, 11:50 AM   #2
naloth
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: Help building an attack (blinding venom spray).

This seems very similar to this thread:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...es#post2346471
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