Corrosive damage on a striker attack

[Necrope]

Hi,
I'm wanting to built a melee attack that both deals impaling damage followed up by corrosive damage. I'm thinking about using a Striker Impaling being the carrier attack, but then unsure if could add the corrosive damage with building a corrosive Innate Attack with Follow Up?
It's just that Innate Attacks seems to be ranged attacks, so I'm unsure if that would be fitting to use as the Follow Up?
Or maybe if could change the type of damage the Striker does beyond types listed on p. 88 and then perhaps use Linked instead of Follow Up with the Impaling Striker?

[Stormcrow]

Innate Attacks are ranged by default, but they can have the Melee Attack limitation added to them to turn them into melee attacks.

In general, think of these advantages as the basic attack forms for advantages:

Innate Attack - cause damage to an opponent
Affliction - attack an opponent to cause something other than damage
Binding - freeze an opponent in place.

All other details are just that: details.

Striker is a special kind of attack: it lets you cause melee damage based on your Thrust, which in turn is based on your Strength, unlike Innate Attack (Melee Attack), which is based on the levels you put into it.

So if you want a melee impaling attack based on your ST with a corrosive follow-up, that would be

Striker (Impaling) [8]
plus
Corrosion Attack 1d/level (Follow-up, Striker, +0%) [10/level]

Roll DX or Brawling to attack with your Striker. If you hit, you do thrust imp damage, adding +1 per die of Thrust. You also do 1d/level of corrosion damage, and for every 5 points of this you do, you reduce the target's DR by 1.

You can modify this attack in lots of ways, making it stronger or weaker, and so on.

[Necrope]

Okay, thanks for the explanation.
It seems like I've been putting the correct things together then, and I just need to add the Melee limitation on the Corrosive attack.

If I wanted the corrosive attack to only reduce DR of the attacked enemy, could I add something like No Wounding to make it cheaper, but then not adding any additional damage to the impaling attack?

[whswhs]

Not quite. If the carrier is an Innate Attack, the value of Follow-Up is the sum of the values of a bunch of modifiers that do include Melee Attack. But your carrier is a Striker, which is a natural weapon like Claws or Teeth, and for natural weapons, Follow-Up is a +0% enhancement; that's instead of the modifier value that would be figured for an Innate Attack carrier. Just buy Corrosive Attack at base cost, ignoring any of the modifiers listed on p. B105.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Necrope

Okay, thanks for the explanation.
It seems like I've been putting the correct things together then, and I just need to add the Melee limitation on the Corrosive attack.

No, you don't need the Melee limitation because you have the Follow-Up limitation instead. You don't attack with the Corrosion Attack; you attack with the Striker, and a hit follows-up with the Corrosion Attack's damage.

If I wanted the corrosive attack to only reduce DR of the attacked enemy, could I add something like No Wounding to make it cheaper, but then not adding any additional damage to the impaling attack?

An attack whose only effect is to reduce the DR of the target would be an Affliction (attack an opponent to cause something other than damage). But I can't think of a good, general way to do this to both natural DR and armor DR. Natural DR regenerates, but armor doesn't. Natural DR can be affected by Affliction (Negated Advantage), which is only temporary anyway, but armor can't.

If you just wanted to reduce the damage done, then yes, you could add No Wounding to Striker to make the damage equal to Thrust +1/die without impaling. You could also add the Weak special limitation to Striker to remove the +1/die, leaving only Thrust damage, no wounding modifier.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If the carrier is an Innate Attack, the value of Follow-Up is the sum of the values of a bunch of modifiers that do include Melee Attack.

But your carrier is a Striker, which is a natural weapon like Claws or Teeth, and for natural weapons, Follow-Up is a +0% enhancement; that's instead of the modifier value that would be figured for an Innate Attack carrier

I kind of understand the +0% for claws because that usually means you have 4 ways to deliver your followup (2 hands 2 feet) but never quite understood this for striker (one way) or teeth (1 way unless you have extra mouth/head)

Impaling Attack 1d-1 (ST-based +30% Melee Attack -30%) [7] ends up being cheaper (and more damaging: +1d-1 outperforms +1/die at low ST levels) option for a Carrier than Impaling Striker [8] to begin with, plus then you get to apply melee -30% to your corrosive attack Followup too?

Strikers only seem to shine in terms of Character Point efficiency if you have very high Striking ST to give yourself high base dice to benefit from it's +1/die applying multiple times. I don't know how to put together a spreadsheet to figure out the point at which that happens though. Obviously at higher ST levels you also need the +100% version of ST-based to allow the bonus dmg from ST to exceed your innate attack's dice (though that also allows using Swing damage)

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Plane

Strikers only seem to shine in terms of Character Point efficiency

I don't think they were trying to outsmart the point-optimizers. Striker is simply a more specific version of Impaling Attack (Melee) that assumes the attack is growing out of your body, and so offers a number of special modifiers to reflect that.

Advantages overlap sometimes, and there may be more than one way to build something using them. A GM might disallow Innate Attacks but allow Strikers, or vice versa. There are many possibilities.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

No, you don't need the Melee limitation because you have the Follow-Up limitation instead. You don't attack with the Corrosion Attack; you attack with the Striker, and a hit follows-up with the Corrosion Attack's damage.

The price of Follow-Up is dependent on certain Enhancements/Limitations on the carrier, it isn't always +0%. Specifically, if the carrier has Melee -30%, and no other relevant modifiers, Follow-Up is actually worth -30%, IIRC. Striker ignores this, and just has you price Follow-Up at +0% as a natural weapon (presumably, Natural Weapons from Pyramid #3/65 would similarly price Follow-Up at +0%).

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If you just wanted to reduce the damage done, then yes, you could add No Wounding to Striker to make the damage equal to Thrust +1/die without impaling. You could also add the Weak special limitation to Striker to remove the +1/die, leaving only Thrust damage, no wounding modifier.

No Wounding on Striker would make it so the Striker didn't cause any Injury (aside from potentially Blunt Trauma and incidental damage from knocking the target into a wall via Knockback, but I don't think Impaling attacks do either of those). No Wounding on a Corrosion attack would certainly cause it to reduce the target's DR without causing other damage. Arguably, if the carrier penetrates the target's DR, the Follow-Up wouldn't affect the DR (on account of not ever encountering it), but I'd ignore that in this case. Note this may not be very efficient, of course - [15] per (on average) -1 to DR certainly isn't cheap.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I don't think they were trying to outsmart the point-optimizers. Striker is simply a more specific version of Impaling Attack (Melee) that assumes the attack is growing out of your body, and so offers a number of special modifiers to reflect that.

One thing that just came to mind for Striker's benefit would be that it doesn't occupy your hand like Innate Attack (Melee -??%) would, so there's that benefit of having an extra limb not interfering with what you're doing with that limb.

That could matter in tabulating cumulative Parry penalties too.

Unless of course there's some examples of melee IAs which can be used without hands, or that it can be used while holding something?

Horror 96-97 for Ngojama has Impaling Attack (Melee Attack) described as...

spikes and fanged mouths in the palms of their hands

so presumably if they were holding a gun/sword they wouldn't be able to use that Innate Attack with that extremity.

though it does seem to support "you can use either hand" (just not simultaneously, that needs Dual enhancement) over "you need to pick one hand" since it uses hands plural but doesn't define separate Impaling attacks for Left/Right

of course someone with One Arm is obviously limited that way. Not sure about One Hand (can you shoot fireballs from a stump?)

I would assume the same is true of other stuff like Leprous Touch (H12) or Paralyzing Touch (H12) unless you took Aura in which case it could be delivered through any body part.

Do we know any examples of Innate Attack (melee) defined as a kick / bite / etc ?

Maybe you don't need Fine Manipulators to deliver these attacks (you can still have a "palm" without fingers?) but it seems like it should interfere with their use if you do have them.

Maybe that applies to the default Ranged version of Innate Attack too? IE no shooting a flamethrower from your palm while holding a gun, you need to open your palm which drops the gun?

[Necrope]

Originally Posted by Plane

Impaling Attack 1d-1 (ST-based +30% Melee Attack -30%) [7] ends up being cheaper (and more damaging: +1d-1 outperforms +1/die at low ST levels) option for a Carrier than Impaling Striker [8] to begin with, plus then you get to apply melee -30% to your corrosive attack Followup too?

ST-based +30%? Do you mean I can change the amount of damage done with an Innate Attack to be based on ST instead of levels of Innate Attack? Haven't been able to find anything about that, at least not in Basic Set - Characters.