Some questions on silly no-wounding innate attack builds

[Calvin]

For reasons known not even to myself, I'm building a no-wounding melee innate attack to be used as a spell by my sorcerer. The fact that sorcery is involved isn't really relevant, but I thought I'd give some background. The innate attack.

The basic build is a crushing attack with double knockback, no wounding, and an armour divisor of (0.1). So really an armour multiplier of 10x. It can also be blocked or parried, and between all that and the sorcery limitation, I find myself with a spare +60% of enhancements I could apply since it's currently sitting at -140%. I also have 18 levels of this nonsense because I'm a sorcerer and sorcerers do what they want. In searching out something to spend this +60% on, the following questions have occurred to me:

1. Per Basic, double blunt trauma is not available for crushing. Really what it does is list almost everything except for crushing, but either way, crushing is excluded as an option. However, the imbuments book still allows you to get double blunt trauma on crushing attacks through the use of Traumatic Blow. So should double blunt trauma still be allowed for crushing attacks? I feel like the answer is probably yes, but likely requires the use of Cosmic to allow the normally restricted option.

2. PU4 has something called Destructive Parry, which for those who need a refresher simply means that if you parry with it or are parried, it does it's damage to your foe's weapon. This raises interesting questions for an attack specifically designed to do knockback, and maybe a little blunt trauma. There are two categories for this, either the foe has a weapon, or the foe is unarmed.

Looking at the case where the foe has a weapon, blunt trauma wouldn't apply (barring some really odd edge cases), but what about knockback? It seems sensible that something would happen since their weapon just had 18d of kinetic energy dumped into it. Knockback does apply to objects, that much is clear, but I haven't seen anything on knockback being applied to objects being held by a character. Presumably, they'd get some sort of ST roll to hold on to the item I'm trying to launch into orbit, but if they do succeed then is the knockback applied to them instead? A successful ST roll doesn't make the energy disappear, and it makes logical sense that they'd get dragged along with it if they managed to hold on.

The second category is where they defend with a limb, in which case I think it's fairly clear. Like a force sword, they're just going to end up taking the damage rolled as normal, knockback and blunt trauma included.

3. Is there a way to buff the parry bonus of a melee innate attack directly, or are such parry modifiers attached to the skill rather than the weapon? Staves get +2, knives -1, and if I want the bonus I need to construct the innate attack to use the relevant skill? This understanding was what I thought the answer was at first, however LTC2 allows you to add a hilt to a weapon for a +1 to parry, which is attached to the weapon rather than the skill, so it seems like it could go either way.

4. The 'Symptoms' enhancement on Basic 109 specifies:

Symptoms are effects that occur if the cumulative damage (HP or FP loss) inflicted by the enhanced Innate Attack exceeds a fraction of the victim’s basic HP or FP.

This is damage, not wounding. Now I am multiplying the target's armour with the AD (0.1) which makes it likely that no damage will get through. Ignoring that for a moment, this seems to suggest that a no wounding attack could indeed apply Symptoms to a person if the damage that got past armour was sufficient to exceed the fraction set for Symptoms, even if in the end no wounding occurred. But then there's that section in brackets which throws a wrench in things. They say damage, but that section seems to suggest that they really meant wounding. Of course, I'm running right over the suggestion to limit symptoms to attacks that do 1d or less, but that's a whole different matter. It also raises questions about wound modifiers, are impaling attacks four times as effective as small piercing attacks at activating symptoms? Or when totalling up the cumulative damage should you count only the damage and disregard the wound modifier. Though then you end up with the odd situation where a Symptom that says it kicks in at 1/2 HP actually starts applying at 1/4HP for pi- and full HP for imp attacks.

And if any of you have suggestions for that +60% worth of enhancement space that doesn't raise odd edge cases then I'm glad to hear them.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Calvin

And if any of you have suggestions for that +60% worth of enhancement space that doesn't raise odd edge cases then I'm glad to hear them.

No Signature (+20%), plus Low Magical Signature (+25%, re-worked from Low Psionic Signature in Psionic Powers). Buy a point of Brawling, and establish a reputation as a martial artist.

[Plane]

"No Wounding" always seemed strange since you could still cause wounds via Blunt Trauma, but I guess calling the limitation "Penetration Damage Has No Wounding Effect" would be too much of a mouthful.

I was never sure entirely how that worked... like if someone had Flexible DR 5 then rolling 5 damage would cause 1 injury from blunt trauma, but rolling 6 damage would cause 0 injury because you penetrated?

It'd seem simpler if you always applied blunt trauma even when you penetrated DR but I don't think that's how it works.

Guess it depends on how you read B379...

may inflict “blunt trauma” if it fails to penetrate

If it was that alone, I might take an approach like "the 6th point penetrated so it doesn't cause blunt trauma, but points 1-5 did not, so it does"

But then there is this 2 paragraphs later which clearly outlaws that interpretation:

If even one point of damage penetrates your flexible DR, however, you do not suffer blunt trauma.

That leads to weirdness like 5/6 being the same (in usual situations) or 6 being worse than 5 (in "No Wounding" attacks) which is why always applying BT based on DR/5 even when it does penetrate is an appealing house-rule.

Originally Posted by Calvin

1. Per Basic, double blunt trauma is not available for crushing. Really what it does is list almost everything except for crushing, but either way, crushing is excluded as an option.

However, the imbuments book still allows you to get double blunt trauma on crushing attacks through the use of Traumatic Blow.

So should double blunt trauma still be allowed for crushing attacks? I feel like the answer is probably yes, but likely requires the use of Cosmic to allow the normally restricted option.

Huh... "1 HP of blunt trauma per 2 points of basic damage resisted by flexible" .. never noticed that before!

I like the idea of allowing it! Even without cosmic... if it were more expensive (needing cosmic) then we would expect the imbuement to be more difficult for crushing weapons, but it isn't.

Originally Posted by Calvin

2. PU4 has something called Destructive Parry, which for those who need a refresher simply means that if you parry with it or are parried, it does it's damage to your foe's weapon. This raises interesting questions for an attack specifically designed to do knockback, and maybe a little blunt trauma. There are two categories for this, either the foe has a weapon, or the foe is unarmed.

Weapons have HP so you could apply standard knockback rules when hitting them, but that's probably intended for applying knockback to things standing alone in an environment.

The issue of how knockback applies against things which are grappled by other things (like a person grappling their weapon, or grappled by an ally who doesn't want them to get shoved off the edge of a cliff) is a bit of a muddier one.

Originally Posted by Calvin

I haven't seen anything on knockback being applied to objects being held by a character. Presumably, they'd get some sort of ST roll to hold on to the item I'm trying to launch into orbit, but if they do succeed then is the knockback applied to them instead? A successful ST roll doesn't make the energy disappear, and it makes logical sense that they'd get dragged along with it if they managed to hold on.

If the basic damage was enough to knock back their combined HP/ST then it seems realistic to have them both knocked back, agreed, assuming they maintain their grip on the weapon.

I've always thought the incrementalism of this would be best solved by Cole's Technical Grappling system which basically has a "not all grips on a weapon are equal" take where you have "Grip CP" where Control Points measure the secureness of control over your weapon just like it would measure the secureness of control over a foe.

Originally Posted by Calvin

The second category is where they defend with a limb, in which case I think it's fairly clear. Like a force sword, they're just going to end up taking the damage rolled as normal, knockback and blunt trauma included.

Knockback against places other than the assumed-default of torso/chest is another issue.

The only time I've seen it addressed is with "Push Kick" (MA78) where if you target the leg/skull/face/neck there is a penalty to the DX roll to avoid falling.

It even says "no other locations are valid" so you can't actually do a push-kick against a foot (unless that's considered sub-location of leg?) or arm/hand. Could probably do it against sub-locations of torso like abdomen/groin or sub-locations of face like nose/jaw/ear but I don't know that it would cause any difference so you'd basically be taking penalties for nothing, unless you had to do it to avoid contact with some kind of spiky locations.

Originally Posted by Calvin

3. Is there a way to buff the parry bonus of a melee innate attack directly, or are such parry modifiers attached to the skill rather than the weapon? Staves get +2, knives -1, and if I want the bonus I need to construct the innate attack to use the relevant skill? This understanding was what I thought the answer was at first, however LTC2 allows you to add a hilt to a weapon for a +1 to parry, which is attached to the weapon rather than the skill, so it seems like it could go either way.

B51 "Enhanced Parry" at 5/level (one melee weapon skill) seems like the closest match.

B112 doesn't seem to clarify what skill you would use to attack with a Melee-limited Innate Attack, so I'm not sure if it would still be Innate Attack or if it would be Brawling like a Striker? I'm sure that must've been clarified elsewhere...

Originally Posted by Calvin

4. The 'Symptoms' enhancement on Basic 109 specifies:

This is damage, not wounding.

I figure that's a semantic flub, the parenthesized "loss" seems to make it clear it has to wound... perhaps the word 'wound' was avoided because it might also apply to HP lost to blunt trauma?

Originally Posted by Calvin

this seems to suggest that a no wounding attack could indeed apply Symptoms to a person if the damage that got past armour was sufficient to exceed the fraction set for Symptoms, even if in the end no wounding occurred.

The terminal condition of symptoms is "abate only when the damage that caused them is healed", so even using this approach, since no injury actually resulted, wouldn't they count as already having been healed?

Originally Posted by Calvin

But then there's that section in brackets which throws a wrench in things. They say damage, but that section seems to suggest that they really meant wounding.

Yeah, with blunt trauma being the blurry middle ground since it's not exactly wounding (no wounding modifier for penetrating damage) but it is HP loss from the attack.

I think I remember some online proposals of treating penetrating no-wounding damage (which seems like it would at least apply to Side Effect, if not Symptoms) as being "imaginary damage" which heals independently and causes no usual effects of HP loss aside from determining how long Symptoms last for...

Maybe that could be defined as a modified version of "No Wounding"? Like "Pseudo-Wounding"? If the default rule is that No Wounding prevents Symptoms (except MAYBE with blunt trauma HP loss? not sure) then Pseudo-Wounding should be worth a lesser discount than -50% since it would be more useful, though you would only take it for the purpose of defining Symptoms.

One way to fudge this might be instead of taking No Wounding, to have "Extra HP" be a Symptom of inflicting damage with this?

If you need to reduce a 10 HP guy below half HP (5) then 6 damage would work, but if you gave +1 HP as a result, instead of being 4/10 (40%) I think they'd be at 5/11 (~45%) so they'd still be below the threshold needed to keep the Symptoms in effect.

That wouldn't work if you hit a 3 HP creature for 2 damage though, because buffing them from 1/3 HP to 2/3 HP would bring them above the threshold needed to keep it operating.

That's assuming I'm right about Affliction: HP giving you 1/1 HP instead of 0/1 HP. If it only increased your max but not your current, it wouldn't do that...

A third option might also be if you kept a static % scaling. So if you were at 5/10 HP and got +10HP you'd be at 10/20 HP instead of 15/20 or 5/20. Was which of the 3 approaches clarified for affliction of HP or FP?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Calvin

Per Basic, double blunt trauma is not available for crushing. Really what it does is list almost everything except for crushing, but either way, crushing is excluded as an option. However, the imbuments book still allows you to get double blunt trauma on crushing attacks through the use of Traumatic Blow. So should double blunt trauma still be allowed for crushing attacks? I feel like the answer is probably yes, but likely requires the use of Cosmic to allow the normally restricted option.

Seems fair, and is probably alright even at the default +20%.

Originally Posted by Calvin

PU4 has something called Destructive Parry, which for those who need a refresher simply means that if you parry with it or are parried, it does it's damage to your foe's weapon. This raises interesting questions for an attack specifically designed to do knockback, and maybe a little blunt trauma.

I'd be strongly tempted to have such an attack give you a free Beat or Disarm attempt each time you Parry or are Parried by an enemy.

Originally Posted by Calvin

Is there a way to buff the parry bonus of a melee innate attack directly, or are such parry modifiers attached to the skill rather than the weapon?

"Natural Weapons" (Pyramid #3/65) is a bit different from Innate Attack, using something roughly more akin to strikers, but has a Good Defense trait that's worth +30% for +1 to Parry, +60% for +2 to Parry. That would be problematic to give to an Innate Attack, as the absolute price of the Parry bonus probably shouldn't scale with the attack's damage. Considering at 18 levels of a Crushing Innate Attack you're looking at [27] for a +1 to Parry, you'd be better off just buying Enhanced Parry (All) for [10]/level (unless you absolutely cannot find anything else to spend that remaining +60% on).

Originally Posted by Calvin

Symptoms

I feel Symptoms should be unusable combined with No Wounding, although there could be cause to let it work with inflicted blunt trauma. Some sort of "Virtual Injury" modifier might be appropriate, having the character take normal Injury but the only effect it has is for checking duration of things like Symptoms.

Originally Posted by Calvin

And if any of you have suggestions for that +60% worth of enhancement space that doesn't raise odd edge cases then I'm glad to hear them.

Side Effects (B109) can be very useful. With a budget of only +60%, Side Effect (Stunning) +50% is probably your best bet. At 18d, against an unarmored target you're looking at around an HT-30 or so roll to resist, although any armor will improve things markedly with your poor armor divisor (every +1 DR is functionally +5 to resist, and against DR 6 and above you have a good chance of not risking any Side Effect).

As for other options...

Affects Insubstantial: Potentially useful if you anticipate running into insubstantial foes. +20%

Aura: A bit outside your budget (+80% rather than +60%), but makes it so any foe who comes into contact with you goes flying.

Delay (Omae wa mou tonde iru): Considering your ability lets you move foes around the battlefield rather readily, allowing you to set a delay (for +10%) or even have a triggered delay (for +50%) so it goes into effect when you snap your fingers (for example) can wreck merry hell on the foe's ability to react. Multiple strikes on one foe that all go off at once should combine additively to determine knockback - pummel someone, state the above line (which translates to something along the lines of "You're already flying," unless I've screwed something up), and snap your fingers to watch them launch into orbit.

Selectivity: Being able to turn "off" some of your Enhancements can be useful. You may even want to consider taking a few additional Limitations and negating them the equal-value Enhancements (for example, No Blunt Trauma -20% and Causes Blunt Trauma +20%); this doesn't modify the trait's cost, but combined with Selectivity allows you to turn unwanted aspects of your ability off (the above will help you avoid splattering foes in flexible armor). +10%.

[Balor Patch]

Are No Wounding and Armor Piercing(0.1) penetrating damage actually compatible? The one stops all penetrating damage and the other multiplies DR by 10 against the remaining non-existent damage.

The AP(0.1) may actually be an advantage as it allows more blunt trauma.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Are No Wounding and Armor Piercing(0.1) penetrating damage actually compatible? The one stops all penetrating damage and the other multiplies DR by 10 against the remaining non-existent damage.

The AP(0.1) may actually be an advantage as it allows more blunt trauma.

There's nothing explicitly disallowing them. They should at least stack somewhat, as an attack that has a good deal of difficulty getting through armor (AD 0.1) is more useful than one that has a good deal of difficulty getting through armor and fails to cause any wounding if it does so. Perhaps in that case No Wounding shouldn't have as high of a Limitation value as default, but I'm not certain what would be an appropriate value (and GURPS design usually doesn't modify the worth of modifiers based on other modifiers).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Are No Wounding and Armor Piercing(0.1) penetrating damage actually compatible?
The one stops all penetrating damage and the other multiplies DR by 10 against the remaining non-existent damage.

No Wounding prevents penetrating damage from causing injury, but it can still be an excellent Carrier for a 2nd attack enhanced with Followup.

A second advantage that No Wounding -50% has over Armor Divisor 0.5 -30% would be it's fantastic ability for causing penalty to the HT roll for side effect based on the damage which penetrates, which doesn't need to actually cause HP loss like Side Effect does.

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

The AP(0.1) may actually be an advantage as it allows more blunt trauma.

Yeah that's why I think it's simpler to just always apply BT to whatever damage is stopped by DR, even when damage beyond that does surpass the DR.

Otherwise you're right, if you have NW anyway it makes complete sense to take the best -70% discount to maximize the chance of Blunt Trauma injury, assuming you want to injury people in flexible armor. If you don't, then you should take it anyway and ALSO take NBT limitation.

[Culture20]

I don't allow No Wounding to do Blunt Trauma. The best you can do damage-wise with No Wounding is with follow-ups or knock-back damage from the target being slammed into another surface.
Rationale: A soft but firm push or a microscopic needle doesn't suddenly cause damage because someone has DR.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Culture20

I don't allow No Wounding to do Blunt Trauma.

That would be my first reaction. The concept / fluff for No Wounding on an IA would usually be something that could better be worded as "Knockback Only", just to move targets around. No doubt someone can think of some idea where No Wounding really means "Blunt Trauma Only", and it somehow only affects targets with DR. Might even talk me into it with a good enough reason. But "I liked the way the math worked out with this combination of modifiers and found this neat loophole" isn't a valid ability concept to me. Start with the concepts, build to match that concept.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Culture20

I don't allow No Wounding to do Blunt Trauma

I hope you still give the the discount for NBT, because the -50% is written clearly stating BT still happens unless you do.

Originally Posted by Culture20

Rationale: A soft but firm push or a microscopic needle doesn't suddenly cause damage because someone has DR.

Microscopic needles would be Small Piercing... B379 mentions "Piercing" works like Cutting/Impaling (1 per 10 stopped by DR) but does anyone know if this is ever changed for the variants (B62) of Piercing like small/(default)/large/very large?

I can't think of why a microscopic needle would ever do more than 9 damage anyway. If you wanted it to be super-sharp wouldn't giving it Armor Divisor enhancements make more sense than increasing the damage?

As for a "soft but firm push", allowing NW alone creates a middle tier between NW+NBT (no damage) and full damage. No problem with having a middle tier for some kinds of somewhat-potentially-damaging impacts.