Afflictions with Follow-Up and Multiple Carriers

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

That's why you Link them to an Advantage that can be used actively. For example, it's like your Striker tail also has Spines on it.

... except Link doesn't give you any permission to rewrite or change the underlying ability. It only allows you to activate two abilities that would normally be activated separately at the same time as one action.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by naloth

... except Link doesn't give you any permission to rewrite or change the underlying ability.

I'm not purporting to rewrite anything.

It only allows you to activate two abilities that would normally be activated separately at the same time as one action.

What rule can you cite in support of that stance?

[Anthony]

The problem with linking spines and striker is that it doesn't do anything useful. The normal meaning for linking lasting advantages it that you can turn both of them on as a single action (so... you grow claws and spines at the same time), which is often resolved by making the second power conditional (only when the first power is active) instead. You might interpret it in other ways, but linking does not change the conditions under which a power can be used, and there is no intersection between the conditions under which a striker can be used and the conditions under which spines can be used.

[Anaraxes]

If you want to make a double attack power via Link (as opposed to just buying one attack with twice the damage), you can do that.

One of them won't be Spines, though. It's like linking a Striker to your DR, and saying that the DR value adds to the damage of the Striker when it hits. Just doesn't make sense. Not that you couldn't build an attack that gets bonus damage under certain circumstances; you just wouldn't use a defense to do so. Just buy that second attack so that it's scaled to match your defense.

[Donny Brook]

Spines are not entirely passive like DR; you roll against DX-4 to hit everyone within Reach C. No rule says they can't be Linked with a Striker. I have described an example of what such a Linked set might be. It seems like some folks are getting hidebound by their previous usage of Link rather than thinking about how to give effect to something they hadn't thought of before.

Edit: on further reflection I could see the idea that Linking Spines and Striker is redundant, that is, that if you have Spines and a Striker the Spines benefit automatically comes into effect when the Striker is close enough to someone, just as a multi-hex creature's Spines affect all the hexes it covers.