Vampiric Strike and High Health

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

A fair point, and I'm aware of other potential abuses, limiting any ability is subject to GM whim so capping the ratio at 1:3 (or 1:2) is fine - just as limiting HP gain from 1:3 ratio to being most useful at less than 40 HP is. Even so, RAW gives options, and those options should be considered if you're wishing to discuss things in full.

Another solution is to allow characters with HP 20+ or 30+ to buy down Leech efficiency back to 1/3.

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

I also feel leech (and its derivatives) are more 'HP transfer' rather than Regeneration "only whilst in combat", as its an easy enough build for the latter. I guess the fluff for the ability is quite flexible though.

That is indeed the default assumption, but we've seen weirder stuff. Anyway, Regeneration is generally a much better deal, given the price. Leech is basically useless as a method of drain-tanking in combat (IA + DR is just better for staying alive), and is inferior to a Regeneration with a few limitations out of combat (e.g. 1/second regeneration with Temporary Disadvantage: Sessile is better than Leech in almost every way, and costs just a bit more; add a few more limitations and you are golden).

[Lamech]

IMO leech is rather good to combo with special recharge ER. You aren't supposed to get regeneration for that. If you slap extra time on it, and FP only then its only 5 points and helps a lot with the ER.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Lamech

IMO leech is rather good to combo with special recharge ER. You aren't supposed to get regeneration for that. If you slap extra time on it, and FP only then its only 5 points and helps a lot with the ER.

Yeah, probably. But I meant in terms of HP gain. Or maybe even FP.

[Bruno]

Yeah, for HP based "drain tanking", slightly convoluted constructions based on attacking, Regeneration, and/or Trigger or an Energy reserve or DR with Absorption and Reflection are a more effective foundation.

Spendy, but frankly drain-tanking should be spendy - GURPS doesn't assume all non-player creatures "of your level" have 10 to 1000 times your HP total, so a drain high enough to negate incoming damage as reliably as DR is doing double-duty as a target-obliterating attack.


(Absorbtion+Reflection actually isn't a bad idea for passive "draining", even if it's counterintuitive)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Yeah, for HP based "drain tanking", slightly convoluted constructions based on attacking, Regeneration, and/or Trigger or an Energy reserve or DR with Absorption and Reflection are a more effective foundation.

Spendy, but frankly drain-tanking should be spendy - GURPS doesn't assume all non-player creatures "of your level" have 10 to 1000 times your HP total, so a drain high enough to negate incoming damage as reliably as DR is doing double-duty as a target-obliterating attack.


(Absorbtion+Reflection actually isn't a bad idea for passive "draining", even if it's counterintuitive)

The problem is, Leech in such builds is not double-duty. It's half-duty. It costs (very roughly) twice as much as equivalent-effect DR+IA, and unlike DR/IA, requires more special circumstances to be useful at all.

And yes, properly managed Absorption is very, very good.

Vampiric Strike at least can be very useful for high-ST characters.

[Bruno]

I'm not talking about Leech-based drain-tanking, I'm just noting that Regeneration (10/s) with a Trigger and a short Duration still isn't going to be cheap, and it shouldn't be either. Neither is interesting amounts of DR Absorbtion/Reflection, really. Adding on an innate attack increases the cost and overall it's not cheap.

Ignore Leech, I'm not talking about it in this context :)

Vampiric Strike seems completely acceptable in price, as long as you're not buying Imbuements just to get it. If you're making an Imbuements based character (focused enough that you've got, say, 4+ levels of relevant Talent, as a good benchmark), it's a rather reasonably priced upgrade you can tack on.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm not talking about Leech-based drain-tanking, I'm just noting that Regeneration (10/s) with a Trigger and a short Duration still isn't going to be cheap, and it shouldn't be either. Neither is interesting amounts of DR Absorbtion/Reflection, really. Adding on an innate attack increases the cost and overall it's not cheap.

Between Maximum Duration and a big Temporary Disadvantage like Sessile, you can get to 30 points, right? Not cheap, but awesome.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Ignore Leech, I'm not talking about it in this context :)

Vampiric Strike seems completely acceptable in price, as long as you're not buying Imbuements just to get it. If you're making an Imbuements based character (focused enough that you've got, say, 4+ levels of relevant Talent, as a good benchmark), it's a rather reasonably priced upgrade you can tack on.

Oh, Vampiric Strike is quite good for an Imbuement character, indeed.

[Kalzazz]

Whatever ended up doing (if anything . . . I'm now feeling nothing is best) would not want to remove the incentives to try and eat the penalties for superior vampiric strike that does better than 1/3

[starslayer]

We seem to have strayed into leech territory here; which is kinda missing the point on vampiric strike. Leech is of note because you have to pay for every point of damage that it does; if the healing did not scale then larger stronger individuals would never benefit from it

The reason why is that Vampiric strike is a damage modifier on regular attacks.

That means if you have high HP (through having high ST) you are ALREADY healing much more then a person of more normal strength due to the increased damage you are dealing. If you allow damage scaling for high ST AND you allow healing scaling- then you are double dipping your reward for having high ST/HP.

Lets assume that we have an ogre PC with enough strength and a big enough weapon to do 4d on a swing, and has 30 hit points and a regular individual who does 1d on a swing and has 10 hit points

If they are both using vampiric strike the regular person will deal 4 point of damage on average, and heal 1 point.

The ogre will do 16 points of damage on average and heal 5.3 hit points.

The ogre is already healing 5.3 times as much health as the regular person, they are already being rewarded for there high strength.

If you then triple that healing amount due to the fact that the ogre has 30 hit points, then the ogre will heal 16 points of damage every successful strike; a full 16 times more then the 1d swing individual- that seems radically out of scope (and/or means that picking up 'one skill' imbuements just for vampiric strike should be something that every large strong PC does- because it will be the cheapest way to recover health in a hurry).

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Whatever ended up doing (if anything . . . I'm now feeling nothing is best) would not want to remove the incentives to try and eat the penalties for superior vampiric strike that does better than 1/3

Just remember that HPs are not everything. Okay, yes, they keep you alive but they're just a measure of if you are alive - they are not a measure of if you're fit for combat!

If you find the weaponified vampiric meatsack too much of a burden due to them never coming close to death and fearing no foe due to their ability to simply heal back any damage taken, there are a few simple things that can keep them from doing too well.

1) If you cant injure it, you cant heal. This is the most important, injury (and preferably lots of it) is required to get decent healing. High DR and various types of injury tolerance are great at just reducing injury and therefore limiting healing. DR specific to their favoured weapon can help make it less of a pain for the rest of the group (skeletons vs impaling weapons etc).

2) If you cant hit it, you cant cause injury. Easy enough, if they're mostly a melee fighter then throw flying or ranged foes at them to minimise their ability to close and hit. If they're quite an all rounder then insubstantial helps, as does darkness to hide in (or just soak high skill with hit penalties), small size and good dodge also help with just simply not being hit.

3) If you cant attack, you cant hit it. Not to be forgotten, there are many ways to prevent anything from attacking. Crippling limbs is the easiest (though not easy with meatsacks) but draining FP tends to be away around those extra HP (although not always viable depending on the type of leecher you have). Otherwise you have the old faithful stunning attacks or just plain disarming them (with a sticky coating over a monsters skin if needs be, you cant avoid being disarmed if you get your weapon glued whenever you attack)!

4) If you're doing something else, you're not attacking. This one needs to be remembered if you want to throw a lot of hurdles in the way of the character. Too many uses of the situations outlined above might get a bit boring/repetitive/obvious, and they wont always be very good for the group in general and so doesn't help rebalance the specific character. In these cases its always good to remember that combat isn't everything. No not even in DF.

There are many situations where a single character might want to stop fighting and do something else to help, ensuring that these situations fall to mr weaponified vampiric meatsack is obviously down the specifics of the character. Most WVMs have high HP though, so probably have high ST, as such make them push things over, lift up trapdoors, hold up portcullis or otherwise do the things the other weaker characters cant. (In my group the rogue-ish character often ends up on the end of a long bit of rope that the muscle is on the other end of, always ends up being entertaining.)

Ultimately though just making sure there's always other things that might help the fight other than actually fighting will help keep them from always wading in and healing up due to culling swarms of lesser creatures (though do remember to send the occasional swarm at them, it is there shtick after all).