Special Damage Less Lethal
Frank Tarcikowski:
Okay, so in my group I've got four players with demons of power 6-9 and each has special damage (lethal). There's also lots of armor and protection around. If I want to give them real opponents (which I want to), they will also have these powers. Thing is: Special damage lethal does X + power lasting damage. And armor and protection only reduce X, right? But as long as X is at least 1, with a power of 9, that's 10 lasting damage which means exitus. It's kinda too binary for my taste.
So I've been thinking about just switching the lines in the chart: 2X lasting and X + power to the next action. Watcha think about this?
- Frank
angelfromanotherpin:
Howdy Frank,
First, Armor does not reduce only the margin of success as you imply, but affects the entirety of the incoming penalties after damage has been calculated, to a minimum of what the attack would have done if it were Fists: 1 lasting and (margin-of-success) temporary.
Second, remember that Demons can choose not to use their full Power for any ability. So if the demon wants to toy with an enemy, or watch their bound Sorcerer sweat, they can turn down the gain as much or little as they want.
Third, I think it's a mistake to look at Sorcerer like it was Champions, with everyone having to have roughly equal damage classes and defenses to compete. It's also a mistake to say about any NPC: 'I want this guy to be real hard to take down.' That's just going to lead to frustration, because the rules don't support it.
In my experience, the way to put the pressure on players with access to Special Damage: Lethal, and Armor isn't through throwing bigger numbers at them, but through the Demon relationship. If they keep using those abilities, they'll keep having to feed the Demon's Need, and they'll become dependent, and then the Demon starts toying with them, withholding help at crucial junctures, and so on and so on.
Remember that you don't get to pick what the conflicts are or who they're with. In Sorcerer, you have to be ready for when the players decide that the necromancer trying to conquer the world has a sweet gig and try to sign up as lieutenants.
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hey Jules, yes, I use the demon relationship and all that, I just also want some nasty combat (and my players want it, too). Please trust my judgement on that one. Let’s focus on the mechanical issue.
I don’t have the book here right now, so I can’t look up what it says about armor. This is how I thought it works:
Let’s say my demon attacks yours and yours attacks back. They both have stamina 8. We roll, you are faster. I abort to defend, but still don’t beat your attack. Let’s say we use d10s and you’ve got a 10 and a 9, and I’ve only got an 8. You’ve got special damage (lethal). But my demon’s got armor, so I roll his power of 9 in addition. I get two 10s and a 9. So overall, I beat you and there is no damage done: My demon’s armor has protected it from the blow.
Here is how I think you say it works:
Again, my defence roll gets me only an 8, you’ve got a 9 and a 10. Thus X = 2, your demon’s power is 9, this means 2 + 9 = 11 lasting damage. Ouch. My demon’s got armor, so I roll his power of 9 in addition and get two 10s and a 9. Two 10s cancel out, leaves me with a 10 and you with a 9, so that’s one success in my favor, so instead of 11 lasting damage, it’s 10 lasting damage.
Am I reading you correctly? Because that makes armor, uh, pretty useless agains special damage (lethal)…
Also, yesterday in the heat of battle I tried to look up the rules on character death and couldn’t find them in the book, can anybody point me toward them? Especially, how much damage can a sorcerer take and still pull off the will trick? Can’t be indefinite, can it?
- Frank
angelfromanotherpin:
As far as I know, Armor isn't rolled, except to see if it can be 'raised up' before an attack goes off. Once it's up, though, it's usually up for the duration of a fight, and it functions like this:
Again, my defence roll gets me only an 8, you’ve got a 9 and a 10. Thus X = 2, your demon’s power is 9, this means 2 + 9 = 11 lasting damage. Ouch. My demon’s got armor, so subtract his power of 9 from 11 and get 2 lasting penalties (this can't reduce incoming lasting penalties below 1, which is what the attack would do if it had been made with Fists). For temporary penalties, there are (2X) = 4 incoming, and I subtract 9 from those as well, except that it can't be reduced below the damage that would be done by a Fists attack, which is the original margin of success, which is 2.
So characters with significant chunks of Armor are usually taking very close to Fists damage.
Quote
Also, yesterday in the heat of battle I tried to look up the rules on character death and couldn’t find them in the book, can anybody point me toward them? Especially, how much damage can a sorcerer take and still pull off the will trick? Can’t be indefinite, can it?
On the Will thing, the cutoff point is penalties greater than twice the Sorcerer's Stamina (pg 108). On the death thing, there was a whole thread, much earlier on the site, about how the issue was not explicitly laid out, but in the table on page 109, it says that after combat (and after lasting penalties have been halved) if a character still has more than twice their Stamina in lasting penalties, they need intensive care. What is not spelled out is '...or they will die, and soon.'
Oop, found it! Here's that earlier thread: Death, Combat Sorcery and Punishment
Frank Tarcikowski:
Damn, I think I mixed up "armor" and "big"! My bad. I'm going to look it up at home, but your example sounds much more sensible than mine. Thanks!
- Frank
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