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| Advice on Cruelty and Razor Fang; Advice on Injury-Based Complaints | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 15 2015, 01:00 PM (1,352 Views) | |
| rlrichey | Jan 15 2015, 01:00 PM Post #1 |
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Rival
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Let's say I have a character who is a tank build. He puts all of his stats into defense and wears armor. He is the most protected character ever, and he doesn't really take damage from hits. Let's say that this character's party is fighting a group of Martial Artists equipped with Razor Fangs and the Cruelty ability. 2 major issues come up: 1. This character is built to take hits. He's not even taking damage most of the time, so why should an on-hit effect like Razor Claw be able to take away 1/10 of his HP? If this player feels that this is somehow unfair, what would you say to him? 2. This on-hit injury effect does something really weird that doesn't normally happen. Let's say you have 4 injuries and you're at the full 60% that you can have. As an effect of Cruelty or Razor Fang, this character takes an injury, dropping their HP to 50%. What really sucks is that now they've hit an HP Marker, meaning that they're gaining another injury just because they gained an injury. In other words, a character with 4 injuries and full HP always takes two injuries from Razor Fang and similar effects (Sometimes 3 at once with Cruelty). Does it seem unfair that a character is effectively being punished for having too much armor and too much HP? Am I interpreting the rules wrong? Is this RAI? Do you think a houserule is called for, or is this how the injury system is supposed to work? Edit: I meant Razor Fang, not Razor Claw Edited by rlrichey, Jan 15 2015, 01:14 PM.
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| Jacquerel | Jan 15 2015, 01:21 PM Post #2 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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This seems like a bit of a dramatisation, considering that razor fangs still only work on a roll of 19+ rather than every attack and Cruelty is only once per scene. Dealing with people with high armour and HP is basically what the item is for, so I don't see why that isn't working as intended. A cruel GM could just make seven or eight martial artists use cruelty in turn to kill this player, but they could also do that to any other player. Having several NPCs use cruelty on the same person in one fight is a player issue, not a balance one. Edited by Jacquerel, Jan 15 2015, 01:21 PM.
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| rlrichey | Jan 15 2015, 01:37 PM Post #3 |
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Rival
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And if the player is intentionally running to the front because they're the tank and they "can take it," is it bad GMing to gang up on that one player? (To me, it makes sense, and it's literally what he's asking for) For example, let's say that there are 5 PCs and for balance the GM provides 5 of the martial artists. 4 of the PCs stay in the back and use ranged attacks, and the tank runs to the front, getting hit. Is it poor form if all of these MAs unload on him? The "scene" and "19+" limitations may seem balanced enough, but even in a battle against 5 Trainers (not even Pokémon) of much lower level, that's 6+ guaranteed injuries on one guy, and the player begins to feel a little cheated. Is it actually the point of Cruelty and Razor Fang to provide pacing and stress against tanks and armor? Edited by rlrichey, Jan 15 2015, 01:53 PM.
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| BatiroAtrain | Jan 15 2015, 01:54 PM Post #4 |
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Pyramid King
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He is asking for it. Let it be a lesson to him. :p |
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| castfromhp | Jan 15 2015, 02:17 PM Post #5 |
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Mawile Ace
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Even a tank is not going to survive 5 equally matched combatants wailing on them, Cruelty or no. It would be surprising if they survived 5 consecutive powerful attacks period. It should be fairly irrelevant. |
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| Domo | Jan 15 2015, 02:22 PM Post #6 |
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Kawaii Detective
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The point of injuries, from a GM side is, yes, to create stress on the party. Because PTU's default setting assumes that any reasonable settlement has access to magical, free, fast healthcare, and because each 'player' is actually upwards of 7 actual health bars, it can be difficult to keep things at a healthy level of stress for parties. Not necessarily 'fear for your life' stress but an appropriate amount of worry of whether or not the players can overcome a serious challenge. Cruelty is particularly dangerous after the party has been softened up by previous encounters, while Razor Fang isn't actually that big of a deal because of its relatively restricted trigger range. While it is semi-realistic to have the five MAs gang up on the most vulnerable target and eliminate him, keep in mind that PTU is not realistic by any stretch of the imagination. Combat oriented trainers should be taking the brunt of damage simply because you, as a GM, should know that full support characters a) can't really take those hits and b) aren't immediate and obvious threats from enemy perspective. If the other four players are standing back, but are also firing death rays and aura spheres, the enemies should probably actually shift focus to the squishier damage dealers. At any rate, if you have a player who wants to soak damage, that's fine, you should have more enemies focus him than the others to give him what he wants. That doesn't mean you should create encounters designed to circumvent what he built his character for and then pretend that you are just doing what he asked. Injury stacking is so brutal that 5 combatants with Cruelty is boss encounter levels of power. |
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| Pandora | Jan 15 2015, 02:46 PM Post #7 |
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Cursed
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Here's my two cents on this, taking into account that I have one of those kinds of character (not to that extreme, but definitely a heavy hitter that tends to inflict lots of injuries.) Razor Fang doesn't usually proc enough for someone to normally have to worry about it, but at the same time, there are those instances when it activates multiple times in a row. It really is up to luck, however, and if a player is subject to unlucky rolls, then there's not much you can do about it. As to what the point of Cruelty and Razor Fang are, I think that is more a question of what the point of injuries are. From what I have experienced, they provide pressure, in that it becomes harder and harder to stretch out the fight if you need it and people are less willing to stretch out a fight the more injuries they obtain. I think that the way you're describing the use of them is more of a problem about abusing those mechanics to artificially lower HP. I can't say much on whether that's bad GMing or not (personally, I would react with a gang-up as well), but the way I would perhaps come to a compromise is, instead of dropping them to the max HP determined by their injuries straight away, to enact a sort of "bleeding" or "bloodied" status where they will steadily decrease in HP every round until it drops to that max (in any manner, including attacks or statuses like Poison). It's definitely less cheap than a straight drop, and leaves the player still able to absorb hits, though not as effectively. How much HP is not my say. You could make it similar to Heavily Injured, although to my understanding this player has a lot of base HP. 10% per round until it reaches the max set by the injury doesn't seem too harsh either. Since I have a feeling my wording for the second alternative isn't very clear, an example. Player A (100 max HP) is up against two enemy trainers. Starting the initiative, one of them is faster and inflicts an insignificant 1 damage but also an injury via Cruelty (taking an additional 2 damage). Player A's HP goes down to 97%, but nothing more for now. Now, Player A's turn comes around and his HP goes down to exactly 90% and no further to match the max HP he should have at 1 injury. He gets to act on his turn normally, and onto the second enemy's turn. This one inflicts 2 damage and a second injury via his Cruelty (taking an additional 4 damage), making Player A go down to 84%. Back to the start of the initiative, the first enemy trainer gets lucky and inflicts another injury with a Razor Fang along with 1 damage, so Player A is now at 83% with 3 injuries (his max should now be 70%). At the start of Player A's turn, he gets dropped to 73%, and he takes his turn. Let's say for some reason the enemy trainers went off to go after someone else in the initiative that I didn't care to talk about and left Player A alone. At the start of Player A's next turn, he would stabilize at 70% HP and should no longer lose more. |
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| rlrichey | Jan 16 2015, 06:34 AM Post #8 |
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Rival
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As a bit of an aside, we've been toying around with some homebrew to find new ways to achieve the same effect. Let's say I have a short-range weapon with no DB increase that inflicts an injury on AC 16+. Considering how long a scene lasts, and the fact that the injury effect is limited to a single weapon, which would you say is worse: This gun, or razor fang paired with moves that average out about DB8? Or what about Cruelty for that matter? Which of these is the least hardcore, and why? |
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| Pandora | Jan 16 2015, 07:40 AM Post #9 |
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Cursed
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The gun is worse by far, especially with Cruelty, and here's why. Less damage doesn't mean that you can't knock the opponent out, just that it will take much longer, and subsequently more attacks, to do so. The gun has a 25% chance to inflict an injury, so if it takes something absurd like 20 attacks to finally knock the guy out, he's already half-dead with five injuries from the weapon itself, plus the two for passing the 50% and 0% HP markers for a total of 7 injuries. Tack on a Cruelty at the end for unneeded punishment, and that's 8 injuries total for an additional 16 damage. Something with more damage with a lower chance to inflict injuries has the potential to inflict injuries via Massive Damage, but it also means the fight would be over way faster. Ignoring Massive Damage injuries, if it took the same 20 attacks for some reason for the DB8 weapon to KO the opponent, they would probably only deal around 4 injuries total, 2 from the weapon and 2 for passing HP markers. If you went the massive damage route, it would still only be 4 injuries total, 2 from two Massive Damage attacks and 2 from passing the HP markers, likely with none from the weapon though it's still possible. Cruelty would bump those to 5 injuries and 10 extra damage, but that's still kind compared to the first scenario. Regarding the usage of Razor Fang with a DB8 weapon though, I'll bring up an anecdote. We were up against about equal level bandits. I happened to roll very fortunately against one dude, with accuracy rolls of 20, 19, and 20, scoring two crits and 3 injuries total from Razor Fang. The combined attacks dropped him below -100%, which means another 4 injuries from HP markers. The crits were enough for Massive Damage, so 2 more. Not going to gloss over it, he was left for dead with 9 injuries. Edited by Pandora, Jan 16 2015, 07:51 AM.
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| rlrichey | Jan 16 2015, 08:06 AM Post #10 |
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Rival
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No, I said gun without cruelty. I would never put the two together. That's terrible |
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