Power clarification: Drain ( STUN and CON )

[Skullkrak]

A PC in my game is playing a chemical based heroine. She has two forms of Drain: "envenom" Drain: CON and "toxins" Drain: STUN; both are 4d6. I understand that if she hits her target, the targets power defense is applied and then the remaining dice total is subtracted from the characteristics active points.

 

As far as I can tell draining CON does two things. One it makes it easier for the target to be stunned and if she drains the target to 0 then it must make a CON roll to do any action which costs END.

 

My major question is what happens when she drains, say STUN, from a character that has no points in STUN ( only the base value of 20 )? Do they lose 2 STUN for each point she drains? IE the same rate that you buy the characteristic is the rate that you lose it as well?

[Steve Long]

Re: Power clarification: Drain ( STUN and CON )

 

First, just so everyone's clear, don't forget that per 6E1 135 and 141, CON and STUN both count as "defensive" Characteristics and the effect of a Drain against them are halved after Power Defense is applied. I expect you're already aware of this, but I wanted to mention it in case anyone reading the question and answer is confused.

 

Second, as discussed on 6E1 135, when you Drain a Characteristic, you're Draining Character Points' worth of that Characteristic, not direct points of it. So using STUN in your example, if you Drain 5 Character Points' worth of STUN, that means you reduce the target's STUN by 10, since every 1 Character Point spent on STUN gets you 2 points of STUN. (Though of course, as I mentioned above, the effect on STUN is halved, so the ultimate effect of this particular attack, assuming there's no Power Defense involved, is to Drain (10/2 =) 5 STUN.)

 

Whether a character's spent any Character Points to increase a Characteristic is irrelevant for these purposes. The value of STUN is 1 Character Point = 2 STUN, for example, whether a character has STUN 20 or STUN 100.