I'm trying to figure out what exactly "innate" means, specifically as a rule for "innate attacks" that can be used against entangles. On page 6E1 216, one of the paragraphs under "Escaping from Entangles" describes what seems to be a possible method of using various attack powers to break free from entangles. The part I'm refering to says "Characters with powers that cause BODY damage and are innate or bought through Inaccessible Foci can use those powers to try to break free..." I've also seen the term "innate" referred to on breaking free from entangles on 6E2 124. However, I cannot seem to find the word "innate" either in the index for 6E1 and 6E2, nor can I find this term in the 6E1 Glossary. Going from context clues, I'm thinking it references any attack that is not bought through Accessible Foci (which would probably mean most weapons would be out). However, I'm still not sure of exactly what is going on, and I can't seem to find this term anywhere else.
The reason I ask about this is because of a bit of a balancing issue that's come up with my gaming group reguarding entangles, which might shed some light on what I'm trying to find out. We've found that it has been pretty easy to take an area of effect entangle with high PD, and use it to turn a fight with several enemies into a series of battles with 1 enemy each. For example, you could take a simple 4d6 entangle, buy up the PD from 4 to 8, and anyone with roughly 20 or less strength will simply not have enough dice to use strength alone to break out (as I understand, they'd have 4 dice of normal damage at that strength, so even with all 6's they'd get 8 body, still not enough to even scratch that entangle's BODY). This means that we could just use attacks to break out the entangled villains one at a time, taking them down before they can reasonably fight back. Since we tend to play at superheroic power levels (although we usually use medieval fantasy based settings), and one of our players is effectively an ice-based magethief, this has come up fairly often in the past. For the time being the players have agreed to reduce their entangle strength in various ways, but I'm thinking that if enough enemies can simply be allowed to use attacks (especially killing attacks), to break out of entangles, then perhaps we can reduce the overall impact of high-powered entangles (as in 80 active points or more) to something that is somewhat effective, but not the final word in a battle. However, I'm still not sure which attacks should be allowed, owing to being unsure about the "innate" rule. Since seemingly all of our game balance troubles have stemmed from misinterpreting the rules, I just want to make sure I get this one right lol.
On a side note, I just wanted to say "thanks" for having this forum here, especially where rules questions can be asked. I actually learned about the existance of the Hero System from looking up the history behind Champions Online, but since the only other Hero System gamers I can find around here play exclusively on the one day I can't play, I've had to pretty much learn the Hero System on my own, and then teach it to the gaming group I started up (which is now 2 years old). Needless to say, starting with 6E1 and 6E2, and with no background on this particular system, this has been a bit of a daunting task. I didn't even know of the importance of a genre book until I bought my first one lol. However, thanks to the community here I found the Basic Rulebook, which helped me get started, as well as a two-page summary of core rules that I now hand out to newcomers to our group. Now our gaming group here loves the Hero System and won't play anything else, though we still are working to get a handle on many of the individual rules, as well as the interactions between rules. =)
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Kruhl Sentru
I'm trying to figure out what exactly "innate" means, specifically as a rule for "innate attacks" that can be used against entangles. On page 6E1 216, one of the paragraphs under "Escaping from Entangles" describes what seems to be a possible method of using various attack powers to break free from entangles. The part I'm refering to says "Characters with powers that cause BODY damage and are innate or bought through Inaccessible Foci can use those powers to try to break free..." I've also seen the term "innate" referred to on breaking free from entangles on 6E2 124. However, I cannot seem to find the word "innate" either in the index for 6E1 and 6E2, nor can I find this term in the 6E1 Glossary. Going from context clues, I'm thinking it references any attack that is not bought through Accessible Foci (which would probably mean most weapons would be out). However, I'm still not sure of exactly what is going on, and I can't seem to find this term anywhere else.
The reason I ask about this is because of a bit of a balancing issue that's come up with my gaming group reguarding entangles, which might shed some light on what I'm trying to find out. We've found that it has been pretty easy to take an area of effect entangle with high PD, and use it to turn a fight with several enemies into a series of battles with 1 enemy each. For example, you could take a simple 4d6 entangle, buy up the PD from 4 to 8, and anyone with roughly 20 or less strength will simply not have enough dice to use strength alone to break out (as I understand, they'd have 4 dice of normal damage at that strength, so even with all 6's they'd get 8 body, still not enough to even scratch that entangle's BODY). This means that we could just use attacks to break out the entangled villains one at a time, taking them down before they can reasonably fight back. Since we tend to play at superheroic power levels (although we usually use medieval fantasy based settings), and one of our players is effectively an ice-based magethief, this has come up fairly often in the past. For the time being the players have agreed to reduce their entangle strength in various ways, but I'm thinking that if enough enemies can simply be allowed to use attacks (especially killing attacks), to break out of entangles, then perhaps we can reduce the overall impact of high-powered entangles (as in 80 active points or more) to something that is somewhat effective, but not the final word in a battle. However, I'm still not sure which attacks should be allowed, owing to being unsure about the "innate" rule. Since seemingly all of our game balance troubles have stemmed from misinterpreting the rules, I just want to make sure I get this one right lol.
On a side note, I just wanted to say "thanks" for having this forum here, especially where rules questions can be asked. I actually learned about the existance of the Hero System from looking up the history behind Champions Online, but since the only other Hero System gamers I can find around here play exclusively on the one day I can't play, I've had to pretty much learn the Hero System on my own, and then teach it to the gaming group I started up (which is now 2 years old). Needless to say, starting with 6E1 and 6E2, and with no background on this particular system, this has been a bit of a daunting task. I didn't even know of the importance of a genre book until I bought my first one lol. However, thanks to the community here I found the Basic Rulebook, which helped me get started, as well as a two-page summary of core rules that I now hand out to newcomers to our group. Now our gaming group here loves the Hero System and won't play anything else, though we still are working to get a handle on many of the individual rules, as well as the interactions between rules. =)
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