Markdoc

Re: Killing Damage in 6e No. Because it's the same as the existing "Increased Stun Multiplier" advantage for killing attack, which also adds +1 to the dice: that's actually where the idea came from in the first place. That too can be problematic, if you buy a lot (especially with the Hit Locations chart), and that too has never raised any problems that I've heard of.

Re: The Ulronai Thread

Re: Killing Damage in 6e This was your response last time as I recall, and my answer hasn't altered. As a general rule, if you have to stack an advantage to +12, that's a fairly good sign that it's balanced under actual play conditions! The rules already allow us to buy 1 shot kill powers, but most GMs are loath to approve them. As for the comment "If I want my characters to live, better buy more rDEF" it applies equally to the existing rules: current killing attacks will frequently do BOD damage at the same level and reasonably often significantly more. So to be honest, I can't buy that argument. I'd agree: but as you point out we already have that problem - the 7d6 KA that does no STUN you posited does much more BOD on average (and has the potential to do way more BOD) than the 14d6 Killing Blast, Does no STUN or the 21d6 normal blast that does no STUN, that you seem to consider problematic. Aside from, the "stack the advantage to ridiculous levels" argument, I'm not seeing any potential problems here. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e And last of all, those were superheroic examples. Lets try some Heroic stuff. We'll make a powerful gun - the .44 Automag, which is 2d6 RKA, +1 STUN Mod. Under current rules, it does an average of 7 BOD/21 STUN, making it a pretty nasty weapon for a handgun That's 37.5 active points, or 7.5 DC I'm going to start of with 2d6 Blast, add killing, BOD+3 and STUN+3. That generates 8 BOD/13 STUN. Still pretty nasty, but a very different balance between BOD and STUN It's going to be a one-shot kill with a hit to vitals or head, whichever build is used. Likewise both builds will stun or KO an unarmoured opponent with a hit anywhere on the torso or head, pretty much all the time. That's good, this is one of the most powerful handguns in the book, so it should be pretty lethal. But now I am going to show why I like the approach I am suggesting. Modern handguns - even powerful ones - do little damage through modern body armour with trauma plates (DEF 9). Youtube is full of videos of dimwits shooting each other at point blank range in armour, and that's mostly civilian grade stuff. If bullets went through them at anything like the rate they do in Hero System teh interwebz would be full of videos of guys being carried away on stretchers after testing out their armour. But these two builds interact with armour very differently. The current killing attack, on a stomach hit will do an average of 17 STUN through the armour+PD, typically stunning a normal wearer, and putting even a tough guy down in two hits. A helmet hit does 22 STUN through the armour+PD, probably putting the user down unconscious ... even though he's taken no physical damage at all. The Killing blast version, in contrast, would put 4 STUN through the armour (increased to 6) on an average stomach hit. The wearer's going to know he's been hit, but he's not going to keel over. A helmet hit? Again 4 through the armour, doubled to 8. On a good roll and a head hit you're going to stun (and injure) your target through good quality armour, but you are never going to achieve the volatility of the current approach. This is how guns actually work in real life. OK, let's get Medieval. Longsword (1d6+1, 20 active points, average damage 4BOD/8 STUN). Turn that into 2d6, killing, BOD+1 (average damage, 4 BOD/7 STUN). Of course a longsword is only as useful as the muscle on the end of it. Let's give it to a big, strong guy (STR 18). It has a STR min of 12, under current rules, so that's 1 DC, making average damage 5 BOD/10 STUN. Apply those same 6 points of STR you the Killing Blast build gets you a half dice - 5 BOD/9 STUN. Pretty much evens stevens, though the same caveats about hit locations and armour apply: the current HKA build is much more likely to knock an opponent out than the killing blast version. But again, there's a hidden benefit in the new approach. STR minimums have always been a bit contentious, because to be honest, 12 STR to use a longsword (which weights less than 2 kilos) is a bit silly. I've always argued in favour of high STR Min.s in the past not because they are especially realistic (they're not) but because they were needed for balance purposes. If you take them away, that 18 STR guy gets to add another d6 HKA to his Longsword. Now he's doing 2d6+1, (Average 8 BOD/16 STUN) and knocking armoured knights unconscious with ease - but if you are using the hit locations table, his potential upper range has jumped to 26 BOD/65 STUN! On a good roll, he's hacking armoured knights to bits and one-shotting Dragons. In contrast, dropping STR Min for the killing blast approach means that 18 STR adds 1 1/2 d6, raising average damage to 3 1/2 d6 (Average damage 7 BOD/12 STUN). Using Hit locations, his upper end for damage is 18 BOD/42 STUN (Still pretty bodacious!) but 1) he's far, far less likely to roll that sort of damage (about 1 in 1200 vs 1 in 36 for RKA max damage) and 2) rDEF reduces his maximum via hit locations dramatically. That's not the case for HKA. So you can streamline the rules yet further. The special rules that were introduced because of the way Killing attack works (can't do more than double weapons damage, STR Min) cease to be necessary if we move to damage based on "normal dice". That also means that mighty Conan with 25 STR is finally more dangerous with a knife than wibbly Wobert (STR 10) wif' 'is wittle shortsword. OK, hope that was helpful! cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e OK, all the arguments I made above are based on spreadsheets and raw numbers. I'm a data guy and I want to make sure the numbers line up before I suggest any change. I usually run 1-20 DC attacks vs defences from 0 to 40 to be sure: in this case I ran those attacks with 0, 5, 10 or 20 nDEF + all combinations of 0, 5, 10, 20 rDEF But it's also nice to look at builds. Here's Pyro's 12 DC Fireblast. Current options: General purpose: Blast (12 BOD/42 STUN vs ED). Normal BOD range 10-14, Normal STUN range 36-43 To do BOD: Killing attack (14 BOD vs rED/ 28 BOD vs ED). Normal BOD range 11-18, Normal STUN range 11-48 Against Tough Defences: AP blast (9 BOD/32 STUN vs half ED). Normal BOD range 7-11, Normal STUN Range 27-36. Under suggested new rules General purpose: Blast (12 BOD/42 STUN vs ED). Normal BOD range 10-14, Normal STUN range 36-43 To do BOD: Killing Blast, BOD+3 (16 BOD/14 STUN vs rED). Normal Range 15-17 BOD, Normal STUN Range, 10-18 Against Tough Defences: AP blast, STUN +1 (8 BOD/36 STUN vs half ED) Normal BOD range 7-9, Normal STUN Range 32-40. If you look at these, a couple of interesting points come out. 1. Under current rules, the killing attack and the normal blast overlap in terms of STUN damage. Things are better balanced than in 5E. In the long run, the Blast will do more STUN, but the killing attack will do more STUN on a regular basis. The same is true of BOD damage - again, the ranges overlap - but since the killing attack goes against rDEF, the Normal attack is likely to do more BOD only on rare occasions. 2. Equally interestingly, under current rules, the AP and killing attack barely overlap in terms of BOD damage: which attack is better will depend very heavily on the target. The killing attack overlaps AP in terms of STUN - in general the AP attack is likely to be better at putting STUN on the target, though the killing attack is going to get a big hit more frequently than the AP one. Compared with the normal Blast, the AP attack is likely a better bet for putting STUN on most credible foes, even though the normal STUN ranges barely overlap, due to the fact that it halves defences ... until you meet someone with hardened, of course! If we compare current rules with the suggested changes: 1. The killing attack (and I have deliberately optimized it, here) will pretty much always do more BOD than the normal blast. Its normal damage range overlaps that of the standard killing attack, so while it will over the long run do more BOD, the current killing attack will do more on semi-regular basis. On the other hand, the STUN range is pathetic: it will essentially never do the amount of STUN that killing attacks are capable of under the current rules. It is going up against rED, not ED, so in a few rare instances it might actually do more STUN than the current rules version of killing attack, but that's pretty unlikely (only happens when your target has very high total DEF and very low rDEF). 2. The finely-tuned AP attack, using the suggested changes, shows why I kept the mostly useless STUN+1 modifier: in some cases, it can be useful. Here it lets you eke out an extra 4 STUN average damage in return for an average of -1 BOD damage. OK, not earth-shattering, but hey, sometimes it'd help. Otherwise, it compares to normal blast much as it does under standard rules. But the proposed setup gives Pyro some new options. How about: Stunning blast: Blast, STUN+4. (6 BOD/45 STUN vs ED) Normal BOD range 6-6, Normal STUN Range 32-48. Crowd control blast: Blast, STUN+4, AoE, Radius (4 BOD/ 30 STUN). Normal BOD range 4-4, Normal STUN Range 28-32. (by way of comparison, a normal AoE Blast would do 6 BOD (range 7-8) and 21 STUN (range 18-24). OK, not super-effective, but if doing more STUN is your thing, it does let you move the dial up by 3-4 STUN a hit If you abuse the limitations by stacking them a lot, you can start to see an effect, but not an overwhelming one (a 12 DC AoE accurate Blast would do 9/33, so it's still a more credible threat to a heroic foe than the big AoE I built above) and also that it does let you create effects that were difficult to achieve before. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e Remember that AVAD (as written currently) converts all damage into STUN damage, so you'd need a +1 1/2 advantage to make a killing attack that way. Initially, I know I suggested changing AVAD: but that was before I thought we'd go the whole route with BOD and STUN modifiers, as we are doing now. That approach renders messing with AVAD superfluous. At first glance, it looks like natural fit: we're shifting an attack from nDEF to rDEF. Isn't that what AVAD does? But when you look at it in more detail, it's not so simple. And when you look at it carefully, the AVAD rules are confusing and contradictory. Killing attack, for a start is an obvious joker. It goes against a common defence (rDEF) ... but only partly. The STUN goes against nDEF. This necessitates a special section just for AVAD and killing attacks, which by itself suggests a mechanics problem. And making things stun only .... Mind Blast is already STUN only, so moving it up to rMental DEF doesn't change it all. Other attacks like Transform and Drain, don't do BOD anyway. Does a transform using AVAD do STUN damage instead of Transform damage? I suspect not Basically AVAD is messed up because it attempted to meld different mechanisms. I'm inclined to leave it alone and treat it as simply expanded NND rules (which is what it really does), not an attempt to rebuild killing attack (which it really doesn't do well). So, here's where I ended up: Killing: +1/2 advantage, allows attack to go against rDEF. Does Extra BOD: +1/2 for +1 per d6. Stop sign for potential lethality of high multiples and a note that attacks with modified dice totals may not take limitations on the other aspects of the dice. So for example, you can't take "Does extra BOD" and "Does no STUN" Does Extra Stun: +1/4 for +1 per d6. Exclamation mark and comment about the possibility to get increased stun with high multiples and advantage stacking That's all we need, IMO, and it's not at all complicated. In fact, I'd say it's simpler than the current rules. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

Re: Killing Damage in 6e I had a chance to run up some spreadsheets in my coffee break. Writing this down, as I did in the post above, has actually helped me think it through. Let's see what you guys think. Sticking with my original idea of making "killing" an advantage on blast, but changing 2 things Right now, blast dice are read: 1 =0 BOD, 2-5 = 1 BOD, 6 = 2 BOD. The STUN is the total on the dice. What if we change this so that killing dice read: 1 =1 BOD, 2-5 = 2 BOD, 6 = 3 BOD. The STUN is the total on the dice. If we make that a +3/4 advantage, we get some interesting math. It means that "killing blast" does the same or marginally more BOD than a normal blast of the same active cost (you get about 1 extra BOD for every 7 DC). It does about 40% less stun for the same cost, but then if it goes against rPD, that means that it'll be less effective against targets with more than 50% rPD and more effective against those with less. Playing round with defences, most plausible combinations of DEF and rDEF indicate that a killing attack will often sneak some STUN through, but it's actually pretty hard to actually stun somebody: it's definitely an attack you'd choose when you want to do BOD. The volatility is exactly the same: all you have done is shifted the curve slightly, in terms of output. The damage output in terms of BOD is about the same, meaning it plays nice with barrier, entangle, etc. The mechanism is exactly the same too: you simply add 1 to the BOD of each dice, for a killing attack, so there no added complexity on actual play: you roll and count the way we always do. And you use the N damage multipliers for damage that goes through defences for both killing and normal blast attacks, if you are using the hit location chart, so both attack forms are equally effective using hit location. Likewise, it plays nice with mixed killing/nonkilling damage: you simply prorate the same way that you would with any other advantage. Anything I've missed here? cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e I agree with these sentiments in general, and have played around with a couple of mechanisms, both of which we've discussed before. The most radical is to dispense with STUN and BOD altogether and simply have an impairing mechanism: the way that would work is that you have three states of injury: Dead, Incapacitated, and Wounded. The basic concept here was actually drawn from an analysis done by a guy from the US army on wounding and death in combat. The idea is that you can be killed just as effectively by a hatpin rammed in through your ear as by a .5 round through your chest ... but that it's a lot harder to kill someone with a hatpin than a .5 browning. In this approach, attacks don't do STUN or BOD just "damage". To avoid rejiggering costs too much, just count your dice total. If a target is hit, it makes a CON roll, at a set minus per amount of damage that leaks through defences (I was considering -1/5points). If you fail your CON roll, you are Wounded (treat like Hero system being stunned) if you fail by 3 or more, you are Incapacitated (Check Hero system impairing tables), if you fail by 5 or more, you are down and dying. You get a CON roll each turn and die when you fail it. This approach has the advantage that it requires little book-keeping, and it's easy to match the degree of lethality to "real-world numbers", but it's such a radical departure from Hero system that I've never taken it further than the thought experiment you see here. The other approach I've played with, is to try and harmonise KA and Blast: you've seen the outcome here. As Hugh pointed out SFX count for a lot. Bullets do little to no STUN, but an axe - which is also a killing attack - is a momentum weapon, which can do a lot of stun. A metal pipe can be defined as a blast or a KA, depending on how you feel. That's pretty messy, considering that currently they use two completely different mechanisms. However, I am still not 100% satisfied with the mechanism I suggested myself. I think it may be marginally better than the current system, but that's about as enthusiastic as I can be So can we brainstorm what we actually want out of physical damage? Here's what I want. 1. A similar mechanism. There's been much discussion of volatility and on the whole, I actually don't mind volatility. Real life damage is volatile. What offends me is that one type of damage is more volatile than the other: that's a clear - but difficult to price - advantage. I have toyed with the idea of using "killing attack" style dice for everything - so that all attacks roll BOD and a STUN multiplier, but the mechanism (5 points gets you one DC which is a part of a dice) is a bit clunky. I also played with the idea that 5 points got you a D6 divided by 3 (1-2 BOD, average 1-5) 10 points a d6 divided by 2 (1-3 BOD average 2) and 15 points a d6 (1-6 BOD, average 3.5) ... that's better than what we have now, but it's still a bit clunky. Having similar mechanisms would also make it far easier to deal with the whole "adding a killing attack to a non-killing attack" thing which has always been awkward in Hero System and would mean that they played better with advantages and limitations. 2. Killing attacks should be dangerous to soft targets. We do need a reliable mechanism for generating lethality. I don't actually have a problem with KA losing a lot of effectiveness against armoured targets: that reflects reality. Bonus points for a mechanism where killing attacks only do significant STUN if they do BOD (similar to the way that normal attacks currently work with hit locations). 3. If killing attacks go against rDEF, there has to be an equally weighty advantage to non-killing attacks. 4. The mechanism should work with or without hit locations.

Re: Fantasy worlds you had to "rework" years later once you've grown up and knew bett When I started GM'ing, I didn't have any published game worlds: all I had was a copy of the AD&D player's manual. So I had no idea of how things were "meant to be". So, I built my game world on the fantasy and myth I loved: Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, Lord of the Rings and old norse tales. As a result, my fantasy world was middle to low magic and relatively low-monster. It's held up surprisingly well: I'm still using it after 27 years. What I tend to do is choose one area of the map, develop that and run a campaign there. After a few years of play, that part of the world is heavily detailed, and I bring the game to a close and start up somewhere else. So far I have only detailed about half the world, so there's a good quarter century left in it, I reckon. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e Exactly! Remember that many Superhero games also use hit locations. We often (though not always) did, and I've seen plenty of GM's on these boards say that they use hit locations for Supers. I've also run heroic games where we didn't use hit locations (though admittedly, only once, for Pulp game). However, it's clear that you cannot make assumptions about whether hit locations are in play or not and ideally, the power rules should work with both. He may, or he may not: either way it's not a big deal, at the level where somebody can afford to shell out over 50 points on defences: you would not expect to be seeing a lot of BOD either way. But one of the things that I don't like about the current setup is the way it strongly favours the fact that everyone has a high (for whatever scale you are playing on) DEF with sufficient rDEF to cover likely BOD damage. That's the "standard set up" whether you're wearing spandex or a battlesuit and I would not mind at all differentiating that more.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e I understand your confusion, because I had exactly the same reaction and worked through exactly the same math. When I first suggested this idea back in the "what would you like to see" thread for 6E, I also felt that if increasing from DEF to rDEF was +1/2, then going from attacking rDEF instead of DEF should also be at least +1/2. But I did the math (lots of different ways) and came to the same conclusion that you did. It's simply not worth +1/2 to go against rDEF, compared to the loss of effect vs normal attacks. I've tried the analysis over attacks of 1-20 DC vs def from 5-40 with 0-50% rDEF. It's just not worth +1/2 and I cannot refute the math. I've done the same analysis for +1/4, and the numbers suggest killing attacks are better where rDEF is low (no surprise there) but as the number of DC increase you fairly quickly end up at a point where the KA does more BOD, but less stun, even though rDEF is low - or somewhat to my surprise - non-existent. One possibility that you raise though, that I hadn't considered: if "killing" was made a +1/2 advantage, you could end up with a situation where in game with high defences (like Supers) that KA would become useless (or at least more specialised: they'd still be good for mowing down mooks, or heroes with little rDEF) whilst retaining the desired lethality in heroic-level games. That's actually quite an attractive idea, allowing a fairly smooth transition from gritty to 4-colour effects. cheers, Mark

Re: Paladin Martial Art? Interestingly, we know a lot about Roman training, because Tacitus left a detailed description. You are right: Discipline was a key focus and the second aspect was fitness/toughness. Joining the legions meant lots and lots of running - singly, in groups, in armour, with loads, etc. Third was building, with combat training a very distant fourth, and apparently pretty basic. The Roman way of war was apparently that if you had enough decently-trained guys who would obey orders in the right place, then you'd win most of the time. A high level of personal combat skill wasn't apparently required. At the same time, we know that a high level of personal combat skill was considered a virtue and there are records of Roman officers challenging barbarian chiefs to personal combat and winning (of course, it was Romans writing these records, so maybe they didn't record any losses ) cheers, Mark

Re: Paladin Martial Art? Yeah, I'd go for that approach quite happily. It shifts the focus from "a paladin martial art" - something that most or many paladins would learn - to individual, personal styles. A warrior with lots of experience could really build up a portfolio of maneuvers. Yup. One of my favourite old FH characters was a serjent from an order of Paladins. One of the other players played a young, idealistic Paladin, with jedi-like powers. I played a grizzled, cynical old warrior with a few dirty fighting tricks. cheers, Mark

Re: Paladin Martial Art?

Re: Divine vs Arcane spells He said un-dead, not brain-dead cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

Re: Paladin Martial Art?

Re: Paladin Martial Art? Ahem: I'd like to point out that your fencing manual of 1639 dates from about two centuries after the end of the middle ages. It was written in a period when armoured knights were a relic of the past, European colonial settlements were springing up on the other side of the Atlantic like mushrooms and battlefields were dominated by cannon, and masses of unarmoured or lightly armoured soldiers with matchlocks and pikes, backed up by lightly armoured cavalry. The British army was already establishing its regimental system. We're well into the early modern period by that stage. Here's some soldiers from the late 1500s: is there anything even faintly medieval about them? [ATTACH=CONFIG]44025[/ATTACH] Now there are actually older manuals than the one you cite. The various fechtbuch of the renaissance - and the texts surrounding them, show pretty conclusively, to my mind, that in the post-medieval period, martial arts based around the sword began to develop in Europe. The writers of those books also made plain that such things had never been done before! Yet more evidence that as far as we know medieval Europe had no tradition of martial arts (at least as we understand the term).You'll notice that the site you linked is the Association for Renaissance martial arts - the renaissance being the period after the medieval. It's more than just hair-splitting: by that time, the social power of the landed aristocracy - meaning knights and nobles - had been waning and in places was being eclipsed by merchants and traders. The knight had lost his supremacy on the battlefield to the gun, and the old feudal armies were being replaced - at least in France, the Germanies and Italy - by semi-professional or wholly professional mercenary companies armed with pikes and arquebuses. As far as we can work out, the fechtbuch were not written for - or by - knights, but by the new emerging class of commoner warriors - probably originating with the mercenary companies. This doesn't mean that medieval knights couldn't fight! Far from it: there were plenty of hard men back in those days, and the best knightly commanders were consummate professionals. But as far as we can tell from their histories (and we have a lot of them), the training they got was entirely ad hoc. Via a family weapons master, if they were lucky, or on the battlefield if not. If the weapons master was any good, they were even more lucky, but either way there was - apparently - no codification, no systems, no tradition (beyond bravery and doing the right thing) - none of the things which your own definition points to. No knight went off to a sword school to learn combat ... there were no such things. He didn't study traditional sword forms ... because there were no such things! He didn't seek out a master for sword training - such an idea would have been entirely foreign to the knights of the time. The closest we come to training in that era was the melee and the tournament ... but you could only enter those once you were considered fully trained! cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

Re: Divine vs Arcane spells in D&D, the difference between what Divine casters can do and what arcane caster scan do is pretty close to entirely arbitrary. Arcane casters generally can't heal and they can't turn undead (though that's a seperate power, not actually a spell). Generally, arcane casters have more spells that augment their own capacities, and more directly-damaging spells, while divine casters get more spells to help others. When they do get damage spells, they typically get them later than arcane casters. But there are exceptions to all of those guidelines. The only real rule when designing spells for D&D is that there are no rules In Hero system if you want to keep them distinct, try either tacking on some limitations "only when serving god's purposes" etc and build spell lists. In my last campaign, each god had a portfolio - like domains in D&D - and they only granted spells in that area. So you couldn't get a fireball spell from the Sea goddess, a healing spell from the War god, or a an anti-undead spell from anybody except the God of the Dead. That way priests had a very limited area of focus - but they got the benefits of belonging to a specific cult, they could learn new spells from the cult, etc, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e But isn't that genre? It was one of the things that I considered when thinking about this design: it blunts BOD damage at the higher end, where Supers are likely to have high defences, but keeps a good deal of lethality at the lower end, for Heroic games, particularly if you are using hit locations - that average of 6 BOD from an assault rifle would be reliable one-shot kill of normals or low level "tough guys" on a head or vitals location. When I was considering this, I was also assuming (consciously) as a default that Supers would not use hit locations and that Heroic games probably would. The effect of that is that in a Supers game it becomes easier to build a "bullet-proof" hero, while at the heroic end, it would reduce volatility - you're less likely to get a one-shot kill, but also less likely to shoot someone in the face, and give them a minor flesh wound. In truth though, I've always felt that Heros system weapons were a teensy bit underpowered: I'd be inclined to increase them all by +1/4. So the 2 1/2 RKA would become an 8d6 "killing" blast. That'd mean against unarmoured foes, one hit puts you down and dying, even for most PCs, if shot in the head or vitals, and a dangerous wound most other places. More importantly, though, it'd mean that handguns would be dangerous but not utterly lethal: you don't want people to require an assault rifle to pose a credible threat. cheers, Mark

Re: Killing Damage in 6e No, as I'd envisage it, killing attacks go against rDEF. I'd like to avoid the kludge where BOD goes against one defence and STUN against another. It doesn't bother me that a killing attack does more damage - albeit only stun - against defences that are 50/50 rDEF and nDEF. if you are opposing an attack to a defences that are more than 50% of the attack's active points, I'd expect little or no body to go through. Under most - not all - situations, however, it does push more BOD through than a normal attack, which was the point, while - as you illustrate - staying more or less in balance with other attack powers. I doubt this rule change would make killing attacks very much less rare: I'm guessing most people would still have some rDEF. But it is true that it would probably make rDEF slightly less of a must-have, in supers games: I think that's a plus, overall.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e I have solution for you: I floated it back in the pre-6E threads, but it's solidified due to changes made in 6E, and I am going to play test it in my next campaign: we're moving from 5E to 6E, so one more small change won't make much difference. Here's the plan. 1. Drop "killing attack" as a seperate power. "Killing attack" simply becomes "applies vs resistant defence" - which is already covered by the advantage AVAD. 2. Rejig the costs of AVAD, so that they actually reflect utility, and simplify the rules. The numbers I have played around with are: Move up one step on the table: +1/4 Move up two steps on the table: +1 Move three steps up on the table: +2 NND goes back to being a special advantage: +1, all or nothing, does stun only. It was always an awkward fit in AVAD, anyway. All of the "special rules" about how AVAD attacks become stun only, that killing attacks don't follow the AVAD rule exactly, etc, ... goes away. AVAD attacks don't become STUN only, and they apply both STUN and BOD vs their chosen defence. So a "killing attack" simply applies against a resistant form of the same defence (a +1/4 advantage). I've run the math with attacks of up to 100 active points, vs defences from 0-20 non-resistant, + 0-20 resistant. If we look at blast, "killing" attacks since they now use the "roll a d6, total is stun, 1 is 0 BOD, 2-5 is 1, 6 is 2" always do less STUN and less BOD in total than a normal attack of the same active points. They are exactly as volatile as normal attacks (because they are normal attacks). That doesn't sound like a winner. However, when you run the math, the results are interesting. When the ratio of resistant to non-resistant defences is low, "killing" blast usually does more BOD through defences than a normal blast, and sometimes more STUN, but as resistant defences increase normal is better at getting stun through. But even when the ratio or resistant defences are very high compared to normal defences, a killing attack is rarely worse. That pretty much only occurs against defences that are totally resistant. But how about other attacks than just blast? Well, STR costs the same and works against the same defences as Blast, so no problems there. HA and TK also work against the same defences, so again, the outcome will be the same. Mental blast is not the same - it does no BOD and it already acts against an uncommon defence So making a mental blast "killing" would mean it would only cost +1/4 to make it work against a rare defence ... but then it costs +1/2 now. It's not a great change in cost and one relatively easily countered. I can't see it as a problem. All the other attack powers either don't work against defences at all (Change environment, Entangle, etc) or work against uncommon defences and don't in any case do BOD damage. It would cost (for example) the same for Flash attack to go up against resistant Flash Defence than against Flash Defence to an unusual sense group, and frankly, that's not a significant change in my opinion. Finally what about moving a normal blast to work against uncommon or rare defence? That would cost +2 for for a rare defence, but under my suggestion, it does BOD. So compared to current rules, it would be slightly more expensive than to do STUN damage, and slightly cheaper to do BOD damage. However, if doing BOD to your target is the goal, it's only marginally less expensive than just buying a killing attack and adding penetrating under the current rules, and would do significantly less STUN. That seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Since Penetrating killing attacks have not been a problem in most games, it also suggests to me that it's not unbalanced. With regard to moving Blast to working against Mental Defence, that would be +1, making the basic cost the same as Mental Blast. Unlike Mental blast, it does BOD, which seems like a clear advantage, but also unlike mental blast, it works against DCV (a limitation) and doesn't get the no range and partially indirect advantages. It seems reasonably balanced. In short, this approach offers several advantages (from my point of view). 1. It removes the problem of killing attacks being best if you want to stun the target. With this approach, it's mostly good for attacking targets with less resistant defence and doing BOD to them: ie: for killing. 2. It simplifies the whole adding KA to normal attacks thing: now they use the same mechanism - you treat "killing" like any other advantage. You can prorate damage, you can have attacks which mix killing and normal damage. 3. It simplifies the system as a whole: there's no need to have two completely different mechanisms for "I hit him with a club". and 4. Especially for Hugh - it offers the flexibility to do something he asked about recently - to be able to convert a single power between normal and killing damage. With this approach, a simple variable special effect would do it. The one potential negative that I can see is that it becomes slightly easier to bypass high PD/ED and inflict BOD damage via this approach with a few dice of attack vs an uncommon defence. I don't see that as outweighing the advantages for the following reasons: a: It compensates somewhat for removing the ability to do more BOD via the volatile killing mechanism - I've seen a 9DC KA roll 16 or more BOD plenty of times. I've never seen anyone roll 16 BOD on a 9DC normal attack. b: It's relatively cheap to counter powers using AVAD to deliver BOD: 5 points of non-resistant mental defence would largely eliminate the BOD from a 50-point Blast vs mental defence. My suggested change would probably lead to a few more PCs having a few points in Mental defence and Power defence, though. c: AVAD is already an exclamation point power - I'd watch out for any powers using it just as carefully as I already do. So, what do you think? Is there anything I've missed? cheers, Mark