Basic Action Super Heroes!

IMHO Attack Weak Spot is just a little too powerful.
I'm thinking of changing it to the following.

Attack Weak Spot (1-2pts)
For 1 point you choose Hand to Hand or Ranged (for 2 you get both).
For Every point you hit your target by you do an additional point of damage.

Wadda think?

This is pretty cool for three reasons:

One:
I like that it implies that it can only be used for attacks made by normal HTH strikes and weapons as opposed to having a player try to apply Attack Weak Spot to their Mind Blast (or worse, that Mind 5 and +5DM power blast)! This makes it feel better as an Intense Training power.

Two:
It can be used with virtually every strike! You don’t need to succeed by a roll of 20 or more. If you hit your target at the exact target number – you get to add an additional +0 points to damage. If you needed a 21 to hit your target and got a result of 41 (the equivalent to what the original power needed to activate), then you could add +19 points to damage. Hey, how about make the base damage bonus start at 1 and add 1 more point per point of success. That way every successful strike, with your chosen field of expertise (Hand to Hand or Ranged attacks, or both), would deal bonus damage equal to the quality of the strike!

Three:
I like how you differentiate between the types of attacks. Marvel’s Lightning Fist, shouldn’t be able to use his Attack Weak Spot power when he picks up a pistol to use! It doesn’t his power theme very well. Bullseye, however…

This is definitely an idea that I’d like to try out. Thanks WaylanderPK!

Thanks Mr Jupiter, you put a lot more thought into it than I did

I think it also follows that you could have an advantage like 'piercing' that did the same thing for special attack.

I like this.

The big reason is that it rewards heavy and light hitters the same amount. As written a guy with a x5 damage multiple and Attack Weak Spot effectively does x10 on a special success, whereas someone with a x2 multiple does the equivalent of x4. With your system, both would get bonus damage based on the quality of the hit, not the value of the multiple.

To me, AWS is there to reflect people like the Batman, Daredevil and Moonknight, even Wasp. They are not heavy hitters, but they can keep up with the likes of Superman or Thor because they hit where and when it counts.

I think I am going to try this one out.

What do people think of this as an enhancement:

As a 1 pt. enhancement, you can spend a hero point to allow the bonus damage to ignore soak rolls.

It means that if someone hits well, they automatically do some damage, regardless of the amount they roll.

That seems like a good idea, but should be more than 1 point. Otherwise, the Hulk would be getting dropped by some ninja character pretty easily.

A 2 pt. enhancement might be better.

I had also been considering a leaked damage cap. My intent was to make it so that the lighter hitters with serious technique could get some traction against the powerhouses, but I don't want to turn the tables around completely, just make things interesting.

Something like:

Attack Weak Spot (1-2pts)
For 1 point you choose Hand to Hand or Ranged (for 2 you get both).
For Every point you hit your target by you do an additional point of damage. As a 1 pt. Enhancement, you can pay a hero point to allow the bonus damage to ignore soak rolls up to a total = half of your rolled damage.

To ignore soak completely? That's still WAY powerful. To bypass Armor / Soak bonuses (from Size, Tough Style, Boost, etc)? That might be more reasonable.

I'm not trying to ignore Soak completely, just allow some of the damage to bypass Soak, with a hard limit [not a flood of damage, closer to a trickle, but meaningful]. Not sure of the mechanics or limit, but I think the idea is that the Hulk would be safe from the ninja for multiple successful penetrating hits. Whereas the ninja cannot stand up to more than one swat from the Hulk.

Baelor wrote:I'm not trying to ignore Soak completely, just allow some of the damage to bypass Soak, with a hard limit [not a flood of damage, closer to a trickle, but meaningful]. Not sure of the mechanics or limit, but I think the idea is that the Hulk would be safe from the ninja for multiple successful penetrating hits. Whereas the ninja cannot stand up to more than one swat from the Hulk.

Baelor, is this right? BRUCE-CHI, a martial artist with Attack Weak Point 1 (for hand-to-hand) strikes at RUFFHOUSE (a villain with gobs of Brawn and Armor). Bruce-Chi would gain a damage bonus equal to the success of the hit that will cut through his Soak roll. Something like this?

>Bruce-Chi’s to-hit roll only succeeds by 5.
>Yay! He gets a +5 bonus to damage.
>Damage roll is 35 which brings damage total to 40 points.
>Unfortunately Ruffhouse manages a Soak roll 7 (x7 multiplier) for 49 points!
>Unless the player spends a Hero Point, the villain shrugs it off as nothing.
>However, if the Hero Point was spent, the durable villain would still take 5 Hits!

Pretty Cool! I don’t think a player would waste a Hero Point for this but it would be something. Under the rules as written, Bruce-Chi would have to have made his to-hit roll by at least 20 in order to damage Ruffhouse. This would have resulted in the villain taking (35x2=) 70 damage and managing to Soak (7x7=) 49 points of it resulting in a net loss of 21 Hits.

How might this go under your proposal?

>Bruce-Chi’s to-hit roll only succeeds by 20.
>Yay! He gets a +20 bonus to damage.
>Damage roll is 35 which brings damage total to 55 points.
>Unfortunately Ruffhouse manages a Soak roll 7 (x7 multiplier) for 49 points!
>This villain would take 6 Hits!
>If the player spends a Hero Point then the Soak roll is reduced by 20 (as per the to-hit roll).
>Ruffhouse’s Soak would become (49-20=) 29pts.
>The villain would then take (55-29=) 26 points of damage off his Hits.

That’s not too much better than the rules as written (RAW) but does require a few extra steps to figure out. Also, there is the matter of having to spend a Hero Point to achieve the 26 Hits of damage dealt. The RAW would have achieved 21 Hits in damage without the player having to spend a Hero Point.

What I was proposing is pretty close to what you have there. What I am suggesting, is that Bruce [or anyone with Attack Weak Point and this enhancement, let's call it Piercing] get a chance to leak through damage based on the quality of their strike. So something like this:

Bruce has Attack Weak Point, and the 1 Pt. enhancement Peircing.

Let's say Bruce succeeds in hitting Ruffhouse by 5, and rolls 24 damage, low enough that none gets through Ruffhose's x7 soak roll of 56. Under the system you proposed [which I like a lot, BTW], the damage would go from 24 to 29 [24 rolled damage + 5 precision damage]. Still way too low to have any effect on Ruffhouse. Fair enough.

What I am proposing is that with the Piercing enhancement, Bruce can elect to spend a hero point to allow the 5 from his to hit roll to apply as damage directly against Ruffhouse's hit points. If Bruce had hit by 20, he COULD add the +20 to the damage from his strike [in the above example, that would be 24 rolled damage + 20 precision damage = 44; still too low to hurt the brick] Instead, Bruce could spend a hero point to have the 20 points [or some portion thereof, depending on the damage cap, see below] go straight against Ruffhouse's hit points. If he chose to do so, the rolled damage would have no effect.

I intended that there be a hard cap on the amount of damage that could bypass soak this way, though I haven't come up with one yet. The idea is that a light hitter is not going to one shot anybody with this system [except maybe minions, which they should be able to in any case], but could chip away at someone with a high Soak.

Also, because this is intended to replicate the arrow to the eye, or the nerve strike punch, etc. Knockback would not apply.

Am I just beating a dead horse here. If so, I will let it go. But I think there is merit here. The issue lies in:
- making it work for light hitters without being too gross
- AND making it not really advantageous to heavy hitters.

But frankly, as Waylander PK points out, that was a problem in the original system too. The idea of a high damage bruiser getting to double their damage with the original system is pretty gross anyway.

Sorry Baelor. I think I get it. I like the idea of the piercing enhancement and the way that it allows you to forget about your “pathetic” rolled damage. With Piercing, you do an end run right around Soak and take the “to-hit” success roll value directly off an opponent’s Hits.

I think that this is great! I also agree that Knock-Back should be ignored for a Piercing attack for the reason you mentioned above. As for the damage cap, how about up to 10 points with 1 Hero Point and up to 20 damage with 3 Hero Points. That way they can get more out of a really good roll, but it’s going to cost them! [I was originally thinking of a requiring a Hero Die for the higher damage threshold, but the player might be better off using the H.D. for the initial to-hit or damage rolls.]

That could work Mr. Jupiter. I agree that a Hero Die would likely be more useful at the front end, but there is nthing to prevent someone with sufficent Hero Points to use them on both ends of the roll.

I like the Hero Point idea because it places the decision in the hands of the player - how badly does [s]he want this shot to work.

Also wondering whether this is actually a general enhancement rather than one that is tied to AWS? Would this work more generally? Mental attacks or Special Attacks with Piercing, for example.

I think it could. Mental Defense is a little closer to a Soak roll than a mental dodge. Mental attacks usually do very little damage, however. Mind Spikes is a triggered attack response and shouldn't merit this Enhancement. Probably Mind Blast, which requires a Mind roll against the target's regular Defense could use it though.

Still, I kind of feel like Attack Weak Point should have some kind of advantage when having the Piercing enhancement applied to it. Here are some ideas:

1/ When Piercing is applied to Attack Weak Point the maximum thresholds become 15 Hits for 1 Hero Point and 25 Hits for 2 Hero Points.

2/ When the Piercing enhancement is added to Attack Weak Point the player can spend 3 Hero Points and have up to 30 points of damage (dependant upon their success roll) able to bypass Soak and come directly off the target’s Hits.

3/ Reduce the benefit of Piercing for all other powers. Thresholds become just 5 points for 1 Hero Point and 10 Points for 2 Hero Points. That way this Intense Training power becomes way cooler!

Regarding the original thought: I find Attack Weak Spot only too strong if you double damage before applying Soak. We play it that you deduct soak and double remaining damage after that. If you do it like that AWS works just fine in my eyes.