Damage v. Soak - What to Aim For

[Dragonfly]

Hey guys,

I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems to me that BASHMAN's original thinking was that your average Soak should probably come in at about x2 less your average attack damage. That, at least, is how I read the fact that you can purchase up to 5 ranks in Special Attack, but only up to 3 ranks in Armor. (I know this is assuming a great deal, but that was my initial thinking.)

Generally speaking, I've followed that approach in my games. If the average PC attack does x6 Damage, I tend to design villains (at least run-of-the-mill villains) with an average Soak of x4. This guarantees that some damage gets through on most hits. Thus far, combats haven't gone too fast. Indeed, they seem to move along at an appropriately dramatic pace.

Glancing once again at the archetypes, however, I notice that MANY examples have Soak values that exceed attack values (or at least match them). This isn't universal, of course, but it does appear to be a trend.

My questions are:

1) How dos the balance b/w Soak and Damage work out in YOUR games?

2) In your experience - does having matching Soak and Damage values (i.e. having the average damage at x5 and the average soak ALSO at x5) slow down the game appreciably? How about having Soak values that exceed the average Damage values by a multiplier or two? I imagine that this would slow things down to a grind, but perhaps I am missing something.

3) Do you think a house rule that allows for the purchase of up to 5 ranks in Armor (rather than the current 3 ranks) would break the sytem?

Just curious! Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Best,

Dragonfly

[dugfromthearth]

In a normal game system you have defensive characters and offensive characters. A "tank" might have soak higher than their damage, a "blaster" might have damage higher than soak.

But BASH does not really have a way for teams to coordinate this (controlling enemy attacks) so having the different roles doe not make much sense. You just would go after the blaster first, then the tank.

There are ways around a high soak. Weaken Brawn, attack weak point, for damage. Or just daze, immobilize or otherwise prevent them from acting even if you don't hurt them.

So a soak equal to attacks is not too bad, even a bit higher can be dealt with. But a soak a bit below attacks is fine too.

Whereas a low defense is just generally useless. That is low vs the attacker. A low defense (x2) is generally useless against supers, but may keep the minions from affecting you.

On the other hand a high defense is much harder for attackers to get around. You have to hit to daze or have other effects.

So I would rather see a moderate defense and a high soak, then a high defense and a moderate soak

[BASHMAN]

Fights where soak and damage are the same tend to take longer- until someone makes that killer damage roll or really bad soak roll.

I did design it that way so that fights would finish quicker.

Yes, some characters have higher soak than damage output- that's their schtick. They're "tankers" to borrow from video games, not "scrappers".

I wouldn't advise doing a chart with max values, to me such a listed maximum effectively becomes the minimum in short order (otherwise your character is "handicapped" according to the other players who have all maxed theirs out).

Instead, my guideline is to build what makes sense for your character.

For damage and soak values, consider these as benchmarks of what you could (barely) damage and use them as guidelines for what you want to build:

x1 A glass window
x2 A wooden door
x3 A metal locker
x4 A brick wall
x5 A metal door
x6
x7
x8 A tank
x9
x10 A battleship

[Dragonfly]

Howdy dugfromthearth,

Thanks for the reply! I agree with you pretty much across the board. I'm not looking to create roles in the system or anything like that. I'm really more curious to know how people structure their games, and what their actual "in play" experience has been.

I too am finding that having somewhat lower Soaks is okay. Everyone, afterall, has 100 Hits, so its okay if a little bit of damage gets through. Say two "bricks" are fighting. Both do x6 Damage and both have x4 Soaks. On average, 15 Hits will get through with a punch. It seems about right that 6 or 7 hits will take one of the opponents down. That seems cinematically appropriate. Sure, I'm not taking into account rolling doubles, but that can happen both on Soak and Damage rolls, so I figure it about balances out. I'm more concerned that I'm not taking into account Critical Hits, Attack Weak Point, and the like. When I start to think about those variables, I start to think that my "brick" types should have higher Soak scores.

Oh, and I totally agree with you about the Defense issue.

Best,

Dragonfly

[Dragonfly]

Hey BASHMAN,

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you about doing charts with max values. I'm totally against that, and for the same reasons. I've had my fill of that in other games (and actually, I never partook).

That being said, I DO like to make benchmark tables, precisely so that my players know what makes sense for their characters. If they tell me, "I want my character to hit as hard as, and be as tough as the Hulk," I want to be able to say, "Okay, well here's the range that makes sense for your character then."

The benchmarks you provided are certainly useful, but they also push me towards wanting the option of building a character with a x10 Soak, which is why I'm entertaining the notion of that house rule that allows for Armor 5. Again, I'd like to accomodate the player that tells me, "I want my character to be as tough as a battleship!" The more I think about it, the more I think it will be okay.

I'm only hesitant because I don't want fights to take much longer than they do now, but if I'm careful about articulating what the numbers mean, I think I'll be okay.

Thanks for helping me think this through!

Best,

Dragonfly

[BASHMAN]

Here is an average x8 Soak at Ground Zero of a Nuclear Blast:

Ave Soak = 56 Damage per hit.

Ground Zero of Nuclear blast = ave. of 70 Damage, three times. 70-56= 14 x3 = 42 Dmg.

So a character with 100 Hits and x8 Soak will easily survive most nuclear blasts (but he will be damaged).

There are ways to improve a character's soak beyond x8 by RAW. Density Increase for instance, or buying Armor w/ Extra Effect vs. a certain kind of damage.

[urbwar]

Doesn't cosmic might affect soak rolls, as it affects brawn rolls?

[BASHMAN]

Doesn't cosmic might affect soak rolls, as it affects brawn rolls?

Yep. That's another way to do it (assuming the Narrator allows it). Generally, I'm cool with people taking 5 levels in a Cosmic Power in a World Class game. However, my current campaign is Street Level (now at about 35 pts per character w/ XP spending) but I am allowing 1 character to buy "Time & Space". It is the focus of an entire story-arc (he cannot control this power and it's tearing holes in time & space, giving me ample chances to send them to WWII (thanks Vigilance Press) and to alien star systems (Thanks ION Guard).

[urbwar]

Well I wasn't thinking outside of a cosmic level game. I was just clarifying that since it affects Brawn, it would affect soak (as soak is based on Brawn)

[Dragonfly]

Hiya BASHMAN,

Those are all tried and true ways of going beyond the x8 Soak. I use them all regularly. I'm thinking that using Boost 2 (Brawn - Only for Soak) would probably work as well. Those are all cool options, if they fit the character concept, but mechanically they are not much different than having a Brawn 5 + Armor 5. I'm thinking that although it's not RAW, going with the Armor 5 might simply be more elegant sometimes, character conceptwise. Given that it IS possible to accomplish the same thing in other ways (and for about the same point totals), given that the soak-of-two-less-than-damage is not a widely adopted practice, and given that it doesn't seem to be that much of a problem to have battles between people of similar Soak and Damage values, I don't see what the drawback of this house rule is.

Of course, I may regret it later.

Best,

Dragonfly

[Dragonfly]

P.S. Is a nuclear blast REALLY only a x10 attack? I'd say it's far more. I might break it up into multiple damage waves: the concussion, the heat, the suffocation one would suffer from the debris, the flash attack, etc.

[BeardedDork]

x10 is adequate. sure your hero will most likely survive, if he has a huge soak, but at world class and beyond survival should probably not be the heroes concern. To use superman as the benchmark x8 soak guy, he can take the blast, it will hurt, but he can take it, his concern is going to be for the millions of people it will kill. His motivation to stop the bomb from going off is at least equal to any one who would not survive the blast. Is it realistic, not really, but it is comic book realistic, which is more to the point.

[Lindharin]

P.S. Is a nuclear blast REALLY only a x10 attack? I'd say it's far more. I might break it up into multiple damage waves: the concussion, the heat, the suffocation one would suffer from the debris, the flash attack, etc.

Actually, I think that is what Bashman implied (emphasis mine):

Ground Zero of Nuclear blast = ave. of 70 Damage, three times. 70-56= 14 x3 = 42 Dmg.

So a nuke in Bash is defined as three separate x10 attacks. And actually, that's even in the book: page 81-82. It is three simultaneous x10 attacks with a mile radius burst... Then it does a single x10 damage to everything out to 2 mile radius.

[Lindharin]

I've used a slightly different set of benchmarks for character creation in my games, where I look at the sum of Attack + Damage , and compare them to Defense + Soak, and I find our battles work well when the characters fall into a similar range (their sums are within 2-3 of each other).

Note: For speed, I'll refer to Attack + Damage as A.D., and Defense + Soak as D.S.

In the Bash book, the archetypes generally have AD and DS sums of 7 to 9, with specific archetypes being more extreme (like the more offensive oriented blaster has an AD of around 11 and a DS of like 5, if I recall correctly). I've been using around an 8-9 as a "sweet spot" in most of my own builds, and encourage my players to do the same.

And because of this AD / DS benchmark, I find my characters being more overall balanced. If I have a high soak concept, then I have to limit myself to a lower defense. Sure, he'll soak most hits, but he'll be vulnerable to attacks that bypass soak because he won't have a high defense to use against them either.

In Bash, you could make a legal 25 pt character with x8 soak and x7 defense. However, in my opinion, that would be unbalanced in many games (especially if you throw in a bit of Mind Shield). By balancing the sum of Defense plus Soak, and Attack plus Damage, rather than balancing each score individually, I find the end result works much better.

Of course, using this as a benchmark is not really useful on an individual basis, comparing two specific characters, because someone with a high Attack and Defense, and low Damage and Soak may be a boring fight against someone with the exact opposite stats, since one will hit but do nothing, and the other will never hit.

But if the PCs and NPCs are built to their concepts, and you have a range of concepts across the team, then as long as they all have combined AD and DS values in the same ballpark, you will probably end up with someone who can be a good matchup against anyone on the other side. Then it just becomes a case of figuring out which hero is the best bet against each bad guy, which always reminds me of the old X-Men comics where shortly into the fight they'd realize they had bad pair-ups with their enemies and call out to switch targets.

It also encourages Teamwork actions since the high accuracy guy and the high damage guy can team up for the best of both worlds. This makes my players a lot happier, and more involved, in my experience.

And one of the cool things is that even the lower 25 pt archetypes and the higher 40 pt archetypes come out with similar AD / DS benchmarks - the 25 pointers might average a hair less, but not much if at all. In my opinion, that is part of why in Bash a 25 pt. character can play on the same team as a 40 pt character; the point difference doesn't necessarily mean their dice totals are really different. The 40 point character has more utility and variety, which the 25 point character makes up for with extra hero points.

So I guess my conclusion is that a x10 soak is pretty extreme, but not going to break the game IF he doesn't have more than 1 or 2 in Defense, and doesn't take a high Mental Defense either. Then there will be a number of alternative ways to challenge him, rather than just raw damage.

[Dragonfly]

P.S. Is a nuclear blast REALLY only a x10 attack? I'd say it's far more. I might break it up into multiple damage waves: the concussion, the heat, the suffocation one would suffer from the debris, the flash attack, etc.

Actually, I think that is what Bashman implied (emphasis mine):

Ground Zero of Nuclear blast = ave. of 70 Damage, three times. 70-56= 14 x3 = 42 Dmg.

So a nuke in Bash is defined as three separate x10 attacks. And actually, that's even in the book: page 81-82. It is three simultaneous x10 attacks with a mile radius burst... Then it does a single x10 damage to everything out to 2 mile radius.

Ah! My bad. That's what I get for reading and posting when I'm running late to work. I was going fast and simply missed the "three times" part. At a simple x10, ROBIN would survive the blast, even if the nuke rolled pretty well!

Best,

Dragonfly