Saturday, January 16, 2016

Power: Scorpion Spear

Famous Quote:
I oblige, come forthwith.
This is an ability that has many different ways to stat out. After thinking it through, I think I'll base it off of warp. Warp is kind of an expensive ability, so there might be cheaper ways to stat this out, but this one works, no problems at all. The canon ability brings an enemy in a state of stun close to Scorpion, doing a *tiny* amount of damage (which falls below the scope of resolution in GURPS, in my opinion) at which point, he is free to proceed however he likes; strong attack, combo, what have you. Weaknesses are that the ability is easily parried, blocked, or dodged, and that it functions by line of sight in a way, requiring a pathway wide enough for the target to travel through. Let's see how this might work out in GURPS.



We'll be using this one again.
Starting off, through sheer serendipity, warping has a warping sickness condition that already create the effect of dizziness brought on by the successful attack. In the settings that I use, it isn't common to have immunity to warp sickness, but if necessary, you can add it back in as a 10% enhancement to the advantage affliction, so only one point in most cases. Now, first off, starting with modifiers to warp in Basic Set, assuming that 10 yards is further than he will ever need to throw his weapon, we can already put a 50% discount on warp saying that the warp can only travel 10 yards at most. Using Powers we need to add that we warp to a fixed location that can move, namely, the person who used the ability, which is another 60% discount. Let's also base it on a generic power source for another 10%. Finally, it is blockable and parry-able, so we add another 10% off. The needing a clear path with nothing in the way is an environmental limitation I'd consider "Common" for an additional 10% discount; a clear open area is very easy to find, but it is also possible that an opponent using effective tactics could set himself up in an area where this is not possible.
Now, next we need to speed things up for an instantaneous warp. We need to add 10 levels of Reliable to warp immediately. Putting that all together, we have:

I'm Coming! (-80%): Warp (Generic Common Power Modifier, -10%; Range Limit, 10 Yards, -50%; Anchored, Movable Anchor, -60%; Environmental, Clear Wide Path, -10%; Reliable, +10, +50%) [20]

The modifier is an even -80%, the lowest we can get, so that is that. I originally had the block-able modifier here, but thinking about it, it made more sense on the affliction... and it saves us more points anyway since we already hit the floor here in discounts.

Next we need to stat out the affliction, which will have a 200% enhancement represented by the above advantage we just statted out. We need to give it our generic power modifier, increase 1/2D to 100%, and lower maximum range to 10 yards. That comes out to.

Scorpion Spear (+175%): Affliction 1 (Generic Common Power Modifier, -10%; Advantage, I'm Coming!, +200%; Increased 1/2d, +15%; Reduced Range, 10 Yards, -30%; Blockable, Also can be parried, -10%) [28]

Roll against an appropriate ability, perhaps throwing(knife) or kusarigama, or innate attack, if it is not defended against, and the target fails an HT roll, they are warped in front of the user and are stunned.

Other Notes

Note, if you are lucky and have a 15% power modifier like sorcery, you knock the cost of this ability down to 27 points. If it seems necessary, add the 10% enhancement to Scorpion Spear, or 1 point, to make the stunning happen in settings where immunity to warp sickness is common; or do it anyway because it is only 1 point. Some additional enhancements to make the HT roll automatically fail would be helpful, but I'm not sure what it would cost. Probably a +10%, or 1 more point on the affliction to cancel out the limitation of blockable, turning it into a special effect, probably not a fair price except when taken with blockable at the -10% level. I'm also a tiny bit confused about whether it is necessary to roll against IQ to warp based on the example text on afflictions that cause advantages in the Basic Set. If necessary, the advantage might cost an entire 50 points more to negate the need of an IQ+Talent roll to successfully warp the opponent.

1 comment:

  1. This doesn't remove the HT roll to prevent afflictions though, and immunity to teleportation shouldn't really prevent this. I was thinking maybe Stretching + Force Extensions + Shoving People Around would work better.

    ReplyDelete

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