A dilema with barrier and continued effect

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Hizeru
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A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by Hizeru »

I have two party members in my campaign with barriers with the perk continued effect(CE). All was well till the barrier was used in our first arc and suddenly as a gm i wasn't sure how this barrier was working. I was conflicted wether my caster could be doing other things and if buying off damage could happen before defense rolls and how did this interact with overwhelming.

I'd love to hear any opinions on how to handles this or anything from other gms that had things like this, that they greatly underestamated for their first sessions.

The second is a custom barrier ability meant to simulate a fire aura that causes attackers to take damage. Its built merging rules from magic arcane, barrier and two different interpretations/instances of CE. Now i greatly misinterpreted CE when i first started helping people make characters, some how ignoring words like deal damage or heal over time. I'm not entirely sure the ability as it stands doesn't actually work but its feels clutterd, clumsy, and problematic. I'm wondering how other gms would build such an ability to help give me some insight on a rework im doing before the next arc of our campaign.
Clay
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by Clay »

I may not have your issue perfectly right, so please correct me if I'm interpreting it wrong. But here goes:

1) Continued Effect really should only be bought if the Barrier damages others. Using it to make the barrier itself last longer is kind of going against the spirit of the Ability.
2) Barrier replaces your Defense Roll. You roll Barrier, and then you can buy off remaining damage 1 for 1. You cannot, after rolling Barrier, decide to make a normal Defense Roll instead. If you are taking advantage of Protect to defend another, or you are keeping a Barrier up for the same purpose, you must spend the Endurance as soon as you make the Barrier roll. You can't roll Barrier, then let the protect-ee roll Defense, then use Endurance to beef up your original Barrier roll. Odds are the protect-ee has already rolled for their Defense anyway.
3) A Fire Aura seems pretty simple. Build Barrier with the perks Effective, Continued Effect, and Affinity: Fire. Pick out some Flaws to tone down the Endurance cost.

When someone attacks you (without the Ranged Perk) and you defend with your Fire Aura, they take 1 DX x your Barrier Roll in damage, and take 1/2 that for a number of rounds equal to your Barrier Ability. Keep in mind that the Attack roll must fail for you to do this damage. This means either beating the Attack Roll with the Barrier dice or buying off all Damage.

Does that help?
Hizeru
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by Hizeru »

Thanks Clay. I think that makes sense to me, some of my team might take a little convincing but they'll get over it.

The fire aura was problematic only because the idea is that the character temporarily lights himself on fire, so that he's not defending with the aura hes just on fire and when people hit him they were taking damage. we eliminated the buying of defense aspect of barrierand just used the damage calculating aspect of barrier.
beknar
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by beknar »

This is perfect for my players! I had no idea that I could attach perks/flaws to any of my abilities (that make logical sense), not just Attack. Awesome. So that means I can attach Multiple Targets for a barrier and put a flaw on there to tone down the END cost to use it to protect multiple people.
Clay
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by Clay »

Hizeru: Sounds like that would work fine.

beknar: Yep! You can apply Perks and Flaws to pretty much anything. You’ll see a handful of cases among the sample characters. (Both Ai and Fukiko’s Barrier, for instance.)
hotaru
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by hotaru »

Ok...so the Defense 4/5 at Fukikos stats means: 2+2 (Quick), if she doesn't use her Barrier and 2+3 if she uses her Barrier?

I'm confused, because at the description of Barrier it says Barrier dice instead of Defense and at the Defense-roll explanation part is this box which says "Some Abilities, like Barrier and Teleport, can also modify your Defense Roll."...and one of my players asked how to take his Barrier into account. His char has Slow at 2 and Barrier at 3, would his Defense be 0 if not using his Barrier and 5 while using Barrier?
Clay
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Re: A dilema with barrier and continued effect

Post by Clay »

Right, the normal Bonuses (Quick, Evasive, etc.) do not apply to Barrier. It is purely your Barrier dice (plus the two-dice default, of course.)

Technically a Defense of “0” is interpreted as a roll of two negative dice, BTW (Roll two dice and take the lowest). There is never a situation where you don’t roll dice unless the rules specifically say “treat as zero."
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