Special Weakness... Psychic Backlash.

[Of The Game People]

First of all Id like to say hello to all the OVA people out there, Ive been playing for over a year now and decided to post and request some help.

As stated above I decided that I wanted my character to have a special drawback everytime he used the Psychic power. My idea behind it was that everytime he used it, there was a chance of him experiencing mental trauma that would manifest as strain on his body resulting in him talking damage. I thought it should scale depending on the points spent on the weakness from -1 to -3. The easiest way I thought to inplement this was to have the -1 to -3 be the damage modifier on how much damage he took. I thought that to be simple enough but there has to be a difficulty setting...

As far as the difficulty, to me atleast, I thought it should scale to how much he exerted himself mentally with his power. As of now we have been using a base DN of 6 for the lowest ability on the psychic chart and scaling the DN up one level for everystep up the chart, so Reading Memories would be DN 10. (Example my character rolls against the DN of 10 but only rolls a 6, with the weakness at -3 he would take 12 damage.)

Now that I explained all that (I hope it was understandable lol XD) Im not sure how well all that really works. My problem is that I dont want the Weakness to be to underpowered or overpowered for my character. Any thoughts or insight would be very helpful thanks.

[Father of Dragons]

This is a really neat idea for drawback! The implementation you have seems reasonable enough, but I would do it slightly differently. It seems to me that in anime where psychic abilities have backlash, it is often possible to succeed and still take backlash, which implies to me that success and backlash might be separate rolls. (Thus, in your example, you'd roll against a Difficulty of 10 twice, once to read minds and once for backlash.) The other thing I would do is have the backlash do endurance damage, not health damage (of course, once you run out of endurance, endurance damage becomes health damage anyway).

[Of The Game People]

Thanks for the reply! And yes I did forget to mention like you said I also made it to rolls, on for the ability itself and the second to see if the backlash actually effects him during that use. Ive only played the character with this ability enough to make a dozen or so rolls with this weakness so Im not convinced on the difficulty part of it just yet. I really want it to be enough of a weakness to the character but I dont want it to be so much so that it kills him quickly or after only a few uses. It seems alright for the moment however, and please be sure to give it a try if you like it! XD

[Father of Dragons]

I might try it.

If you find that the character isn't failing their backlash checks often enough, you could subtract the disadvantage from the dice rolled for the check; ie, if you have a psychic ability at +4, and the disadvantage at -2, you'd roll 6 dice for the ability check but only 4 for the backlash check. This'd make Psychic Backlash -3 pretty bad!

[Of The Game People]

Thanks for the suggestion, I havent thought of trying that yet so I may give that a go and see if I like that better.

[Beli]

Hi there.

Sorry for chiming in late, but I've been a bit busy with holiday, family and decorating over the weekend, so I am playing catchup at the moment.

I like this weakness, but here's a thought for you to mull over. With regards to dice rolls, I prefer a single set of dice rolls to tell me everything I need to know. Combat is performed with a single set of dice rolls for each player. There's a little math involved, but I don't mind math.

Here's another mathematical idea for you to try. It should allow for successful checks while still giving the chance of backlash depending on how difficult the situation is.

In your example of needing a TN 10 to read minds, 10 and up would be a success. How about using a multiplier to devise a second target number for the same roll.

Using the same roll to determine succes of power, use the following table to determine backlash results:

-1 - Roll must be greater than TN x 1.5 or suffer backlash
-2 - Roll must be greater than TN x 2.0 or suffer backlash
-3 - Roll must be greater than TN x 2.5 or suffer backlash

This may not seem like much, but if you have a TN 10 roll to make, at level 1 you would need that roll to also be a TN 15 or you would suffer backlash. Level 2 would be TN 20, and level 3 would be TN 25.

Of course, using this system would prevent you from using the multiplier system of you initial post (which I did like), unless you wanted to punish the character for taking such a powerful weakness. If you went this way, it would probably be best to inflict the difference between the roll and Backlash TN as endurance damage.

A player with a TN 10 read minds check rolls 14.

Level 1 - takes 1 point of endurance damage from backlash
Level 2 - takes 6 points of endurance damage from backlash
Level 3 - takes 11 points of endurance damage from backlash.

It will hurt their endurance quickly, especially if you put a set damage amount to it.

This way, you only need to roll dice once to get your results, and it really gives you a big chance of danger at higher levels.

But, as it is, this is all just something to mull over. I still like your original writeup, and if you were going the backlash only on failure route, that would be a great way of doing it with a single roll.

[Father of Dragons]

Some interesting ideas there, Beli! One problem with your approach is that a psychic ability check that failed would also automatically cause backlash, which seems kind of funny, and doesn't seem to quite match story logic. The questions is: is there any single roll approach that can give both a chance of backlash and a chance of failure without tying them together?

One approach might be to borrow the idea of width from the One Roll Engine (ORE) which is the number of identical numbers in the roll (well, sort of). In this approach, to avoid backlash at -1, you'd need at least one pair, at -2 at least on triple and at -3 at least one quad, with backlash damage being the amount short you were on width x 5 endurance damage. The major problem with this approach is it adds an entirely new die roll mechanism for something that's supposed to be simple. A minor problem is that backlash becomes inevitable once you have too few dice.

I can see why you'd like to keep to a single die roll, but I can't currently see any way to make that work nicely. It's an interesting problem, though.

[Beli]

Hmmm... ok. My approach considered blacklash a possibility even during failure. Adding something similar to "If power is not used successfully, backlash does not occur" would cover that eventuality.

I do like your needing pairs, trips or quads to not suffer backlash. It adds an interesting twist to the rule set. I can see the added mechanics being a little bit of a problem though, but it may be an idea for something down the line as well.

[Clay]

If I were doing this myself, I would probably either make using the Psychic Ability have a flat Endurance cost or give a flat number the character has to exceed the DN by. Calculating a multiplier every time someone uses a Psychic ability might get old fast. (Player: What the heck is 1.5 x 15, GM!? GM: I DUNNO. YOU FAIL REGARDLESS.) If you do not want it to affect failed attempts, simply add a descriptor stating such.

I realize these are just slight variations on what you said, Beli.

[Beli]

No worries, Clay. We're all tossing ideas around, but you probably have the best thoughts on the system since it's yours.