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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Papa Gruff on June 05, 2010, 12:54:09 AM
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Hey there. We just finished a session were the wizard of my group wanted to do a zone wide attack on four mercenaries who wanted to lay destruction onto his homestead. He gathered eight shifts of power witch would have inflicted six stress (-2 shifts to make the attack a zone attack).
Now, the rules state clearly that everybody who is in the attacked zone suffer the stress of the attack if they are not able to counter it (YW 251). And thats where the debate started. I as the GM (who arguably isn't totally solid in all the rules during the third session) was of the opinion, that potentially 24 or more points of stress (four targets in the attacked zone) are very very much for an evocation with the power of eight. I still stand by this. In my opinion the effect is far to great for the coast and the risk invested, but the rules state clearly that everybody in the zone gets attacked.
Have I read something wrong? Do the spray attack rules apply in this case and the damage gets divided?? I'm confused and a bit angry about myself, because I ruled the enormous damage down at the gaming table and the following debate got rather heated (again sorry to my guys). How do you guys handle this?
Edit: Sorry if this has come up before. It's really late here and I just wanted to drop the question before going to bed. I haven't searched as much as I could have...
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Its very powerful, but its by the rules. The downside to zonewide attacks is that you also hit any allies that are in the zone, as well as yourself if you are there. As a GM, don't ever let all the opponents make themselves easy targets for zone wide attacks.
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Not only does it hit all four guys, it hits the zone itself with the same force. Tossing around zone wide attacks in public areas usually results in calls to Homeland Security. Even if no one saw it happen, it's going to look like a bomb went off and will be treated accordingly. Look how much time Dresden wasted being grilled by the FBI and the agent was completely on his side because Murphy vouched for him. Most players aren't going to be that lucky.
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Yeah ... I get the rules an all (after consulting them after the session). Never the less, to me this is hugely out of proportion. In the end I have nothing against my player making a stand for himself and on his home turf. It never was the plan to burn his house down. Not by some nameless mercenaries anyways. To me it's just to much stress for (at least in some situations) essentially not a lot of cost. It also seems not very consistent with the spray attack rules were the damage gets divided (I can see the difference between those two, no worries).
The attack in question was a lightning attack witch was unleashed on some pure mortal guys who wouldn't have taken consequences. How do I do this? If this is that powerful, where is the drawback for the wizard? Should they be taken out "Dead" by such an obviously strong attack? I'm not really sure how to scale for such an event. It's not that difficult to make your allies get clear of a zone and then simply toast the hole damn thing with an +6 attack.
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If he fried a group of pure mortals with that, then I'd absolutely make taken outs die. A six shift evocation attack is clear intent to kill, so lawbreaker would have been appropriate for deaths caused.
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If he fried a group of pure mortals with that, then I'd absolutely make taken outs die. A six shift evocation attack is clear intent to kill, so lawbreaker would have been appropriate for deaths caused.
Ok. That's a ruling I can life with and that I guess my players can get behind. As I understood it, the attacker determines what happens with the taken out. But I guess it is reasonable, that a weapon: 6 attack with some more shifts from not defending properly would kill a pure mortal and as the take out has to be within reason thats that.
Naturally my wizard wanted to avoid to kill these guys with the evocation. If we agree that this is not possible in this particular incident, then I have absolutely no problem with allowing this insane damage. I would like to hear more opinions on this matter from anyone who is interested...
Edit: I still think it's a lot of effect for very little effort. Still smells glitchy to me.
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If he fried a group of pure mortals with that, then I'd absolutely make taken outs die.
You don't get to decide for your players what happens when they take someone out with an attack.
A six shift evocation attack is clear intent to kill, so lawbreaker would have been appropriate for deaths caused.
Hardly a clear intent to kill on professional killers depending on the situation. 4 Mercs? I'd have two of them start off by
moving into the zone and declaring a covering fire block on the Wizard to keep him from zapping them. Going by averages
that's 5 points of defense (3 for skill plus dice, +2 for teamwork) right off the bat, +2 for Armor and even rolling the 8 he
needs to land that Weapon 6 hit and he's only looking at 7 stress. At least one rank in Endurance for the Mercs, taking
the 3 stress on the track and they walk away with a Moderate Consequence, equal to a bad sunburn. Does sunburn kill
people in your game?
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You don't get to decide for your players what happens when they take someone out with an attack.
Six shifts on a standard 2 point stress track mortal can be absorbed with a moderate consequence, equal to a bad sunburn and taking the remaining 2 point hit on the track. Why does sunburn kill people in your game?
weapon: 6 effects kill people in my game. Grenades are merely weapon 4, and you don't throw those without trying to kill someone. Of course, if they were named NPC's they might take a bigger hit before going down, but that doesn't change the fact that you are trying to hit them with artillery level firepower. The players have some control over taken out results, but it has to be within reason. And within reason for this is deciding whether the guy's body twitches or smokes when it gets blasted with enough power to take him out in a single hit.
This doesn't mean that you just hit a PC with lawbreaker out of nowhere. But it does mean that, after being warned that the attack the wizard is preparing has a good chance of outright killing the opponent, the PC has to make a choice whether or not to risk it. And if they risk it, it is absolutely appropriate to slap a lawbreaker stunt on them.
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Six shifts on a standard 2 point stress track mortal can be absorbed with a moderate consequence, equal to a bad sunburn and taking the remaining 2 point hit on the track. Why does sunburn kill people in your game?
Six shifts of power makes for weapon:6. Attacks have a minimum of 1 shift to succeed. That's 7 points of stress. If someone has a 2 point physical stress track, that's 5 over their track. To avoid being taken out, they need to take a minor and moderate or a severe Consequence.
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Six shifts of power makes for weapon:6. Attacks have a minimum of 1 shift to succeed.
Attacks have a minimum of 0 shifts to succeed. It won't do any damage without a boost, but it still does connect.
If someone has a 2 point physical stress track, that's 5 over their track. To avoid being taken out, they need to take a minor and moderate or a severe Consequence.
And being mercenaries, they probably have a rank in Endurance, that's 4 over the track and a bad sunburn might not stop a trained killer using heavy weaponry. Should you be required to whittle them down over half a dozen rounds with 1 point attacks while they blow up your house and hose down the entire neighborhood with bullets?
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Attacks have a minimum of 0 shifts to succeed. It won't do any damage without a boost, but it still does connect.
And being mercenaries, they probably have a rank in Endurance, that's 4 over the track and a bad sunburn might not stop a trained killer using heavy weaponry. Should you be required to whittle them down over half a dozen rounds with 1 point attacks while they blow up your house and hose down the entire neighborhood with bullets?
Part of the point you are missing is that they aren't going to take anything more than a mild consequence, what with being unnamed enemies and all. Therefore, the mechanical effect of giving them sunburns is bypassed by the narratively appropriate result of killing them, since they did just get hit by an artillery level blast of power. You would never see Harry blasting a normal human, mercenary or not, with a full blast of his most powerful flame attack, because he knows full well that that is 1st law territory. You should hold the PC's by the same standards, unless you are changing the setting.
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weapon: 6 effects kill people in my game. Grenades are merely weapon 4, and you don't throw those without trying to kill someone.
Going by that reasoning, EVERY weapon rating from 1 on up should kill people in your game. You don't shoot people with pistols or stab them with knives without trying to kill someone.
Of course, if they were named NPC's they might take a bigger hit before going down, but that doesn't change the fact that you are trying to hit them with artillery level firepower.
The difference between a grenade and actual artillery is a couple of orders of magnitude. "Artillery Level Firepower" is a meaningless term in this context unless you want to talk about a Wizard's Death Curse, which could pretty easily inflict a Weapon: 20 hit on 4+ zones at once.
The players have some control over taken out results, but it has to be within reason.
To use the exact quote, "it has to be within the realm of reason". It's entirely within the realm of reason that a burst of electricity, a fireball or a grenade didn't kill the target but otherwise rendered him combat ineffective, it happens in the real world every single day.
And within reason for this is deciding whether the guy's body twitches or smokes when it gets blasted with enough power to take him out in a single hit.
So everyone ever knocked out by a grenade was killed by it? I'll be sure to let one my buddy Jay know that he's dead now; he'll be rather shocked at the news.
Part of the point you are missing is that they aren't going to take anything more than a mild consequence, what with being unnamed enemies and all. Therefore, the mechanical effect of giving them sunburns is bypassed by the narratively appropriate result of killing them, since they did just get hit by an artillery level blast of power.
And just how do you figure this out? Wait for them to take the consequence and blow up your house or kill a few dozen innocent bystanders in a hail of gunfire?
The point you're missing is that it is entirely within the realm of reason for one of these attacks to not actually kill the target. Fortunately, it's the player who gets to decide if the target dies or not.
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The comparison with grenades was to demonstrate that much power shows clear intent to kill, not to say that it always happens. The nature of the adjective ladder is that +2 to an effect often represents an order of magnitude greater in effect. That's why swords and grenades are separated by that amount. The point is that weapon: 6 effects are dangerously strong, and any wizard capable of using such should be fully aware of the likely consequences of using them. It strikes me as extremely unrealistic, and counter to the very nature of the setting, for a wizard to casually use those kinds of attacks on pure mortals, without some expectation of death. I could easily see reason in letting a mortal or two survive such a hit if the rolled well enough on their athletics to represent the fact it grazed them, but in the give scenario, that would pretty much not happen. At best, the player would expect them to have an athletics of three, so assuming he meets the control roll, at least one of the four guys he roasts is eating 12+ stress. There is no way a player should be able to do that and escape the narrative consequences of breaking a law of magic. In the extreme circumstance of the PC having evidence of his magic being self-defense, and justifying the killing on those grounds, you might get out of lawbreaker, but at the very least, mercenaries would be dead, and the wardens would want you that way.
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The comparison with grenades was to demonstrate that much power shows clear intent to kill,
Dresden's Force Ring is a Weapon: 4 attack, exactly equal to using a hand grenade on someone. He uses it on mortals all the time, to date none of them have been blown into little pieces by an "artillery level blast of power", to use your description of it. Not some of the time, not occasionally, never, not even once.
Does Dresden have a clear intent to kill when he uses a force ring on a mortal? You say it's clear he does, I strongly disagree.
not to say that it always happens.
So it's within the realm of reason that the target survives. That completely satisfies the requirement per the rules for taking out, that means that every single target over the entire course of the players wizard constitution extended life survives if he so desires it. A Weapon: 4 evocation isn't equal to a grenade in any case, the difference is that the grenade isn't inflicting his will on reality. If the will of the caster is that the target not die, he doesn't, as simple as that.
It strikes me as extremely unrealistic, and counter to the very nature of the setting, for a wizard to casually use those kinds of attacks on pure mortals, without some expectation of death.
The setting itself disagrees with your premise.
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And just how do you figure this out? Wait for them to take the consequence and blow up your house or kill a few dozen innocent bystanders in a hail of gunfire?
The point you're missing is that it is entirely within the realm of reason for one of these attacks to not actually kill the target. Fortunately, it's the player who gets to decide if the target dies or not.
Luminos is figuring that out by the rules, theres a section that talks about scaling, and how low level mooks will usually only have a minor consequence to spend. Let me find you some quotes.
In general, nameless NPCs should never accept consequences—when they take stress past their stress track, they’re taken out.
Supporting NPCs should not fight to the bitter, bitter end—the most determined of them should fight to a moderate consequence at most before you concede the conflict to the PCs.
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Also, I disagree with you, whats to stop my powerful wizard from casting say, and 8 shift evocation versus Sally who works behind the Burger King counter (Sally F'ed up my order, and put mayonnaise on my whopper)? Sally only has a stress track of two, and it hits, and she rolls a 0 on her defense. Sally gets hit for SIXTEEN shifts of damage. How in the hell are you going to say that she doesn't die? Its eight times her capacity to absorb damage.
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Eh. A baseball bat is Weapon 2 and seems to lend itself to inflicting bruises and knockouts. A .45 pistol is also Weapon 2, and seems to lend itself to more bleeding wounds and death. Clearly, weapon rating, while generally indicative of how effective something is at taking out enemies, doesn't necessarily indicate intent or what kind of damage people take.
A wizard's non lethal lightning blast could be designed to use the same principles as a taser so it incapacitates instead of kills even with high power. Generally speaking, of course. Accidents do happen. And someone might be justified in Declaring that the non-lethal spell might be less effective against an inhuman physiology. Maybe the rubbery bat body of a RCV just isn't bothered by high voltage, or microwave beams, whatever - so if you want to have full effect against monsters, you have to risk death to innocents.
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The nature of the on going debate tells me a few things. First it seams, that there are very widespread opinions about the effects of stress and take outs. I can see reason behind all the different opinions here and that's kind of the problem.
It's true that the rules clearly state, that the take out gets decided by the Attacker within the realm of reason. In this special case considering the total damage inflicted i lean towards luminos opinion, that reason dictates that the damage of an attack such as the described clearly is intended to inflict great damage by design (+6 is clearly explosives grade in damage, the design of the spell is merely flavor here, since the explosive and zone attack rules apply).
My nameless NPC only take a minor for the reasons luminos stated. Yet a player can never by entirely sure about that and shouldn't be. The way I see it, if the wizard only wants to take them out he has to be subtle and use a less strong evocation if he doesn't want to kill the mercs. Who says that he has to attack with his max power? He can easily attack with only 3 shifts zone wide, still rolling his discipline to see if the attack succeeds (which it probably will).
At this point I'm actually glad that this came up during yesterdays session, because I as a GM I have learned to be even more demanding to my wizard's player when it comes to him describing his desired effect and alerting him to the possible outcomes of it.
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Ok, me being the player who made that attack I thought i'd pitch in.
The Attack was actually a 6 shift evocation. 4 shifts for stress, 2 shifts for zone.
The Original idea was to fill the zone with a Electrical-Taser Field. Using Earth Magic.
Since there were only 4 targets to hit I described it badly making it sound like a spray attack, causing all that trouble with discussions and so on.
I'm of the opinion that 4 shifts of power are definetly in the realm of "Incapacitate but not kill" a target.
(Especially in the current case. Thinking of how the mercs were described as being well trained and equipped. They had freaking Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers dammit :P )
What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.
just an idea.
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What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.
just an idea.
Thats not a bad compromise. It certainly makes it a lot more reasonable to not expect them to die.
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Ok, me being the player who made that attack I thought i'd pitch in.
The Attack was actually a 6 shift evocation. 4 shifts for stress, 2 shifts for zone.
The Original idea was to fill the zone with a Electrical-Taser Field. Using Earth Magic.
Since there were only 4 targets to hit I described it badly making it sound like a spray attack, causing all that trouble with discussions and so on.
I'm of the opinion that 4 shifts of power are definetly in the realm of "Incapacitate but not kill" a target.
(Especially in the current case. Thinking of how the mercs were described as being well trained and equipped. They had freaking Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers dammit :P )
What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.
just an idea.
For the purpose of this thread can we please not change the parameters of the example? However the values of power and shifts are, the effects possible to create with this in my opinion merit a greater downside then "your friends get hit too". No Friends, no downside...
I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control. You spend two shifts to attack the hole zone with the energy you unleash. You hit everything not able to get out of the zone in time. You inflict the damage on everything in the zone and possibly create scene aspects as well. To me extra shifts to stress should apply simply because you gave up a lot of focused control over your energy by not targeting anything in particular.
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For the purpose of this thread can we please not change the parameters of the example? However the values of power and shifts are, the effects possible to create with this in my opinion merit a greater downside then "your friends get hit too". No Friends, no downside...
I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control. You spend two shifts to attack the hole zone with the energy you unleash. You hit everything not able to get out of the zone in time. You inflict the damage on everything in the zone and possibly create scene aspects as well. To me extra shifts to stress should apply simply because you gave up a lot of focused control over your energy by not targeting anything in particular.
But shifts from an attakc actually ARE control translated into damage, by better controling the spell i can use its energy more efficiently, inflicting more stress... less control translates into only having the powers that ist there doing what it does, and nothing more.
Also, doesn't the player get to decide if/or if not he wants to use shifts as damage in any case ? at least that's how i interpret the rules.
It wouldn't make much sense for an highly disciplined wizard who is casting a 3 shift evocation with a really high dicipline to suddenly do a lot more damage because he hit so well... that would actually translate into less control with higher dicipline...
You get to choose if you want to use shifts for damage, since shifts represent control and quality.
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Dresden's Force Ring is a Weapon: 4 attack, exactly equal to using a hand grenade on someone. He uses it on mortals all the time, to date none of them have been blown into little pieces by an "artillery level blast of power", to use your description of it. Not some of the time, not occasionally, never, not even once.
Does Dresden have a clear intent to kill when he uses a force ring on a mortal? You say it's clear he does, I strongly disagree.
Having just read Summer Knight, where he is using the force ring to defend against mortals, he is EXTREMELY cautious to point it away from the assassins that were after him and make sure it was only a glancing blow. Why? So he didn't kill them with it and he didn't pick up another Lawbreaker and be happily joining Bianca in the land of the dead.
Other than that time, the only two major times I can think of him really cutting loose with the force rings don't have mortals as the targets. Ghouls and the Big Icky. But I'd love to see your cites on him using it on mortals.
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Why not compel an Aspect of the wizard to tempt them to pour enough into the spell to kill the targets? That way the choice is still there for the player, but in making them pay a Fate Point to not kill the mercs, you're representing the self-control needed to not pour too much power into the attack.
Also, just because the player doesn't kill the targets, that doesn't mean they get to decide exactly how badly they're hurt. You could end up with 4 unconscious mercs in your yard with electrical burns in critical condition. They need medical attention, and fast. What is the wizard going to do? Will he ask the Council for help? Drop off four heavily-armed men to the nearest hospital and hope he gets there in time, and manages to avoid some serious questioning?
Not to mention that, Lawbreaker or not, the Wardens are going to start paying close attention to a wizard willing to lay-down a massive area-effect electrical charge on mortals. And we all know that the Wardens can be more than happy to take someone down based only on the mere suspicion that they have broken or will break the Laws.
Narrative solutions to issues like this are always more fun for the group than enforcing mechanical restrictions, I feel.
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Attacks have a minimum of 0 shifts to succeed. It won't do any damage without a boost, but it still does connect.
I just checked, and you're right. I stand corrected. I guess I'm not totally used to this version of FATE yet.
And being mercenaries, they probably have a rank in Endurance
Irrelevant to this scenario. You posited mortals with 2 box stress tracks in the text I quoted, and I'm responding to that. So we're talking about mortals with 2 box stress tracks, not mortals with high ratings in Endurance.
Eh. A baseball bat is Weapon 2 and seems to lend itself to inflicting bruises and knockouts.
Baseball bats are totally capable of breaking bones, even tough ones like skulls and femora.
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You only get to concede before the dice are rolled! I think the same rule of thumb could inform mooks taking consequences. Once the dice are in the air, the mook is going to take Stress and/or Consequences. At that point the mook may concede, bargaining for a non-Lethal taking out result. But, if all the mook's stress and consequences are used up, you can tell the player that the only acceptable Taken Out result is death.
This is, I think, what someone concerned about being killed when Taken Out would do - take the hit, and consequences, and then immediately Concede. If they really thought their opponent would kill them, they would not immediately let themselves be Taken Out where they could die without having a chance to use their Consequences first.
Besides, if mooks never used their Consequences, they would never show up in a hospital, and where's the fun in that?
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But I'd love to see your cites on him using it on mortals.
He does use one on that thug in SmF, in Helen's office. However, the charges in his rings are extremely variable, so it's plausible that there wasn't enough of a charge in the one he used to kill a tough human.
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Well, seeing as he went for the energy of one of his four tripled bands, I'm pretty sure in that case he was shooting to wound. If it's Weapon: 4 with about 4 charges, then I think he'd have been pulling a Weapon:1 or some such by only activating one band, although it's unclear how much power he really put into it. Either way, I'd say it wasn't a full charge just because it was meant only to get them off him. And they did walk out under their own power.
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What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
I like this! I'll defiantly be using this at my table.
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I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control.
By definition, if your Discipline roll beats the power of the evocation it is controlled.
In my opinion, if the caster controls the power of the spell and the mercs are taken out then the player narrates the effect. If they fail to control the power and the mercs are taken out then it seems fair that the GM narrates the effect.
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By definition, if your Discipline roll beats the power of the evocation it is controlled.
In my opinion, if the caster controls the power of the spell and the mercs are taken out then the player narrates the effect. If they fail to control the power and the mercs are taken out then it seems fair that the GM narrates the effect.
Sorry, I could have been more clear. By control i meant that he gives up his ability do direct his magical energy to a narrow point. As everything gets hit by the same amount of energy, I see no reason why extra shifts from not defending against these energie shouldn't apply. It would only be consistent with the attack mechanics.
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It would not be consistent with attack mechanics, or with the mechanics in general. The only place in the entirety of the book a high roll can be bad for you is with Demonic Co-Pilot, and you get to defend against that. Rolling high on your DISCIPLINE roll logically grants a player much more control, and attempting to deny them their NORMAL ability to declare the effects of their take-out as a punishment for good luck makes no sense within the system or within the circumstances.
If this happened at my table, I would call it antagonistic GMing and caution whoever was in that chair to remember that they need to be able to control the antagonists without becoming one, or else the game turns way too personal and friendships rather then character sheets start feeling the stress. The player chose electricity and explicitly stated he wanted a nonlethal effect. He did well, and should be rewarded, not penalized. If he had flubbed the Discipline roll and dumped a bunch of fallout on the Zone, it would of course be a different story, but he didn't.
Zone-Wide evocation attacks are not too strong. Powerful single antagonists go down to high-powered single target spells; mooks go down to zone-wide evocations. Combat is fast and dangerous in DFRPG by design, and characters generally should not be getting into lengthy slugfests with things that can hurt them or they're dead characters. If you want to draw out a combat, ramp up the defense, ramp DOWN the offense, and stop sending mortals with a maximum of four physical stress to gank a wizard.
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This is why I like my solution of using a compel. It fits with the philosophy of the game, and if used fairly it can add some nice drama to moments when a character comes to take down an enemy who has caused them trouble for a while, regardless of whether it's a zone-wide attack or one on one.
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This is why I like my solution of using a compel. It fits with the philosophy of the game, and if used fairly it can add some nice drama to moments when a character comes to take down an enemy who has caused them trouble for a while, regardless of whether it's a zone-wide attack or one on one.
As long as they have a relevant Aspect like Take No Prisoners or Merciless, that's fine. I would not call murder a valid compel on a wizard's High Concept; that's just another form of punishment, making the player spend a Fate Point to get the result he already, by the dice, has won for himself.
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A lot of what it takes to run this game well is maturity from the players and GM, as well as a lack of the typical "GM vs Players" attitude found a lot of the time some groups and games. Obviously, compelling a wizard PC who already has -9 Refresh and is on one or even zero Fate Points is totally unfair. But if you're at a dramatic moment, even the climax of a scenario, and the character has some Fate Points to spare, and an appropriate Aspect.
The wizard in my Boston game, for example, has the Aspect "Boston Is My Town," so if he was about to take down a necromancer trying to set up shop and prey on innocents, I'd consider it fair to compel that Aspect to push him towards particularly savage responses.
Similarly, when the character's sister was about to be killed by a rogue pyromancer, I compelled his "Head Of The Family" Trouble Aspect to make him attack without warning or negotiation.
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I can't help that the thread is missing the point of why mooks don't take consequences. It's not because they can't, it's because they generally aren't committed enough to keep going after injury, and being taken out can represent everything from losing consciousness to simply losing the will to fight.
Stress =/= damage done to a character. That's what consequences are for. It's perfectly fine to hit a bunch of mooks with a weapon: 6 attack and have them simply get knocked out from the attack. Even with only two stress, that's only a moderate consequence.
A similar example would be if a PC got hit by a weapon: 4 mundane weapon. Without any extra shifts, it's completely possible to get "hit" by the grenade or whatever and still not take any damage(consequences).
In any case, in zone-wide attacks, everyone in the zone makes a defense roll, and the attacker's attack roll is applied to each individual target. The drawback is that the attack is indiscriminate. My point is that the people in the zone all get a chance to dodge. I don't see why extra shifts from the attack roll wouldn't apply.
The real question is why you'd send four 2-stress mooks after what is obviously a capable wizard.
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I think the risks of zone wide attacks do make up for the advantage they offer.
Its happened more then once in our game that I didn't dare use AoE, b/c other characters
were in that zone. I also have had minions nearly die thing happen, and honestly i can't say i judge
my GM harshly for ruling mortals hit by 9 shift magical attack described as a hail of force bullets is gonna die. He was nice enough to accept spending a fate points to attach the aspect "Not Dead yet". Which worked out well for both of us, cause he then had the Warlock kill himself and use a death-curse, and my poor character didn't become an npc due to refresh lose.
The Alternative with splitting successes is useful but so far i have found that focusing is usually the best way, anyway.
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I'd rule that the taken out results would all have to be the same.
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I have thought a lot more about this topic during the last couple of days and discussed it at length with my players over G-wave.
One thing that Ala Alba said is true. Stress ain't damage. It even can be disputed if consequences are equal to damage. As a matter of fact I have come to the impression, that the creators of the RPG avoided the term damage by design. It just doesn't work like this. What could be called damage is a very very abstract thing in the FATE system and it works differently to anything else I have encountered in other systems so far. It takes some getting used to.
To further clarify: Tsunami didn't describe his Attack Action as non lethal. But it doesn't matter all that much. It comes down to what is reasonable in the given situation. That's a very good rule of thumb whenever a situation comes up that has the potential of disrupting the peace of the gaming table. It's totally cool if it comes to a discussion about what's reasonable. As always the last word lies with the GM. The problem I can see with this is, that everybody at the table has to show the maturity to accept the opinion of the others (as Wordmaker said). Also if the description of an Action is sound, that drastically limits how it can be interpreted and what is an reasonable outcome to it. By describing exactly what you want the effect to be, any disputes about the nature of a take out can be easily avoided and it's even good for the role play of an exchange.
So fare I have to thank all participants of this thread for their input. It has helped me a great deal to revise my interpretation of several rules and I can see now, why the zone wide evocations are not necessarily overpowered. All it takes is good effect description to make an potentially lethal effect of raw power into a non lethal stun.
What I like to steer the thread towards now is, if a stun should be allowed to be the effect of an Attack Action. In some situations it might be more elegant to describe the stun as a maneuver or even a full block. What are your thoughts on this?
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I think it's appropriate do stun people through attack actions.
After all, if a character attacks someone with a taser, is that a maneuver placing the aspect "Shocked Numb" or is it an attack that can place the consequence "Numb Leg" on the target?
In this case, I think the latter is more appropriate.
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It depends on what you want to do. Stress goes away when the scene changes. So if you blast someone for stress and describe it as nonlethal, the opponent might be stunned or knocked out for a short time. Appropriate consequences added to physical blows that don't cause "lethal" damage are stunned, concussion, severe concussion and coma.
Think boxing; the boxers wear specialised gloves designed to make their punches just as damaging but as nonlethal as possible. In a boxing match, you take no stress from simple contact (because fists are weapon 0) and might take no stress for standard blows (because you have "tough stuff") but you do take stress from good hits. An especially powerful and lucky hit or repeated good hits can add alot of stress in an exchange. You may tough it out and take minor consequences like being stunned or a mild concussion but continue or just give up, take stress and get knocked down or knocked out.
Unless you pushed yourself beyond your limits and took consequences, when the bell rings and the round ends, accumulated stress goes away but not consequences. You then repeat the round. If you are knocked out, you usually stay that way for a very short time-half a minute or less but even ten seconds count in boxing. You might get up with some help but you're in no condition to fight.
That would be how nonlethal magic works; you "blunt" the spells, either spreading the impact area or spreading the "duration". An exchange is a few seconds in a fast combat. Consider these examples:
A lethal blast of fire would be an inch-wide bolt that lasts a fraction of a second to deliver killing blow with that energy by burning through the target's chest. The same blast as nonlethal would have just as much power but would be a wide torrent -spreading the impact on the target's entire body- and last for a couple of seconds, taking out the target not by lethal blow but by extensive burns, unfathomable pain and enough heat to make his body temporarily collapse from it.
A lethal zone explosion would be a blastwave that lasts a second and is concentrated in a fraction of a second in a single powerful sweeping blow that pulverizes internal organs. A nonlethal zone explosion would be a similar-sized explosion that distributes the same energy into fire, sound, a flash of light and a much milder blastwave that would take out targets by stunning them, searing them, and overwhelming their senses like a gigantic flashbang grenade.
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To further clarify: Tsunami didn't describe his Attack Action as non lethal.
Didn't I ? I'm pretty sure I did... but let's not go there... Like you said, it doesn't really matter.
What I like to steer the thread towards now is, if a stun should be allowed to be the effect of an Attack Action. In some situations it might be more elegant to describe the stun as a maneuver or even a full block. What are your thoughts on this?
Lets say, for the purpose of this thread, "stun" means to take someone out without killing him/her.
That is not a maneuver, except maybe if you'd allow aspects like "unconscious" to be set by a maneuver. Which would basically be the same as a taken out result.
Which would basically make it a "consequential conflict" of some kind... but still, not really.
Personally, playing a Wizard... I'd like that... Stun someone with a X shift maneuver, no stress to bypass... taken out in one hit. but i think it would be overpowered.
Maneuver stuns are for things that hamper the target, but do not take it out. Like "blinded" or "deafened". But "unconcious"... nah, i don't think so.
A Block has to be maintained, if I remove someone from the conflict by rendering him/her unconscious... how would that need to be maintained to go on? I don't see it. Blocks are to prevent targets from doing something in a controlled fashion... I don't think it fits.
If the goal is to have the target be "taken out", attacks are the way to got here.
And why wouldn't a competent wizard know ways to take someone out without killing them?
Competent Fist-Fighters know ways to do that in their style of combat as well, so why wouldn't wizards ?
Take Rashid during TC for example. When he showed up at demonreach and took out Molly, Will and Georgia. To me that definitely was a Mental-Stun attack. (damn... i gotta steal that one... *g* )
Maybe the outcome was forced by the GM handing out compels, but still. A Stun attack.
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The boxing example is interesting. Would that mean that the caster would have to concentrate on making the spell blunt? Does this merit raising the difficulty of the spell by a level? Is it reasonable to say that fire can stun a target without inflicting second or third degree burns which in itself might be life threatening? These are things that have to be taken into account when you try to stun someone with any kind of Attack Action if you ask me. Using electricity or fire your targets might get burned bad if you try it that way. If you try to stop someone from breathing by extracting air or flooding his lunges that might lead to brain damage or something. Side effects basically.
If you use evocation to render someone unconscious or stunned you have to be really really careful in my opinion. Harry worries about these kind of things constantly and would most probably try to take an other course of action. A simple solution that comes to mind is to just handle an appropriately described Evocation Attack Action as a Special-Weapons-Attack (YW 326), not inflicting stress but setting a temporary aspect on the target. Overcoming the effect would then be a Maneuver Action against the Weapon strength WITHOUT extra shifts. Does that solve the hole problem?! I don't know if i'd allow this for all elements though. Fire is surely out of the question...
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Make sure the effect you are going for is thematically appropriate to what you are doing. If you really just want to stun them, then Papa Gruff's suggestion about using the rules for special Weapons Attacks is the best way to go, sacrificing weapon rating to represent an effect like "stunned". I really cannot imagine how you can describe a weapon:6 effect as being essentially non-lethal and up to the player to decide, but if the weapon: 6 was converted into the difficulty to resist being stunned, instead of damage, it works.
And why wouldn't a competent wizard know ways to take someone out without killing them?
Competent Fist-Fighters know ways to do that in their style of combat as well, so why wouldn't wizards ?
Consider the fact that competent fist fighters don't have anything approaching a weapon: 6
If you want your wizard to take someone out of combat without the risk of killing, use low weapon value attacks, or grapple style spells.
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I don't think there should be any increased difficulty to let a player describe an attack in non-lethal terms. It's definitely worth agreeing as a group what kinds of descriptions can be non-lethal, and in what manner.
Using a gravity spell to pull people to the ground and knock them out is a non-lethal description. But then, frying someone with a flame spell but stopping before they die, leaving them with severe burns all over their body and in need of medical treatment is also non-lethal, at least in the short-term.
One habit I'm trying to get into with my players is, each time an attack is made, specify whether the attacker (be it a PC or an NPC) intends to try and kill.
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Make sure the effect you are going for is thematically appropriate to what you are doing. If you really just want to stun them, then Papa Gruff's suggestion about using the rules for special Weapons Attacks is the best way to go, sacrificing weapon rating to represent an effect like "stunned". I really cannot imagine how you can describe a weapon:6 effect as being essentially non-lethal and up to the player to decide, but if the weapon: 6 was converted into the difficulty to resist being stunned, instead of damage, it works.
Consider the fact that competent fist fighters don't have anything approaching a weapon: 6
If you want your wizard to take someone out of combat without the risk of killing, use low weapon value attacks, or grapple style spells.
The problem then being that 6-shift Evocations are not necessarily the same thing as a mundane Weapon:6 attacks.
A mundane Weapon:6 attack is akin to a tank-cannon, or a bomb. That's lethal, no questions asked.
A 6-shift evocation might be something like that, a heavy blast of fire, a cascade of lightning, a cannonball of raw force... that's lethal, no questions asked.
But it may just as well be something that is designed to render an average (3 stress) human being unconscious (taken out) while leaving them with a lasting headache (mild consequence). Like for example, a low amperage, high voltage electrical attack, or maybe some form of Mental attack, or maybe an earth evocation creating a fluctuating gravitational field to induce a state of vertigo that leads to unconsciousness.
6 stress attack translating into: 3 stress to fill the track + 2 stress going into a mild consequence + 1 to get over the stress track
Taken out, non lethal.
And since i can chose not to use eventual shifts from the discipline roll to increase the stress, that's really all it should do.
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As a GM, you might require that the spell's control is always 1 or more points higher than the spell's power. Beating the control check like that means you control the energy especially well, justifying the fine-tuning of the results. (that's actually in the rules; exceptional success means better results). If the control check barely matches the power, you might tell your players that there is a danger a nonlethal spell kills the target. And if the control is lower and they take backlash or fallout? Sorry, you can barely cast the spell without killing yourself; there's no way you can guarantee other people don't die.
Examples of controlled power:
My outsider scion character has a spirit attack that leeches life energy. It doesn't do physical damage in the way of wounds but it does do cellular damage like weeks of fatigue and starvation. It might leave a character taken out with fatigued (mild), starving (moderate), emaciated (severe), skeletal (extreme) and throw them into a comma but it isn't going to kill them outright. It is weapon 8 power-wise; consider how much energy a month's worth of food equals to. It's 15 kilos of fat, protein and sugars. If that much energy was violently released, it would blast apart a small house. The spell just drains a similar amount of energy magically from the target.
Similarly, a weapon 6 area heat attack would heat up an entire area by several degrees (or cool it down by several degrees), including any people inside it. The bodies would collapse from heatstroke without burns. Heating up the entire body by 5 degrees is equal to heating the skin and outer fat layer by 500 degrees energy-wise. That's how you turn a lethal burn into an instantaneous nonlethal take-out; spreading the energy.
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There are easier Alternatives, I do think it is probably possible to do some kind on Non-lethal magical attack. Using water to lower blood pressure, (Could be lethal, but would generate the desired effect), Taser folks with lightning might work but again as with real taser they might have a weak heart or something. I would suggest another mechanic. Block is really the method I'd go with for non-lethal magical attacks. Blind them, wrap them in force chains or a force bubbles, alter their co-efficient of friction, so they slip all over the place, lift them three feet of the ground so they can't move try, turning their sweat into a paralytic.
Blocks vs all action or some actions are every bit as good at making your enemy not do anything as just straight taking them out. You can also target something where its weak if your smart about it.
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I think the rules support stuns and nonlethal actions without any need for a houserule. A block stops an opponent from taking action, and you can for example use a version of Orbius to "grapple" a target and describe it as a magical stun they need to overcome. Since stress isn't damage, you choose whether a Severe consequence from an attack is "Barely Conscious" or "Internal Hemorrhaging". You can use maneuvers to hit an opponent with stuff like "Immobilized" (Entanglement) already, but a complete stun should probably remain the province of block actions.
Mindlocks and mentally-based stuns should probably remain outside the hands of players for no other reason then mental stress is essential to spellcasting, and being able to deal it out WITH spellcasting is a little strong. If they really want to hit opponents with mental effects in combat, they should take Incite Emotion (can be used as a block, maneuver, and as a high-stress Social attack) or Addictive Saliva (can apply mental stress).