Topic: Add on elemental attacks vs elemental resistance

[Warl]

using the chart Like I or LM devised above, makes the most sense to me as Most elemental attacks hit point damage from the innital attack doesn't always have direct relation to the element being used. For instance, many of the bolts and Ball attacks are doing Impact damage when they hit as well as an elemental crit. Balls from the explosion they do, watter bolts, Air bolts and lighting bolts from the Impact. So unless a Creature is immune to ALL impact/crushing type attacks, they would still be effected by the attack, but the if they have immunity to the element being used the elemental crit would still be reduced.

[Arioch]

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the way proposed by Dark Schneider here: http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=6644.0

of treating "critical-delivering" spells like a Ball Attack is the one that makes more sense. Actual versions of these spells IMHO is just incoherent with the rest of the system. It would be a lot better, and a lot less confusing, if all attacks were treated in the same way: using attack tables.

[yammahoper]

I'd like to think that -100 equates to immunity. Like an Elf's +100 vs Disease modifier

I think this a fallacious statement.

Immunity is immunity.  An RR mod is just that, a bonus to resist.  A +100 rr mod is great...unless you are faceing a level 100 attack.  ALL a +100 says if that you have GREAT resistance against the average attack.  No immunity is implied.

lynn

[Marc R]

I actually have to agree, -100 and immune are not the same. . . I would like it if it were true, but it just doesn't work out that way. . .it's one of those things that makes this question less than clear cut and easy to answer.

[yammahoper]

I actually have to agree, -100 and immune are not the same. . . I would like it if it were true, but it just doesn't work out that way. . .it's one of those things that makes this question less than clear cut and easy to answer.

True LM.  And I did not intend to come off so strong, but I feel the 100 equals immunity was taking an interesting conversation down the wrong path.

Back to lurking.

lynn

[Marc R]

It points out an inherant problem with the way resistance is expressed, namely "+100 RR / +100 DB vs X" when the two scales are very different.

+100 RR is almost, not quite, but almost immune in actual game mechanics fact. Elves are described as "their bodies are immune to viral and bacterial infections" and get a +100 RR to Disease. (So +100 to RR is being equated to "immune")

A 1st level elf has to roll over a 0 to resist a 20th level Disease. (Any GM inflicting 20th level effects on 1st level characters is being rather nasty at that.)

+100 DB is not anything like immune. The difference between "Deflections" -100 to missile attack and "Aim Untrue" making any missile attack miss, demonstrate that. . .and while it's hard, it's not impossible to strike someone with 100 DB. (So +100 DB is NOT being equated to immune).

Which leads to weird results. . .ala if a character has +100/+100 resistance to heat, then likely they could casually interact with an "E" level effect that requires an RR, but they may take "A" criticals from bolt or ball attacks.

This is because there are far more OB bonus elements than there are RR reduction elements in play.

The end result being that that when you try to balance a resistance to a normally unresistable effect to the RR bonus scale, you get a totally different result than if you tried to balance it to the DB bonus scale.

i.e. short of dumping the "Andromeda Strain" into your game, the elves will ignore disease because their +100 RR to disease makes them immune to it. . .but if you added a spell list with the spell "Disease Bolt" to your game, elves most certainly couldn't ignore it the way the mechanics currently work.

In the end, +X to RR is better, a lot better, than +X to DB vs. . .

I'm not really sure you can overcome that split of the logic of the game mechanics without having one overide the other.

[Arioch]

In the end, +X to RR is better, a lot better, than +X to DB vs. . .

Yes, I agree.
A solution could be totally dumping RRs and handling everything with a mechanic similar to normal attacks. So, instead of having a RR bonus against the various Realms, Poisons, Diseases, etc, characters would have a DB against Realms, Poisons, ...
Obviously this solution is a bit extreme and to adopt it you would have to change a LOT of things first... 

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

In the end, +X to RR is better, a lot better, than +X to DB vs. . .

Yes, I agree.
A solution could be totally dumping RRs and handling everything with a mechanic similar to normal attacks. So, instead of having a RR bonus against the various Realms, Poisons, Diseases, etc, characters would have a DB against Realms, Poisons, ...
Obviously this solution is a bit extreme and to adopt it you would have to change a LOT of things first... 

Do you realize that this is basically what D&D 4e is doing?

[Marc R]

Rather than convert RR to DB, or DB to RR, I'd think that changing both to critical reduction would work better. . .ala "Reduce all X crits by Y steps".

That would essentially work out with the logic of Warl's answer, which is that if an elf had "Reduce Cold crits by 2 steps" as their cold resistance, then they would take A Cold crits as A-50 cold crits, meaning they're unlikely to be harmful. . .but if you hit them with a cold bolt or ball, they would be just as easy to hit as a human of the same armor type or DB, and take the impact related hits the same way, but take a lesser cold critical. . .

Thus, a C critical caused by a cold wall, one caused by a frost blade, or one caused by a cold bolt, cone or ball would all be reduced in the same manner, in the same proportion, two steps to A criticals.

Of course, that would mean re-jiggering all the resistance racial abilities, and all the spells that offer resistance, which is a bit of a PITA. . .though you could just use a conversion table.

[Warl]

the minor difficulty comes in applying this to poisons and Diseases as these do not (typically) have critical effects, but they do have levels of severity.

there are only 4 levels of severity for diseases and poisons. (rather than the 5 A-E critical effects and even then there are more than that going into F, G H crits which are just double crits.)

so now the question becomes, how would we handle Resistance versus these 2 effects and be consistent?

the best answer i can come up with is, the resistance does not effect the RR roll but instead effects the severity level.

the question becomes again, "how Much RR bonus equals a drop in severity?"

Poison and diseases only have 4 levels of severity, the the results of the RR roll could be over 101+.

if we use the same +20 RR equals 1 drop in severity, then one only needs +80 RR to be immune. If we make it +25 = one drop in severity, the +100 equals immune.

The problem with this method also increases with RR failures of greater than 101+. though this doesn't happen all that often.

so again Like Yamma says, this doesn't work out as equally when applying it to RRs versus a spell that has nothing to do with crits or damage, Poison attacks and resiting diseases.

[Arioch]

Do you realize that this is basically what D&D 4e is doing?

Yes, this is one of the things that I like of what I've seen of 4e. 
IMHO using the same mechanics for all similar things (in these case, attacks/ harmful effects) is a very good thing.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Do you realize that this is basically what D&D 4e is doing?

Yes, this is one of the things that I like of what I've seen of 4e. 
IMHO using the same mechanics for all similar things (in these case, attacks/ harmful effects) is a very good thing.

Yeah, I thought it was a decent idea as well. Not sure how to properly apply it to RM or HARP though (nor is this thread the proper place to explore it either). There are a few other things that I thought were interesting as well (though I didn't like the "At Will" spells/abilities like Magic Missile).

[markc]

Do you realize that this is basically what D&D 4e is doing?

Yes, this is one of the things that I like of what I've seen of 4e. 
IMHO using the same mechanics for all similar things (in these case, attacks/ harmful effects) is a very good thing.

 I would be very interested in what you have to say about this after the books come out or if you have the pre-realese adventure and are playing in it.

MDC