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Skywalker
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Joined: 07 May 2007
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Location: New Zealand
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 Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:20 pm Post subject: Nephilim - more reason to use x5 over x50 |
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So Mortal Remains contains the Nephilim. Engels in 10ft powered armour.
The Nephilim are on Vitality sclae and kick serious butt. However, at the x50 scale, they are about 10 times weaker than a human in powered armour of the same size.
I have previously made an argument that the correct scale between Vitality/Integrity/Hull should be x5 not x50. It maintains the jump between scales but almost perfectly ties the ends of each scale to provide a nice continous progression, allowing 10ft Zabuths to meaningfullly interact with 10ft powered armour without the powered armour loosing its overall advantage.
Nephilim seem an even stronger analogy. Using two stats as examples:
Using x5 we get:
Vitality: Nephilim 20; PA 25
Armour: Nephilim 3; PA 5
Using x50 we get:
Vitality: Nephilim 20; PA 250
Armour: Nephilim 3; PA 50
So who's with me? 
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Mike V
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Location: Just N of the Emerald City
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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Unsure why you're saying power armor are supposed to be more powerful than Nephilim.
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chad morris
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know anything about the nephilin, nor why it's in vitality... If it's an Engel Power armor it should just be a 1 Integrity, I think....
Even so, I actually use a x20. It works quite well for Armor ratings, Hit points and Strength Checks.
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Skywalker
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Joined: 07 May 2007
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Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Mike V wrote: | | Unsure why you're saying power armor are supposed to be more powerful than Nephilim. |
An Nephilim is a 10ft Engel in Powered Armour. Currently, under the rules as written, it is more than 10 times weaker than a human in 10ft Powered Armour. As with the Zabuth/Powered Armour comparison, I find this to be odd.
To give a full example under the rules as written:
Emim
Damage: 8d (Claws)
Vitality: 20
Armour: 3d/3d
Crusader (Vitality Scale conversion)
Damage: 50d (HyperEdge Blade - 1d Integrity)
Vitality: 250 (5 Integrity)
Armour: 50d/50d (1d/1d Integrity)
In addition, each MoS for the Crusade increases the damage by 50d rather than 1d as with the Emim.
The effect of this is that a Emim punching the PA that is the same size would never do any damage to it (base 8d - 50d damage). Flipping it around, the Crusader would obliterate the Emim with 1 swing (base 50d - 3d = 235 average Vitality damage to the Emim's total of 100).
Using a x5 scale:
Emim
Damage: 8d (Claws)
Vitality: 20
Armour: 3d/3d
Crusader (Vitality Scale conversion)
Damage: 5d (HyperEdge Blade - 1d Integrity)
Vitality: 25 (5 Integrity)
Armour: 5d/5d (1d/1d Integrity)
The Crusader is more heavily armoured and does slightly less damage (though it benefits from 5d for each MoS rather than the Emim's 1d).
The effect of this is that a Emim punching the PA that is the same size would damage to it (base 8d - 5d = 15 average Vitality damage to the Crusader's total of 125). Flipping it around, the Crusader would damage the Emim too (base 5d - 3d = 10 average Vitality damage to the Emim's total of 100). Again the Crusader would do more damage with higher MoS as it scales at x5 not x1.
The x5 seems to produce a much more sensible result given that an Emim is described as a 10ft Engel in Powered Armour and the Crusader as 10ft Powered Armour.
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Last edited by Skywalker on Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:58 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Skywalker
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Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| chad morris wrote: | | Even so, I actually use a x20. It works quite well for Armor ratings, Hit points and Strength Checks. |
I converted about a quarter of the vehicles, mechs and creatures in CTech and found that even a x10 scale is too much to provide any meaningful interaction between scales and IMO give a more accurate depiction of the scales set out in the rulebooks.
The reason for this is that when the scaling factor is applied to multiple stats it has an exponential effect. For example, x10 increases the Armour by that amount as well as the Vitality/Integrity. So not only does it severely reduce damage caused per hit by a factor of 10 but it also drastically increases the damage capability of the target by a factor of 10. The effective gap is much large than it appears. This doubling effect is very powerful.
The x5 scale has a number of interesting benefits:
1. Moving from x50 to x5 is very easy as it merely requires dropping a '0' off the end.
2. It required no other modifications. All the stats in the books work exactly as written as far as I can tell.
3. Using x5 makes the biggest Vitality scale critters like Nephilim and Zabuth Dhonanoid less powerful than the smallest Integrity scale critters like PA, but only by a small margin (as illustrated above). Again, given the description and sizes in the book this seems accurate. The same happens at the Integrity/Hull change over as well.
4. x5 is still significant enough that mecha are beyond the abilities of Vitality scale opponents without a Hyrbid Weapon. This also applies for most Integrity/Hull scale interaction too. Many people fear that x5 will see people blowing up mecha with their pistols or surviving missile hits to the chest. Due to the exponential effect explained above, this is simply not the case.
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chad morris
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Joined: 18 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:22 am Post subject: |
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well, If you think that a zabut can lift 2500lb (and actually up to 4 Ton if it tries) one would quite think it could rip trought a steel armour of 5-10cm...
On the other hand, a tiny mech would lift 2 Tons and theorically might lift up to 10 Tons...
It's quite a difference.
The point is that -in toto- mecha are made to be uber over the vitality scale.
So we need to adapt the whole thing if we want a paragonable level.
The thing that really puzzles me is the Engel Exo in vitality scale...
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Skywalker
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Joined: 07 May 2007
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 7:06 am Post subject: |
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| chad morris wrote: | well, If you think that a zabut can lift 2500lb (and actually up to 4 Ton if it tries) one would quite think it could rip trought a steel armour of 5-10cm...
On the other hand, a tiny mech would lift 2 Tons and theorically might lift up to 10 Tons...
It's quite a difference.
The point is that -in toto- mecha are made to be uber over the vitality scale. |
I agree. But as already pointed out specifically to deal with this commonly raised counterpoint, that difference is maintained with a x5 scale because of the exponential effect.
At a x5 scale mecha will still be insurmountable to Vitality scale opponents. To give an example, converting a Broadsword to Vitality at x5, you get:
Damage: 15d* (Laser Cannon or Hyperedge Blade)
Armour: 15d
Vitality: 100
*plus effectively +1d per point that the Attacker beats the Defender on the attack.
That's an average base of 82.5 Vitality damage, and it quickly scales upward. That would kill all but the toughest Vitality scale opponent in one strike.
It effectively ignores on average 82.5 Vitality damage on each hit. Nothing on Vitality scale does that unless its a Hybrid weapon, and then the scaling has the same effect at both x5 and x50.
It has a total of 600 Vitality. So even if you can do more than 82.5 damage in one hit, it makes hardly a scratch.
So, the point of using x5 is not to destroy the differences between the scales but to provide a better and more accurate integration from the highest levels of Vitality (like Nephilim) to the lowest levels of Integrity (like PA).
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chad morris
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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ok, you got me.
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Mechanurgist
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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I generally concur with Skywalker. I've adopted a smaller scale factor as well.
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Rallan
Joined: 24 Jan 2009
Posts: 48
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| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:40 am Post subject: |
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| Personally if I was gonna tinker with the damage scaling in Cthulhutech I'd leave Integrity the way it is (when you've got super-ultra-magitech robots the size of office blocks running around, you want them to have stats that are way out of the league of human-sized stuff), and focus on drastically expanding Hybrid Damage to become its own comfortable scale in the middle that you can apply to Dhohanoids, Nephilim, Tagers, Power Armor, and pretty much anything else that you'd expect to be badass enough to rip a human being limb from limb but small enough for a giant robot to stomp underfoot. |
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