Defensive Blast Problem / HELP!!

[ricardo440]

I first played conan with a group of mates, one of whom had introduced me tot he system. Because I had read no conan books back then I used a different setting.
Day 1. Scholar uses defensive blast. 7d6 damage bang.
Till that point the warrior characters had all be struggling to hold their own.

my initial reaction BROKEN.

My favoured solution if you want it is to you put the sorcerer on -1HP after he does it.

 

[MadDog]

Any prerequisites?

Scholar must know at least 2 sorcery styles and have a minimum base PP of 5 or greater.

The feat will make people think about it and it meshes well with all the other adventures. No feat for DB, no problem.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

Gelid Touch, for example, is a low level spell that completely disables an enemy for 1 power point on a touch attack if they fail a will saving throw.

While Gelid Bones is nice, any scholar faces the very real danger of being ground into hamburger almost immediately if he gets into HTH combat due to the lack of armor.

Scholars are quite limited in combat other than a few (mostly necromancy) spells.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

As for the DB fix, Vincent hit it right on the head: just don't let your players use it for anything other than defense.

While that is probably the ideal solution, it makes you have to try and guess what the player was thinking and sometimes force you to "take over" thier characters, which I think could lead to a lot of friction.

Mad Dog

 

[jadrax]

Sorcerers are only a weak class early on; as they level, they become terrifying. A 1st level Scholar has very little to add to any combat situation and isn't very good in melee, much less defending himself.

This isent neccasserally true, the first level scholor in my adventuring group came with a Wolf that was pretty awsome at first level.

 

[Trailingvortex]

Well, yes, scholars wear no armour, but their insta-takedown attacks tend to ignore armour too. And they aren´t anywhere near as squishy as wizards.

The using defensive blast "defensively" thing, if you want to go that way, needs to be clarified to the players under what circumstances they can and cannot use it (saying "defensively" is not good enough). Not only that, but it must be comprehensible IN CHARACTER as well. That a sorceror would have a great power of mass destruction and -not- use it in battle whenever he thought he would benefit is indicative of someone who does not value victory nor his life. I assume that is not the nature of most characters. And unfortunately, the rules for defensive blast as written go seem to go out of their way to show that it is anything but defensive. It doesn´t actually protect the sorceror; it just kills people! And it may be a free action, but you can only use it on your turn, not when the enemy is trying to atack you. As written it´s only defensive in title.

 

[Cavalorn]

I'd probably houserule this as follows:

When reduced to 1 or fewer hit points by an enemy who continues to threaten his space, OR both helpless AND threatened by at least one enemy at the start of his turn, a scholar may spend a Fate Point to unleash a Defensive Blast as a free action. The Defensive Blast occurs after any damage is received, but before the scholar becomes unconscious (or dead) as appropriate.

Unleashing a Defensive Blast leaves the scholar fatigued and unable to recover Power Points by any means (including Opportunistic Sacrifice) for 24 hours.

 

[urdinaran]

Are you referring to the basic Nature spell? I though the creature summoned by that was only temporary; I'm at work right now, no book available to look it up. I once looked at creating a nature scholar and was a little dissapointed.

 

[jadrax]

Just asked the GM, (as I'm not massivly paying much attention to the Sorcery rules as im a Barbarian/Pirate,) and he got by the cunning dint of buying a trained war dog for 50 silver and saying it looked like a wolf ;o)

Which is quite cheap for something that ment he could more than cope in combat at level one.

 

[MadDog]

I was considering turning the damage dealt by DB into half subdual, and add a knockback effect.

Mad Dog

 

[urdinaran]

The using defensive blast "defensively" thing, if you want to go that way, needs to be clarified to the players under what circumstances they can and cannot use it (saying "defensively" is not good enough). Not only that, but it must be comprehensible IN CHARACTER as well.

Here are some examples:

NO:
- If the Sorcerer is going to move forward past the meat-shields in the group
- If he is going to Tumble in order to get in the middle of the enemy
- If he is trying to position himself to maximize damage output to enemies
- If he is trying to position himself to minimize damage output to friendlies

YES:
- A couple of the enemy move past the meat-shields and it looks bad for the Sorcerer (i.e. the party is aware that the enemy are dangerous in combat, not just 0-level mooks)
- The Sorcerer is one of the few party members left standing and is engaged in melee by the enemy

etc. etc.

If your players are gonna pick at straws about this, then it sounds like they are munchkinizing the game. I too like to have things in black-and-white, but in this case, it's a matter of "the spirit of the game".

 

[Trailingvortex]

Ah, but Urdinaran...what exactly do /you/ mean by the "spirit of the game"? Is using the Defensive Blast ability very simply as written a violation of the "spirit of the game", then? I always thought I knew what "spirit of the game" meant until now, and had assumed that violating the "spirit of the game" involved one of two elements:

A) Bad roleplaying. This can, for example, involve a character using out of character knowledge, or behaving in a way that does not mesh with his stats and abilities, such as a low intelligence person coming up with brilliant plans. Or in a stricter sense, though it's difficult to tell from the outside, behaving contrary to his own character concept because he finds it expedient to do so at the time.

B) Twisting the rules to have unbalancing effects beyond the obvious effects as written.

Neither of those two are involved, are they?

The rules for Defensive Blast, as written, without ANY clever manipulation, rules lawyering, or trickery WHATSOEVER, allow a sorceror to blow up pretty much anything, almost at will.

There are, in my opinion, only two viable ways of dealing with this: suffer it, or change the rules.

Otherwise, hmmm...take this theoretically common scenario:

The sorceror, knowing he has defensive blast, finds himself in a fight in closed terrain, such as in a building. He does not run away from the enemy, though one might expect a weedy sorceror to run away from harm. The enemy, predictably, close with him. Bang. GM calls him a munchkin. Player, who is quite principled and wouldn't dream of committing either A) or B) is rather hurt by this accusation and asks why the hell the GM doesn't either fix the rules, explain in each case when and how the abilitiy is viable at the time in a consistent fashion, or just run his character for him. And everyone ends up old and bitter.

It's not the only rule that's broken (see the Rule of the Master, which allows any sorceror to siphon power points at infinite range from any of his sorcerors thralls) and hopefully with a second edition they will have fixed them all.

Meanwhile, that's what this board is for. I like Cavalorn's suggestion best; it's very well thought out. He's limited the ability as well as actually making it a bit more defensively useful by being able to trigger it when one is dangerously wounded, outside one's own actions.

 

[Bloody Malth]

Hi, new here, this is my first post...

I can't believe no one else has posted this, but you can't use the pushing it rules with defensive blast, the second rule in defensive blast states:

All the Sorcerers current (emphasis mine) power points are expended.

The Sorcerer doesn't get to choose how many power points they spend; they can't go negative because only their current power points are spent. There is no way a first level character could do 14d6 damage.

I am in favor of letting a sorcerer use defensive blast whenever they want (give 'em enough rope...), but I would disallow the use of opportunistic sacrifice with it, rule the sorcerer fatigued, and rule that they cannot gain power points by any means other than rest for 12 hours.

 

[Mark Dunder]

I find Defensive Blast strange to say the least. I've only played one short session (mostly just to test the miniature rules ) and so have not seen occasion to use it in the game (no Scholar classes made). I just don't recall this as an option for sorcerers in any of the Conan books, but then again, it's been a long time since I've read all the stories, so I might have missed the reference. But this is a game, and for players that don't want to risk losing their scholar, and being that this is mostly a world of hack and slash, having Defensive Blast may be the only option. If it were a last ditch effort, knocking the scholar out right after using the DB, may also limit the use of the DB. I also like Cavalorn's idea and will use that and knockout to really make the use defensive.

 

[Sutek]

I still like the idea of it being treated as a STR X Bullrush, where X = the number of PP siphoned off. You have 28 points? Zap - its a STR28 Bullrush. Therefore, AoOs apply, but foes can be both knocked back and damaged by 1d6 per effective STR bonus of the blast (in the case of STR28 [+9], 9d6).

No opportunistic sacrifice. No need to expend a fate point.

Either some other system, or have it require the expendature of a Fate Point and allow OppSacrifice.

 

[Zul Daire]

I just don't recall this as an option for sorcerers in any of the Conan books

I agree. Though a couple stories I have not read and it has been a while since I read some of the others. Just started the 2nd Del Ray book.

Does anyone know of a moment in any story when a sorecerer released a defensive blast?

 

[Sutek]

This has been brought up in the thread already, but I know it's huge.

There isn't. It's just a cool idea that the Mongoose people came up with. :wink:

 

[Mark Dunder]

Well then, if it's not an attempt to duplicate a feature of the Hyborian universe, then it's uncool. It can and seems to, according to the posts I've read, cause confusion because no one has a reference for it. Sounded like power gaming or something brought across from D&D, when I first heard about. Conan would have been in trouble several times if the sorcerers he confronted blasted him like this.

So my opinion? Chuck it.

 

[Strom]

I think defensive blast captures the oft mentioned natural superstition and distrust Conan felt for sorcerers in just about every Conan story. Now PC's are naturally wary of just hacking a sorcerer up and instead have one more thing to worry about - just like Conan had to face the dread he felt for all things supernatural. The mongoose guys should've come up with a way to make DB a NPC only trait, which they did in one sense by discouraging scholar PCs.

 

[Mark Dunder]

In my game system, there are Magical Weaknesses that duplicate things that are in the Conan books. Like the Magical Weakness, Distrusted. Too bad OGL Conan botched their version. Which is why my system is better. Actually duplicates the world of Hyboria more as it was read. I have so much more fun creating characters in my system then I did when I gave OGL a shot. So I'm gonna stick with my game.