How To Stat This Ability?

[Ordovician]

Putting this here because it's only one aspect of a write-up. Not sure who's seen Night of the Big Heat (which I now realize was partially written by Pip and Jane Baker who did a few Who stories) but I'm statting up those aliens, and running into a bit of a snag with one of their abilities. As it is, I have:

"Special – Fiery Aura: All beings within close range of a Thermoplasm (10 feet or less) take 4/L/L damage as they burst into flame."

Not sure if I like that - it's kinda shoehorned in, and I wasn't sure if I should make it a resisted ability or not. Does it sound OK? Or is there another way you'd handle an ability like this?

[olegrand]

But if this damage is automatic and unresisted, how is the usual three-tiered structure (i.e. 4/L/L) determined ?

[Ordovician]

True. Teach me to try to stat things out while tired, I guess...

[Stormcrow]

The game handles fire damage thus (See Losing a Physical Conflict/Other Sources of Injury):

Fire’s a tricky one, as it can depend upon how big the fire is. The way we’ll handle it is actually avoiding catching on fire yourself. This way, you can run through a burning building,  fight back a blaze, try to put out a burning document that has been thrown into an open fireplace – it’s all handled the same way. The Gamemaster will change the difficulty if the fire is particularly intense, but a failure means that you’ve caught fire in some way – an item of clothing has caught alight, or worse. A Disastrous result is Lethal, as it doesn’t take long for the flames to totally engulf a person. A Bad or Failure result means that you’ve managed to put out the fire after suffering some burns, reducing the damage to 8 or 4 respectively. Again, Story Points are going to be the lifesaver in this situation.

So if there's a chance of avoiding the Fiery Aura, set a difficulty; the damage code is 4/8/L. If you want it to be more automatically deadly, set the damage to 4/L/L.

If there's no chance of avoiding the Fiery Aura, damage is automatically Lethal, unless the player spends a Story Point, in which case the damage is 4.

[olegrand]

But on which combination of scores should we base the "chance to avoid the fiery aura"?

The most logical answer would probably be a pair of attributes rather than (attribute+skill), since it's obviously a question of instinct and reflexes rather than a question of training. I'd tend to suggest (Coordination+Awareness).

On the other hand, if I were to include such an ability in my campaign, I'd probably go for a simpler, less dice-dependent approach : you cannot come into contact with the fiery aura (which means no unarmed combat etc.) otherwise you suffer lethal (L) burning damage, reduced to 8 if you spend 1 Story point, to 4 if you spend 2 points and to 0 if you spend 3 points.

[Ordovician]

Jul 10, 2017 18:51:53 GMT olegrand said:

The most logical answer would probably be a pair of attributes rather than (attribute+skill), since it's obviously a question of instinct and reflexes rather than a question of training. I'd tend to suggest (Coordination+Awareness).

That ended up being what I changed the write-up for this ability to.

Jul 10, 2017 18:51:53 GMT olegrand said:

you cannot come into contact with the fiery aura (which means no unarmed combat etc.) otherwise you suffer lethal (L) burning damage, reduced to 8 if you spend 1 Story point, to 4 if you spend 2 points and to 0 if you spend 3 points.

I really like this approach, too.