By Agony Empowered

[Solfi]

Am I reading this right? In effect, this Charm gives the Infernal an entire extra damage track, suffering no penalties for the "first" track, and only if the Infernal has Essence < 5 for the second? Admittedly cool, but at Essence 3? (Infernals p.112)


... Someone with a more solid grasp of the mechanics give me a rundown of the balancing behind this?

 

[Ker'ion]

By Pain Reforged gives you a Scene of no penalties on Bashing damage and you can't be knocked out until it becomes all Lethal.


By Agony Empowered makes this permanent, as well as bumping this up to no penalties on Lethal damage and you have to fill your Health Levels up with Aggravated damage before your Dying Health Levels are even broken into.


At an Essence of 5, you ignore all wound penalties from Aggravated damage as well.


Now where's my Gem of Adamant Skin at?

 

[Solfi]

... that's what I said, isn't it?

 

[Flagg]

... Someone with a more solid grasp of the mechanics give me a rundown of the balancing behind this?

It doesn't give you an extra damage track per se, it just lets you ignore lethal damage until it rolls over into agg, and then at the end of the scene you're fucked.

 

[Solfi]

... Well, presumably, you'd be fucked if you slipped into unconsciousness during a battle anyways.


But the text does state that upon reaching Incapacitated, instead of damage going towards Dying Levels, they start converting lethal levels to Aggravated, and when *those* levels reach the Incap level you go into the Dying Levels . . . And during all of this, you'd only start reacting to damage penalties, when the penalties are incurried by the Aggravated track. And upon reaching Essence 5+, not even those will you give you any penalties.


... I'd say that's the same as getting an extra damage track (albeit, it could potentially be a bitch to heal all of those up).

 

[The zombie cat]

... Well, presumably, you'd be fucked if you slipped into unconsciousness during a battle anyways.
But the text does state that upon reaching Incapacitated, instead of damage going towards Dying Levels, they start converting lethal levels to Aggravated, and when *those* levels reach the Incap level you go into the Dying Levels . . . And during all of this, you'd only start reacting to damage penalties, when the penalties are incurried by the Aggravated track. And upon reaching Essence 5+, not even those will you give you any penalties.


... I'd say that's the same as getting an extra damage track (albeit, it could potentially be a bitch to heal all of those up).

It is certainly not the same as getting an extra damage track.


It is dammed near as good as that but if you think of it in that way you will make serious mistakes when you take aggravated damage. and possibly other scenarios.


Scenario assuming no ox bodies or similar effects and taking damage as levels


Considering it 2 damage tracks


You take 10 boxes of lethal damage. You fill in your first track and 3 boxs of the second.


You take 3 levels of aggravated damage. You fill in 3 more boxes on the second track. For a total of 6, you fight on


Same scenario considering it to be one damage track but you don’t use dying levels till you are filed up with aggravated.


You take 10 boxes of lethal damage. You fill all 7 boxes and convert 3 box to aggravated.


You take 3 levels of aggravated damage. You add 3 levels of aggravated damage to the track pushing 3 levels of lethal off your track. These 3 levels wrap around and convert your incapacitated box into aggravated and fill 2 of your dying boxes, you are bleeding on the ground, better hope you have a friend that can scare away the thing that just hit you for aggravated damage


There are also differences in the healing rates (do you need to heal 6 agg and1 lethal or 6 agg and 7 lethal or just 13 lethal, correct answer is number 1)


Now all this said the book keeping is easier if you call it 2 tracks. If you want to use that as a house rule it is perfectly fine. Just don’t go believing that your not changing anything. It dose maybe the charm significantly more powerful against things that deal aggravated damage however. You could mitigate this by having aggravated damage fill 2 boxes for each damage success. But it is still not the same efects as the rules as written.


Edward

 

[Solfi]

... I didn't say I wanted to houserule anything, or call it 2 tracks to ease bookkeeping.


I just want to see the balancing behind the Charm. Admittedly I glossed over the possibility of getting hit with more Agg damage while under the effects of this Charm, but then Aggravated damage has been exceedingly rare in the campaigns I've played thus far.

 

[Quchu]

The mechanics for the two Charms sound somewhat like that trick from Promethean: the Created. One thing the Promies had going on was endurance, and the only way they could physically be killed was they were beat and shot up until their body tore off piece by piece.


What they did was, instead of adding additional HLs, their Lethal wounds would turn into Aggravated wounds after their entire HL track has been filled with Lethal damage. Hopefully, the Promie would disconnect themselves from the source of harm by this point. Their leftmost HL boxes would be marked off as Agg damage and the rest with Lethal damage. The damage would heal as normal, withing having to heal additional HLs.


So. Well. I'd say that the Charm doesn't give you more HLs, but that your HLs are just more, uh, efficient?

 

[The zombie cat]

... I didn't say I wanted to houserule anything, or call it 2 tracks to ease bookkeeping.
I just want to see the balancing behind the Charm. Admittedly I glossed over the possibility of getting hit with more Agg damage while under the effects of this Charm, but then Aggravated damage has been exceedingly rare in the campaigns I've played thus far.

Rereading my post it came of rather heavy handed. I apologize for that.


I interpreted your line

... I'd say that's the same as getting an extra damage track

As a belief that there would be no difference, and set out to correct this misinterpretation.


I apologize for the overly terse tone of my post.


Edward

 

[skafte]

The charm doesn't seem all that overpowered. Essence 3 is pretty high, and essence 5 is something not many charms require, at least not when you compare to Solar charms. Plus a cost of 1HL is not something to forget.


At least in the games I have been in extra health levels are always good, but it should not be the trick that you count on to survive. This charm does two things: it gives a very cool feel to the infernal - just like extra -0 HLs to, you keep taking damage and it just doesn't affect you. And second, as Quchu say, this charm will give you as a player a second chance to escape, plus it give your ST a bit of slack as to how much damage she can throw at you and still count on you surviving and getting the point of it's a losing fight.


Or and imagine the effect this will give the first time your players meet a guy with this charm running: they fire an essence cannon at him, hitting and blow out a big hole in his stomach, the ichy parts flodding out, clearly there is also missing some ribs and there is hole in his left lung - cause you can hear the air he is breating in coming out again somewhere it shouldn't, oh, and he is missing an arm now. And he is still coming at you with full power. What the playesr doesn't know is that he now is down to his last Agg HL...

 

[Tedryn Nist]

The charm really seems to be there to mitigate the fact that despite them being around Solar level, their version of Ox-Body doesn't give them any extra -0 and -1 health levels. Instead they get two -2s and a -4. The -2s are decent but by the time you hit the -4s you're in pretty bad shape. The charm helps to negate that and really makes the Infernals into the unstoppable monsters they should be.

 

[RedSypher]

The charm really seems to be there to mitigate the fact that despite them being around Solar level, their version of Ox-Body doesn't give them any extra -0 and -1 health levels. Instead they get two -2s and a -4. The -2s are decent but by the time you hit the -4s you're in pretty bad shape. The charm helps to negate that and really makes the Infernals into the unstoppable monsters they should be.

They get three -2 HLs, and one -4, giving them a more painful version of what Solars have, and similar to what Lunars have, but not all out better than either.