Supernatural PS Power Kick

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dragonfett
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Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by dragonfett »

If a creature with high SNPS tries to punt (i.e. power kick) an human sized opponent with normal PS, would parrying the kick, even if successful by the die roll, do any good?
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by eliakon »

dragonfett wrote:If a creature with high SNPS tries to punt (i.e. power kick) an human sized opponent with normal PS, would parrying the kick, even if successful by the die roll, do any good?

Sure
Its a parry, not a block.
They could deflect the leg, or turn the blow, or otherwise cause the blow to not land properly to do the damage.

That said, I am not sure that punting and power kicking are synonymous.

The game logic here is pretty sound as well since otherwise we end up with the ruling "you can't parry kicks" which doesn't seem to 1) be legit and 2) is against the clearly stated rules that allow for doing just that.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

RAW, parry does not care about the strength of the opposing forces.

in practice, most GM's come up with some kind of limit, even if it's simply needing an MDC weapon to parry MDC attacks in general. after all, a parry redirects force, but good luck redirecting the force of a speeding mack truck.

The thing to remember is that Strength is not really the determing factor in how easy it is to parry an attack, intertia is. the more mass behind the blow, the more energy is required to redirect it, even if the mechanial damage is the same. a demigod with a SN PS of 40 would be easier to parry than a 50 foot tall robot with a Robotic PS of 50, even through the damage of the power kick is the same, the sheer mass behind the robot means there's more intertia to overcome to successfully redirect the attack.

a punch attacking with a PS of 10 but coming from a gargantuan being that is 1000 feet tall and weighs thousands of tons would logically be nearly impossible to deflect, even if you are stronger, because the mass of the attacker matters more than the strength.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by eliakon »

Nekira Sudacne wrote:RAW, parry does not care about the strength of the opposing forces.

in practice, most GM's come up with some kind of limit, even if it's simply needing an MDC weapon to parry MDC attacks in general. after all, a parry redirects force, but good luck redirecting the force of a speeding mack truck.

The thing to remember is that Strength is not really the determing factor in how easy it is to parry an attack, intertia is. the more mass behind the blow, the more energy is required to redirect it, even if the mechanial damage is the same. a demigod with a SN PS of 40 would be easier to parry than a 50 foot tall robot with a Robotic PS of 50, even through the damage of the power kick is the same, the sheer mass behind the robot means there's more intertia to overcome to successfully redirect the attack.

a punch attacking with a PS of 10 but coming from a gargantuan being that is 1000 feet tall and weighs thousands of tons would logically be nearly impossible to deflect, even if you are stronger, because the mass of the attacker matters more than the strength.

Hence why giants and dragons couldn't be parried even in PF1 where there wasn't any form of supernatural strength :D

The other thing to remember is that supernatural PS is just that... supernatural.
While you can do absurd amounts of damage with your fist you do not seem to have nearly the same scale of leverage or the ability to apply that strength in any form but hitting things.
This is why even while punching for 200, 300, 500 or more times as much damage as a regular person you can't lift nearly as much.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Axelmania »

The problem of hamsters parrying Godzillas is a problem I've never seen addressed in any dice RPG.

GURPS tried to do it by putting a "basic lift" limit on what 1 arm could parry (2xBL for 2H parries) but it was far too generous and did not reflect what should be a logical sliding difficulty as attacks became more massive, instead of a blatent yes/no.

What they should have done was introduced progressive penalties based on damage, not ST, and/or partial damage mitigation like how Power Parries had.

It also had the problem of unarmed attacks being too light (ST/10 so square overwhelmed linear) although some subsequent optional rules made it a bit less problematic by using BL to calculate weight of attacks too.

Another problem it had was that it was an either/or to use weight of weapon or strength of wielder, when in reality a stronger wielder's hits should be harder to parry than a weak wielder using same weapon. Calculating from damage would've made more sense for that reason.

eliakon wrote:giants and dragons couldn't be parried even in PF1 where there wasn't any form of supernatural strength

I couldn't remember this, do you recall which page talked about it?
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

Axelmania wrote:The problem of hamsters parrying Godzillas is a problem I've never seen addressed in any dice RPG.


You have, but only in systems that avoid the problem by avoiding having discrete defense mechanics at all. AD&D's good old THAC0 system avoids the parry problem by not really defining how defense works that finely. Agility, Armor, Magic, and Shield's all factor into AC and it's between the DM and Players to figure out if any paticular blow was blocked, parried, dodged, or tanked based on whatever the narrative flow of the combat is. A character in Leather armor is probablly dodging sling stones. A character in full Plate is probablly letting them ping off. They're probablly blocking with sheilds in melee with other humans. They're probablly parrying larger foes like Orges. They're probablly dodging Giants. If Magic's involved you can have a lot of fun with discriptions. The mechanic works for all of them, so whatever makes the most sense is what you assume happened.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Axelmania »

I suppose, agility / durability being merged into a single concept makes my head spin though.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

Axelmania wrote:I suppose, agility / durability being merged into a single concept makes my head spin though.


Try Tunnels and Trolls. It combines every combat stat into a single one: which is both defense AND offense. So bulking up at the Gym for strength also makes you a better dodger, and learning magic also makes you a master swordsman. Try wrapping your head around that one :D
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Axelmania
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Axelmania »

Magic TK to wield your sword, training for strength makes you more explosive and faster!
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by malaclypse »

eliakon wrote:Sure
Its a parry, not a block.


RUE page 340 wrote:Parrying can be done automatically (without using a melee attack/action) by anyone trained in any form of hand to hand combat. A parry blocks the attacker's strike, preventing damage from being inflicted.

(emphasis mine).

A parry, according to the rules, is a block.

RUE page 340, same section wrote:A physical Mega-Damage (M.D.) attack from a Supernatural punch or claw, or an attack with an M.D. melee weapon (magic sword, VibroBlade, etc.) can be parried/blocked by another M.D. object such as a Vibro-Blade, an M.D.C. rifle, a piece of M.D.C. metal, or a hand or arm that is clad in M.D.C. armor.


Parrying the kick can be done, but if not using an M.D. item to do so (including armor), the parry could fail and result in damage instead. The rules don't specifically address what would happen if someone did this exact thing, though they do discuss parrying an M.D. weapon bare-handed.
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Re: Supernatural PS Power Kick

Unread post by Axelmania »

Palladium isn't the only system with this problem, not even GURPS with all its crunch has yet to distinguish between different rolls/effects for holding up an arm to take a punch vs pushing that punch aside so the punch misses.
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