Math! To hit advantages vs Weapon values

[crusher_bob]

I'm pretty sure I did this before, but don't think I posted the results.  So here's a table showing you the average damage, based on the attacker's targeting advantage over the defender's defensive skill and including different weapon ratings up to 6.

Note that I used the decimal probability results to compute the table, rather that the exact probability results  (e.g. ".012" and not "1/81"), so the results shown here will have a slight error in them.

Code: [Select]

                          Weapon Value
Attacker
Advantage    0     1     2     3     4     5     6
   -4       0.03  0.10  0.16  0.22  0.29  0.35  0.41
   -3       0.10  0.24  0.38  0.52  0.66  0.80  0.94
   -2       0.24  0.49  0.75  1.01  1.27  1.53  1.79
   -1       0.49  0.91  1.32  1.74  2.15  2.57  2.98
    0       0.91  1.49  2.08  2.66  3.24  3.83  4.41
    1       1.49  2.23  2.97  3.71  4.45  5.19  5.92
    2       2.23  3.09  3.95  4.80  5.66  6.52  7.38
    3       3.09  4.02  4.96  5.89  6.83  7.76  8.70
    4       4.02  5.00  5.97  6.95  7.92  8.90  9.87

Example:
The attacker has a skill of 4 and a weapon:2, the defender has skill 3.
So the attacker's advantage is 1, and we'd expect attacks to do an average of 2.97 points of stress per attack

Here's a comparison of strength powers (as offense) vs equal points of speed powers (as defense) and assuming equal skill:
Normal: 0.91
Inhuman: 1.32
Supernatural: 1.27
Mythic: 0.94

And I'm too lazy to check the standard deviation, but note that the results become much more swingy as the weapon values go up.  But just the extra damage from strength provides (very roughly) damage output that keeps up with the increased defense granted by speed powers.

Now, what about toughness?
This just tracks stress through the armor value of the toughness, and doesn't address the effect of the increased stress meter.
Normal: 0.91
Inhuman: 1.49 (defender has 2 more stress boxes)
Supernatural: 2.08 (defender has 4 more stress boxes)
Mythic: 2.66 (defender has 6 more stress boxes)

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We'll compare incite emotion as a combat power vs claws, assuming that all skills start out equal:
Incite emotion damage: 2.23
Claw damage: 2.08

With +2 damage upgrade (so weapon: 4 claws)
Incite emotion damage: 3.95
Claw damage: 3.24

With +4 damage upgrade (so weapon: 6 claws, (skill+2) weapon: 4 incite)
Incite emotion damage: 5.66
Claw damage: 4.41

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To recap the reasons that I don't like incite emotion.
1
It does more damage than claws, for the same point cost.
2
It does more things than just break stuff.
3
It attacks an out of context defense (discipline, instead of athletics) which will generally be lower than physical defense.
3.5
In addition, all the enhanced defenses presented in the written rules only work vs physical attacks (speed powers, toughness powers, evocation blocks, enchanted items).  Only recovery powers also work equally well against the damage done by incite emotion.
4
It attacks a stress track that may be considerably shorter, since there is no way to increase your mental stress track.

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[ways and means]

Incite Emotion is meant to be grim most of the most broken character concepts around it is even more broken when you consider infuriate gives a +2 to accuracy on incite emotion for a refresh, if you a spirit for free refresh you can boost your accuracy by another 2 and you can also marked by power to give another +1 to incite emotion (which run of social skill) and all of these stack with the plus 2 from feeding so if you are emotion feeding ghost who is marked by the ghost king with high refresh that feeds off of anger you can get an attack modifier of 12 as a normal attack which mods to 13 every attack after the first.  (which is nice)

[Michael Sandy]

I thought that basic Incite emotion you could only do blocks and maneuvers?  You need Lasting Emotion in order to inflict mental stress.

And a minor issue for your comparison, but the skill you use to attack with claws, Fists, is also used for defense.  The attacking skill you use for Incite Emotion is Deceit.  Used for social attack.  Campaigns may vary a bit, but you are more likely to use your fists for defense than deceit.

I suggest a couple of in-game limitations for Incite Emotion.

For example, if someone is aware of the presence of something that can Incite Emotion, they can put either the Lore or Discipline navel gazing maneuvers 'aware of the possibility of emotion manipulation' 'my emotions do not control me' as a supplementary action.

Those would give them a free tag the first time versus an incite emotion attack.

If an incite emotion attack fails by 3 or more, the target can become increasingly resistant to the attack from that source.

[Sanctaphrax]

This is pretty awesome. You know, I think that a math thread on the Resources board would be pretty cool.

I maintain that there is enough ambiguity in the Incite Emotion writeup for it to be entirely reasonable not to give the +2 bonus to attacks.

Also, I wouldn't let you use stunts to boost it like that. It's an attack trapping, treat it like one.

[Silverblaze]

Crusher_bob?  Could you please do the math to find out what happens if each attack has one fate point spent on it?...Two?  Just so we can see it in chart form.  I know tehre isn't much point, but it's my main concern with multiple attacks.

[crusher_bob]

The simplistic answer is that a FATE point increases the "Attacker advantage" by two if spent by the attacker, and decreases it by two is spent by the defender.

For example,
If our attack has targeting 3 and weapon 2, vs. someone with a defense skill of 4; we'd expect our damage to be 0.91 stress.  If the attacker spends a fate point on the attack, his expected damage goes to 2.97 stress.

Giving an exact answer is complicated by at least 2 things:
1
A FATE point increases your expected roll from 0 to ~2.07, because it is a 'better' use of a FATE point to reroll a -3 or -4 result than add 2 to your roll.
2
You normally spend FATE points after rolls, so, in theory, I also know what the defender rolled before I start using FATE points.  So, if the defender rolls, say, a +4 on his dice, spending a FATE point on an attack that is not going to hit is pointless.  Just like I won't spend a FATE point on an already successful defense.  So the marginal advantage of FATE points is even better.

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And as you can see, once you get to attacker advantage 3, adding either another point of attacker advantage or another point of weapon value both just increase the expected damage by almost 1 point.

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If I have the time, I'll redo the table using more accurate computations for the probabilities and extend it a bit.  But the current implementation I made only churns out one data set of (attacker advantage, weapon value) at once, so it's slightly tedious to spit out some more numbers.

[Belial666]

just the extra damage from strength provides (very roughly) damage output that keeps up with the increased defense granted by speed powers.

In a fight between Mythic Strength and Mythic Speed characters who both have the same athletics and fists skill, Mythic Speed wins. That is because Speed powers not only provide increased overall defense but also provide a bonus to athletic maneuvers. Including offensive athletic maneuvers. So the speedster does the 3 maneuvers to 1 attack ratio, stacking up aspects. Those can help him both in offense AND defense. The Mythic Strength guy is never going to hit; he was hitting every 4th blow at best against the increased defense but the speedster can tag aspects to reroll/boost his defense and still have maneuver aspects remaining. And as soon as the speedster has a few aspects massed, he tags to attack at Fists+6 or more.

This just tracks stress through the armor value of the toughness, and doesn't address the effect of the increased stress meter.

It's simple to calculate Mythic Strength vs Mythic Toughness. We start with Weapon 6 Stress 4 vs Weapon 0 Armor 3 Stress 12. Armor negates Weapon and thus becomes Weapon 3 Stress 4 vs Weapon 0 Stress 12. Since it's weapon 3, it can never hit less than the 3rd stress box so we can also simplify and the equation becomes Weapon 1 Stress 4 vs Weapon 0 Stress 10.
And now the advantage of Mythic Toughness becomes readily apparent in a fight where stress matters. However do note that other factors can swing the balance one way or another. Force Multipliers like giving both crews weapons and armor might change the equation - provided you can find weapons that don't break when used by mythically strong characters. Also, tactical shifts like grappling instead of mellee attacks give an advantage to the Strength guy instead.

[crusher_bob]

And here's a similar table showing successful maneuver chances

Code: [Select]

Attacker           General       
Advantage  Fail    Success  Fragile  Sticky
   -4      0.9355  0.0645   0.0405   0.0239
   -3      0.8587  0.1413   0.0768   0.0645
   -2      0.7392  0.2608   0.1195   0.1413
   -1      0.5844  0.4156   0.1549   0.2608
    0      0.4156  0.5844   0.1687   0.4156
    1      0.2608  0.7392   0.1549   0.5844
    2      0.1413  0.8587   0.1195   0.7392
    3      0.0645  0.9355   0.0768   0.8587
    4      0.0239  0.9761   0.0405   0.9355

The 'General Success' column means that you were able to place an aspect on the target, ad the fragile and sticky columns break down the distribution of your general successes.

Example:
If you have a advantage of 1 over the person you are maneuvering against, you have a ~74% chance of placing an aspect.  Of all your attempts, ~15% will produce a fragile aspect and ~58% will produce a sticky aspect, with ~26% not generating an aspect at all.

[Belial666]

Which shows why Speed powers pretty much win against Strength powers. On the other hand, strength powers have more non-combat uses than speed powers and a lot more than toughness powers.