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.
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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