Is anyone else annoyed by Physical Immunity?

[Belial666]

@BumblingBear: That's part of the problem. The cost of Physical Immunity does not accurately reflect the challenge that it provides.

Ballpark figures that I think might be reasonable. Not expecially well-thought-out, just a quick sketch. Feedback wanted.

2 refresh for immunity to electricity.
4 refresh for immunity to magic.
8 refresh for immunity to everything except cold iron.
16 refresh for immunity to everything except a Sword Of The Cross.

You are running into the problem of character effectiveness with the too-high costs. Consider, for a moment, the Enduring the Apocalypse game. Someone who has paid 16 refresh for your last physical immunity can be defeated by any other member of the group;

Bergelmir can just pick up a 10-ton weight and bury him under it. Or he could grapple him and use him as a weapon or projectile to whack things with; as he's indestructible, the giant would not have the problems of weapon durability he might have with anything else.
Sedran can outfight him with maneuvers until he has enough advantage to grapple, tie him up and take him for some private Inquisition.
Marcus and the new guy can rip his mind and eat his soul.
Elena can do too many mildly unpleasant (but utterly horrible) things to him to even contemplate.

At the same time, the only thing the physically-immune guy has to effect the environment is his skills and mundane equipment. It would take him several exchanges to kill a zombie. Bigger threats would just ignore him; after all, he's just a man with a gun. You can't kill him but it's not as if a gun can harm a mythically fast, mythically tough demon anyway. Or they can kick him real hard; how hard is it to kick a 200-pound object into escape velocity anyway?

[sinker]

I'm with Belial on that one. 16 refresh is too much for something that's only very narrowly useful.

[Sanctaphrax]

I did not expect to see the words "very narrowly useful" used here.

Anyway, it would indeed be a pretty dumb power for someone with 18 refresh available to buy. It'd be like an Up To Your Waist character buying Mythic Toughness with a +0 catch. Too much defence, not enough offense.

Problem is, any cheaper and this becomes too much better than Toughness + Recovery. I figure that 10 refresh is the most anyone will spend on Toughness, and so that's what I'm balancing against.

By the way, this power would have been a very smart investment for that Hecatoncheir fragment that you fought in EtA. It had 8 points of Toughness, 4 points of Recovery, 3 defensive stunts, and 4 points of size. All of that did it a whole lot less good than this power would have.

So I don't think it's underpowered. It's just viable only at stupid-high refresh levels. Which is how it should be.

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, though.

[sinker]

I did not expect to see the words "very narrowly useful" used here.

Consider that there are two different situations under which one would take an action. There are conflict actions and non-conflict actions. Within conflict there are three types of conflict (physical, mental, and social). One of those (mental) requires specific circumstances, though I'd say those circumstances are easy enough to create (mostly through magic). Within Physical conflict specifically there are three actions all of which are capable of disabling someone. A high block will effectively disable someone. A manuever/compel also has the capability to disable someone. An attack, though stress will eventually disable someone. Out of all of those things PI is only useful in that one single circumstance (physical stress) and if it doesn't have a really narrow catch then it's not even useful in that one circumstance all the time. Seems narrowly useful to me.

I suppose it does depend on the campaign. In a campaign with a huge focus on physical conflict it would be more useful, but still not overwhelmingly useful.

[Becq]

I think 8 refresh is probably fine for Physical Immunity.  Instead, I think the problem lies with inflated rebates from The Catch.  With more reasonable Catch rebates, you are comparing Mythic Toughness to most things for as little as, say, -3 refresh to Physical Immunity to most things for -8 refresh.

[sinker]

That's kind of an odd comparison, since you are clearly comparing a 3 point catch in mythic to a 0 point catch in Physical Immunity... Which is not remotely the same thing...

[Becq]

That's kind of an odd comparison, since you are clearly comparing a 3 point catch in mythic to a 0 point catch in Physical Immunity... Which is not remotely the same thing...

I view the Catches for Toughness and Physical Immunity as working differently.

You buy Toughness to everything except something, with the Catch rebate scaling based on how often you will be facing that something.  0=rarely, 1=occasionally, 2=fairly often, 3=often.  The frequency can be due to your weakness being to something commonly used as a weapon in DFRPG, or due to ease by which opponents can determine and acquire your weakness, but your Catch rebate is basically your way of telling the GM how often you want to be inconvenienced by your weakness.  (Ex: It's pretty common knowledge that Fae are weak to iron, and iron can be found pretty much anywhere in the city, thus it's worth +3.  All your enemies need to do is realize you're a Fae, and suddenly you'll be facing squads armed with steel pipes and Bowie knives.)

You buy Physical Immunity to something, with the Catch rebate scaling based inversely on how often you will be facing that something.  0=nearly everything, 5=rather situational at best.  (Ex: with Dresden as a notable exception, fire attacks tend to be fairly uncommon, meaning an Immunity to fire will be only situationally usefult.  Thus it's worth a +5 discount.  Immunity to bullets would be worth quite a bit less of a discount, even if it were *only* immunity to bullets, since guns are very common weapons.)

(I'm not claiming this is RAW, by the way.  Just the way it seems to me it should work.)

[sinker]

It's definitely counter RAW, as RAW says that they both work in the exact same way.

Ahh, I get what you're saying now though, going back over your previous posts with that context in mind.

[Becq]

It's definitely counter RAW, as RAW says that they both work in the exact same way.

It's not entirely counter-RAW, though it does rely more heavily on the spirit of the RAW, rather than the literal interpretation thereof.  Consider the following:

1) The examples in the RAW do not follow the RAW.  My first example of two are the Fae, who have one of the most commonly available (and, in fact, is used as the example of a commonly avialable material) and one of the most commonly known Catches in the game: iron.  This should be worth +4 per the RAW, but Fae are only given (up to) +3 for it, even when they have enough refresh worth of applicable powers to qualify for +4 or more.  My second example is RCVs, who have the Catch of sunlight.  This is a nearly universally known vampiric weakness, and is available for free 50% of the time (or more, with the use of special hankies).  Yes they likewise get only +3 for it, even when they could have been allowed +4.

2) A strict following of the RAW can lead to (adjusted) refresh values for Toughness and Recovery powers that are more than a bit silly.  For example, if my character has Toughness with the Catch of "physical blows so soft that the average human would hardly notice receiving the blow".  Once I publicized this weakness on the internet, I'd get a +4 discount for it.  Yet the only attacks that I wouldn't get the benefit of my Toughness on are the once that can't damage me anyway.  (A gently applied poison or electrical shock, for example, isn't 'a physical blow' and would therefore allow my Toughness to be used).  This is obviously against the spirit of the RAW, but is technically allowed.

So the best bet seems to be to try to uncover the spirit of the rules, then find a way to reasonably apply them.  One concept brought up in the past is to consider 'weaponization' as a factor in Catch valuation.  This is a useful way of looking at the problem.  But at the root, what the RAW is trying to tell us is that the rebate value of a Catch is based on how likely that Catch is going to come into play.  Which is where I was going with my previous posts.

[TheMouse]

One thing to consider about Physical Immunity (and Toughness powers in general) is that they do not in and of themselves allow you to achieve goals. They're entirely passive. All they do is mitigate or at best remove one failure condition: attrition based on physical damage.

In other words, you're not so tough that you win. You're so tough that you can't lose in one particular way.

So at first glance Physical Immunity might look really impressive. However, once you get down to it, it doesn't directly increase your ability to get what you want. You can't jog at highway speeds. You can't fly. You can't control the minds of others. You're just really bloody tough against physical damage. You're not even resistant against someone trying to talk you into something.

[ways and means]

Probably should edit out the inadvisable language before someone who cares complains (not me) but otherwise I agree.

[Becq]

By the way, I think that one of the key things that makes the refresh with rebate concept fail to satisfy for many people (myself included) is that rebates are constant, rather than relative, which really encourages min-maxing tendencies.

Consider the case where I want to play a Faerie.  I know I'm going to get the standard Faerie Catch package, which is worth +4 accoring to the RAW (despite examples in OW that indicate otherwise).  Why would I ever consider getting only -2 refresh worth of Toughness/Recovery, when I can get -4 refresh worth for the same net cost, or -6 refresh worth for only 1 additional refresh?  (Does this sound a bit like the orginal post?  It should.)

Or, if I'm playing some more customized template (non-Changeling Scion or Emmisary, for example) and I wanted to take Inhuman Toughness, why would I ever attach to it a Catch worth more than +1 rebate, since I won't get any additional rebate for making the Catch inconvenience me more?

One answer to this might be 'because it makes sense for the character', and I understand that sort of answer.  But the system encourages people to favor utility over story, which is odd given the nature of the game.

I would fix this by doing two things:

First, by using a story-driven interpretation of rebates, as I've described previously.  Basically, interpret rebates as the player's vote as to how often the Catch will come into play, with +0 being almost never and +3 being fairly regularly.

Second, by scaling the rebate.  For example, a +3 rebate turns into a rebate of +1 per tier (tier = -2 refresh worth) of applicable power, a +2 rebate turns into +1 every other tier starting with the first, and +1 rebate is +1 every third tier starting with the first.  Or something along those lines.

[toturi]

But the system encourages people to favor utility over story, which is odd given the nature of the game.

I see this as the system encouraging people to balance utility together with story, instead of focusing on story altogether, which is in keeping with the nature of the game.

If min-maxed mechanic X works, then find a story that would fit the mechanics. If taking 6 Refresh for a Changling makes more sense, then come up with a plausible story of why the character has such Toughness powers.

[Sanctaphrax]

Wow, all of a sudden I agree with everyone.

Yes, PI is fairly narrow. But so are Toughness powers in general. And PI basically does everything Toughness does, but better. So it should be pricier than the highest level of Toughness.

Now, I have good reason to believe that if PI didn' exist, then characters in high-refresh games would have excellent reason to buy above-Mythic Toughness. So Toughness should be expanded, lest high-refresh play become boring.

So nearly-catchless PI pretty much can't be cheaper than 16 refresh or it'll be unbalanced against Toughness + Recovery. As a defensive power, it is rather unlikely to break games at a cheaper cost. But even if the consequences of a mistake are low, the mistake remains a mistake.

In other news, I agree with Becq about The Catch. But I think that I also agree with toturi. I read a quote on the White Wolf Exalted forum once that went something like:

Good game designers incentivize the behaviour they want to promote. Bad game designers incentivize other things, then complain about metagaming.

The current mechanics incentivize things that we don't want. So let's change 'em.

[ways and means]

The game design purposely didn't include higher than mythic levels in anything physical so attempting to balance physical immunity with these non-existent toughness levels only makes sense if your playing the game way different from the raw, this is fate game so that is perfectly reasonable. When it gets down to it 16 refresh for a power which can be bypassed by everyone (social skills yah) or by anyone who invests 2 refresh in incite emotion or 3 refresh in All things equal before God, 3 refresh in evocation or 4 in the right type of sponsored magic seems excessive. Yes Physical immunity is better than the other toughness powers that is the point of it (IMO) it is the final upgrade from mythic toughness (as it gives no advanatage to recovery or endurance  it doesn't class as recovery power) and as all of the other upgrades cost an additional 2 refresh this seems semi-reasonable even if it is the biggest leap. It should be noted that as I like that things cap at mythic and think that any higher levels could get really silly especially if they aren't capped.  I also think that catches should only be compulsory for PI which would give PI a weakness compaired to mythic toughness with a 0 catch.