Harry's pain-blocking stunt

[nadia.skylark]

How would you write up a stunt to reflect the pain-blocking trick Lash taught Harry in Dead Beat? Would it clear a consequence? Prevent aspects associated with consequences from being invoked against him? Give him armor against pain? Temporary extra physical stress boxes?

I'm not sure how to model it rules-wise.

[Sanctaphrax]

Something along the lines of the Unshakable stunt (YS 151) might work. Or just No Pain No Gain (YS 152). Or the Feel No Pain custom power.

Really, you have any number of options for representing an ability to fight through or ignore suffering.

[nadia.skylark]

Feel No Pain seems perfect!

How much of a discount, if any, would you give it for needing to take an action to establish it as functional before it starts working?

[Sanctaphrax]

1 Refresh.

That's just gut instinct, but most custom power balance is just gut instinct.

[nadia.skylark]

So here's what I've written up:

[-2] A Block Against Pain: You have the ability to set up a block against pain. You do this by rolling your discipline skill, and unlike most blocks, this one stays up until someone takes it down. While this block is up, you automatically succeed on any roll meant to ignore or endure your own suffering, and nobody gets a free tag for inflicting a physical consequence on you. In addition, people have to exceed the value of the block in order to inflict physical stress on you. However, any consequences you have while this block is up heal as if they were one step more severe.

What do you think? It feels true to what we see in the books, but I'm not sure if it works mechanically.

[Sanctaphrax]

I don't think that's a good idea. If you can pump that one Discipline roll into the stratosphere, you become more or less invincible. Not a particularly fun play pattern.

[nadia.skylark]

I don't think that's a good idea. If you can pump that one Discipline roll into the stratosphere, you become more or less invincible. Not a particularly fun play pattern.

Good point. Would it work better if the block could be used as armor against physical stress? That would cut the value in half, right?

[Sanctaphrax]

That would actually be stronger. Armour is generally considered twice as valuable as a block. And it would be particularly strong in this case, since there'd be no way to remove it.

In general, I don't think an indefinite-duration protective roll is gonna work well.

[nadia.skylark]

That would actually be stronger. Armour is generally considered twice as valuable as a block. And it would be particularly strong in this case, since there'd be no way to remove it.

Okay, I think I've forgotten how armor and blocks work. Could you remind me? I'd thought that if you exceed the value with shifts, you can put those shifts toward destroying the armor/block, and the difference between the two was just that using something as armor meant that you cut the shifts in half. But from what you're saying, I have that wrong.

[Sanctaphrax]

A block opposes actions in general. If people want to do anything that the block affects, they need to beat the block's strength. It doesn't stack with defense rolls, you have to pick one or the other.

Armour is only for attacks. It reduces the stress inflicted by successful attacks, essentially reducing the weapon rating.

If an accuracy 5, weapon 5 attack is thrown at a target with a 4-shift block, a defense roll of 3, and armour 2, the attack hits by a margin of 1 and inflicts 4 stress.

Normally blocks and armour are not damaged by attacks that exceed them, but magical shields are an exception. If the 4-shift block in the above example was from an evocation, it would collapse after the attack. Armour from evocations does not have that problem, but you only get half as much of it from a given spell.

Your Story 252 is probably the page you want here.

[nadia.skylark]

A block opposes actions in general. If people want to do anything that the block affects, they need to beat the block's strength. It doesn't stack with defense rolls, you have to pick one or the other.

Armour is only for attacks. It reduces the stress inflicted by successful attacks, essentially reducing the weapon rating.

If an accuracy 5, weapon 5 attack is thrown at a target with a 4-shift block, a defense roll of 3, and armour 2, the attack hits by a margin of 1 and inflicts 4 stress.

Normally blocks and armour are not damaged by attacks that exceed them, but magical shields are an exception. If the 4-shift block in the above example was from an evocation, it would collapse after the attack. Armour from evocations does not have that problem, but you only get half as much of it from a given spell.

Ah, thanks. What I want is armor equal to half the value of the discipline roll, like evocation armor except that if you exceed the value of the armor you can choose to use some of your excess shifts to erode the armor.

Would it work better if there was a time limit on how long you can keep it up? There doesn't seem to be in the books, but I can see where I might need to add one. In the books the reason it isn't much used is that Harry thinks not feeling pain is dangerous, but that probably doesn't translate to RPG rules that well.

[Sanctaphrax]

A time limit would help, but I'm really not keen on the approach as a whole. Even if you find a way around the inherent balance problems, it's pretty weird for pain immunity to provide such enormous durability. Armour 3 is Mythic Toughness level, after all.

[nadia.skylark]

I'm trying to come up with a way to represent being able to disregard damage. After all, the minor damage represented by stress really shouldn't effect you that much if you're not feeling pain, and the books seem to show this technique allowing Harry to take a bunch more damage than usual without being incapacitated--not because he isn't being hurt, but because his body isn't registering "being hurt" as a reason to stop operating at 100% capacity. That's why I combined the armor with making all damage you do take heal slower.

Would it work better to give extra stress boxes equal to half your discipline roll?

[Sanctaphrax]

That has many of the same problems.

The game already has, like, half a dozen ways to handle this kind of thing. Why not use one of them?

[nadia.skylark]

The game already has, like, half a dozen ways to handle this kind of thing. Why not use one of them?

Because I'm not sure what they are. What I'm trying to do is find a way to reflect mechanically the ability to keep going through more damage than usual, but then crash harder afterwards. I have suggested armor + making consequences and stress heal slower, and extra stress boxes + making consequences heal slower. I suppose adding extra consequences might work?