Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="therealselah" data-source="post: 9867385" data-attributes="member: 6981288">On Mutagenic damage, I read the question as dealing with the secondary Mutagenic damage caused by the growths in each following round.Assume Super Handsome Dude gets hit with a single target use of Mutagenic damage as you specify above, dealing 1000 damage. A "hostile mass of sentient tumorous eyes, teeth and tendrils" erupts in Super Handsome Dude's perfectly sculpted left bicep. The next turn, this tumorous mass (Mass A, 1000hp) makes a single attack (the sidebar doesn't specify an attack modifier, so presumably this is an automatic hit?) and deals 50d6 mutagenic damage (175 average, or possibly 300 max damage - I don't know enough about your rules on damage at this level of play).As a result of the additional Mutagenic damage, does (i) Super Handsome Dude get a new playfriend erupting in his amazing jawline (Mass B(A), 175hp, 1/rnd deals 8d6 Mutagenic damage)? Or (ii) does Mass A grow in size by 175hp and in damage by 8d6 to 1175hp and 58d6 respectively? (My notation [Mass B(A)] means that the Mass B arises from damage from A.)Assuming (i) above, then the following round would give Mass C(A), of equivalent hp and damage potential as Mass B(A), as well as Mass D(B), a 28hp, 1d6/rnd damaging mass.The following round would give 4 new masses would arise, but only 3 of these would be viable to deal any damage (particularly with Damage Threshold in play). In other words, Mass D(B) can be treated as functionally not causing any new masses. Some of the damage potential is watered down overall, but each instance has to be dealt with separately to remove.If instead (ii) above, then Mass A scales damage indefinitely without watering down the damage potential.Combat lasting enough rounds for there to be any meaningful difference in damage is unlikely, right? A single, expanding growth is easier for the DM to run, but also requires only a single action (or whatever aspect of the action economy that applies to play at these levels to cast Heal) to remove. In the meanwhile, one must also ask whether Super Handsome Dude's tumorous stowaways somehow manage to only make him look even better.Design and tradeoffs at play again.</blockquote>

Verification