raspberryfh
First Post
This has been a pretty contentious issue for most of my campaign. It feels extremely unbalanced for a character with a single-exploit investment to completely negate another character's heavy armor (which has monetary costs and drawbacks for use). Just automatically done.
Armor becomes a potential risk to survivability because it increases your likelihood of being shot (-2 def for medium armor, -4 for heavy), but you have no ability to avoid the Weak Point exploit's effect. There's no drawback in using Weak Point either, like making the hit less likely to hit. And the imbalance is further exaggerated by the fact that characters with Weak Point are also likely to be high-damage-output in combat as well.
After a lot of discussion with my players, we arrived at this quasi-solution, which still feels very powerful but at least requires more of an investment (two actions, an additional skill required):
During your attack, you may roll perception and then ignore SOAK equal to 0.5 x the result, rounded down. This ability is only usable on attacks benefiting from an Aim action. This ability does not stack with armor piercing ammunition. Unlike the original version, there is no limitation to the number of times per target you may use this ability. (e.g. Fandango aims then attacks B'lonzy who is wearing riot armor with SOAK 7. Fandango uses Weak Point on his attack and rolls a 13. As long as his attack also hits, he will ignore 13/2 = 6.5 -> 6 SOAK. Assuming the attack hits, it will only be SOAKed for 1 point before dealing damage to B'lonzy)
The other alternative was just to make enemies have stupidly high HP, but then if they have high HP and high soak, it almost requires having Weak Point to finish them...
I'm curious if this has come up in other campaigns and what other solutions have been?
Armor becomes a potential risk to survivability because it increases your likelihood of being shot (-2 def for medium armor, -4 for heavy), but you have no ability to avoid the Weak Point exploit's effect. There's no drawback in using Weak Point either, like making the hit less likely to hit. And the imbalance is further exaggerated by the fact that characters with Weak Point are also likely to be high-damage-output in combat as well.
After a lot of discussion with my players, we arrived at this quasi-solution, which still feels very powerful but at least requires more of an investment (two actions, an additional skill required):
During your attack, you may roll perception and then ignore SOAK equal to 0.5 x the result, rounded down. This ability is only usable on attacks benefiting from an Aim action. This ability does not stack with armor piercing ammunition. Unlike the original version, there is no limitation to the number of times per target you may use this ability. (e.g. Fandango aims then attacks B'lonzy who is wearing riot armor with SOAK 7. Fandango uses Weak Point on his attack and rolls a 13. As long as his attack also hits, he will ignore 13/2 = 6.5 -> 6 SOAK. Assuming the attack hits, it will only be SOAKed for 1 point before dealing damage to B'lonzy)
The other alternative was just to make enemies have stupidly high HP, but then if they have high HP and high soak, it almost requires having Weak Point to finish them...
I'm curious if this has come up in other campaigns and what other solutions have been?