Questions Regarding After Sundown

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HeavyMetalGames
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Questions Regarding After Sundown

Post by HeavyMetalGames »

Hey there fine folk of TGD. I'm playing in an After Sundown game and my group had some questions about a few things. I hope you don't mind me asking them here.

Firstly, regarding damage in combat: We're not really certain how much damage a character does in melee combat. I mean, we understand the damage the weapon deals well enough, but I had been given to understand there was some kind of bonus damage for having a high strength. Is it just the bonus from net hits? If so, it seems improbable that even a very strong Supernatural would be able to kill a normal human in one blow without Feinting first. Even a Kaiju is not likely to do more than 6N damage before Soak to a relatively competent combat character. Is this intentional or are we missing something?

Secondly, regarding poisons: There seems to be some crossover with the Delay and the Damage in the chart and quite frankly we just don't know how poisons are supposed to work. If someone could explain the rules to me I would be very grateful.

Finally, regarding disease: Abyss of the Body covers various magical diseases pretty well, but we haven't found anything solid regarding curing diseases and, aside from abilities that render a character immune to them, absolutely no examples of rules to handle (either the spreading or effects of) mundane diseases. Any information on this topic would be appreciated.

So, yeah. Those are our questions. After Sundown is a very well-constructed game and we're looking forward to playing it, but we'd really like to get this stuff cleared up first.

Thanks!
Last edited by HeavyMetalGames on Tue Dec 08, 2015 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

A poison's Delay number is simply what a delay number means for any other Damage Over Time effect - it's just that for some reason that's also where it denotes that a given poison causes Normal damage instead of Lethal.

So, if you can get your head around DOT in general, poison only differs in that taking more doses after the first one can mess with the Timer and Delay.
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HeavyMetalGames
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Post by HeavyMetalGames »

I got my head around the DOT relatively easily, and the increased doses part makes sense. If the Delay number is exactly that (a Delay) and the poisons that do Normal instead of Lethal are marked as such in the Delay, then where does it say how much damage they actually do?

For example, Tear Gas is listed with a Delay of 2N and a Timer of 5 rounds, with notes saying that it causes a dose for each round of exposure. That would mean it deals normal damage every two rounds, lasts for five rounds, and that staying in the Tear Gas is (short version) going to make it keep happening. But it doesn't say anything about how much actual damage the Tear Gas does.

This is the case for all the poisons. If the Delay on the chart is just the Delay and an indicator of if the poison does Normal or Lethal damage (if indeed it does damage at all), then there doesn't seem to be any indication whatsoever of how much actual damage the poison does.
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erik
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Post by erik »

Kaiju will be rolling 30 dice to hit, and of those expect 20 Damage - Dodge (Agility + Combat), because of course you dodge.

I'm not sure what your metrics are, but I'd think a competent fighter is packing 15 to Dodge maybe. So they'll score maybe 10 on a roll. So even a competent fighter is going to be soaking in order to survive one hit and unlikely to survive the second hit, which sounds about right. If the rolls go the wrong way on damage, or on dodging, or on soaking, it's a one hit kill on a 9/8/6 agility/strength/combat character. Edge is likely to be spent.
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Post by HeavyMetalGames »

Nevermind about the combat, I figured out how Net Damage translates into actual Wounds and it makes much more sense now. I was under the impression there was a 1:1 correlation but it's actually much more in line with how the increases in awesomeness for other stuff goes. 3-5 Net Damage can seriously just end someone. My bad there.

So, disregarding that. I'm still confused regarding Poison and Diseases. Any more help there?
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Post by Brobdingnagian »

You know I've been wondering about the Poison thing too. Under "Bite Of The Serpent" it says that Toxic poison causes the victim to suffer damage, and it's description under Poisons lists a Delay of 0 with a timer of ten rounds and a note of "Agony" (whatever that means).

So seriously. What does it actually do?
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Post by Grek »

HeavyMetalGames wrote:Hey there fine folk of TGD. I'm playing in an After Sundown game and my group had some questions about a few things. I hope you don't mind me asking them here.

Firstly, regarding damage in combat: We're not really certain how much damage a character does in melee combat. I mean, we understand the damage the weapon deals well enough, but I had been given to understand there was some kind of bonus damage for having a high strength. Is it just the bonus from net hits? If so, it seems improbable that even a very strong Supernatural would be able to kill a normal human in one blow without Feinting first. Even a Kaiju is not likely to do more than 6N damage before Soak to a relatively competent combat character. Is this intentional or are we missing something?
Remember that damage in After Sundown is triangular. 0 net hits is 1 wound box, 1 net hit is 3, 2 is 6 and anything 3 or higher puts someone down immediately if it isn't soaked.

Let's take Barbara Stanwick, the example werewolf given in the "Making a Character" section. Suppose she has wolfed out in a frenzy but is not spending points on vigor. She has an attack dicepool of 18 and a base damage of 4. If we pit her up against Chris, the example bystander in the Persona Non Grata chapter. He has a combat threshold of 2 (we're rounding up) and a soak value of 3. Barbara rolls 18 dice to attack, getting an average of 4 net hits and an unsoaked damage of 8 with her claws. Chris soaks an average of 1, getting hit with 7 damage and promptly becoming eviscerated.

If she then attacks Daunte (his Luminary cooworker), she does pretty much the same damage, as his threshold is one lower, but his soak roll is 3 higher. Short of spending edge to not die, Dante will be just as splattered across the Quickie Mart as Chris was.

If Barbara is sent against Dean, the example Fallen and the most combat capable of the three example supernatural NPCs, she gets an average of 0 net hits and "merely" inflicts 6 boxes of aggravated damage.
HeavyMetalGames wrote:For example, Tear Gas is listed with a Delay of 2N and a Timer of 5 rounds, with notes saying that it causes a dose for each round of exposure. That would mean it deals normal damage every two rounds, lasts for five rounds, and that staying in the Tear Gas is (short version) going to make it keep happening. But it doesn't say anything about how much actual damage the Tear Gas does..
DoT effects do 1 box of damage for every "Time Between Damage Boxes" listed on the DoT Delay table that passes while the character is still under the effects of the DoT. For poisons, the character stops being poisoned when the Timer for the poison runs out. To continue the previous example, let us then suppose the riot police turn up and throw a canister of Tear Gas in with Barbara. Iy has a delay of 2, which is increased by the results of Barbara's soak roll. She has a soak of 14, so on average she adds 4 to the delay, making it 6. Consulting the delay chart, 6 translates to a "Time Between Damage Boxes" of 15 minutes. Given that the tear gas only lasts for 5 rounds (1 minute), Barbara is completely unphased by this development. Presumably, she goes outside to rip apart some cop cars (and cops).
Brobdingnagian wrote:You know I've been wondering about the Poison thing too. Under "Bite Of The Serpent" it says that Toxic poison causes the victim to suffer damage, and it's description under Poisons lists a Delay of 0 with a timer of ten rounds and a note of "Agony" (whatever that means).

So seriously. What does it actually do?
Bite of the Serpent's Toxic poison has two effects. One, it's a delay 0 poison that lasts 10 rounds. Recall that (before soak) delay 0 is "every initiative pass" and that there are 4 initiative passes to a round, making it incredibly deadly in short order. Two, you suffer from Agony, as listed under the "Temporary Conditions" heading.
Agony: The victim is in incredible wracking pain. Their Wound penalties are calculated as if they had two more boxes filled in than they do with Normal marks, up to a maximum of all boxes filled.
Last edited by Grek on Tue Dec 08, 2015 9:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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HeavyMetalGames
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Post by HeavyMetalGames »

Okay I see it now. Thanks!

Anyone have any help on the disease front? It's really a minor concern that I'm sure we can do without but if there's something I'm missing there then I'd still like to know.
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erik
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Post by erik »

I dunno if solving or contracting mundane diseases was within the purview of After Sundown. It's almost too normal.
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Post by HeavyMetalGames »

That's what we were figuring but we wanted to be sure.

Thanks again. Much appreciated.
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