So, the other day I got to talking with a friend of mine about how CoT's damage system might work. Physical damage, energy damage, and exotic damage, right? And it brought up something that doesn't fit obviously into the system: Poison.
Whether a giant quill with poison on it, a toxic gas, poisoned zombie bite, or whatever, poison is going to come up in the game. But what damage type fits with it? It's definitely not physical damage, and at the same time it's sure not energy damage! I came to the conclusion that it would be exotic damage. Why?
Poison, as a damage type, typically does more damage against living targets. The exact details vary between game and setting, but poison does more damage against living targets than it does against robots, undead, elementals, etc. In CoT's case, that would likely manifest as those enemies having resistance to that kind of damage.
So, what other damage types also do more damage to living targets? Going from CoH's damage types, the ones that stand out are Psionic damage and Negative Energy damage. Psionic damage would be most effective against anything with a nervous system (though I notice that a lot of CoH plant creatures don't have psionic resistance anyway) and Negative Energy damage is literally death energy.
Also, Psionic and Negative Energy damage are currently the shoe-ins for exotic damage (along with complicated mystical damage and other such nonsense).
Now, my friend was under the understanding that 'Exotic' damage would instead be like non-elemental damage in some other games; a damage type for which there would be no or very few resistances. And... truthfully I hope not. For the following reasons:
1. Having a damage type more effective against living creatures (or less effective against non-living creatures, as appropriate) adds some depth to the game.
2. Giving the exotic damage type weaknesses makes it easier to balance, and therefore less of an issue to give to PCs.
3. You can simulate typeless damage (if desired) by making specific attacks ignore the effects that depend on damage type. The downside to this is that every attack must have those modifiers separately, but typeless damage is going to be rare in any case.
4. Having exotic damage as typeless would make it vanishingly rare, making what few powers do affect it less desirable.
Now, I'm not proposing that exotic damage be made as common as physical or energy damage, even if it covers poison and other similar things it won't be near that common! But since the game only has three damage types, if one is super-rare that would drag down the depth of the game. By covering poison exotic damage would simply be uncommon; not really found in every faction, but a few factions will have a lot of it and a number of factions will have an occasional unit that uses it. However, that's still common enough for it to be worth considering in a build.
This also opens exotic damage to more styles (flesh-eating bacteria, magic flesh transmutation) that have potential in both PC and NPC powers, while keeping it separate from energy damage (Fire, lightning, maybe acid) and physical damage (blunt and sharp).
Thoughts? What's other people's understanding of exotic damage? It hasn't been mentioned much but as a core game mechanic I think it deserves discussion.
Under Construction...
Tannim once described it more as Physical -> Energy -> Exotic as akin to Common -> Uncommon -> Rare.
I'd argue poison fits best into Physical damage actually: robots having metal armor would be resistant to bullets and poison. Poison-able squishy targets would also be susceptible to bullets and smashing, so it works both ways.
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Well, what about robots with a cheap aluminum casing? Or super-durable heroes? Durable heroes do typically have some resistance to poisons, but less than they do resistance to physical harm. Poison is even one of the traditional counters to durable heroes (though I do admit that varies based on the exact hero, setting, and writer).
In addition, a power with a poison effect but physical damage would be counterintuitive. I guarantee you there would be confused forum posts about that.
Under Construction...
It might be easy to classify NPC's as "living" or "non-living" but it would make it harder on the PC side. Is it a one-time choice on character creation, a choice for each build (or perhaps even costume), or do we even get a choice at all?
Also I don't see why the more specific "damage types", like poison, has to map to only a single one of the generic ones that will be in CoT, all the "specific" ones would be translatable to the generic ones depending on how you use them. Poison is basically just a chemical reaction so making it exotic doesn't really make sense to me.
This game as Aesthetic Decoupling, powers and their visible FX are totally separate. For example, a power that does physical DoT, I could throw a blade and call it bleeding, you could shoot a dart and call it poison.
Cheaply made robots could be disabled by the throwing knife tipped with the poison. Super-durable heroes are generally immune to poison. What bulletproof hero is susceptible to poison?
I think poison as physical damage is pretty consistent. Exotic damage is way more exotic: psionics, cosmic powers, reality altering debuffs, whereas poison can be found anywhere. Energy obviously make no sense for poison since energy is generally photon-based.
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
If I were to make a poison-based character, I would use a powerset like Atrophic Blast for its DoT. According to what we can read about that set, it seems like DoT would be mostly (if not entirely) using energy type attacks.
However, I remember having read Tannim explaining how there would be an option to change the damage type of an attack. If true, then you could make it anything you think is more fitting.
[b]Codename :[/b] Doctor Plague
[b]Archetype :[/b] Ranger - Hunter
[b]Primary :[/b] Atrophic Blast (Diseases)
[b]Secondary :[/b] Illusion (Miasmas)
[b]Tertiary :[/b] Undecided
[b]Mastery :[/b] Eliminator
[b]Movement :[/b] Teleportation, Flight
Not an option, but a possible Set Booster which can change a portion of a Power Set’s damage type from one to another damage type.
This may not be available at Launch.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Yeah, the set booster stuff is great and I look forward to that. This immediate concern is more for NPCs.
And yes, energy damage being based on photons/electrons/heat energy is good. But Physical damage and poison really don't have any kind of real life connection like that (or it would vary so much between poisons as to only make things worse). What about poison gas? Or poison breath? Venom spit from a giant snake? Those would all be damaging from the poison, but not related at all to any physical impact.
And exotic damage as very rare will make powers that defend against it less useful. Exotic damage as just rare? Yeah, that's fine, common enough to affect your build but not actually common, right. Poison isn't so common that it'll bring that up to common. But Exotic damage as a very rare sort that interacts with other powers rarely... I feel that that's a waste of a damage type. And in a game with only 3 damage types, that would be even more of a waste than normal.
And, again, for strange powers that ignore defensive abilities, those can always have special things attached to them.
Under Construction...
To be accurate the suggestions listed as “poison” are more accurately toxins. Toxin covers the spectrum of poisons (usually toxins ingested); venoms (toxins injected), or any other substwnce which causes disruption by chemical reaction which occurs on the molecular scale.
Which is ultimately irrelevant to our damage type system.
We don’t have any aesthetics in the costume system which note “living bs non-living”.
And be it a “green colored cloud”, or a dart gun with yellow liquid - are all just aesthetics which can be applied by a player to any power of any damage type.
As a general “rule of thumb” when we design powers (particularly for NPCs) anything related to a toxin or “toxic” would be assigned an Exotic damage type.
The common / uncommon / rare association is again, a general rule. Not a “hard rule”.
We can have NPCs that mainly use Exotic damage. But when you look at the broad spectrum of application of NPC damage types across the entire game as a whole, they would fall into the smallest number. But note the split doesn’t necessarily mean 1%.
Over time it could be 40/35/30% and you still follow the same “rule”.
The same applies for PC powers. Most powers are assigned physical damage. Then energy, with the least number of sets assigned Exotic.
At the same time, when it comes to protecting against those specific damage types (resistance and subtraction), you will find NPCs mostly do not have any or high protection towards that type. Making it generally more effective - again when it comes to the specific type.
If an npc has no resistance or Subtraction - it is Whaley affected by damage types.
We can also give NPCs Evasion or Defense to styles of attacks instead of resistance.
Resistance is applied when we want to provide layers of protection to increase sustainability to certain damage types inversely opening weaknesses to others.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Sounds good to me. 40/35/30% Seems like a solid ratio, enough that a difference is noticed but not so much that it's easy to ignore. Good to know that this has already been thought about on the backend!
Under Construction...
Just realize that is only speculative at this point. The launch of the game being only the first 30 levels and consisting of just half the over all game means that such splits will be more skewed.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
In some games Poison is an element like fire or ice.
People have pretty varied ideas of what sort of attacks should fall under what damage types, which is why I'm glad for the aesthetic decoupling CoT is going to have. I'll either use whatever powerset I feel fits or I'll just use whatever one I like the play style of.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Right, I've got characters that 'shoot' electromagnetic railguns, exploding magical butterflies, 'gravity bullets', and psionic blasts. Poison is just too mundane!
Be Well!
Fireheart