Thursday, June 02, 2005

Dissipate Energy - New House Rule

I've been doing a little looking at this and I think this is how I want to House Rule it. This is not final yet, so please let me know what you think, or what doesn't make sense.

Dissipate Energy is as stated in the book with the inclusion of the Errata and the following clarification:

Works against all Energy damage.
You may dissipate attacks that affect both Vitality and Wounds but only Energy attacks, not Physical.

You gain no Vitality back from dissipating damage that would have caused Vitality damage, only attacks that would have caused Wound Point damage.
Vitality is still only returned from attacks that would have caused Wound Point Damage.

The Fort Save DC is 10 + the damage
If the attack does 10 points of damage, the save would be DC 20.

Using Dissipate Energy is a Reaction, the same as a Jedi's 'Deflect' class ability.
Dissipate Energy can be used at anytime during the round, but costs the character a Move Action on their next turn. Multiple uses of Dissipate Energy still only cost the character the single Move Action.
(This is actually in the feat, I just missed it.)

You must declare before the attack that you want to Dissipate Energy.
You cannot wait until you know whether the attack hit, or how much damage. If the attack misses, you are not penalized the Move Action. If you fail the save, you are still penalized the Move Action.

Example:

Obi-Wan is fighting a droid. He currently has 5 VP and 15 WP. He decides to use Dissipate energy both to stop damage, and possibly restore vitality. Amazingly the droid hits him for 12 points of energy damage from a blaster. Obi-Wan's Fort save is DC 22, he rolls well and makes his save. If the attack had hit he would have taken 5 VP and 7 WP. Because he made his save he takes no damage, and gains back 3 VP points. He now has 8 VP and 15 WP, and seeing the next Droid lining up an attack keeps Dissipate Energy 'up'. The droid takes aim and hits him for only 7 points of energy damage. Obi-Wan is still using Dissipate Energy, and makes his save of DC 17. However, he gains no VP back, because the attack would have done no Wound points of damage, based on his new VP and WP stats. On his next turn, Obi-Wan has only one action, either Move or Attack, because he sacrificed a Move Action to use Dissipate Energy. He also cannot take a Full Round action (I'm still checking on this).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This solution seems more than fair to me.

So what are other possible "reaction" type actions? Is this just a Jedi thing?

Wookiee Daddiee said...

The other Reactions that I know of are related to the Jedi Deflect ability with their lightsaber. Dont know of any other class or feat that has this ability. I've been thinking that it might make a good "Dispel Magic" feat, but that has its own set of difficulties.