hup7 wrote:First lifting is not related to damage, yes both are related to strength. But it doesn’t follow the same progression nor should it. I will deal with lifting briefly: body matters. You can be strong enough to lift weight, but your arm only has a certain limit before tearing in half – a supernatural MDC creature doesn’t face that limitation (well not unless faced with WAY more force).[
And structure is the next point to be made – yes, a human with equivalent strength can punch a wall but their flimsy squishy flesh will crush and tear. An MDC creature can throw way more into it and thus punch a lot harder. So even if you say a human with PS45 can lift the same as a supernatural PS18 they cannot punch as hard – because their structure is not as hard. And no, it doesn’t matter if they have MDC gloves because their hand is then smushing into the glove.
I get what you're saying, but Palladium doesn't pay any attention to such things in their game rules except perhaps in rare exceptions.
In the Rifts Conversion Book, where we're first told that Supernatural Creatures don't follow the same laws of physics as normal people, where we're told that "their PS may be roughly equivalent to a numan's strength in relation to overall physical power" yet inflict vastly higher amounts of damage, etc., also tells us...
CB1 44 The power Extraordinary Physical Strength uses the Supernatural PS Chart to determine punch/kick damage regardless of whether or not the hero throwing those punches is SDC or MDC.
CB1 49 Martial Artists can inflict Mega-Damage with their bare hands and/or feet simply through training, without even using Chi abilities or Martial Arts Powers. Chagi (the kind of kick practice I learned back when I took Tae Kwon Do in high school) "provides a power kick that inflicts 2d6 MD in addition to its usual bonuses."
(Note: That rule is is utter nonsense, of course, but it IS/WAS an official rule made in the same book where Supernatural PS comes up, so it still indicates a serious lack of consideration for the kind of realistic limitations of human flesh that you're describing as if maybe they thought about it when writing the Supernatural PS damage charts and/or lift/carry rules)
CB1 24 Augmented Humans, Mutants, Cyborgs, & Exoskeletons are shown to potentially inflict more damage than a normal human, but it's still vastly lower than the amount of damage inflicted by the SNPS equivalent. At the time CB1 came out, a Full Conversion Borg (MDC creature, just like most Supernatural Critters) with PS 45 can carry 900 lbs, lift 1800 lbs, and can inflict 1d6 MD on a Power Punch (normal punches inflict no MD).
A Supernatural Creature with PS 18 can carry 900 lbs and lift 1800 lbs, and can inflict 1d6 MD on a normal punch, or 2d6 MD on a power punch.
The Borg and the Supernatural Creature can lift the same weight, carry the same weight, but one of them inflicts twice as much damage on a power punch, and roughly 17.6x more damage on a regular punch.
An SDC Crazy with PS 45, by the way, works out just like the Full Conversion Borg: same weights, same damage.
MDC was not considered as a significant factor.
Great list ShadowLogan here are some more (might be some overlap):
WB2 Atlantis: p45 Knuckle spikes; p122 Staff of Eylor; Staff of All Seeing
WB5 Triax: p210 All of them
WB6 South America: p114 Hunter Cat, p134 Minion of Inix, p136 Pincer Warrior, p144 Transformer (more than meets the eye)
WB7 Undersea: p46 Psiren
WB9 SA2: p55 Pacura Red Giants, p61 VBlades, p138 BloodLizard, p145 Psi-Taur, p186 Larhold Weapons
It seems more this is the standard rather than the “few” exceptions.
I disagree.
What we see with the Splugorth Conservators' knuckle spikes is the continuation of a long-running trend in Palladium's games that goes back at least as far as TMNT 1st Edition, where a Slap Glove added +2 to damage with punch attacks.
PUNCH WEAPONS have very often added to punch damage rather than having their own damage rating, and the Conservators' knuckle spikes are following that pattern.
A number of other weapons on the list(s) are as well, in fact.
But in the same breath that Atlantis 45 tells us the damage for Knuckle Spikes is "adds 1d6 MD to punch," it also tells us that the damage for Finger Blades is "2d4 MD," and the damage for Elbow Spikes is "1d6 MD."
Note the utter lack of any mention of punch damage with either of those two non-punching weapons.
I don't see any reason to believe that was an accident or oversight; it seems very much like a specific decision that punch weapons can enhance punch damage, but that punch damage for beings with Supernatural PS
do not add to weapon damage.
Lastly are you talking about the Pogtalian Dragon Slayer from SA1 when you say VK? They are a different case altogether.
I'm talking about the Pogtal Dragon Slayers, who are described on pages 150-153 of the original Vampire Kingdoms book, under the description of Bonecruncher, the Strongman for the Night Arcade & Freak Show.
They're also described/statted in SA1 135-136, BUT they're changed for that book.
In fact, the SA1 description is changed in exactly the kind of way to support my thesis that the Pogtal's aura was a prototype for Supernatural Physical Strength when it comes to the interaction of punch damage and hand-held weapons.
VK1 description lists the Pogtal's PS as 5d6+10. There is no mention of them having Supernatural PS because that wasn't a thing yet; being supernatural only affected lift/carry limits when it came to strength, because this book came out before CB1 introduced the concept of "Supernatural Physical Strength," along with the punch damage tables.
Pogtals could have PS of 15-40, but their punch damage was always the same regardless of how strong or how weak they were: 4d6 MD.
The weakest Pogtal in the world would punch for 4d6 MD.
The strongerst Pogtal in the world would punch for 4d6 MD.
Just like the weakest mundane human in the world with a 6d6 MD rune sword would attack with that magic weapon for 6d6 MD, and the strongest mundane human in the world would attack with the same magic weapon for 6d6 MD, because it's the magic doing the damage more than any other factor, NOT the strength of the wielder.
Same deal with Pogtals, only
they are the magic weapon in question. They inflict the same magical damage no matter how strong or weak they are.
So VK1 151 says (as I believe I've already quoted):
The additional effect of the mega-damage aura is that the energy field turns ordinary hand-held SDC weapons into MDC extensions of the Pogtal!
Thus a strike from an SDC giant sword, club, dagger, or uprooted tree inflicts the 4d6 MD of a full strength punch from the giant. Damage from energy weapons and vibro-blades is not increased.
The damage from magic weapons is the higher amount of damage; i.e., a magic weapon that inflicts 2d6 MD will inflict the 4d6 MD of the punch, while a magic weapon that inflicts 6d6 MD will inflict 6d6 MD because it is higher than the normal full strength punch..Compare that text to RUE 286:
Supernatural Damage and Hand Weapons: When wielding a hand weapon, such as swords, clubs and knives, supernatural beings inflict either the weapon damage plus PS damage (in SDC) or their own PS damage as per Supernatural Strength, whichever is greater.Different words, but they're saying basically the same thing.
Also note that the bolded heading for the quoted text says "Supernatural Damage," NOT "Punch Damage" or "Supernatural Punch Damage" or "Strength Damage" or "Supernatural Strength Damage."
"Supernatural damage," because it's the supernatural that's doing the damage, not the actual strength of the person throwing the punch or wielding the weapon.
It's literally supernatural damage.
Until the Pogtal was written up, there were no rules for a supernatural creature's strength, strength bonus, or punch damage to affect the damage they inflicted with melee weapons of any type.
There were rules in SB1 for robots adding their PS damage to MD melee weapon attacks (later nerfed and discarded), but
nothing about supernatural creatures doing it.
It was during the writing of the Pogtal that KS or other Palladium writers first tried to come up with some kind of way for a supernatural creature to use weapons in a way that mattered.
The point of the Pogtal's energy field affecting weapons that way was to provide
some reason for these giants to use melee weapons that inflicted less than 4d6 MD, while also letting them use weapons that inflicted more than 4d6 MD without penalty.
If a dragon at this time picked up a tree and hit you with it, there were zero rules allowing that strike to inflict mega-damage; the dragons could inflict MD with their supernatural weapons--teeth, punch, etc.--but not with the power of their physical strength. Same with other supernatural creatures.
The only reason they inflicted MD was
because they were magic, not because they were physically strong.
IF physical strength had been the reason why supernatural creatures could inflict mega-damage, then the Pogtals' energy field wouldn't have needed the rules to allow for hand-held weapons to inflict mega-damage, AND their PS attribute score would have affected their punch damage in some way.
The fact that the writers came up with the energy field to explain how a Pogtal could inflict mega-damage without a magical weapon shows that Pogtals and other supernatural creatures could not as a rule inflict mega-damage without magic as a rule.
(Or without something like a vibro-blade which inflicts mega-damage in anybody's hands)
What's important about the Pogtal's Energy Field today is that it gives us an understanding of what the writers were thinking when they first started coming up with ways for supernatural creatures to have a use for melee weapons, and the fact that the net result is the same as the RUE rules for Supernatural PS interacting with melee weapons isn't a coincidence; they're basically the same thing, and work the same way.
The only current advantage of the Pogtal's Energy Field is that it allows them to use SDC weapons without the chance of the weapon breaking.
