Killer Cyborg wrote:Frankly, if a 1st level character can somehow get 6 successful Withering Flesh strikes on the Lord of the Deep without getting killed, I can see an argument that they deserve the win.
Bet.
In this corner we have The Lord of the Deep (Rifts Underseas): Alien Intelligence, Father of Monsters and perhaps the most powerful fully-statted creature Palladium has ever published.
In this corner, we have Black Belt Mary: 1st level Worldly Martial (Ninjas and Superspies), with average ability scores.
Mary studied Jujustsu. As a Worldly Martial Artist, she gets a bonus Martial Arts power, for a total of four at first level. She takes Withering Flesh Atemi, Weapon Kata (Knife), Zanshin and Iai-Jutsu. She uses one of her basic skill program allotments to pick up the Physical Program (taking , Acrobatics, Boxing and Gymnastics) and gets the Science Program (taking Biology.) With the extra attack from boxing she gets 3 APM. Her starting PP is 10, but she gets +2 from Jujutsu and +2d4 from Ninja and Superspies Gymnastics and Acrobatics (taking the average of 5). giving her a final PP of 17. She gets automatic parry and a +6 bonus to parry with a knife (2 from Jujutsu, 2 from Zanshin, 1 from PP and 1 from WP Knife), and a +7 bonus to initiative (from Zanshin and Iaijutsu). Upon arriving on rifts Earth she learnsLore: Monsters and Demons (per the conversion book).
Let’s give her a fighting chance.
We’ll assume:
-The Lord of the Deep has pulled itself up onto land for some reason
(maybe it took an interest in Mary and wants to turn her into a monster).
-It let Mary get within striking distance.
-Per the creature description it only has one Reacher from the Deep tentacle nearby (and not additional support monsters)
-Mary gets two rounds of relative surprise from the Lord, one wherein it simply doesn’t regard her as a threat, and one where it’s panicking because of how much she hurt it. During these rounds it won’t use magical attacks against her, instead using tentacle attacks (like a person swatting wildly at a wasp as it tries to sting them.) On the third round, it will regain its composure and lay into her with its 3 magical attacks/round. At which point, if she's gotten in even one touch, it will probably rain down Meteors on her or hit her with Dragon Breath
So basically, she's got to put the thing down in two rounds or she's taking a dirt nap.
-We’ll use Killer Cyborg’s initial interpretation of the Withering Flesh conversion: It knocks out ¼ the target's total MDC/attack, until the target has only 1 MDC left. Let’s say it’s contingent on making Biology and appropriate Lore roll. Mary has both skills. We’ll be charitable and say she makes both rolls.
Mary’s got her Jujustu gi and a vibro-blade she picked up somewhere. She figures (correctly) her only chance is to take out The Lord before it knows what’s happening.
Her gamble is to hit The Lord with 3 Withering Touches the first round (reducing it to 25% MDC). It will regenerate 1d4x100 MDC at the end of that round, bringing it above 25% MDC, so she’ll need 2 Withering Touches the next round to bring it down to 1 MDC. Then she’ll finish it off with the Vibro-Blade.
The Lord gets one Main Tentacle Attack against each round, and its Reacher From the Deep tentacle cluster gets 6 attacks against her each round at +4 to strike. All these attacks MD; so if any of them hit, she’s a goner.
The Main Tentacle attack is big enough to take down ships, let's figure it can't be parried. So if it rolls above a 4, she’s out. Technically, she could try and dodge. Given that the Main Tentacle is only +1 to hit, and she’s got +9 to dodge, she’d probably succeed. But she’d lose an attack, which would necessarily push the fight into a third rond, and then she’s dead anyway. So it’s got a 85% chance each round to win just on that.
On the other hand, she can parry the tentacle clusters attacks with her Vibro Blade. The tentacles are +4 to attack; but she’s +6 to parry. All told, they only have 42.5% chance of landing. But there are six of them each round.
Thankfully, The Lord of the Deep’s main body cannot dodge or roll with a punch, so she just needs to roll a 4 or above. Again, she’s got an 85% chance to land each attack.
Initiative doesn’t matter the first round: She’ll need to land all her hits, and hope to evade all The Lord’s attacks. Her odds are about .333%. For that round. .0033293167
Second round, initiative comes into play (If she lived this long). If she wins initiative, she only has to deal with one main tentacle attack and two tentacle cluster attacks before completing her attack sequence. Otherwise it’s one main tentacle and three cluster attacks. She’s got a 78.75% chance of winning initiative. If she wins, her chance for successfully pulling off her second attack sequence is 3.05%. If she loses initiative, it’s only 1.75%.
All told, her odds are .00017758%. About one in 500,000.
Okay, yeah, if she pulled it off, I’d sign off on it.
That said, I agree that the Rifts Japan conversion is probably the most balanced, but drewkitty’s is still reasonably balanced (against low MDC opponents you could probably do more damage with a high powered rail gun; and against high MDC opponents, Dragons and the like, you’d take a huge chunk out of their MDC, but have to rely on other methods once you got down to 50% MDC), and it adheres more closely to the spirit of the original power, and the wording of the conversion book note.
I’d rule in Killer Cyborg’s suggestion: that you’d need a successful Biology roll (and probably a roll for the appropriate Lore skill, too) to make it work. And I’d still insist you have some way of causing MD with your hand to hand attacks. All in all, it isn’t game breaking.
