What’s the over/under on Warstrider Solar vs Daikaiju Lunar?

[Isator Levi]

The last I heard on the discord everything a lunar gets counts as charm dice but I am not sure what "everything" entails, so maybe?

That's exactly my point.

I'm sure the specifics will all be worked out in due time, but for the moment it can be agreed that turning giant does not allow you to ultimately push your stats higher than they would otherwise go; at best, it might make doing so more efficient.

I'm not saying it will be without advantages, but to just keep things in perspective.

[The Wizard of Oz]

If my Strength 4, Stamina 4 Lunar turns into, say, a Tyrant Lizard, what's their soak? 8 or 15?
What's their Damage on a bite? Tyrant Lizards have 16. Is mine 11? 13? 15? It doesn't say if it's a Light, Medium or Heavy weapon after all.

Currently, your attribute+ability dice pools are capped. But Stamina and Damage aren't attribute+ability dice pools.
So my Strength 4, Brawl 3 Lunar rolls 11 dice to hit (like Tyrant Lizards) but can't increase it with excellencies. But their damage is 16, same as a tyrant lizard. And they could increase it with Damage charms that increase withering damage (though currently there aren't any).

If you say Soak is capped at, say, 10 for a Stamina 5 Lunar, then Lunar giant animals are pretty flimsy, much flimsier than regular giant animals. They already have a lot less health levels after all, unless you take a ton of Ox-Bodies.


A Stamina 4, Resistance 5, Essence 5 Solar can use Resistance charms to increase their soak by 29+. They can further increase it with Martial Arts charms.*
But a Stamina 5 Lunar will only be able, with multiple charms, to increase it by 5?
That seems a bit unfair.

*Except in a Warstrider, where they can increase it by 0 using charms, of course.

(The same applies to damage. With various Martial Arts charms combo'd, a Solar can increase their Withering damage by a lot. I haven't added up everything, but I've seen +15 extra damage with combo'd martial arts. It seems unfair to cap Lunars at +5 even if they have Strength 5).




Now, one dev (I forget who) did mention a long time ago that the Stamina and Strength excellency would have to be written in such a way as to address using them to increase damage or soak (currently, you technically can't use the excellencies to increase damage or soak at all). I'm sure that, if, for example, you can use the Strength excellency to boost damage (and I'm not sure if you will be able to), it will have some sort of internal cap*, but putting a hard limit of 5 or less on on all combos of damage and soak charms seems quite unfair considering both Solars and Dragonblood don't have a cap.


Now, I can see the devs not wanting to see utterly abusable combos brought in. The fact you can't use Martial Arts charms or most Evocations in animal form helps with this, so they don't have to worry about people using the soak and damage increasing charms from Martial Arts.

But they can do this by balancing the Lunars' own Strength and Stamina charmsets, rather than putting on a limit to Damage and Soak that's never applied before (in any edition) and doesn't apply to Solars or Dragonblood.


(Someone mentioned that Lunars need a cap on Strength because of the charm that lets you attack with Strength. That already has a limit. Soak and Damage are not limited by excellency caps, Attacks are limited, because they're attribute+ability rolls, unlike damage. That's how it works for Solars, Dragonblood, and the way Excellencies are written up for Lunars in the Antagonist section of the Core book).



*Seperate to being able to increase her Stamina rolls, Eska can increase her Soak using the excellency by the pretty measly limit of Stamina/2, or Stamina+Attribute/2 with a stunt. I don't believe that Lunars are only going to be able to increase their Soak by a max of 3 with any combination of their entire Stamina tree. Nor do I believe a Stamina 5 Lunar that turns into a 30 foot monster is going to be capped at a Soak of 8. I can and do believe that the Stamina excellency, in addition to letting you increase your Stamina rolls, also allows a Stamina 5 Lunar to increase their soak by 3, but I doubt 3 is the hard limit on soak increases for Lunars across the board.

[Isator Levi]

If you say Soak is capped at, say, 10 for a Stamina 5 Lunar, then Lunar giant animals are pretty flimsy

It may be that they get to go above for the sake of getting the full power of those beings, but no further.

What you were proposing before sounds way too far in the opposite direction.

A Stamina 4, Resistance 5, Essence 5 Solar can use Resistance charms to increase their soak by 29+. They can further increase it with Martial Arts charms.*
But a Stamina 5 Lunar will only be able, with multiple charms, to increase it by 5?
That seems a bit unfair.

It may need to be the burden of Attribute Charms.

How many motes does that 29 soak cost?

[prototype00]

If Soaking n+1 damage and Wolverine style regeneration (and the ability to become a Three Storey Behemoth) are some of the things that Lunars have an edge on Solars in, you know what, I'm kind of okay with that.

If we're to move away from the Silver Solars of 2nd ed, then yes, there has to be some differentiation, and while I grant that Solars should basically be better at all the application of skills than anyone else, Lunars should have the things they are superior at too, and what better choices than the very things they were known for since 1st edition?

prototype00

[armyofwhispers]

Lunars will be able to boost their soak by anything the Devs feel is appropriate because there is no cap on Soak. The Stamina excellency may have a special call out for how it effects soak because your 'Natural Soak' is equal to your Stamina rating. My question was simply whether animals, being QC, interact with that cap in any way. Obviously the animals have higher soak than their Stamina, but we don't know by how much because they're QC.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that you'll probably just take the Soak rating directly from the animal you're shapeshifted in to. I imagine that soak boosting charms will only work on your characters own soak rating and then you could use that if it's better. Otherwise, being able to boost a soak of 17 (Armored Terror) by an additional 29 would be ridiculous. Since they want Lunars in their own form to be effective in combat, I doubt they'd nerf soak boosting charms to make it that much lower.

Or maybe an armored terror lunar will be an un-hittable monstrosity. We'll find out I guess?

[TalosX]

If my Strength 4, Stamina 4 Lunar turns into, say, a Tyrant Lizard, what's their soak? 8 or 15?
What's their Damage on a bite? Tyrant Lizards have 16. Is mine 11? 13? 15? It doesn't say if it's a Light, Medium or Heavy weapon after all.

Currently, your attribute+ability dice pools are capped. But Stamina and Damage aren't attribute+ability dice pools.
So my Strength 4, Brawl 3 Lunar rolls 11 dice to hit (like Tyrant Lizards) but can't increase it with excellencies. But their damage is 16, same as a tyrant lizard. And they could increase it with Damage charms that increase withering damage (though currently there aren't any).

If you say Soak is capped at, say, 10 for a Stamina 5 Lunar, then Lunar giant animals are pretty flimsy, much flimsier than regular giant animals. They already have a lot less health levels after all, unless you take a ton of Ox-Bodies.

Pretty sure we've already been told how this is going to work. Lunar's have to obey dice caps just like everyone else, but their shape-shifting allows them to break those limits with certain stipulations. From what I remember of Vance's comment when you shape-shift into another critter, you get all that critters stats, even if they exceed your own dice caps. The caveat being if you exceed your dice caps, your then unable to alter those abilities via charms because you're already capped! Soak though, as you mention, is a bit of an oddball because it has an excellency cap for Lunar's due to their attribute-based charm set. My guess, is that while the Lunar's excellency to boost Soak has a limit, they can still stack other Soak boosting charms just like a Solar. So a Lunar in Tyrant Lizard form probably can't use his Stamina excellency to boost Soak, but will still be able to use normal charms to amplify Soak.

[armyofwhispers]

Pretty sure we've already been told how this is going to work. Lunar's have to obey dice caps just like everyone else, but their shape-shifting allows them to break those limits with certain stipulations. From what I remember of Vance's comment when you shape-shift into another critter, you get all that critters stats, even if they exceed your own dice caps. The caveat being if you exceed your dice caps, your then unable to alter those abilities via charms because you're already capped! Soak though, as you mention, is a bit of an oddball because it has an excellency cap for Lunar's due to their attribute-based charm set. My guess, is that while the Lunar's excellency to boost Soak has a limit, they can still stack other Soak boosting charms just like a Solar. So a Lunar in Tyrant Lizard form probably can't use his Stamina excellency to boost Soak, but will still be able to use normal charms to amplify Soak.

No you explicitly do not.

If you have Strength 2, Athletics 1 and you turn into a Tyrant Lizard and want to perform a feat of strength, you only get 5 dice (str 2+Ath 1 + str 2). If you stunt it in such a way as you can bring your stamina to bear then you can also add it to the cap. So if you've got stamina 5, you could potentially have a feats of strength pool of 10 in such a case. You don't have to spend motes, but you do NOT get the full 12 dice unless you have the stats to support it.

Found the relevant quotes:

Current model is that you use the better of your own (Attribute + Ability) or an animal form's dice pools. If it's an animal form's, then any dice over your natural amount count as Charm dice.

Shapeshifting doesn't let a Lunar reach a dice pool higher than the maxed-out dice limit they'd have in human form, by any means.