I am wondering how others handle when a target gets hit, soaks all the damage, and still has effects like knockdown and/or stun. I think by rules the effects still apply because the attack hit.
The effects apply as normal and depending on it - can be negated with doom or talents if something is applicable.
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Speaking of effects and soak. I am progressively coming up with something of a problem that I could use some advice on how to deal with as a gm. My players are heavily combat oriented. One two of them have gone down the command tree to grant mental soak and now they have an effective mental armor of 8 at minimum. One of my players has a courage soak of 5 so in effect he soaks 13 mental damage which means that basically every mental attack is completely useless against him unless I give it piercing.
In that position, with multiple characters having the Inspiring Leader talent, I would not allow the soak dice from Inspiring Leader to stack - only permitting one of the characters to grant the talent’s benefit. This would mean no character would gain more than 2 or 4 dice of mental Soak. I would allow them to be clever and arrange themselves so that the area granting the 4 dice of soak could be larger, but still no stacking. May seem counter to what many think, but it is how I would handle it.
As for Courage 5, that’s one fearless individual. I wouldn’t necessarily be frustrated with this. Not everyone will have the depth of courage. Everyone gets worn down. This person could still be resolute in the face of challenges that have broken their allies.
You can use:
- Penetration to gain double the Momentum/Doom spend to overcome Soak.
- Vicious to make the damage from the attack hit harder.
- As you said piercing.
- Doom spends to roll extra damage.
If you combine what I said above, that leaves most characters in your group having at most 8 Soak if they roll well enough, will probably average 3, with the fearless one indeed having the potential to have 13 with their 5 Courage, but figure 8 with the average of 3 with 4 Soak dice.
Of course, if the players are hell bent on not being crushed mentally and spend Doom, well that’s just fun for you as the GM.
I was debating on the not allowing the soak to stack. I wasn’t sure what the official ruling on it was. The problem they will probably run into with my game is that when the party has something so does the enemy. I just don’t want it to become too easy for them, nor do I want encounters to turn into 4 hour slogs as everyone is basically immune to everything. Thank you for your input.
There are ways to make heavily tanky characters sweat. A sorcerer slinging dismember while a Shoggoth is in their faces, while not having any effect on their resolve, should chew up their vigor fast, since both have abilities that pierce through armor.
I have this in store for my players if they fail to stop said sorcerer from sacrificing an entire village to summon said Shoggoth. (The sorcerer also has plenty of undead minions to throw around as well, just to keep things interesting)
Yeah, I recognize that piercing can generally be an equalizer but it feels gimmicky to give enemies piercing all the time. To be fair, my group is usually primarily worried about rp but this is something that has been developing recently.
In which case, try using their command talents with army vs. army combat with a few personal combats as generals duel to spice things up.
An enemy mercenary company, bandits that got to big for their britches, or an overly-ambitious necromancer who neglected his history about sorcerers vs. barbarians…
You can even throw around some political intrigue to mix it up.
We recently finished a political arch in our story and they are travelling north towards more of that. Thank you for all the feedback. 