Scum and Villainy question

Scum and Villainy question

Scum and Villainy question

I don’t understand this Special Ability:

SUNDERING

You may push yourself to attune to the Way and twist it, causing psychic harm to anyone in the area vulnerable to your assault. You may spend 1 stress for each additional feature: it damages instead of stuns — you may choose who is included in the effect.

You warp the Way within you, and by extension warp the Way in others—a risky proposition at best. Sundering cannot harm inanimate objects. When causing harm, the symptoms can include short term seizures and ruptured blood vessels. Those specially trained to resist psychic attacks or are somehow shielded may reduce your effect. By default this hits one target.

The last bolded sentence seems to contradict the former two, unless there’s something else going on. How can it hit anyone in the area, but only one target by default? Under which conditions would it hit more than one target? What’s the purpose of the second option “you may choose who is included in the effect” if it only affects one target?

Seems like the last sentence should be removed, though this opens up the question about how large “the area” is. Or perhaps this is meant to hit one target, and choosing the last option opens it up for several targets? In that case, the wording is extremely confusing, perhaps it should be “— it can affect more than one target”.

13 thoughts on “Scum and Villainy question”

  2. My interpretation (which may or may not be accurate but has worked for me when I run it) is that ”anyone in the area vulnerable to your assault” defines the limits of the ability, the potential targets. It’s not saying you will affect everyone vulnerable to your assault, its saying that you cannot affect anyone who is not vulnerable…

    The last sentence defines the number of targets under default circumstances. When could it affect more? Perhaps if someone performed a suitable setup action, if you pushed yourself for effect, you rolled a critical, or you had potency. In fact any time it makes sense in the fiction…

  3. Declan Feeney Fair interpretation, but how does this go together with “you may choose who is included in the effect” then? You affect a random target in the area (whatever the area is)? That would be a useless ability, so this cannot be the intended function…

  4. The distinction may be a question between whether the effect is governed by area or by intention. Like, with a fireball, if you let it go you cannot choose who is hit; everyone in the area is hit. This explanation could be meant to point out that it can affect people in an area, but you never risk “friendly fire.”

  5. I think the wording of the default effect and the second feature needs work.

    The area seems implied as “those in the area” which probably ought to be “those nearby”.

    Choosing who is included is weird when it’s area effect- I think it should be that you can exclude others. We know it will target more people if the magnitude is heightened with additional stress

  6. Hey, good catch. I believe we need to adjust the writing. In our haste to upgrade to 1.7 the text got clipped:

    Sundering

    You may spend 1 stress for each additional feature: it damages instead of stuns — the area includes a few targets instead of one — you may choose who is included in the effect.

    By default, you can only hit one person with the effect. If you spend a stress, you can affect an area, instead. For another stress, you can selectively exclude people from that area.

    We’ll work on getting the text better worked out there.

  10. Benjamin Davis That is correct. What you’ve said does not make sense.

    By default you pick a person to affect.

    If you spend an additional stress, you pick an area to affect and it includes everyone in that area.

    If you spend another stress, you can choose who in that area you want to affect.

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