Re: [HOE] Doomsayers and MIRV

["Johnny" <Johnny.Burlin@home.se>]

>So... one of the players in my posse brought in a >Doomsayer with MIRV and Rad Baby...
>
>Is it just me or is MIRV disgustingly powerful?  :-)

Yes, it is very, very powerful. How many Doomsayers start out with less than 5D12 in Faith? Some, but the vast majority go for 5D12 as only Faith (and Strain...) matters to Doomsayers (ok, other things matters to but they usually don't matter enough to make the player give up Faith 5 in favor of, say, Taletellin', Academia : Occult or somehting similar).

So, we have a fresh Doomie with a Faith of 5D12 meaning that he can blast 5 opponents for 1D10 damage. Since a D10 averages at about 6.1 this means an average of 2-3 wounds per use, not that powerful, especially since targets usually have some form of armor. But MIRV has the raise rule, with 5D12 you have have a 25% chance per die of rolling 10+, on 5 dices that becomes a 76.3% chance of getting a raise so in 3 out of 4 uses you get 2D10 per bolt. 2D10 averages about 12.2 points of damage (1.5 wounds) for total damage of 7-8 wounds. It's beginning to hurt.

The radiation priest with 5D12 faith also have a 30.2% chance of rolling 15+ (3 raises). The damage then is 3D10 (18.3 points of damage, 2.5 wounds, 12-13 wounds total). Now you are hurting. Then add in Rad Baby and a chip or two and you are REALLY hurting.

The power of Nuke without the side effects (bystanders, destruction of equipment and the like), the best way of killing lightly armored opponents, especially those that are only vulnerable to magic.

MIRV also gets considerably better with increased Faith. Longer range, higher chance of getting raises and more bolts.

Still, MIRV doesn't unbalance my game that much. The party's Doomsayer usually uses Molecular Cohesion (which is also disgustingly powerful) and Glow Stick and rarely uses MIRV or Nuke.

If I were to change the rules for MIRV I would limit it to 3 bolts per target, then the doomsayer can choose to spend his raises to either boost the damage or to get more hits.

/Johnny