What the Heck!?

I'm testing Chi Focus. The basic idea is that you start with a guy (for a 16 AP character) like this:

• 8 AP in HTH damage (+16 HTH damage)
• 8 AP in Damage Points (+32 DP)
• Character points in building a martial arts bad-ass

And that's your basic "super-charged" (because of APs) martial artist. Compare to someone who has:

• 6 AP in HTH Damage
• 2 AP for 6 AP worth of Chi Focus
• 8 AP in Damage Points
• Character points in building a MA bad-ass with the Chi Focus skill

So these guys should either be:

(a) About the same -- or -- 

(b) The Chi guy should be a little better because he has mystical martial arts training.

Now, remember: Chi Focus gives you:

1. Chi Blast (Long Action 1x per round charge-up "Chi Fireballs"). Oh, and it ignores armor.
2. approximately ever-other-round 1x Rate of Fire Chi Punch for some extra damage
3. Some other stuff that isn't too important here.

So, okay: how much does that Chi bolt need to do to make them "about equal"?

Answer: A lot. The simulator says like 30 IMP Ignores Armor Damage. That's too much. I was like: that's wrong.

But Then It Hit Me

This is going to get a bit complex, so bear with me. 

The "A-Cost" (Attack Cost) rules state that you pay full points for your most expensive attack (in this case the HTH damage) and 1/3 the cost for any others (the Chi Focus). Unless the attacks add together in which case you just pay full cost (like how super strength and claws are cumulative but psionic blast and poisoned spikes aren't).

Now, although Chi Focus can add to HTH Damage with it's Chi Punch, for the points that's a losing move--so I was just testing the blast part. This is, technically, an exception to the rule--but that's okay for now. 

So it hit me: the way the Chi guy is constructed, he's not supposed to be better--or even "as good." Since he is splitting his attack points (between ranged Chi Bolts and HTH damage) he should be "more versatile" which ought to be okay. 

If I wanted mystical martial arts training to be "as good" it needed to add damage to every attack the guy did with his fists to bring it up to -- not as high as the straight up damage guy -- but not quite that far away. You know, closer. 

This would make Chi Focus statistically the most desirable expenditure of points possible. Which is bad. But I would mitigate that by requiring several CPs in Chi Focus (which is good)--and also having some restrictions on how it's usually sold and what's available with it it (which is bad--we usually don't want to rely on those rules) and it would give us reasonable Chi Martial Arts rules. Which is good.

The Frogurt is also cursed.

So anyway. I was set. I just needed some testing.

So I Tested

I tested the basic guy and got a base line. Then I added in the once-every-other Round AP blast. And his Percent of Victory (PoV) went down. This is baffling to me. What. The. Fuck?

So check this out: our Chi guy hits on odd turns for +16 damage. This is a total of 18 Damage with STR (no factor for martial arts here). On ever other round he blasts once for 17 IMP damage. This blast:

• Can't be blocked by the Herd (it's ranged)
• Hits at +1 since their defensive AGI doesn't fully apply (ranged)
• IGNORES ARMOR (Which 2/3rds of them have)
• Works, uhm, at range (should they somehow be at range by Round 2)

And yet, the character gifted with this attack wins 4% fewer battles than those without it.

This makes no sense to me. Something must be wrong with the simulator.

But if something is, it's not happening often: I've looked in detail at five or 6 fights--and these are complex and as far as I can tell, everything is working.

A Clue!

However, there is a clue to what's going on: the guy with the attack does, it's true, win more often against the 1:1 fights. It's the 2:1 fights that he loses substantially more. I still can't figure out what's going on here. I haven't seen anything in the battle logs that make sense.

Huh!?