Reactive Strike + Push Your Limits Clarification

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
1

I am just trying to figure out exactly how a Reactive Strike and Push Your Limits combo would work.

Reactive Strike allows a character to react to an Attack against them by rolling their single (Power) die plus the damage dealt to them as a Reaction, while Push Your Limits allows to take as many Reactions in a round as they desire, with the limitation that each Reaction after the first in a turn inflicts either 1 irreducible damage or a Minor Twist.

So the first thing to determine is if this allows the character to React multiple times to the inital Attack? I am inclined to say yes, since I can not find any ruling that says that anything that says you can only react once to any given trigger (an oversight likely due to the fact that one normally only gets 1 Reation per turn).

Assuming that this allows one to React multiple times to that initial trigger and that the player chooses the 1 irreducible damage for each additional Reaction, would the damage suffered because of multiple Reactions add to the damage that is added to these Reactionary Attacks (as the damage the character suffered is added to the roll)?  In this case, I am not as sure, since technically the irreducible damage suffered from the multiple Reactions was not caused by the initial Attack that triggered the Reaction (so I am leaning towards no, only the original damage is added to the Reaction roll to Attack).

I do realize that this is an incredibly powerful combo... but one that does have a serious flaw that (in my opinion) isn't too game breaking.  First, since both portions are Red Abilities, it is only available in the Red Zone... which will usually be due to a character suffering damage (which at best means that the Character is at 14 or less Health).  In this case there is a built in limitation as to how many times it can be used on a single target before either the Target or the Character are knocked Out.  Yes, theoretically the Character could just take multiple Minor Twists to go even longer than their current Health would allow, but even here there are consequences for abusing this combo too much (ones that will need to be role-played).

In the end, I see this as sort of a berserker-type combo, where it just feeds into itself and causes the character to just pummel anyone foolish to attack them in this state... but once that target (or the character) is down, it ends until someone else is foolish enough to attack an enraged beast (though such an attack would need to deal damage to trigger this combo again).

In essence, this is a double edged sword type combo... where it is very powerful when it works, but also very costly to use which should hopefully discourage it from being abused too much.

Any insights as to whether or not my interpretations are correct... or even if this has been discussed before (yes, my search-fu is weak for finding topics that have been discussed before).

2

Reactions can only be used in response to a specific trigger and thus that limits you to one time use not multiple times to the same trigger.  With Push Your Limits and Reactive Strike it just means that you can use Reactive Strike once from each individual attack done to your hero.  If you have other applicable reactions you could use them once as well but again limited to triggering once off a specific trigger.   

3

Please cite your source... so that I can confirm the conclusion is official.  I can not find anything in the rules that a given trigger will only cause a reaction to be used once... going by what is actually written.

I am still inclined to allow the combo as it does make for a very effective berserker that just pummels a target into submission (a persistant Lieutenant that is irritating the character to the main villain that thinks they are stronger).  This would be like the Hulk repeatedly pounding Loki into the floor at Stark Tower during the Battle of New York in the Avengers... stoping only once Loki was Out... or the Flash delivering multiple blows in rapid fire to Weather Wizard after taking away his weather control rod in Justice League vs. Teen Titans (okay, not exactly perfect examples, but examples of multiple attacks by heroic characters against a villain).

I think the inherent weakness of the combo balances it out... both the consequence of multiple minor twists or the potential of knocking oneself Out (given that this combo is only available in the Red Zone) limits any potential abuse... as is the fact that one actually has to be damaged by the Triggering Attack (if the Attack did no damage due to some Resistance/Mitigation or Defend action) you can't trigger the combo.  So, if a character has some sort of Innate protection (immune to a type of energy or damage is reduced by a given amount depending on their Zone... or they can just ignore damage done to them due to another Ability), then Reactive Strike can not trigger from an attack that doesn't deal damage and thus the combo falls apart.  This is the double edge part of the combo... in order to use it, they have to take damage initially (and when in the Red Zone, they usually don't have much Health left).  The more they want to use it, the more damage they will need to take to initiate it and likely have to take to maintain it.

Besides... I think that the Rule of Cool is the ultimate trump in regards to this combo.  Who didn't chear when Hulk smashed Loki in Avengers?  In the end, it is likely going to be a finishing move... for either the target it is used against or the Hero that uses it (especially if they are indiscriminate with its use).

Besides I can already think of a few ways that would shut this combo down... or at least make any player who relies on it too much to rethink their choice.  For a single ability, Impenitrible Defense could very likely shut this down on its own... as this ability (provided by Material, Psychic and Self Control  powers) allows one to Defend against all Attacks until their next turn as a Reaction (and get their Max + Mid dice to do so).  At best, this will negate every attack made while the attacker keeps taking more and more damage, while at the very least, it reduces the damage taken (with the hope that the defender out lasts the reactionary attacker's ability to maintain the relentless attack).  Reactive Defense (from Physical Qualities) in combo with Push Your Limits would also be a fairly effective defense (or at least slow down one's attrition of Health until the Berserker falters.  Push Your Limits and Defensive Deflection (from Self Control) would be a very effective counter... as one gets to Defend against each Attack (suffering only 1 damage from each from Push Your Limits) while redirecting any damage that wasn't Defended against to other targets (such as the Berserker's allies).  I am sure other options will also be available once we get the rules for creating villains.

In the end, I think this combo is a very creative one players have come up with for a character.  Now if the abuse of it gets out of hand and begins to spoil the fun the group has (how many times have the Avengers used the Hulk Smash! threat to intimidate villains into surrenduring?) then I will reconsider how the combo functions... but until then, I think I will let players have eat their cake and have it too.

4

Page 37 of Chapter 2 says this:

>
> Reactions are specific things you can do when some trigger event happens

> >

If you already reacted to a specific trigger I don't see how you keep using the same ability off the same trigger    For Reactive Strike you have to be attacked and take damage which is the specific trigger allowing you to use that Reaction.  So you've meet that trigger only once and can only use that reaction once.   If you are attacked and take damage later that round before your turn then you can use Push the Limits to use Reactive Strike again.   Now you are free to rule how you want in your game.   I don't think it's broken as you'd be low on health anyways(or taking lots of twists to accomplish) but by my reading what you want to do is not the intention.  

5

In a Letters Page episode they said that "Push your limits" would let you react to the same trigger more than once

<Edit> they have changed there mind on this ruleing

Of course they also said you could take the same abillity more than once but did not see the point, totally forgetting damage immunity/refection/reversal. Before we got rule preveiw i had considered a build of Salamander that was immune to fire and cold.

 

also in the new version "combat stance" was changed from same damage to min die for some but not all sources, do we think this was this intentional? ShadowStripe was asking about a different abillity but in theory all damage sheild or hit back powers should work the same 

6

You’re right I found where it was asked in Episode 118. This is from WalkingTarget’s notes

Push Your Limits” removes the restriction of one Reaction per round, could you use this to take multiple Reactions triggered by the same event? Yes, but you’ll be taking that point of Irreducible damage [or a Twist] for each extra Reaction and you’re already in the Red zone if you’re using it.

I wouldn’t have viewed it that way and if I GM a game I’d probably would want some justification from the player to repeatedly use the same reaction off the same trigger.

Combat Stance is unchanged but what you are probably looking at is that the ability exists in two different power sources. It exists under Training and Mulitverse. My guess is either they should both use the same text or the one under Multiverse should use a different name.

7

> Push Your Limits” removes the restriction of one Reaction per round, could you use this to take multiple Reactions triggered by the same event? Yes, but you’ll be taking that point of Irreducible damage [or a Twist] for each extra Reaction and you’re already in the Red zone if you’re using it.

I could be wrong, but I still don't think that means what OP thinks it means.

I think what they mean by that is:  Suppose you have a hero that has both the Reactive Burst reaction ability (which lets you attack all close enemies when attacked) and the Combat Stance reaction ability (which causes an equal amount of damage to your attacker when attacked).  Your hero is attacked while you're in the red zone.  What they're saying is that you could take both of those reactions as a response to that trigger.  You don't have to choose which one to react with.  In other words, "take multiple reactions" refers to multiple reaction abilities, not an arbitrary number of repetitions of the same singular ability.

Keep in mind that there are reactions that heal you without cost.  If you could trigger those healing reactions an arbitrary number of times, then the explanation they gave about taking a point of damage or a twist while you're already in the red zone doesn't make sense.  Why would taking 1 point of irreducible damage be a mitigating factor if you could just heal d8 health an arbitrary number of times by doing so?  "Hmm. Should I heal 1d8-1 health for free again?"

8

The only reaction that recover health stipulate it has to be a particular energy/element source and you won't always come across that.   Regardless, I don't see any issue with taking different and multiple reactions to the same trigger assuming you meet the trigger.  

9

> The only reaction that recover health stipulate it has to be a particular energy/element source and you won't always come across that

Except you could easily engineer it. For instance, you could use Harvest Life Force to deal it to yourself whenever you wanted (and get in an attack and heal an ally as gravy).

In fact, if OP's interpretation is correct, you could use Harvest Life Force, Techno-Absorb, Push Your Limits, and Command Power to, once you get in the red zone, deal infinite damage to every enemy in the fray...and heal yourself into the yellow zone and your friend with your Max die, all with a single action.  You'd basically win every battle once it gets into the red.  Seems unlikely that's what the designers intended.

10

To fall back on what Powerhound quoted from WalkingTarget's notes, I propose a clarification that was provided back in the card game regarding Mister Fixer be brought forward: Once an ability has been triggered by some event, it cannot be triggered again by the same instance of that event.
As an example, with Reactive Strike and Pushing The Limits, Speedy Mc Two Swords is engaging a Big Monster.

 

Speedy Mc Two Swords is in the red zone, and is Attacked by the big monster. The Attack is pushed onto the event stack.

Speedy Mc Two Swords triggers Reactive Strike in response to the Attack. Reactive Strike triggered by the Big Monster's Attack is pushed onto the stack.

Reactive Strike resolves, and Speedy Mc Two Swords does damage to the Big Monster. Reactive Strike is popped from the stack. Reactive Strike cannot be currently triggered, since it 'remembers' that it was already triggered on the resolving Attack by the Big Monster.

Big Monster's Attack resolves, and damage is dealt. Big Monster's Attack is popped from the stack. Now that Big Monster's Attack is no longer on the stack, Reactive Strike 'forgets' that instance of Big Monster's Attack triggered it, and everything is fine.

 

But what if the Big Monster has the ability to Attack a target that Attacks it? Let's call that ability 'Bring It ON'.

Big Monster Attacks Speedy Mc Two Swords. The Attack is pushed onto the event stack.

Speedy Mc Two Swords triggers Reactive Strike in response to the Attack. Reactive Strike triggered by the Big Monster's Attack is pushed onto the stack.

Big Monster triggers Bring It ON in response to the Attack from Reactive Strike. Bring It On triggered by Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack is pushed onto the stack.

Because Speedy Mc Two Swords has Push Your Limits, and Reactive Strike hasn't been triggered in response to Bring It ON yet, Speedy Mc Two Swords triggers Reactive Strike in response to Bring It On triggered by Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack.

The new Reactive Strike is pushed onto the Stack. Speedy Mc Two Swords either takes 1 damage, or a minor twist.

The Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike in response to Bring It On triggered by Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack resolves, and is popped from the stack. Because Bring It On triggered by Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack triggered Reactive Strike, Reactive Strike cannot be triggered in response to it.

Bring It On triggered by Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack resolves, and is popped from the stack.

Since Big Monster's Attack triggered Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike, Speedy Mc Two Swords cannot trigger Reactive Strike in response to it.

Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike triggered by Big Monster's Attack resolves, and is popped from the stack.

Since Big Monster's Attack triggered Speedy Mc Two Swords Reactive Strike, Speedy Mc Two Swords cannot trigger Reactive Strike in response to it.

Big Monster's Attack finally resolves, and Big Monster hopes that this fight ends soon.

11

@nephilim1

Harvest Life Force, Techno Absorb, and Command Power all come from different power sources so unless you are doing the secret third method for character creation you can’t have all of those abilities on one hero.   Which if you did use that secret third method I wouldn’t expect it to be balanced.  

12

True, but my point was that compounding powers like that with OP’s interpretation could really blow the power levels out of whack. It doesn’t matter whether you could get all those powers into one hero or not.  Even if there wasn’t a particular path through the character creation rules to get all four of those ability effects into a single hero, all you’d need to do is coordinate with another hero to set up these same chains.  For instance, suppose there was no power that would let you deal yourself fire and still get the other ones.  All you’d have to do is have another hero take the fire power and have them hit you with it, with a normal attack if need be, and now your chain of reactions triggers - just on their turn instead of yours.  What’s broken is not “it’s possible to get all these into one character”.  What’s broken is “reactions can be retriggered infinitely”.  It’s broken whether one hero is doing it themselves or multiple heroes are doing it in tandem.

BUT if you insist on a legal coordination of the listed ability effects in one hero, here you go:

  •  For your power source, take Higher Power, take an athletic power and the fire elemental power.  Choose the Command Power reaction.  This makes it so when you take damage from fire, you can deal that damage to another target.

  •  For your archetype, take Blaster, and choose Energy Immunity, which lets you convert fire damage to healing as a reaction.  (This is the same as the Techno-Absorb ability mentioned earlier.)

  •  For your first red power, choose Eruption (legal because it’s from the elemental category).  This lets you attack yourself (and others!) with fire as an action.

  •  For your second red power, choose Push Your Limits (legal because it’s from the athletic category).  This gives you the multiple reactions.

There.  Now you’ve followed the rules of character creation and gotten all the effects I described earlier.

When in the red zone, you can do an Eruption and hit yourself with fire.  With OP’s interpretation, you can then heal yourself with Energy Immunity that amount as many times as you want, and you can use Command Power to deal yourself 1 damage and attack another target with that amount as many times as you want.  Alternate between them as much as you need to, staying between 1 health and the top of the red zone.  This way, you can deal unlimited damage to an unlimited number of targets.  With a legal character.

But it’s important to note that you don’t even need to follow this path exactly to create a broken result.  For instance, if you take Volatile Reactions instead of Command Power, you can create a boost and then destroy it to wipe everything in the encounter, too.  A little less convenient, perhaps, but still crazily overpowered.

The above build is not some convoluted cocktail of mechanics that produces an outlier result.  Nearly every reaction would be overpowered if you could retrigger it and retrigger it from a single instance of the triggering condition.  Some moreso than others, sure, and mixing healing with the repeating is especially overpowered since it entirely removes the “one irreducible damage” mitigation factor, but nearly all of them, if able to trigger in an unbounded way, are far more powerful than any other red ability in the rule book.  This is the point I was trying to make.

 

13

are you sure Command Power would trigger? Energy immunity turns the damage to zero inherently so you never take any damage for CP to react to. I have thought about this and the "hit back" combo more than once.

 

They already changed minion rules from the broadcast games they still might revamp some of these rule with us game mechanics playing with the bits and bods

 

14

Yeah I agree with Sea Envy.  If you use Energy Immunity as your reaction no damage is being taken so Command Power can't trigger as part of it.   I also still don't know that you could use Energy Immunity multiple times off the same attack especially when you already reduced the damage to 0 once.   You'd need a new attack to occur.   As to your comment about legal coordination it does matter as the secret third option isn't going to be balanced at all even moreso than any other character built.   I think I'll send in a question to the Letters Page in regards to Push Your Limits as it certainly seems to need more clarification on what can and can't be done with it.  

15

Edit: We got an updated ruling from the latest Editor's Note and thus I'm removing my quote.  

16

Makes sense. Glad some clarification came to the matter.

17

Latest Editor's note they said they messed up on "Push your Limits" you can not use the same ability to react to the same trigger more than once

they said it worked one way and have now changed their minds (of course Christopher and Adam did not write the system from the ground up so mistakes are expected). This is also why they do preveiws and give people a chance the shake down the system before printing

 

Would it be possible for Walking Target or anyone else to edit the page PowerHound quoted so people no that the ruleing has changed?

If so could the first Captain Cosmic episode be eddited to cross out where they origionaly said that there was never any romantic subplot with Galactra?

18

WalkingTarget can't edit my post.   I was waiting for WalkingTarget's notes from the new editor's note before I altered it.  Though I've done it now just in case and will just make a new post with that summary from WalkingTarget later.  

19

Powerhound i meant editing the wiki. So if someone checks the wiki for WalkingTarget's quick notes they would know the change

and i have edited my earlier post mentioning the earlier, incorect editors note

20

Gotcha.  I will update that in a bit.