[skalchemist]

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but search seems useless to me because I can't filter out previous version questions. 

On page 121 it talks about the Power of toxins.  If I am reading this correctly, it seems like the Power is treated as a Threshold that has to be beaten on the Toxin Resistance test.  That is, its the DV for damage, and the number of hits needed to avoid the effect for non-damage. 

Is that true?  If so, holy CRAP!  Most toxins seems completely impossible to avoid, even if you have Toxin Resistance.  You would need 11 hits on toxin resistance for example, to avoid Pepper Punch.  Good luck with that!  If the power were a number of dice rolled by the toxin, that would make a bit more sense.  But that's not what I am seeing on page 121. 

[Michael Chandra]

You soak toxins. The remaining power is used for the damage. And yeah toxins didn't get halved. I would definitely half all powers myself.

[skalchemist]

You soak toxins. The remaining power is used for the damage. And yeah toxins didn't get halved. I would definitely half all powers myself.

So, for example, you would treat Pepper Punch as Power 5, not Power 11?  Seven-7 would be 6 not 12? 

A couple of other question about gas/smoke grenades and toxins?

* Is it just me, or is it weird that an actual explosive device (stun grenade) is legal with a license, but a much less explosive device (smoke/thermal smoke grenade) is illegal?

* Why would anyone use nausea gas instead of pepper punch?  PP is cheaper, applies the same bad status effects as well as some extras, has a higher power, faster speed, longer duration, higher power, AND works on contact as well as inhalation.  PP seems superior on every metric.

[Michael Chandra]

Iirc with gas clouds longer duration is a bad thing: you're only getting hit a second time after the duration expires?

NG is better if your own people have to walk through the cloud.

[skalchemist]

And two more questions:

* I just noticed Pepper Punch is listed as n/a in the availability column of the toxins.  I think that means "not applicable" (because alcohol is also listed as n/a) and not "not available".  In other words, it is superior to nausea gas [3L] in terms of availability and legality as well?

* how does the availability of the toxin interact with availability of the grenade?  Gas grenades are 4(I), but many of the toxins are like 5 or 6(L).  My guess is that you take the higher number and the worst of the legality.  So a gas grenade [4I] of Neuro-Stun IX [6L] would be 6I availability. 

[skalchemist]

Iirc with gas clouds longer duration is a bad thing: you're only getting hit a second time after the duration expires?

I don't see that rule anywhere, Michael.  The rules on page 122 seem to suggest that you get re-exposed every 10 rounds of exposure regardless of whether you are currently affected or not. 

But even if that were the case, it would only matter with toxins that do stun (or lethal, I suppose) damage directly.  For gases like nausea and pepper punch that just apply status effects it doesn't matter how many doses you apply as far as I can tell.  Once you Blinded I, Nauseated, Dazed and Stunned you are those things, all that matters is how long. 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

so first, the rule for common reference:

Power tells how powerful the toxin is. For toxins
that do actual damage, either Physical or Stun,
Power serves as the DV of the attack. A Toxin Resistance
test (Body + Willpower + the rating of any
appropriate protective gear/systems) is used to reduce
the damage. If a substance’s Power is reduced
to 0, then no damage occurs, and no other effects
happen, unless noted in the substance description.

Ok, so someone shoots you with a Narcoject dart.  It has Power 15 with an Effect of Stun Damage.  Let's say you have Body 5 and Willpower 4.  You roll 3 hits on 9 dice.  That reduces the Power from 15 to 12, and so you suffer the Effect of 12 Stun Damage.  Probably, it's lights out.

In contrast, a toxin like Nausea Gas has an Effect that is not Stun Damage.  It's Power 9, and Effect Dazed Status, Nauseated Status.  If you're exposed to that, you roll 3 hits on your 9 dice again.  Power is reduced to 6, but since there's no damage to apply, you still suffer the Dazed and Nausated status since the Power was not reduced all the way down to 0.

[skalchemist]

so first, the rule for common reference:

Power tells how powerful the toxin is. For toxins
that do actual damage, either Physical or Stun,
Power serves as the DV of the attack. A Toxin Resistance
test (Body + Willpower + the rating of any
appropriate protective gear/systems) is used to reduce
the damage. If a substance’s Power is reduced
to 0, then no damage occurs, and no other effects
happen, unless noted in the substance description.

Ok, so someone shoots you with a Narcoject dart.  It has Power 15 with an Effect of Stun Damage.  Let's say you have Body 5 and Willpower 4.  You roll 3 hits on 9 dice.  That reduces the Power from 15 to 12, and so you suffer the Effect of 12 Stun Damage.  Probably, it's lights out.

In contrast, a toxin like Nausea Gas has an Effect that is not Stun Damage.  It's Power 9, and Effect Dazed Status, Nauseated Status.  If you're exposed to that, you roll 3 hits on your 9 dice again.  Power is reduced to 6, but since there's no damage to apply, you still suffer the Dazed and Nausated status since the Power was not reduced all the way down to 0.

That's the way I assumed things worked, SSDR.  And my assumption is that, per pg 122, if you are still be exposed 10 rounds later you make another test.  In the case of damage you may take more damage.  In the case of status effects it would simply reapply the status effect assuming you had gotten rid of it somehow, otherwise wouldn't do much of anything.

Follow my reasoning here regarding these power levels.  Lets say I am pretty good at body and willpower, a 5 in each.  So my base Toxin Resistance dice pool is 10.  I find myself in a cloud of Pepper Punch, Power 11.  I think we can safely say that I will get hammered by the Pepper Punch; even if ALL of my dice roll hits, I'm still not there yet.  There isn't enough Edge in the world to help me.

But lets say I am wearing a chemsuit rating 6.  That gives me an extra 6 to my dice pool, so I'm rolling 16 dice.  I'm...still going to get hammered by the Pepper Punch.  By my calculations (per Anydice) I only have a 0.4% chance of avoiding its effects.  Even if you assume that the ratings of respirators would stack with chemsuits, the best you could get is +12 dice, which is still only a 7.87% chance to avoid the effects of the gas.

This leads me to believe that the power levels can't possibly be what was intended by the designers.  A rating 6 chemsuit (the highest rating you can get) has to be virtual immunity against a relatively simple pepper-based toxin gas, right?  Michael has to be right and the power levels all need to be divide by 2 or so.  Alternatively, maybe the designers intended chemsuits and respirators to be essentially useless?  That doesn't seem likely.

A full hazmat suit would work, of course, because it simply says it protects you. It doesn't add dice like the chemsuit or respirator.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well you do have blanket immunity if you have a good and proper chem seal.

If your armor jacket has 6 levels of chemical protection, it's STILL an armor jacket.  Ok your chest and arms are very well protected, but your hands/face/legs/feet are completely exposed still.  I can see an argument on the flipside that you shouldn't even get those dice    It's abstract... I think it works mostly well as-is.  (what DOESN'T work is gas masks... 100% effective vs inhalation means 0% effective vs toxins that are both inhalation AND contact...)

[skalchemist]

Well you do have blanket immunity if you have a good and proper chem seal.

If your armor jacket has 6 levels of chemical protection, it's STILL an armor jacket.  Ok your chest and arms are very well protected, but your hands/face/legs/feet are completely exposed still.  I can see an argument on the flipside that you shouldn't even get those dice    It's abstract... I think it works mostly well as-is.  (what DOESN'T work is gas masks... 100% effective vs inhalation means 0% effective vs toxins that are both inhalation AND contact...)

SSDR, I want to understand what you are saying, so I will ask you two specific questions.

Is it reasonable that any Body+Willpower total of less than 11 cannot even possibly resist the effects of a cloud of Pepper Punch? (I guess barring dropping lots and lots of Edge)

Is it reasonable that a rating 6 chemsuit (not an armored jacket mind you, but a purpose built device to protect you from things like gases and toxins) provides me with much less than 10% chance of actually avoiding being affected by a cloud of Pepper Punch? 

If both are yes...fair enough.  I see no reason to argue with you, we just have very different perspectives on it.   

[skalchemist]

I lied, I am going to try to convince you for a moment.   

The issue here is not that things like chemical protection on armor, chemsuits and respirators are not 100% effective.  That makes perfect sense.  As you say, they don't have chem seals, independent air supplies etc.  But that potential ineffectiveness is already represented by the fact that they add dice to the toxin resistance test instead of providing immunity (as hazmat suits and gasmasks do). 

Therefore the issue is that because the power levels of the toxins are off the charts, even at their highest ratings these devices are still practically useless, certainly providing far less protection than a simple reading of their descriptions implies.  Like, if the description of chemsuit added "btw, even in a best case scenario you will only get less than 10% chance to resist common off-the-shelf crowd control agents like Pepper Punch" I think you wouldn't even think of paying the price for them.  You'd just accept you are going to be Blinded, Nauseated, Dazed, and Stunned if someone uses them against you and move on. 

EDIT: if the rating of these devices counted as auto-hits on toxin resistance...at that point I think the system would maybe make sense to me.  Like, I am wearing a rating 6 chem suit.  That means the effective power of pepper punch is 5.  That's still hard to get on a toxin resistance test without lots of dice, but well within reason especially if edge is used. 

[Michael Chandra]

Incidentally the Antidote spell reduces the remaining Power.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well you do have blanket immunity if you have a good and proper chem seal.

If your armor jacket has 6 levels of chemical protection, it's STILL an armor jacket.  Ok your chest and arms are very well protected, but your hands/face/legs/feet are completely exposed still.  I can see an argument on the flipside that you shouldn't even get those dice    It's abstract... I think it works mostly well as-is.  (what DOESN'T work is gas masks... 100% effective vs inhalation means 0% effective vs toxins that are both inhalation AND contact...)

SSDR, I want to understand what you are saying, so I will ask you two specific questions.

Is it reasonable that any Body+Willpower total of less than 11 cannot even possibly resist the effects of a cloud of Pepper Punch? (I guess barring dropping lots and lots of Edge)

Is it reasonable that a rating 6 chemsuit (not an armored jacket mind you, but a purpose built device to protect you from things like gases and toxins) provides me with much less than 10% chance of actually avoiding being affected by a cloud of Pepper Punch? 

If both are yes...fair enough.  I see no reason to argue with you, we just have very different perspectives on it.   

Well... "is it reasonable" is an opinion question. 

But my opinion on #1) is that I'm generally ok with the status quo.  If a substance is known to have some effect in some dose then that should be the result, rather than letting the dice say what happens.  For example, so many grams of cyanide is lethal.  If you're exposed, you should die.  You shouldn't roll to see if you die.  Of course, in a RPG there's an expectation for hero armor, so I'm also fine with a "lethal" dose of a toxin proving to be less than lethal because you rolled really well.  So that's the status quo: barring edge, yeah you're probably gonna suffer the effects of whatever the toxin does if you're exposed to it.  Seems right and natural to me.  Now, I do have a minor quibble with the premise of your question.  If you're building a "tough" character who is meant to resist toxin attacks, then you're very much doing it wrong if you're not using augmentations and/or gear.  So the "you can't reasonably resist a toxin by only rolling body + willpower" point is imo flawed.  If you're trying to resist them, then you'll be rolling more than just body + willpower.  Which segues into:

#2) Is the question of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of those bonuses.  A couple of dice here and a couple of dice there may not look like much, but add them all up and you've got a respectable dice pool.  6 dice from chemical protection, 6 dice from nephritic screen, maybe a circumstantial edge because you have some goggles on or a scarf covering your nose and mouth, and  we've got a much stronger situation than "naked" body + willpower, no matter what those values might be.  Also note that statuses have a duration at the GM's discretion.  If you reduced the CS/Tear Gas to power 1 and therefore you still suffer the Dazed and Nauseated statuses because you didn't knock it all the way down to 0, the GM should probably be saying your statuses wear off faster than the guy who got few or no hits.

So, for those reasons, plus the existence of Antidote patches, I'm fine with toxins being the way they are.  Yes in my subjective opinion I think they're "reasonable".   Are they disproportionately powerful compared to options like guns?  Also yes.  I'm in no way a fan of the idea of coating your katana with narcoject so that your weapon DV is irrelevant and the toxin takes your victim out.  But stacking two DVs into one attack is a different ball of worms.

I lied, I am going to try to convince you for a moment.   

Lol, ok

The issue here is not that things like chemical protection on armor, chemsuits and respirators are not 100% effective.  That makes perfect sense.  As you say, they don't have chem seals, independent air supplies etc.  But that potential ineffectiveness is already represented by the fact that they add dice to the toxin resistance test instead of providing immunity (as hazmat suits and gasmasks do). 

Therefore the issue is that because the power levels of the toxins are off the charts, even at their highest ratings these devices are still practically useless, certainly providing far less protection than a simple reading of their descriptions implies.  Like, if the description of chemsuit added "btw, even in a best case scenario you will only get less than 10% chance to resist common off-the-shelf crowd control agents like Pepper Punch" I think you wouldn't even think of paying the price for them. 

Way I see it is if you have some kind of armor that is all-encompassing, you'll just get the chem seal option rather than the inferior chemical protection option.  If chem seal is not an option because the armor is not all encompassing, I'm fine with the chemical protection being far from immunity when it's on armor that leaves your face/large portions of your body exposed.  As I said before, it's almost silly to say it helps in any way whatsoever, really.

You'd just accept you are going to be Blinded, Nauseated, Dazed, and Stunned if someone uses them against you and move on. 

As an aside, not only are there antidote patches (if you're fast enough with the slap patch before the statuses take effect), see also the fancy gear called "Liter of Milk" on pg. 157, No Future

[skalchemist]

Fair enough, SSDR.  Thanks for the thoughts and help.  You too, Michael.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

You're welcome.

And hey nobody plays any RPG without some house rules.  If you knock toxin power down by 75% or even 50%, I don't think it'd cause Lone Star to come busting in to enforce the Game Law