Question about Temptation

[MeiLan]

As the title says i have some questions about the temptation stat.
there are a lot of spells and magical effects that affect resolve, [Carnal Hex] and [Hypnotic Words] for example, my question is, are those spells affected by Temptation or Spell Penetration like any other spell?
There are also other off-kilter spells like [Psyshock] that are affected by presence, is it safe to assume that spell is affected by Ward?

 

[Prince Charming]

Whether a power uses armor penetration, spell penetration or temptation depends on its tags. You can see these tags on the power's card, which you can find in your powers tab if you have learnt the power already, or in a sense result if it's an enemy power during combat.

• If the power has a [Weapon] tag, it will use armor penetration.
• If the power has a [Spell] tag, it will use spell penetration.
• If the power has a [Tease] tag, it will use temptation.
• If the power has several of these three tags, it will use the highest relevant stat.
• If the power has none of these tags, it will use "base penetration", which in effect is equal to the character's Strength stat.

Now whether the power's damage is mitigated by the target's armor, ward or focus is dependent on the power's implementation, namely the "damage type" that is dealt. There are 4 damage types: physical (hits against armor), magical (hits against ward), mental (hits against focus), and sexual (hits against focus too). The problem is that for some powers the damage type is not entirely clear; my way of retrieving it is by using the javascript console.
A big confusion comes up when calling them damage types though, because there is already another classification of damage types: penetrating / crushing / fire / frost / storm / holy / blight / acid / raw / mind / drug / pheromone / tease. These two classifications are independent: you can deal 35 crushing magical damage, 35 crushing physical damage, as well as 35 crushing sexual damage. Keep in mind though, that penetrating / crushing / ... / acid / raw damage will only hit the target's health points, while mind / tease / drug / pheromone will only hit the target's resolve.
For instance, let's check the three powers you've brought up:

• Carnal Hex has the [Spell] tag, so it uses Spell Penetration. The power card also tells us that it deals Tease damage, so it will reduce the target's resolve. Finally, javascipt dark arts tell us that the damage is magical, so it will hit the target's ward.
• Hypnotic Words has the [Spell] tag, so it uses Spell Penetration. It deals Mind and Tease damage, both will reduce the target's resolve. The console tells us its damage is magical, so it will hit the target's ward.
• Psyshock has the [Spell] tag, so it uses Spell Penetration. It deals Crushing damage, so it will reduce the target's health. The code tells us the damage is magical, so it will hit the target's ward.

Maybe at this point you are wondering when the hell is temptation used then? Well there are a few powers that have the [Tease] tag, namely Allure and Song of Splendor: these will use temptation. Also they most likely deal sexual damage, so they will hit the target's focus. Also, the base tease attack is a [Tease] power after all, so it uses temptation too.
Oh, and bonus round to highlight some oddities in the power system: consider Arcane Shot. It's a [Weapon] power, but not a [Spell] power, so it uses Armor Penetration. However, it explicitly deals magical damage, so it uses Armor Penetration against Ward, instead of Armor. And finally consider Power Wave: it is both a [Weapon] and a [Spell] power, so it will use whichever is higher between Armor Penetration and Spell Penetration.

 

[Erzulie]

That was an excellent breakdown that should be front and center on the wiki.

As a slight digression, the fact that there are two categories of damage and both sets of subcatory elements are called "types" is, in my view, a significant mistake. It makes it much harder to parse these mechanics. Indeed, "type" is already a really common word on top of the ambiguity its use here presents.

Suggestions I'd make if I were organizing these stats:

I'd call the suite of physical, magical, mental, and sexual malison tags and explicitly note that they are mutually exclusive.

I'd call armor, ward, and focus benison tags and it should be obvious that I'm using really weird and obscure terms here because it's really intuitive to english-speakers (and, well latin speakers) that these are opposites.

I'd call crushing, acid, blight, fire, frost, holy, penetrating, raw, and storm kinetic afflictions and drug, mind, pheromone, and tease spiritual afflictions and the sum total of them would be rather obviously referred to as afflictions. I chose "spiritual" over "psychic" because the latter term is also part of the name of a power and I want to make every term as unique as possible.

 

[zagzig]

Just to muddy the waters, we also have spells like Groping Tentacles and Trick that scale off spellpower but target Mental Resistance and Focus. Because lol.

 

[Erzulie]

Mental Resistence is notable. That actually is another source of confusion I didn't have time to address above.

There is a category of stats called "Attack Avoidance." I'dve called them "Avoidance" myself in order to get rid of that pesky, overused "attack" word such that you don't have multiple reserved terms with the word "Attack" in them, but the greater point is the names of the stats in this category:

• Evasion
• Physical Resistance
• Magical Resistance
• Mental Resistance

Here's the problem: Avoidance and Resistance are actually opposites in this context. They're synonyms in a looser, broader sense, but in this case the distinction is between avoiding an assault without triggering successful assault rider effects or the assault damage and absorbing an attack's damage, suffering its rider effects and triggering assault-response effects while reducing that damage.

"Evasion" covers this concept but commits the sin of not being in the same format as the other three stats, lacking the word "Resistance." It commits a further sin in that its not conceptually distinct from what "Physical Resistance" does.

The other stats commit the greater sin of just not making sense. In a rpg sense, "resistance" suggests mitigation of the harm created by an attack that successfuly made its to-hit roll or other success check, whereas here it means to defeat such a check entirely. So I'd rename them, with the following caveat:

Physical Resistance is hardest to rename because its description colloquially means the exact same thing as "Evasion" in this context. That is, dodging weapons and dodging grapples sound like they'd be in the same category based on the term "physical." Plus, it covers grappling and poison, which are hard to group together linguistically. The only phrase that accurate covers both is the tongue-in-cheek Badtouch Evasion, which is silly but does have the advantage of making sense. Alternatives are Manhandle Evasion, covering grapple well but poison not so much, and Impairment Evasion, which is pretty freakn' generic but it sounds like something dealing with debuffs in an rpg as opposed to mostly-riderless damage, which is accurate.

So I'd call the Avoidance stats Strike Evasion, Impairment Evasion, Magical Evasion, and Mental Evasion.

This has the added effect of not confusing any of the Avoidance stats with bonuses to Elemental Resistances (looking at you, War Paint).

(Notably Elemental Resistances aren't explicitly called out as being capped at 75%, so that's ambiguous, though it's a minor point since I'm not sure any of them can get that high. Also, just for the sake of completeness, the Elements aren't called out as being a set of specific tags, so I can't be sure if Acid is elemental or not. I'd probably clarify that.)

Further, I'd purge any mechanical reference to Lust in the wiki that isn't a reference to a reserved term (e.g., something with "Lust" actually in the name). "Lust" is used almost interchangeably with "Tease" and "Lust damage" with "Resolve damage" all over the place. Indeed, the most disciplined approach would be to tag each use of the term damage as having one of two Qualities (another reserved term), Resolve and Health. Then, for each time the word "damage" is used, Health or Resolved is mentioned as a matter of course. That way you don't have to to check on the Affliction tag (term I invented above) and check for exceptions (as if it wasn't confusing enough!) to determine what the Damage Quality is.