Quick question. Anatomy Lessons states that for a destiny point you can add damage equal to your intellect to one non-vehicle weapon.
Would this include brawl? Technically not a weapon, but it seems to me like it should apply.
Anatomy Lessons
Why not? Vibro-knuckles to the kidneys should make for a bad day.
I was thinking more of bare hand brawling, no brawl-weapon at all. Specifically, I was thinking about the potential of combining anatomy lessons and pressure point. Get a reasonably skilled character with both talents, and you could do some disgusting amounts of strain. For example, somebody with a 3 Strength, and 4 each in medicine and intellect. Flip a destiny point and you're doing 11+ successes strain damage that ignores soak. It does require that destiny point, which seems like a good balancer to me, but I wanted to make sure that my interpretation was reasonable.
I'm not 100% how the rules would handle it. Any GM worth their salt should say yes to this though. As for the exact way to rule it, I would closely examine the section where it talks about what the default Brawl attack is. I think you're definitely hitting the semantics issue that it isn't considered a weapon.
I assume the issue is more that they were trying to prevent PCs from using Anatomy Lessons on vehicle scale weapons (where +damage has significantly different consequences than on personal scale, plus not that kind of "Anatomy"). To get that wording in, they used "non-vehicle weapons." They weren't trying to prevent it from being used in unarmed combat.
Arguably, any attack is performed using a weapon of some kind. Its just that the unarmed brawl "weapon" doesn't have a normal profile.
I would let the player do it. There is little help to players using brawl, no peirce, vicious stuff like that. Also unarmed attacks are normally pretty low damage so it shouldn't be an issue. Also it will encourage the to spend the destiny points.
Edited by damnkid3I agree. Anatomy lessons should apply to Brawl/Unarmed attacks. Especially since it costs a destiny point. It does get powerful with Pressure Point, but it is cinematic. And in my mind, destiny points are cinematic. Plus, it lets the Doctor get a Vulcan Neck pinch that could drop rivals, not just minions.
Thanks for the insight all. I also agree that it should be legal, I just wanted to double check that I wasn't missing anything. I'm planning out an Arkanian doctor, and really want to be able to pull out that Vulcan Neck Pinch. I plan to pair Doctor and Medic, and use the medics well rounded talent to pick up Brawl. The character hates killing so will use pressure point and a stun gun for their primary attacks. Very effective against living beings, less effective against machines.
Yes. Anatomy Lessons can be used with an unarmed attack. This is based on a question that was posted in the “FFG developer answered questions” regarding the Pressure Point talent. Based on the example below, I’d say it is developer-approved and definitely RAI.
Emphasis added in bold:
”Pressure point reads: “When making a Brawl check against a living opponent, the character may choose to forgo dealing damage as wounds, instead dealing the equivalent damage as strain, plus additional strain in equal to his ranks in Medicine. These checks cannot be made with any weapons, but this strain damage is not reduced by soak.”
Thus, whenever the Doctor makes an unarmed Brawl check against a living opponent, first determine how much damage the attack would inflict. As normal, this takes the base damage for Brawl checks (Brawn + Successes), plus an additional damage from relevant talents and abilities (such as Anatomy Lessons, Feral Strength, Targeted Blow, Soft Spot, Wookiee Rage, etc). Then, the character’s player may decide to use Pressure Point to convert all of this damage into strain and add additional strain equal to the character’s ranks in Medicine. Then, the sum total of the strain the check inflicts ignores the target’s soak.“