Hey all,

We had a question come up in our recent game with a lightning spell. The spell was cast with auto-fire and generated two hits. We wondered if the Stun quality could then be activated with each hit (enough advantage was available to do this). Does this seem reasonable? Is it only reasonable to activate Stun against different targets?

In essence our question is are qualities activated per hit or per attack? Burn states clearly that it can be activated on multiple hits (with the expenditure of additional advantage), but what about things like Stun (which basically adds damage) or Ensnare?

It seems clear that multiple activations of most qualities would not stack on a single target (so a target suffering Ensnare 3 twice would still only be Ensnared for 3 turns), but what about things like Stun which apply a cumulative affect?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Finarin

If there's enough advantage to activate the same quality on more than one target hit by the auto-fire, I don't see why it couldn't be activated. If it isn't strictly prohibited by the rules, then it should be allowed.

22 hours ago, FinarinPanjoro said:

In essence our question is are qualities activated per hit or per attack? Burn states clearly that it can be activated on multiple hits (with the expenditure of additional advantage), but what about things like Stun (which basically adds damage) or Ensnare?

It all depends on the quality in question. Each one will list if they can be activated multiple times or not—Auto-Fire, obviously, can be, as can Burn, Concussive, Disorient, Ensnare, etc. But most of them can still only be triggered once per target. Since Stun doesn't say it can be triggered multiple times, it can't.

The relevant rules reference, CRB86: " Active item qualities on weapons can only trigger on a successful attack, unless specified otherwise. "

Also, an important note, is that the Stun quality doesn't "basically add…damage". It causes the target to suffer strain, which bypasses soak. Damage is reduced by soak, suffering strain/wounds doesn't care about soak, so they are indeed different.

Thank you both. That still leaves me somewhat confused. If it's once per successful attack would that mean it could only be activated on one target if multiple targets were hit with auto-fire? It seems like once per target might be more consistent, but then Burn states clearly it can be used this way, and Stun does not- so is that omission deliberate? I agree once per hit would need to be specified (so a single target hit twice with an auto-fire attack could not activate Stun for both hits).

Yep, I mis-spoke when I referred to Stun as adding damage. We mostly use it against minions and rivals where it does increase wounds since they don't have a strain threshold, but against PCs and Nemesis level adversaries we do use it as you stated.

After some thinking, my impression is that when you activate Stun, every target suffers strain, but only once and not per hit.

6 hours ago, grisumbras said:

After some thinking, my impression is that when you activate Stun, every target suffers strain, but only once and not per hit.

I would probably run it this way too. If I recall, this is how other active qualities work with the Blast quality, but I could be remembering incorrectly.

Well, I hadn't even considered that possibility! That would be very different from Burn, Ensnare, Knockdown, etc which all specify you may activate on multiple affected targets but must pay 2 advantage for each activation. That seems like it would make Stun unusually powerful (when combined with Blast and Auto-fire) especially since it ignores soak.

That…is an interesting conundrum. Personally, I would just use the other "the quality may be triggered multiple times, affecting a different target each time." wording as in the rest of the qualities to keep it on-par with those.

That makes more sense than one activation affecting all targets hit. It makes it too good, IMO.