A different use for Vicious Strike, or The Breakthrough Feat

In the discord server, Vicious Strike came up. It’s a really underutilized Feat due to its unpredictability, and the point was made that with a natural 20, the Attack Roll would already be quite high.

So I decided to give it a different effect, one that hasn’t been seen in Open Legend as such before. It could also be used as an entirely separate Feat, for which I think Breakthrough may be a fitting name.


Vicious Strike/Breakthrough

Cost: 1 Point

Prerequisites:

  • Tier 1: Agility 3, Might 3 or any Extraordinary 3
  • Tier 2: Agility 5, Might 5 or any Extraordinary 5
  • Tier 3: Agility 7, Might 7 or any Extraordinary 7
  • Tier 4: Agility 9, Might 9 or any Extraordinary 9

Description: Whether through brute force, lethal precision, or volatile magic, a deadly attack delivered by you is capable of even defying special protection.

Effect: Any time you roll a natural 20 on the d20 for an Attack Roll, treat the relevant Resistance the Target has as reduced in Tier by as many Tiers as you have in this Feat against that Attack.
This cumulatively downgrades immunity to a +9 to Defenses, a +9 to a +6, +6 to +3 and +3 to +0. Any other numerical bonus gets reduced by 3 cumulatively.
This Feat is not capable of reducing a Resistance to less than 0.


This is simply the first version of the Feat, and @Great_Moustache has already suggested of making it more reliable by instead of using the d20, triggering the Feat on an Exceptional Success relative to the unaltered Defense of the Target. In that case I agree with him to increase the Prerequisites, possibly to 6/7/8/9.
That also ensures that the Attack actually deals Damage if the Feat triggers, since the Defense will be below the Attack Roll unless some shenanigans is afoot, such as stacking the Energy Resistance III Feat with the Resistance Boon.
So here is that version for clarity:


Vicious Strike/Breakthrough

Cost: 1 Point

Prerequisites:

  • Tier 1: Agility 6, Might 6 or any Extraordinary 6
  • Tier 2: Agility 7, Might 7 or any Extraordinary 7
  • Tier 3: Agility 8, Might 8 or any Extraordinary 8
  • Tier 4: Agility 9, Might 9 or any Extraordinary 9

Description: Whether through brute force, lethal precision, or volatile magic, a deadly attack delivered by you is capable of even defying special protection.

Effect: Any time you exceed the unaltered Defense of the Target of an Attack Roll by 10, treat the relevant Resistance the Target has as reduced in Tier by as many Tiers as you have in this Feat against that Attack.
This cumulatively downgrades immunity to a +9 to Defenses, a +9 to a +6, +6 to +3 and +3 to +0. Any other numerical bonus gets reduced by 3 cumulatively.
This Feat is not capable of reducing a Resistance to less than 0.


A word of caution: As written, this Feat currently works with Banes, and against the GM-only Feat Bane Resistance, so there is a small chance your cool Boss might get Dominated after all. As such, the GM is free to make it applicable to Damaging Attacks only. Similarly, it’s up to the GM whether this Feat affects the Insubstantial Boon.
The GM may also decide that two Tiers of this Feat are required against every one Tier of a natural Resistance, making it only half as effective.

Note that like with any Feat, narrative comes first.
For example, if the creature has no mind to invade or obscure, you still cannot use your psychic powers without a really good explanation.

Let me know what you think, which version you prefer and what changes you would make. Should it be more expensive or is the niche usage and not entirely reliable activation enough to warrant the relatively low cost?

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The original “Vicious Strike” feat always felt like it was geared to reward a more aggressive approach in combat and I can see that in this version as well (I like the second iteration, by the way).

The thing I’m kind of concerned about is how the less combat-like Extraordinary attributes like “Prescience”, “Protection”, and even “Influence” would fit into this feat. :thinking:

Is it possible to consider limiting the applicable Extraordinaries to, say, “Energy”, “Entropy”, “Movement”? Or would that be too limiting?

Would like to know your thoughts!

It would be easy to come up with creative reasons why those attributes give you access to the feat. It’s not necessarily the attribute you are using to do the attack after all.

Also the fact it applies to banes, which those can all do.

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That makes a ton of sense - I totally forgot about the banes!

Thanks for the clarification! :blush:

I used the same Prerequisite Attributes as Attack Specialization has (which only works for Damaging Attacks), but Great Moustache already said everything else I wanted to mention.

Yeah - I suppose I’ll have to go ahead and give this a try when my players have the level to try it!

Thanks for this, I’m sure it’ll be interesting!

1 Like