Chapter Text
Design Notes: Since at least one person's had enough interest in this to pick it up and run with it a bit, I figured I'd consolidate the mechanical nitty-gritty stuff in a chapter rather than sprinkled throughout the document to help folks more easily write up their own additions for the setting.
If there's something here that's different to the character entries, either let me know or assume this chapter is authoritative.
Attack Overview
Damage types
Most of the time damage is damage, but some characters or materials might interact differently. This will aim to be a non-exhaustive list of damage types and anything noteworthy.
Physical Damage
Force/Physical: Primarily comes in piercing, cutting and blunt types. Physical damage is defined by imparting a physical injury to the target somehow, and or all intents and purposes Force damage from a kinetic energy blast or sci-fi beam sword is indistinguishable from mundane physical force. A blast wave, like Instashield, a dummy ring explosion, or Knuckles' ground pound is effectively a blunt damage attack. Finally crush damage is also physical, though usually environmental in nature.
Sonic resists most blunt damage attacks and is immune to blast waves and other large scale blunt attacks, which will launch him instead.
Blunt damage can break solid barriers - (note barriers can be armoured same as enemies, however).
Cutting damage can cut through things like vines or other flexible barriers.
Design Note: Your average rocket or other explosion is a mix of blast wave, Fire, and piercing shrapnel. Assume there's enough going on there for it to deal its full damage to whoever it hits one way or another unless otherwise noted, like Miles' ring mines.
Sonic: Focused soundwaves, operates by triggering resonance cascades in its target.
Most organic targets resist sonic damage, becoming only stunned from all but the strongest sonic attacks (treat them as having 4 armour) - flesh does have a resonant frequency but it's pretty variable between lifeforms and soft tissue handles resonance quite well comparatively. Sonic attacks don't need to penetrate armour to stun organics.
Brittle targets like glass or crystal are weak to sonic damage, taking +5 damage.
Chemical: Many and various types of toxin, acid and miscellaneous.
Generally speaking these vary between poisons, corrosives and various other effects. Beyond being physical they should be treated on a case-by-case basis. Robots don't care much about poison gas, most everyone cares about corrosive clouds or pools, chemical damage is pretty weird and variable.
As with fire, generally speaking either a chemical is going to take out the target, hurt the target and interact with their damage mechanic, do nothing to the target, or have an impact on the target that fades shortly after they stop being in contact with it. Long term effects and injuries are plot points, not game mechanics.
Energy Damage
Fire: Primarily involves being hot, burny, or otherwise incendiary. This includes mundane laser beams.
Blaze is immune to all fire damage, whether environmental or otherwise.
Fire damage can ignite flammable materials, either creating an environmental fire or burning away the obstacle. Note that living plants actually burn quite poorly, so it can take a few goes to accomplish compared to force attacks. They also melt ice, and are generally doused by water.
Lasers usually don't ignite things, but pierce through 1 point of mundane armour.
Obviously gimmick enemies or their attacks might be flammable, but generally speaking most living/robotic can be treated as non-flammable where it matters. Mobians that get taken out might ignite, but generally keep them intact and non-burny.
Electrical: Primarily involves putting too many volts into a thing, which in Sonic physics doesn't actually care too much about the properties or location of the thing in question. This comes in two types - Plasma - emitted energy blasts, and Zaps, which are instantaneous additional bursts of damage from either proximity or contact with an electrified thing. Zaps are usually instantaneous and their damage handled separately from the main attack.
A hit of either type will energise machinery it hits and stun targets. The enemy must receive damage through its armour in order to be stunned.
Electrical damage interacting with water immediately damages anything within the near vicinity for 1.5x the regular damage of the attack (minimum +1, maximum +2). The more damage the attack deals the larger this AOE effect, and can hurt the attacker and their allies if they're in the water.
Freeze: Primarily involves dropping the temperature of the target, possibly wrapping it in a giant cartoon ice cube. Don't ask me, Sonic physics is just like that.
Hitting a target with a freeze attack will freeze it solid, protecting it from most external attacks until, if not taken out, it breaks free. They can also freeze water. They don't need to bypass the target's armour to freeze it, though particularly tough or strong targets will just smash free straight away.
Untyped: Sonic is a shonen setting, energy blasts are all over the place and pretty variable. Netherbeams, shrink rays, death rays, if it doesn't carry ice, fire, plasma or force properties good chance it's Energy without any real need to categorise it further, same as Chemical.
Design Note: When an attack is two types assume 3:1 damage allocation in the attacker's favour, with a minimum 1 damage of each until it's 2 damage or less, at which point call it purely in the attacker's favour. This removes most stalemates and promotes aggressive play over turtling in keeping with Sonic's style.
Finally, if an attack is a Projectile it's something people like Amy, Silver or Miles can interfere with. If it's a zap, blast or beam then it's not, and regular artillery explosions like Shadow's RPG are going to hurt most things regardless of any damage type resistances. This primarily focuses on damage types and maybe stun properties, not any specific properties of the attack.
Armour Capacity - General thresholds of armour are none - anyone can beat these eventually, 1 - a mobian needs to be armed with a weapon or power to beat these, 4 - only heroic tier or people packing explosive ordinance can handle these, and 9 - basically unstoppable eldritch monsters who normally need a Chaos State or sustained heavy artillery fire to stop. These aren't the only levels of armour, assume it's on a curve.
0.1% of enemies have 9 armour (theoretically this goes up into ever smaller fractions of a percent above this)
0.4% have 8
1% have 7
2.5% have 6
5% have 5
8% have 4
12% have 3
16% have 2
20% have 1
35% have 0.
The highest level of armour a character can land 10 damage on in a single Chaos State is their Chaos Mode capacity, land 10 damage on from full rings is basically the character's Baseline capacity, while the highest level they can defeat indefinitely without running out of those 100 rings is their General capacity.
This doesn't perfectly show how easily these things can be done, but does give a rough estimate of a character's comparative power level, so Sonic's capacity would be 14/6/5. He can handle effectively anything in Super form, 98.5% of enemies in his Base form, and can hold out against 96% of enemies indefinitely.
Sonic
Spin Attacks, all variants - Melee, Blunt/Cutting
Light Speed Dash - Ranged, Untyped (Beam).
Insta Shield - Ranged, Blunt (Blast).
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting), Untyped
Capacity: 14/6/5
Miles
Tail Attacks and Tackle - Melee, Blunt.
Blade attacks, all - Melee, Cutting.
Force Shot - Ranged, Piercing (Projectile)
Fire Shot - Ranged, Fire (Blast)
Plasma Shot main shot - Ranged, Electrical (Projectile). Double duration stun.
- Plasma Shot zap - Ranged, Electrical (zap).
Force Charge - Ranged, Force, Blunt (blast).
Fire Charge - Ranged, Fire (Projectile)
- Fire Charge Detonation - Ranged, Fire (blast)
Plasma Charge - Ranged, Electrical (Beam). Double duration stun.
- Plasma Charge zap - Ranged, Electrical (zap).
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting/Piercing), Electric, Fire.
Capacity: 9/5/3
Blaze
Tail Whip, combo - Melee, Blunt.
Rocket Tackle, Immolation melee attacks - Melee, Fire/Blunt
Blast - Ranged, Fire (projectile)
- Blast explosion - Ranged, Fire (blast)
Burst, Tornado, Wave, Immolation - Ranged, Fire (blast)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt), Fire.
Capacity: 13/6/6
Rouge
Stun Rods/Kicks - Melee, Blunt.
- Launcher mode - Melee, Blunt/Electrical.
Launcher - Ranged, Chemical (projectile/cloud)
Shriek - Ranged, Sonic (blast)
Omega
- Claw - Melee, Blunt/Cutting.
- Autocannon - Ranged, Piercing (projectile)
- Grenade - Ranged, Sonic (projectile/blast)
- Laser Blast - Ranged, Untyped Energy (beam)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting/Piercing), Fire, Sonic, Chemical, Untyped.
Capacity: 13/6/2
Shadow
Spin Attack - Melee, Blunt/Cutting
SMG, Pistol - Ranged, Piercing (Projectile)
RPG - Ranged, Explosion (Projectile/Blast)
Laser Rifle - Ranged, Fire (Laser, Beam)
Blade - Melee, Cutting
Nether Arrow - Ranged, Untyped (Projectile)
Nether Burst - Ranged, Untyped (Blast)
Nether Beam - Ranged, Untyped (Beam)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting/Piercing), Fire, Explosion, Untyped.
Capacity: 14/14/3
Silver
Spin Attack etc - Melee, Blunt/Cutting
Psychic-Knife - Ranged, Cutting (Projectile)
Psychic-Crusher - Melee, Blunt
- Crusher shockwave - Ranged, Blunt (Blast)
Pulse, Throw, Meteor Smash - Ranged (Projectile), variable
Crush - Crushing (grapple)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting/Piercing/Crushing).
Capacity: 14/14/1
Amy Rose
Spin Attack - Melee, Blunt/Cutting
Hammer Attack, Block - Melee, Blunt
- Throw - Ranged, Blunt (projectile)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting).
Capacity: 1/1/1
Knuckles
Punches - Melee, Blunt/Piercing
Spin - Melee, Blunt
Ground Pound - Ranged, Blunt (blast)
Kick - Ranged (Projectile), variable
Crush - Crushing (grapple)
Instilled attacks - Add Untyped to the initial damage above (for instil only the damage bonus of instil is treated as untyped in this case, up to 3)
Total attack types: Force (Blunt/Cutting/Piercing/Crushing), Untyped.
Capacity: 14/11/6
Cream
Kicks - Melee, Blunt
Chao Attack - Ranged, Blunt (Projectile)
Infuse - Add untyped damage to Chao Attack. For other mobians, Instil adds 1 blunt, cutting, or piercing to damaging attacks that employ physical strength to use (same as the force damage component of the attack in question), and up to +2 untyped damage to all melee attacks (as with instil, no more of the damage calculated can be untyped than is added by infuse).
Total attack types: Force (Blunt), Untyped.
Capacity: 2/1/0
Tikal
Ancestral blades - Melee, cutting.
Water attacks - Variable, blunt (blast, projectile, beam, and can be ranged or melee depending on use).
Sticks
Boomerang - Ranged, Blunt (projectile)
Snipe - Ranged, Untyped (beam)
Defensive Overview
Parrying
If two melee attacks intersect (regardless of whether they'd actually hit the other attacker) special things happen:
- If both attacks are within 1 damage of each other then both attacks are Close Parried, with neither attack harming the other. Any ongoing combo attacks can continue their sequence normally.
If an attack would bounce the attacker back on contact, such as dash attacks or Blaze's lunging combo hits it will do so when parried, otherwise the attack will simply follow through harmlessly.
- If the attacks are more than 1 damage apart, the weaker attack is Parried, allowing the stronger attack to potentially deal damage while the other attacker enters into a parry animation or behaviour linked to the attack in question. The stronger attacker's attack is reduced by the damage of the weaker attack in this case.
If an attack encounters multiple hits, treat it as though it's at its normal attack power for calculating who gets parried, but reduce its damage by each hit it parries accordingly.
For example, Miles tail whips into Shadow's Blade swing. Both tail whips get parried (3 damage beats 1), and Miles takes 1 damage from the successful hit.
Projectiles can't be parried, generally speaking, whether by other projectiles or melee attacks, unless they're large and abnormal. This generally includes Energy Attacks, Sonic Attacks, and Chemical Attacks since it's hard to parry a flame thrower, a ghetto blaster, or a cloud.
For energy enhanced attacks, such as Blaze's flaming melee strikes a parry only occurs if the incoming melee attack hits her ordinary attack range, not the added bursts of flame she's emitting.
Spin Attacks and their variants (including Sonic's spin dash, which starts as a 3 damage stationary "attack" and increases to 4 as he revs up the attack to full) are handled as a melee attack, but with a twist. If they're parried, the hardshell reduces the damage of the incoming attack by the damage of the spin attack and is knocked away. If both attacks are within 1 damage then the hardshell will be bounced away the same as if they landed a hit on something. Note in either case their attack damage is going to lose any bonus from speed.
Weapons with durabilities take 1 hit of damage from close parries, and the damage difference between the two attacks if they are parried.
Generally speaking if it's not an attack (a spiky badnik isn't attacking with its spikes, they're just pointy, Blaze's immolation aura isn't an active thing she does, it just hurts anything close enough to hit her in melee) it's not a parry situation. Likewise contact damage from an enemy isn't parrying anything, it's just representing an attack of opportunity by an enemy when an unprepared player gets too close.
Design Notes: This gives some emergent complexity to consider.
1: A faster multihit attack has an advantage over a slightly stronger single hit attack.
Example: Amy swings her hammer, Miles tail whips. One tail parries the hammer swing, the other tail is not parried and hits Amy, dealing damage.
2: Two combo attackers will bounce off one another through an entire combo or until either a combo-finisher is powerful enough to parry their opponent or their combo ends.
Example 1: Miles and Shadow use their blades, both pulling a three hit combo against one another. Every attack cancels without damage and lots of flashy sparks.
Example 2: Knuckles and Sonic fight. Sonic's homing attacks neutralise Knuckles' attacks one after another as he gets knocked back in his base 3 damage state, but Knuckles' 5 damage finisher breaks through Sonic's defences at last, costing him a ring.
3: Sonic becomes extremely good in melee.
He's usually going to be spinning one way or another letting him parry a lot of attacks that would otherwise hurt him, even if he still has a bit more trouble landing hits against high damage melee fighters like Knuckles, Miles or Shadow who can parry his attacks and counterattack. This works great for Sonic, who we want to be fearlessly getting up close and personal with enemies.
4: Timing and combo-breaking becomes highly important.
With an instant activation dash attack characters like Blaze, Miles and Shadow can effectively interrupt their attack chains to land a sudden high damage hit right after a close parry or at the end of their regular combo.
Example: Shadow fights Knuckles. His three hit blade combo blocks each of Knuckles' first three punches and then he Dash attacks a moment later to parry Knuckles' finisher.
5: Combat is differentiated for range and melee.
Perhaps most obvious, but this gives a big boost to any melee specialist over ranged, letting them avoid or reduce incoming damage from nearby enemies in ways that have nothing to do with their inherent damage mitigation power, but also a big downside that their own attacks can be mitigated in the same way. Unblockable ranged attackers meanwhile have to choose between melee range where neither side can block the other or nice and far away where they can attack with more or less impunity but are easily dodged.
Ring Scatter is effectively a defensive burst of ring energy to repel an attack. It grants 2 seconds temporary invincibility against damage when it happens, but the lost energy must be collected again, and rival mobians can steal it.
No Scatter has no mercy invincibility on damage, potentially allowing chained attacks to be landed against the defender, but has none of ring scatter's downsides.
Stun
- typically lasts for around quarter of a second for electrical damage or parry, half a second for sonic damage, and 1 second for freeze damage.
Defensive Capacity for mobians isn't very helpful, since someone like Miles has a bad ring:damage ratio of 5:4, but with Timeless can shrug off 4 damage hits every 10 seconds without losing a ring and convert three 15 damage hits into 5 rings of "damage", and Shadow can basically handle infinite energy damage without losing a ring and block massive 15 damage physical projectiles with a rift for just a few rings as well, despite his theoretical 1:1/2:1 efficiency. Suffice to say if you're looking for tanky heroes, look towards Miles and Shadow's non-ring based damage mitigation, or Amy's exceptional parry type mechanics, while civilian tier mobians won't have damage mitigation at all, or will be strictly capped like Amy or Cream as to how much they can block at once.
Likewise, however tanky a chaos form might be, it's limited to 200 seconds without gathering more rings, more likely 100, and frequently much less, making it fairly unimportant overall.
Sonic
Immune to Blunt (blast)
Immune to enemy contact damage at Boosted Speed or above.
Vs Blunt - Lose 1 ring for each 2 points of damage taken (no scatter).
Vs all else - Lose 1 ring for each 1 point of damage taken (ring scatter).
Miles
Stamina meter.
Recovers 10 Stamina per second (x1.5 while crouching, recovery rate increased by Tempo), max 100.
25 stamina lost for each 1 point of damage taken (no scatter).
Any damage that would put stamina below 0 costs 5 rings (no scatter) to restore stamina to 100 and apply the rest of the damage to stamina (repeating the process as many times as necessary to account for all damage dealt). This cures all negative effects, including stun.
Can see markers indicating the location of incoming attacks.
Dodge Roll grants temporary immunity to most attacks in exchange for 40 Stamina.
Gust can deflect flames, projectiles and gases.
Blaze
Immune to fire, heat, and lasers. Recovers from freezing in half the normal time.
Autocounters melee attacks while immolating, preventing all damage taken if the enemy dies and immune to contact damage at full speed.
Vs all else, including ice damage - Lose 2 rings for each 1 point of damage taken (ring scatter).
Rouge
Immune to sonic damage and sonic stun, as well as most forms of chemical blindness.
Vs all else - Lose 5 rings for each 1 point of damage taken (no scatter).
Can blind enemies with smoke grenades and hide to evade detection.
Omega has 1 Armour, 4 Armour while crouching, and 5 hull.
- Hull regenerates at 1 per 6 seconds, but only with aura inactive.
Shadow
200 maximum rings.
Nether Meter, maximum 10.
Vs non-Energy - Lose 1 Nether meter for each 1 point of damage taken or 2 rings for each 1 points of damage if at 0 nether (no scatter).
Vs Energy - Gain 1 Nether meter for each 1 point of damage taken or 1 ring for each 1 point of damage taken above 10 nether (no scatter).
Can hide in rifts to avoid damage (rifts can still take damage, but ignore many types entirely), and use rifts to redirect force projectiles or attackers away without harm.
Nether energy can be safely vented either into attacks for rings, or for free with Blink.
Arrows - 1 ring:(1 nether +1 per active rift), no scatter.
Burst/Beam - 5 rings:Up to 10 nether, no scatter.
Blink also grants temporary immunity to most attacks for either 1 stockpiled nether energy or 2 rings.
Silver
200 maximum rings.
Loses 2 rings for each 1 point of damage taken (ring scatter).
Cannot lose/scatter more than 100 rings combined from a single injury.
Can pulse away projectiles.
Can block attacks with held objects/enemies.
Can grab would-be melee attackers to prevent incoming melee attacks.
Amy Rose
Defends using hammers with 5 health points each.
Can deflect incoming projectiles with hammer strikes without damage to the hammer with careful enough timing.
Can block all incoming melee, projectile and beam attacks with hammer block, taking damage to her hammer equal to the damage the blocked attack.
With aura active can block incoming melee and ranged attacks damage, taking up to 9 damage to the hammer, including blasts and zaps.
Attacks that reduce the hammer to <0 points will stun Amy, knock her back and the hammer must be replaced for 2 rings. Any overflow damage is ignored so long as the attack was below 10 damage.
Attacks that are not blocked or deflected will instantly take Amy out if they hit.
Knuckles
4 armour while blocking, crush damage is capped to 10 rings lost (no scatter).
Loses 2 rings for each 1 point of damage taken (ring scatter).
Loses 1 ring for each 1 point of damage taken while blocking (no scatter).
- Treat lesser crush attacks like Silver as though he were blocking - 4 armour, 1:1 ring loss and no scatter.
Can block attacks with held objects/enemies, and infuse those objects to give them 4 armour as well for 5 rings.
Cream
Can block one attack of up to 5 damage per Chao in her swarm, losing the Chao in the process, starting with Cheese. Each hit over 5 either takes out multiple Chao or instantly takes her out.
Can regenerate Cheese by collecting 5 rings, Empowering for 5 rings to recover Cheese is her only Chao, or can recover Cheese by paying for 5 seconds of her Infuse aura (costing 10-25 rings), other Chao must be collected.
Tikal
Undefined, likely very strong against projectiles (drowning bullet), and fire, but ring inefficient and helpless against electrical damage.
Sticks
None whatsoever.
Design Note: Generally speaking, if you want a threatening rival to a specific character aim for the rival to have a few advantages over the character offensively or defensively. Don't feel this needs to thwart everything the character can do, but being able to target the character's Achilles' heel helps, as does having an Achilles' heel to a particular character - Shadow has both, being extra vulnerable to most of Sonic's attacks but also having a lot of long range attacks and dodges Sonic has trouble dealing with.
Likewise, note that the Emerald Guardians & Knuckles are all top tier combatants, able to fight entire armies alone, the ones competing with them on an equal level should be major villains or entire villainous factions working together.
If there are any particular interactions, other mechanics or the equivalent you'd like to see here ask away. Same with any balance considerations. Knuckles, for example, might be swinging too hard in his current state, +1 from instil +1 from aura would be plenty enough to make him a top tier fighter who can give Super Sonic a headache without him being able to punch out Cthulhu in a base state, but Sonic's main rivals being those who can land that sort of damage isn't necessarily a bad thing.