Interesting scenario came up recently:

Someone was running a 600 point Sinestro Corp. team with Superboy Prime WoL 057a. He's on Click #5 with "Run, Cowards!" (Superboy Prime's attacks generate knockback and opposing characters that take damage from his attacks are given an action token.) He close combat's a character with Toughness, and the attack is Critical Hit.
Superboy Prime's Damage had been Perplexed up with Sinestro FFWOL003 and Scarecrow BN003.

The target (I don't remember who it was) is on top click with Toughness, and had an action token on him AND is next to blocking terrain.

Supes deals (3+1+1), then Critical damage, then knockback and then the target takes pushing damage. Someone asked if "Rule of 3" applies to the damage value.

So the question is: how much damage does the target take? Does the fact that the target has Toughness effect anything?

My answer was that Critical damage is a modifier, but knockback is not. So the target takes (3+1+1+1-1=5) THEN knockback (1-1=0) and then pushing (1). The argument, like stated above was that knockback damage is a product of the attack and therefore a modifier.

Rule of three does apply to the damage value.
It does not apply to damage dealt, which critical hits modify.
Knock back damage is dealt separately from the damage from the attack.
Pushing damage is dealt separately from both of those things.

Critical damage affects damage dealt not damage value so is not affected by the Rule of 3. Knockback damage is applied separately so is not affected by the Rule of 3.

Note in your example knockback is applied after the attack damage so you would have to check what defence power he had after the character had taken the original 5 damage.

That's not something I thought about. What about what order they take knock back and pushing damage?

Pushing damage comes last.

The damage from the attack is taken first.

Then knock back occurs and knock back damage, if any, is dealt and taken.

Finally, as the action resolves, action tokens are placed and pushing damage, if any, is taken.

So, If I have a character that has a 2 damage value, I use 3 Perplex to increase the damage to 5 and I got a critical hit.

Does the damage stack? Meaning that the character does 6 clicks of damage(2+3perplex+1Critical Hit=6).

What I do not understand is, What is the difference between damage dealt and damage value?

Damage value is a combat value. One of the numbers printed on the combat dial.

Damage dealt is a theoretical construct with no observable value. You can determine it using a real thing (damage value), but there is nothing you can point to and say, "There, this right here, that is damage dealt."

Since damage value is a combat value, it is governed by all the normal rules for combat values, like the Rule of Three.

Since damage dealt is *NOT* a combat value, it doesn't follow those rules. Instead, damage dealt has its own specific rules (mostly on page 10 of the rule book).

In your case, the combat value is 2. That value is modified by +3 for a total of 5 (2 + 3 = 5). Since 5 is within +/- 3 of 2, the Rule of Three does not activate.

Now, that total damage value of 5 is used to determine what damage dealt will be. Start with 5 damage dealt and then add any modifiers to damage dealt. In this case, we've got a positive modifier from a critical hit, so 5+1 = 6. Other potential modifiers include damage reducing powers like Toughness which apply negative modifiers. If there *WAS* such a modifier, let's pretend it is Invulnerability, it is applied after the positive modifiers to damage dealt. So now we've got 6 - 2 = 4. Assuming no other modifiers, our final damage dealt is 4.

Now we click the dial 4 times. Assuming no KOs pop up or other effects that stop us from turning the dial, that means we've got 4 damage taken. If something does stop the clicking early (maybe a KO appears after only 2 clicks), then the actual damage taken could be less than 4.

Thanks, normalview.

That was an excellent explanation.

Superboy Prime has a 5 damage value (3+1+1). He is dealing 6 because it is a critical hit. The 6 damage is dealt, knockback is then applied. After knockback, the target is given an action token, and pushing (if applicable) is applied.

Easy.