Haka's Savage Mana

How is it supposed to work, exactly? Mind you, I mean this in the thematic sense. I get how defeating each foe would make Haka stronger, building confidence and such, but how does he, er, release the power? Moreover, why is it toxic damage? Does he absorb the essences of his fallen opponents, then release it all in a beam of toxic energy? Which honestly would not make sense, because Haka doesn't seem to have powers like that. I really can't think of a way to explain it...

....unless Haka actually DOES eat his victims (Mana is food, yes?) and then-ew-regurgitates them back at the enemy. That would totally count for 'toxic' damage.

Lots of damage types get used pretty loosely ("Sonic Damage" representing monloging on a number of villains is the classic example), and I suspect that's what's going on here.  Although, to be fair, even if it's not a spray of acid or somethng, I do suspect that Savage Mana is released as a magical blast.  As a superpowered ghost, some kind of building up and releasing of energy from defeated foes can be expected.

Ironic

So wouldn't that be energy damage, or radiant, or something else? Toxic just seems like such a strange, out of place damage type for one such as Haka.

Well, thare's one way I can imagine that toxic damage would make sense...

Let me set the scene:

Omnitron-X, having sensed a massive influx of unknown power radiatiing from the Ruins of Atlantis and not able to reach the main team of the Freedom Five; has brought Haka(who was taken from his lunch), Tempest, and the Scholar to aid him in finding the cause of this disturbance. Strange enough they discover that the Matriarch had somehow stumbled upon a portal to the mystical hub of power, and amazingly was able to bring a large flock of fowl into the massive structure. We now join our heroes in mid fight with the matron of aviation.

Matriarch: "Ha ha! You simpletons will never defeat me and my flock of beauties!"

Haka: I've had about enough of these birds for one day! *stomach growl* And I still haven't eaten yet!

Haka's player uses 'Rampage', Destroys all birds and domains on the field. Damage de3alt to teammates blocked/redirected.

Tempest: If I know Terran customs as well as I'd hope, isn't it customary to eat some species of birds?

Haka: ...That's a great idea! *Begins to stuff all birds down his mouth*

Omnitron-X: Warrning: Sutch binge eating is not good for a humans health.

Haka: *Turns green* Ugh...I don't feel so good...

The Scholar: Hmm...That gives me an idea. *Turns Haka torwards the Matriarch* Hey Haka, want this candy bar that's been in my pocket for the last week?

Haka: Ugh...

Matriarch: Wait, what are you-?

And that, my friends, is where I'll leave your imagination to fill in the blanks...

I mean, in the origional art for Savage Mana, Haka's laying his hands on Hippopotumus Man and Hippo man looks like he's about to pass out. Perhaps he's absorbing thier essense with his fists and is laying it down, Fanatic Style on his foes... 

Perhaps it has something to do with Lactic acids that build up when you work out. and Haka absorbs it when he crushes his foes, and uses his immortality magic to transfer it to the target...?

Wait, Haka or Hippoman looks tired? Perhaps that could be the case though...

Hippoman looks like he's about to pass out. Sorry, I need to brush on my grammer…

Could we get a picture of that? I don't know how many people have the old art but that sounds kind of interesting

Hear, hear!

The vassal mod was produced before the Enhanced Edition was released, so it has the first edition cards in it, Haka is one of the 6 heroes in it.

If you don't have vassal you can download the mod and change the file into a .rar and unzip it to look at the cards.

How do you change it into a .rar … whatever that is. Sorry, I'm not very good with computers

Here.

hero_haka_08_x2.png355×503 401 KB

That pic, together with the fluff quote at the bottom, makes it seem like Haka is basically draining their life essence or something. No wonder it's toxic if he's doing what seems to be Necromancy (thought you'd think it'd be infernal in that case, I suppose) ;).

I think it looks like he's drawing out the opponent's essence there with the green smoke, not that the green smoke is the damage he puts out because he's buffed up.

Yeah that's what I meant - he's draining out their life essence into himself and when he's built up a whole store of it, then he explodes it at something ;).

Awesome, thanks a lot

Also, I agree with Ameena and Spiff about the draining

No, its toxic because he's shoving the carcasses into the hippo to ripen.

Then, he lets it out in a massive blast of stench and nasty.

Or he just eats it all and projectile barffs at the enemy.

The real joke is that it's not "Mana" as in the Polynesian term for magical energy in such common usage these days, it's a typo meant to be "Manna" as in the biblical miracle food which many historians think was actually edible fungus.  So, Savage Mana is really just Haka giving you bad shrooms.

(This makes the game I played where Haka was the last man standing against The Ennead and had to take down Shu with a 24-point Savage Mana attack even funnier.)

Ironic

I think it's toxic because theres no "Natural" damage type

little bit of a thread necro here... but I would assume its Toxic because he's absorbing energy from Badguys, and so that energy is Bad. Just my 2 cents

It's toxic because he eats his enemies souls and then farts them back out. :B

The Maori had lots of poisoned weapons, didn’t they? That would be toxic damage.

I'm not aware of the Maori using any poisoned weapons, and google doesn't show any results for it either.

According to my findings, they would sometimes use poison tipped bolts/arrows.

Bolts? Like...for a crossbow?

I am now verily intrigued to hear more about these Maori weapons.

They also used lasers made of vaporized lead.  They'd burn a toxic hole right through you.

I'd always imagined it like Haka just builds up a huge amount of sweat from fighting, then headlocks the one target and does the damage just by having the enemie's head near his super-powerful armpits. I know I'd be out of a fight if anyone ever did THAT to me.

It’s the life essence of defeated villains with which he empowers his physical strength. That essence is evil, making his attacks toxic to living things. How is this confusing to anyone?

Bit of a hostile way to resurrect a nine-year old thread, but welcome to the forums.

To answer your question: the reason this was confusing to people was that it did not seem to match up with Haka’s power set as typically presented in the game and the surrounding lore, and indeed your interpretation wasn’t quite what the developers had in mind.

When the Haka episode of The Letters Page first released, C&A confirmed this:

It wasn’t that the energy he was absorbing was evil, it was just that death-energy was being treated as Toxic rather than Infernal for the purposes of the card.

Ultimately, this capability didn’t end up matching the ways in which Haka developed as a character, not the least because he doesn’t actually kill most of the foes he defeats, which (along with the awkward slightly-racist nature of the card) was why it was removed from Definitive Edition entirely.

Except, I’m not so sure it was. Rather, I think Savage Mana was actually substantially reworked into Definitive Haka’s Taonga Mana card. Indeed, neither the effect nor the name is the same, but both names share the word mana and the new card’s effect is somewhat reminiscent of the old—it still represents Haka drawing strength from victory, but now fits with him better both mechanically (it synergises with his card drawing and discarding mechanics) and narratively (he’s now longer killing people and absorbing their death energy and then doing a death shout), in my view. Plus, it removes a bunch of wonky interactions where he would, e.g. tuck the entire Organization under the card.

Or even better, the cult of Gloom. Organization at least will always have the Operative and her one shots, but Gloomweaver’s original deck can be reduced to nothing but one Ongoing and three copies of a One-Shot which now reads entirely “Play another villain card”. Apparently Haka’s stomach is the true Realm of Discord.

Savage Mana was ridiculous against The Matriarch… “What birds?”

Oh, that’s fair. I think of it as removed because, as you said, Taonga Mana plays on drawing strength from victory, rather than absorbing the lifeforce of his defeated enemies, but it’s definitely the endpoint of the design shift, yeah.