Hey everyone.
In the deviant feats section, from the Dark Archive and reprinted in the Gatewalkers Players' Guide, the backlash entry for the Dragon classification is called Energetic Meltdown, and its moderate effect says this (emphasis mine):
Energy wracks your body. After taking the damage, you gain weakness to the energy type of your backlash until your next daily preparations. The weakness is equal to one-third of your level. You also lose immunity to the energy type if you had it, until your next daily preparations.
So, it says "After taking the damage", but doesn't say how much damage you take.
For reference, the Mild backlash says this:
You take damage equal to your level as energy scours your body
So it seems like when the Moderate one says "Energy wracks your body" it's intended that you take some damage, but it looks like the amount was omitted. It could be read as referring to the damage from the Mild backlash, but that might have been a long time ago, and it would make the Moderate backlash pretty weak compared to other examples.
What does everyone think, is this just a mistake? Would something like damage equal to twice your level seem fair?
I think it is referring to the mild backlash value. The point in time where you first took the mild backlash may have been a long time ago, but when reading the rule text, it is directly above the moderate backlash rule. I can't think of anything else that it would be referring to.
It would be nice if it actually said that though.
And the impact of the moderate backlash is not the amount of damage that you take, that is just an afterthought. The main penalty of the moderate backlash is the permanent (for the rest of the day) loss of energy immunity and addition of the energy weakness.