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Post by reiphil on Jan 14, 2010 19:28:17 GMT -8
Linked powers are fine. Toughness of a baseball is you just being a jackass. But it's a steel cased grenade :X I could just do a blast linked to blast (ranged, ranged area) that does the same effect. Which is actually better than the baseball grenades because a baseball grenade at it's foundation (unless i do heavy points into it) would be a standard action to grav control it, and a standard action to smash it at someone), and a single blast:blast would be a standard action. I could even RP a blast:blast as a baseball grenade as well. I just thought it would be cool to combine powers to do silly/cool things because at it's core for combat, all anyone needs to do is just take blast or strike and link them or alt them for any affect they want. And at that point everyone has either rank 6 strike or rank 6 blast.
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Post by frobones on Jan 14, 2010 20:07:23 GMT -8
Stephen. Don't take the feat. If you want to go BOOM you have to leave ghost form. The only reason you'd take that feat is out of pure uberness. Generally if you are making a character that only very specific enemies can harm you are going overboard. I agree on the uberness part, but does this also mean you will be limiting the Impervious Extra? Cause that stops all damage targeting Toughness unless you meet or exceed the Impervious Extra rank or have the Penetrating Extra. Seems that it could be on par to being incorporeal and only being affected by Mental/Sensory, Affect Incorporeal Feat (which can be extra efforted to last the entire encounter), and some sort of weakness descriptor (like fire maybe). I'm not debating towards either case, just bringing up things that could be of similar concern.
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jan 14, 2010 23:51:03 GMT -8
I dunno. Have to think about it. If meeting the impervious rank still prevented damage then yes, but meeting it isn't all that difficult. It's basically minion protection, and even some of them can get you.
Mostly I just don't want to see a bunch of maxed out defenses and maxed out pure offense. I know it seems kinda awkward, but in addition to building a character with cool strengths, give him some weaknesses. And when I say weaknesses I don't mean just slapping on a 7 charisma. I'm talking Kryptonite or all things yellow type of weaknesses. Now THAT could be fun! Just make sure you all don't share the same weaknesses...
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Post by kore on Jan 15, 2010 10:32:30 GMT -8
... or all things yellow ... I so wish I could play Saturdays. Your mention of a weakness to the color yellow made me think of Super Fuzz www.imdb.com/title/tt0082924/ . His weakness was the color red. And yes, I know: "In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight Let those who worship evil's might, Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!" Edit: fixed the link.
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jan 15, 2010 13:41:30 GMT -8
Now that would be fun! Just SEEING the color red was a problem!
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Post by reiphil on Jan 15, 2010 15:55:30 GMT -8
Well Micah, if you wanted to switch days...
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Post by frobones on Jan 17, 2010 4:46:59 GMT -8
<!> Crucial information for JP aka Toshi <!>
I was reading through the powers again in my physical copy of the M&M handbook and I read an interesting sentence that is present in it and NOT in the PDF versions. Page 86, last sentence of the first paragraph of Gravity Control reads: "Gravity control counts as if it forced a saving throw for power level purposes."
Meaning that Gravity control is limited by the campaign PL... meaning you can only have rank 6 in it as opposed to your rank 12. Sooo... now you have 12PP just lying around to be redistributed.
...
Or maybe... just maybe... Joseph can play around with those 12PP as the side effect of your radiation mutation (Mwahahaha)
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jan 17, 2010 15:03:54 GMT -8
That could be fun. I just might do that.
And final decision on calculating damage for the strike of the grenade and then doing explosion damage separate: NO! It's nothing more than a cute rules trick. A loophole of sorts. It's another example of focusing on min/maxing and trying to break the game as much as possible instead of true "character" creation. It also bogs down combat by adding more rolls.
Its not a matter of "can" you do it. Of course, but what I've read over and over again is that this game is easily breakable if the players don't exhibit a certain amount of self-restraint. DnD you can min/max to your heart's content and the system will handle it. DM might have to increase monster levels, but the game plays just fine. This game is much more fragile. Focus on character, personality, and a general power theme. Use the Archtypes as a base if you don't trust yourself. Like I've said before, the more trivial you make combat due to hardcore powergaming, the less exciting combat will be. If your idea of fun in an RPG is pushing the mechanics to the limits then this might not be a good game, because this game just isn't built to take that kind of punishment... which is fine. Two thirds of RPG is Role Play. I don't want everything we do to be an ubermensch competition.
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Post by frobones on Jan 17, 2010 16:14:56 GMT -8
That could be fun. I just might do that. And final decision on calculating damage for the strike of the grenade and then doing explosion damage separate: NO! It's nothing more than a cute rules trick. A loophole of sorts. It's another example of focusing on min/maxing and trying to break the game as much as possible instead of true "character" creation. It also bogs down combat by adding more rolls. ... Use the Archtypes as a base if you don't trust yourself. It's not really a cute rule trick. Some of the archetypes do similar things, like the Pyrokineticist (pg 26. of Instant Superheroes) or the (Alternate) Form Power [Energy] (pg. 75 of Core rules) which have the Strike power as an aura. Meaning whenever they do a melee attack and hit, they get to do damage from the melee attack and the damage from the Strike aura as separate damage rolls. The Core rules even explicitly state that it happens, read the Aura Extra (pg 112 of Core rules). This isn't too much different of linking a Blast:Blast (area) power to have two separate damage rolls. I'm not arguing for either case. I'm just here to make everyone aware of what's there, but it's not like we're going crazy and linking ten Blast 4 powers together for 10 damage rolls with a single standard action.
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Post by reiphil on Jan 17, 2010 16:37:16 GMT -8
Joseph. I came up with a character idea that I thought would be fun, not even looking at the rules. Then saw the rules that could support it.
The point is, if I try to come up with unique character concepts, or things I think would just be fun to role play or enjoy, you would probably think that I am breaking the game.
You basically went ahead and said that linked powers are ok. Conceptually they do the same thing. If I went ahead and did a Blast:Blast(Area) power, I could just write my own filler text on the description of it being a baseball that I pitched or batted at you. Could you argue that? Is it really min maxing? Think about already how much we have put aside for our characters for RP and then also look at how lucky we have been in some encounters to be able to defeat them.
Most of the time, we only get by by using our Hero points. Hell, you almost killed two people on the fight with Dr. Null, and it took us our Hero Point counters to be able to survive. Had I not decided to take Impervious armor, I probably would have went down as well.
But it's fine if you don't want to allow things or think some things are too broken for the game. But please, for the love of god, write up a character creation guide for us telling us what you want to model your world off of and what powers and types of powers we can build off of. If you're going to restrict the book, let us know so we can build our powers off the restrictions and not argue what is in the book or find rulings to support RAI powers.
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Post by mrdent12 on Jan 17, 2010 21:06:03 GMT -8
Most of the time, we only get by by using our Hero points. Hell, you almost killed two people on the fight with Dr. Null, and it took us our Hero Point counters to be able to survive. I think encounter with Dr Null was pretty fun. It didn't feel like a DnD encounter where we go in and kill the bad guy. We had to worry about the other people on the bridge as well as the various hazards like the leaking oil. If we ignored helping the people we probably would have defeated Dr Null in a two or three rounds. The fact that I almost went down the first or second round made the encounter extra fun for me. If I thought I would be impervious to harm or be able to take damage that just took off HP it would have felt more like a fantasy world than a world that is based largely on the current world minus the fact there is people with powers and giant killer robots. You also have to consider that we are not superman or spider man type characters that use our powers for combat against giant robots and super villains everyday(with the possible exception of Nathan). We are still learning. I bet Toshi won't blindly charge in flying anymore against advanced technological weapons. Even if one of us does fall in a encounter in a non fall in the water and drown way, Gilbert or I can heal.
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Post by reiphil on Jan 17, 2010 21:29:40 GMT -8
David - Nathan isn't superman or spider man either. I agree that the encounter was fun, however, we have no counter, regardless to lethal attacks. Which is fine. I know I personally didn't take immunity because it would be too broken.
Heal. But can you revive?
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Post by mrdent12 on Jan 17, 2010 21:45:55 GMT -8
I only mentioned Nathan as a exception because I know he is part of that secret organization. My memory failed me at the time of writing the post if you mentioned him fighting villains on par with Dr Null.
I don't think Joseph will throw lethal attacks at us all the time. He only used lethal force on Toshi because Dr Null thought a missile was flying at him. We have to trust that Joseph won't go for the kill most of the time. Besides, villains don't have counters to our lethal attacks. Emptying a clip of a machine gun into Dr Null probably would have killed him.
We have our hero points to help in situations that could be catastrophic or require amazing luck such as teleporting away before extremely fast bullets hit you or deflecting a laser.
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Post by Joseph Barros on Jan 19, 2010 17:04:04 GMT -8
I never stated I had a problem with linked attacks. If you spend power points in something that's fine. But calculating the toughness of a grenade casing to eek out some extra damage is overboard. Phil I don't know why you think I would call a unique character concept broken. I just don't want a bunch of uber characters that have all their bases covered defenseively and offensively. However, I will be exerting a bit more control over what is allowed. Not by outright banning any given concept, but rather by taking your idea and suggesting how you can keep the idea without trivializing combat. I challenge you prove how I have prevented anyone from running the character they wanted. I might have made some tweaks here and there to fit the campaign being run, but other than that everybody is playing what they want. No you won't have complete full reign like the first character again, but I can promise you you will play the character you want to play... unless that character is Ultron. In which case fuck you.
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Post by frobones on Jan 19, 2010 18:23:16 GMT -8
I never stated I had a problem with linked attacks. If you spend power points in something that's fine. But calculating the toughness of a grenade casing to eek out some extra damage is overboard. In argument for Phil's case, he'd have to spend Power Points on purchasing the grenade. Albeit not as much as a linked Blast:Blast[area], but it would almost eliminate the need for the Gravity Control Power (which is the appealing concept i would assume) - so it would take more analysis on which option would cost more Power Points (Blast:Blast[area] power -or- Gravity Control + Equipment cost of Grenades). However, with the grenade casing option, you would at least have some control over how many grenades he can bring to any given encounter (not to mention the RP drawback of carrying grenades around in public). The power route would give him unlimited ammo and seem completely normal in the public's eye. However, I will be exerting a bit more control over what is allowed. Not by outright banning any given concept, but rather by taking your idea and suggesting how you can keep the idea without trivializing combat. I challenge you prove how I have prevented anyone from running the character they wanted. I might have made some tweaks here and there to fit the campaign being run, but other than that everybody is playing what they want. No you won't have complete full reign like the first character again, but I can promise you you will play the character you want to play... unless that character is Ultron. In which case fuck you. A little guidance would be cool, but most of our designs seem "streamline" - save for Yulis with his Morph power, Toshi with his Concealment power, and possibly Michael with his X-ray vision. Those choices seem a little on the convenient side.
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