Killing attack question Re: Sylar's attack Monday night

[Jaxom]

Warning, this contains spoilers from Monday night's Heroes episode. If you wish to avoid them, quit reading now.







Ok so... Sylar is using TK, simple enough. He picks up a bunch of glass shards and throws them. I'd call what Sylar did an AE attack of some sort. It didn't look indirect. He did it with TK, which means you can just treat it as held weapons being manipulated with the TK. And he did it with a OAF of opportunity. Seems simple enough.

.5d6 HKA found OAF wielded by telekinesis of at least 5 points, AE with a good location roll. To make it an AE with lots of shards, do you take something special that I am not thinking of (i.e. to handle multiple items) or do you just take it AE and treat the rest as special effects?

What if I wanted to do the same thing by manually throwing the glass? I'm not terribly familiar with those mechanics. Is there a good writeup somewhere in 5E or FRED that someone can point me to?

[OddHat]

Always a few ways to do it, but:

If Sylar has a VPP, I'd write it up as just an AOE:Cone RKA, OIF: Sharp objects of opportunity.

If he doesn't have a VPP, I'd say it's an application of the Power Skill.

He could have done it as a spread RKA, OIF: Sharp Objects of Opportunity, just losing a few DC to fill more hexes.

He could have done it as an Autofire RKA, again spreading to fill hexes.

Any of the above work fine with an HKA and the Ranged advantage.

[Manic Typist]

To make it an AE with lots of shards, do you take something special that I am not thinking of (i.e. to handle multiple items) or do you just take it AE and treat the rest as special effects?




It's just SFX. It could have been one piece of glass swishing through the air at a high rate, or a random pieces of furniture being grabbed and tossed at random.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd call it a power stunt. He's got an ungodly high Power Skill, possibly multiple Power Skills.

[ghost-angel]

"Weilding Weapon Of Oppotunity With TK" isn't ness. using the TK Power.

Energy Blast (or RKA); Indirect (any direction, any source); Object of Opporunity (OIF).

[McCoy]

Physical RKA, explosion, hole in the middle.

[BNakagawa]

Physical RKA, explosion, hole in the middle.

Not so much. It looks like all of the shards were moving in the same direction and none of the shards went, oh say up or down or behind Sylar.

[McCoy]

Physical RKA, explosion, hole in the middle.


Not so much. It looks like all of the shards were moving in the same direction and none of the shards went, oh say up or down or behind Sylar.
Don't have it on my TiVo anymore, looked to me like they went in all directions, though admittedly in a plane, not a sphere.

All went the same direction and only one hit Peter?

[Jaxom]

Well, it looked to me like he fanned them in the direction he though Peter was in. I'd go with the cone interptetation.

The reason I asked though it this... He's using glass as a weapon of opportunity... If he had only one shard of glass, we're treat it like a real weapon and we'd say STR could only double its base damage. I think I got hung up on this because as McCoy mentioned, only one piece of the glass actually hit Peter but it leads to some interesting lines of questioning.

There are lots of powers where using a bunch of projectiles makes sense but that way leads to madness. What's the difference between throwing one piece of glass (or one shuriken) with TK and throwing every single one in the room? For that matter, TK is priced basically as STR +ranged. What prevents someone from using normal STR to throw stuff? If a player wanted to scoop up a bunch of sand and make a flash attack by throwing it, would you allow it? What about picking up a bunch of glass shards and throwing them?

Put a different way... I know we can take powers like EB or TK and take the appropriate Lims and Adders to get the Cone AoE effect with any amount of damage that we choose (regardless of the durability of the focus used, presumably because you could be hit by lots of individual pieces). Is it possible, using basic rules cannon, to make that same attack with raw STR and any combination of Adders you can think of?

Throwing is covered in the rules but it focuses on throwing one big thing like a car or a slab of concrete. It *does* allow you to target a hex bt I don't have a reference handy so I can't remember how much damage it does in that hex. I don't recall any rules for making AoE attacks... I do remember, from brick tricks, buying Adders to raw STR for some tricks and buying other powers with STR-based SFX... But if I just wanted to do this with Raw STR, can it be done?

[ghost-angel]

The difference is between Special Effects and Mechanical Effects:

assume you have Plant Man, who can shoot thorns at people. He has two basic effects - he can target one person, or he can cover an area in thorns.

The first, one person, he shoots a bunch of small thorns at someone, only one target takes damage, but little thorn bits hit the surrounding area; mostly bouncing harmlessly off things, or sticking to scenery. You could say the amount of damage done indicates just how many thorns hit home even.

The second, multiple people or an area, he shoots lots of thorns at lots of things - again, many hit for damage and many just hit random scenery as part of the Special Effect of the power.

The number of projectiles that appear to be used in the attack may have nothing to do with the overall effect of the attack itself.

[McCoy]

Physical RKA, explosion, hole in the middle.


Not so much. It looks like all of the shards were moving in the same direction and none of the shards went, oh say up or down or behind Sylar.


Well, it looked to me like he fanned them in the direction he though Peter was in. I'd go with the cone interptetation.
They showed that attack again tonight in the intro. The glass shards were definitely spreading out. I stand by my original interpetation.