Stretching range

[Elysea]

As I understand it, a character without the Stretching power can hit a target in hand-to-hand combat that is standing in the same hex as him, or in an adjacent hex. The adjacent hex, as I understand, is "one inch away."

Therefore, can a character with X inches of stretching hit any target that is X+1 inches away? If zero inches of Stretching are required to hit a target one hex away, it seems to make sense that 8" of stretching would let a character hit someone 9 hexes away. We've been ruling it such that if our stretcher hits a target that is X+1 inches away, he can only hit them stright-on, not bend around to hit them from the side of behind.

My apologies if this is in the book and I missed it, and thanks in advance.

[Steve Long]

You didn't miss anything; you've actually raised a fundamental issue (some would say problem) re: HTH Combat and related issues.

You couldn’t certainly allow that if you wanted, but that’s not the intent of the rule. While I didn’t create the initial HTH Combat range rules, here’s what I think is intended and how I interpret things.

The idea that someone in a hex can reach/touch/hit someone in any adjacent hex is, on its face, illogical and unrealistic as an absolute statement. That would imply that any given character has a reach of as much as 13 feet (assuming he were standing on one edge of his hex and his opponent was on the far edge of a hex on the opposite side). The “hex you’re in or any adjacent hex” is intended to allow for two situations:

1. A character’s ability to make a quick two or three steps to reach his target as part of his attack. The movement rules of the HERO System don’t generally allow for explicit movement in conjunction with a HTH attack, but they implicitly allow for it via this rule.

2. The situation where someone is standing on the edge of a hex and his opponent is standing over the edge — in another hex but clearly within arm’s reach. A rigid rule that “the characters must be in the same hex” would be grossly misinterpreted and abused by the rules lawyers and min-maxers among us. ;)

What Stretching 1” allows is for a character to reach anywhere in another hex without having to move at all — without having to make that “quick two or three steps” mentioned above. It’s a little illogical, given the rules about HTH range, but I think it makes more sense to interpret it that way than to start reading it as X+1”.

Of course, all of these problems, and others, would go away if you dispense with hexes and just measure things in meters or feet, and establish a rule regarding a standard character’s standard reach. But that’s a 6th Edition discussion to hold years from now. ;)