Unusual Maneuvers

[ZootSoot]

In one game I played a character who cost 185 points in a 250 point supers game. She was a gadgeteer whose main gimmick was a gliding suit with an owl theme. We were in combat with Marvel's Wrecking Crew. I swooped down behind Pile Driver and snatched the back of his mask and yabked it up and twisted it so it covered his eyes. The GM simply ruled this successful. Does anyone have a more objective way to adjudicate maneuvers of this sort.

[Monolith]

Ultimately, I think when you are doing maneuvers like that the only thing you can rely on is the GM's interpritation of the event and how "in genre" the maneuver might be. I do not believe there should be hard and fast rules as to how to put a paper bag over someone's head. If you try to make the system too roll-intensive instead of action oriented you just bog-down the game while everyone looks up an obscure rule.

 

The addition of the Power "stunt" Skill was a great boon to the system. It finally "officially" allows players and GMs to play the HERO System outside of the established points barrier. I would like to see more imaginative player/character actions and less rules/character points action in the game myself.

[winterhawk]

Was there a roll involved? I usually assign some kind of penalty (in this case I'd call it a called shot to to the head -8 OCV). If the attempt is successful, I'd say poor Piledriver was Flashed for one phase. I reward players for creative manuevers like this. I think they bring a sense of the comics to the game.

[Acroyear]

I'd treat it kind of like a -2 OCV martial flash type thing. While it's cool and all that and certainly fun you want to make it possible, but not as easy as just smacking someone.

 

Also, it depends on the player. If it's the kind of player who will do it once, everyone says "yeah, cool!" and then that's that... I'm much more likely to just say "ok, you do it!"

 

If it's the kind of player who will then turn around and use that sort of thing in every fight, I might disallow it entirely.

 

One thing we've always promoted was that if funky stuff is allowed to happen in the player's advantage... it can work for the bad guys, too, at some point. Kind of a karmic trade-off.

[Zaratustra]

Don't forget the creativity bonus! If you overpenalize anything original a player makes, they'll stop making original things.