is this legal?

[Insaniac99]

Re: is this legal?

 

thanks for the info guys, I pointed the problem out to the GM and he talked to the player and is reconsiddering the entrie house rule.

[Zanthis]

Re: is this legal?

 

Just curious Raven, what do you do about MPAs? If the cap is 12 DC and I've got a 12d6 EB and a 4d6 RKA, would you force me to only MPA with partial strength from both, like 6d6 EB and 2d6 RKA? I may not even be trying to abuse the rules, I may be a wind/ice blaster and I want to combine my concussive blast of air (EB) with my razor sharp blast of ice shards (RKA). I'm guessing it also gets messy when powers are Linked, which would suck for my Fantasy fire/lightning mage who had a lightning bolt that exploded at its endpoint into a fireball.

 

Bah, I hate caps. Caps encourage people to hit them. In most of our campaigns, a Strength of 130+ is considered Godlike. No one gets close to that, not because its a cap, but because most people don't envision there character's Strength as being Godlike. Our highest is a touch over 100 (which is category Incredible), but still about 10 points away from the inbetween category of Impossible (115). He's not really going any higher simply because he can't envision his character have such a ridiculously high Stength (although, actually he can since Ridiculous is right below Incredible so he's actually already passed that category).

[Col. Orange]

Re: is this legal?

 

I'd be wary if anyone habitually tossed around two linked damage powers, both at campaign limits. Flash and EB? No problem. EB and RKA? I don't think I'd cut them in half though, just knock maybe two DCs off of each.

 

Regarding caps... I dunno. I think they're necessary to a point - without limits you end up with villains that are either too tough for the 10 DC heroes or too fragile for those with 15+ DCs.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: is this legal?

 

Regarding caps... I dunno. I think they're necessary to a point - without limits you end up with villains that are either too tough for the 10 DC heroes or too fragile for those with 15+ DCs.

 

But is that solved by caps? If the cap is 15 DC, a character with 10 DC is perfectly OK, but won't do much against characters wth defenses to survive in a 15 DC world.

 

Rather than Cap, I would say Range needs to be specified. And I do agree with Zanthis that "cap" is too often read as "minimum", so "Max" DC of 12 and "Max" defenses of 25 too often results in all characters having 12 DC and 25/25 defenses.

 

I'd rather play with a RANGE of (say) 10 DC to 15 DC, and 18 to 30 DEF with it being understood an average attack is 12 DC and average defenses are 22. This comes with the caveat that a character with 10 DC can be better than average in other aeas (eg. OCV, Speed, defenses), while a character at the max 15 DC should be worse than the average in other areas. A 30/30 DEF character would be expected to have lower than average offensive punch, DCV and/or lack exotic defenses. "Balanced" and "Equal" are not necessarily synonyms.

[Zanthis]

Re: is this legal?

 

Trouble only occurs when PCs aren't balanced relative to each other. The GM is always able (skill and experience permitting) to scale the bad guys to the teams power level. However, if one or two heroes are too powerful all kinds of problems crop up. Its all relative.

 

Personally I find the "insta-kill" powers more annoying to handle such as Extra-D Usable As Attack. I just remind players that 90% of all bad guys will have immunity to their insta-kills shortly after the character learns it. This allows them to have such powers, but only lets them be as effective at removing enemies as other more traditional powers.

 

Someone asked about defense vs Extra-D UAA. We've often used:

Ring of Returning: 20 Extra-Dimensional Movement: Any location on Earth (+5 Adder), Trigger: Only when involuntarily moved extra-dimensionally and no other Ring of Returning trigger is already activating (+1/4) [Active Points 31], IIF: Ring (-1/4), Charges: 4 (-1), Limited Power: Only to exact location moved from (-1/2), Extra Time: Extra Segment (-1/2) Real Cost 9

 

Agent sets all 4 charges when putting ring on (and this is when the Extra Time happens, not when triggered). Only one will actually trigger due to the second clause in the trigger and so the agent is protected four times for 9 points.

[Dust Raven]

Re: is this legal?

 

Just curious Raven' date=' what do you do about MPAs? If the cap is 12 DC and I've got a 12d6 EB and a 4d6 RKA, would you force me to only MPA with partial strength from both, like 6d6 EB and 2d6 RKA? I may not even be trying to abuse the rules, I may be a wind/ice blaster and I want to combine my concussive blast of air (EB) with my razor sharp blast of ice shards (RKA). I'm guessing it also gets messy when powers are Linked, which would suck for my Fantasy fire/lightning mage who had a lightning bolt that exploded at its endpoint into a fireball.[/quote']

I love MPAs almost as much as I love Rapid Fire and Sweep! Of course, I do regulate this as well. Most characters in my game simply can't afford two large attack powers that can go off together, so it's not much of an issue. I encourage characters that want such effects to buy multi slots in their MP, and I might allow a larger reserve (but not larger slots) to accomidate using two attack powers in an MPA.

 

Bah, I hate caps. Caps encourage people to hit them. In most of our campaigns, a Strength of 130+ is considered Godlike. No one gets close to that, not because its a cap, but because most people don't envision there character's Strength as being Godlike. Our highest is a touch over 100 (which is category Incredible), but still about 10 points away from the inbetween category of Impossible (115). He's not really going any higher simply because he can't envision his character have such a ridiculously high Stength (although, actually he can since Ridiculous is right below Incredible so he's actually already passed that category).

I hate caps as well. I use "guidelines" to describe where I expect the characters to fall into. There's no hard top a character isn't allowed to breach, but I'd recomended that they stay within certain levels. Ultimately, this is intended to allow for stunt powers, like an overload attack with lots of Limitations, but could also allow for other concepts that standard caps wouldn't allow for (such as a true mimic or shapeshifter). If you're interested, you can check out my Seacouver campaign to see some of the guidelines I use. I'm still building the site, so the other campaigns aren't up yet.