At a stretch

[Sean Waters]

Following on from the stretching damage question,the FAQ quotes an answer to an example without quoting the example,so is a little hard to follow - it seems to suggest you do need to be a minimum distance from a target to take advantage of stretching bonus damage which does seem to contradict the rulebook, which says that acceleration is not a factor, so for instance for an adjacent opponent you would get no bonus damage, for an opponent 1" away you could get up to 1d6 bonus damage, 2" away you could get up to 3d6 bonus damage, 3" away and you could get up to 5d6 bonus damage and so on (subject to having the requisite points in stretching!). Is this right?

 

Also the stretching FAQ says that you can grab a fixed object and pull yourself to it, up to stretching distance or half that in a half phase. The rulebook says that you can't use stretching to enhance movement, but that seems to be exactly what is happening here - for example a character with 6" run, 7" swinging and 8" stretch can move 8" in a phase using their stretching powers. Granted this makes 'common' sense, but seems to circumvent the rulebook. I appreciate the stretching doesn't increase the run or swing distance per se but the book says can't improve movement capabilities, so which is right or are they both and I'm just not seeing it?

[Steve Long]

Re: At a stretch

 

I'm not entirely sure I understand what your confusion is. I'm going to quote 5ER (which you haven't seen yet, of course, but trust me:)) and leave it at that.

 

A character with Stretching can use all of his inches of Stretching in a Phase. There’s no “velocity” or “acceleration” to Stretching that limits the number of inches of Stretching a character can use to “move” part of his body in a given Phase.

 

To reflect the momentum of Stretching, when a character uses Stretching to make a direct attack on a target, he may add a number of Damage Classes equal to 1 Damage Class for every full 3” of Stretching. For these purposes Stretching does have an “acceleration” — a Stretching character can add 5” of “velocity” per hex for these purposes. (For example, if a character has Stretching 10”, he can gain a maximum of +3d6 damage, but he has to “accelerate” at 5” per hex for 2” to reach his full bonus damage.)

 

On the second point, the rules say "Stretching does not improve the character’s movement capabilities — he cannot, for example, run faster[.]" In other words, Stretching doesn't directly add to, say, Running. But that's a different thing from the Stretch-and-pull-yourself-up sort of maneuver being contemplated here. I'm not sure how else to explain it.