Kristopher Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? If you don't allow Pre attacks' date=' then Pre should be a much cheaper stat.[/quote'] Note the word "massive" in my post. 40+ dice of PRE attack is, as someone else pointed out, a nice way to kinda get AoE Mind Control for about half cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Uhm, that requires him to _get_ an action to configure his power pool. By that point, most of the team will have acted, Illusions will be up to make him look like a cute fluffy bunny (and sound like he's mute), and it might well be too late. (you can only take 0 phase actions on your turns) So no, I don't think Tak gets to go "PRE Attack, I win". And if need be, I can scrap Major Victory's Suppress for more PRE. (Heck, if you're going tor "Pre Attacks Uber Alles"... give a 250 pt 4th ed hero this power: 100 "I am one scary @#$%er": +200 PRE, Offensive Only I believe that will make even Takofanes the Mighty wet himself, as his personal PRE is only 60... at this point, any power that can hurt him is sufficient.) Abort to invisible and desolid. On phase 2, reveal self and Mind Control MV at +91 on average and then conduct the 0 phase action Pre attack. Phase 4, finish off the drooling thumbsuckers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Note the word "massive" in my post. 40+ dice of PRE attack is' date=' as someone else pointed out, a nice way to kinda get AoE Mind Control for about half cost.[/quote'] At what number of dice would you draw the line? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Abort to invisible and desolid. On phase 2' date=' reveal self and Mind Control MV at +91 on average and then conduct the 0 phase action Pre attack. Phase 4, finish off the drooling thumbsuckers.[/quote'] Illusions = no LOS (wait... he has additional targeting sense, doesn't he... what are they?) = no mind control. Oh, and as I said earlier... it is impossible to beat Takofanes, played with suitable breaking of his Power Pool, with ANY heroes. Even 1000pt ones. THe best result possible is mutual annihilation. Becaus, y'know, I read the DD vs Takofanes thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Illusions = no LOS (wait... he has additional targeting sense, doesn't he... what are they?) = no mind control. Oh, and as I said earlier... it is impossible to beat Takofanes, played with suitable breaking of his Power Pool, with ANY heroes. Even 1000pt ones. THe best result possible is mutual annihilation. Becaus, y'know, I read the DD vs Takofanes thread. Yep, Tak has targetting discriminatory detect souls. The illusion is only sight and sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? At what number of dice would you draw the line? Depends, but basically somewhere between where PRE attacks are useful, and where they can easily neutralize multiple PC-level characters simultaneously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Abort to invisible and desolid. On phase 2' date=' reveal self and Mind Control MV at +91 on average and then conduct the 0 phase action Pre attack. Phase 4, finish off the drooling thumbsuckers.[/quote'] Oh, and let us not forget... 1) Abort to Desolid and Invisiblity is illegal... as he would have an action on Segment 12. 2) Takofanes is NOT the sort to panic the second he sees some heroes pop up. And by the time they start hitting him (in a coordinated effort), it's really too late. (right AFTER the 32d6 Move Through he will have taken about 30 points of STUN damage... so he actually has to take _two_ copies of that. That will then STUN him again, I think, as Qu and Mightman continue to beat the crap out of him). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Yep' date=' Tak has targetting discriminatory detect souls. The illusion is only sight and sound.[/quote'] Right. So we go with the power pool set to Flash or Darkness vs that sense. And he goes down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? 1) Abort to Desolid and Invisiblity is illegal... as he would have an action on Segment 12. Explain, please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Explain' date=' please?[/quote'] Uhm... the Abort rules let you act on a Segment when you wouldn't have a phase, not one when you would? I'm pretty sure that's how it works... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Uhm... the Abort rules let you act on a Segment when you wouldn't have a phase, not one when you would? I'm pretty sure that's how it works... I thought you could Abort as long as you hadn't already taken an action in that segment, or already aborted to your upcoming action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? I thought you could Abort as long as you hadn't already taken an action in that segment' date=' or already aborted to your upcoming action.[/quote'] Now that I think about it, you do seem to be right. However, _Takofanes_ aborting to Desolid before he gets attacked ONCE is a little out of character... and then he get's hit with the full powered attacks that do STUNning damage. (admittedly that will also really, really hurt MightyMan... unless, of course, he get's lucky and does knockback... which is why I think Poltergeist holding him in the air and Major Victory lowering his KB resistance might be the best plan) Anyway. He gets stunned on 12, and the two heavy hitters (relatively speaking) are both SPD 6. Game, set and match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caris Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Uhm... the Abort rules let you act on a Segment when you wouldn't have a phase, not one when you would? I'm pretty sure that's how it works... No, you can Abort in a Phase you have an action as long as it is before that action. You can not use Abort in the same Segment that you have ended an action. For example, if you fire an EB on Dex 22 of Segment 3, you can not make an Abort until the top of Segment 4. On the other hand, if on Dex 26 of Segment 3 some one fires an EB at you, you can Abort to Dodge sacrificing your Phase 3 action that you would have gotten on Dex 22. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Oh yeah... and with a Darkness to Soul Sight covering the Heroes, and Frequency having a "nothing interesting here" illusion up, Takofanes wouldn't even know WHY he was supposed to be aborting to Desolid. These guys ambush him in his next rampage, and he never regains conscioussness before the mana goes away. Anyone care to figure out what happens when they go attack Doctor Destroyer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caris Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? well' date=' more usually the "cosmic rays" are taken to be something other than everyday space radiation really, FF/X-men was also where faked journals were created to make Reed and co suspect he had intentionally so exposed them, ruminations like Ben's forget they weren't just hit with standard radiation.[/quote'] I’m aware of what Doom’s plot was, but Doom’s plot could only have worked if it made Reed’s action more plausible than the alternative. The heart of the matter is that Reed did not think to put enough shielding on the rocket ship. Last I knew it was considered pretty well established that the Cosmic Rays were a fixed part of Earth’s radiation belt, that is why Red Ghost and the U-Foes could voluntarily expose themselves to it. Did Reed underestimate the strength? Yes. Were they unusually strong or some passing phenomenon? Barring a retcon, no. I’m not trying to say that Reed isn’t brilliant, but it is very easy to fall into the “Reed is so smart he can do anything†trap. Reed is a brilliant scientist, as demonstrated by his designing and building that rocket ship. It is not too far fetch to assume that the in addition to getting the malleable body from his exposure to the Cosmic Rays that his intellect took another leap. After all how does “force fields of doom†really fit into the same SFX as “can turn invisible� Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pendaran Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? except that no powerless portrayal of Reed has /ever/ assumed that. Or depictions of Reed where he's become some kind of floating brain thing in the future, or etc. Exiles to me is the benchmark of this, in that all it's alt Reeds, whoever they might be, are supergeniuses on standard Reed's levels, yet will often be completely powerless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? After all how does “force fields of doom†really fit into the same SFX as “can turn invisible� Um...they're invisible force fields? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Champsguy Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? I’m aware of what Doom’s plot was, but Doom’s plot could only have worked if it made Reed’s action more plausible than the alternative. The heart of the matter is that Reed did not think to put enough shielding on the rocket ship. Last I knew it was considered pretty well established that the Cosmic Rays were a fixed part of Earth’s radiation belt, that is why Red Ghost and the U-Foes could voluntarily expose themselves to it. Did Reed underestimate the strength? Yes. Were they unusually strong or some passing phenomenon? Barring a retcon, no. I’m not trying to say that Reed isn’t brilliant, but it is very easy to fall into the “Reed is so smart he can do anything†trap. Reed is a brilliant scientist, as demonstrated by his designing and building that rocket ship. It is not too far fetch to assume that the in addition to getting the malleable body from his exposure to the Cosmic Rays that his intellect took another leap. After all how does “force fields of doom†really fit into the same SFX as “can turn invisible� In real life, you don't get exposed to cosmic rays as long as you're within Earth's magnetic field. Once you go too far out (the International Space Station isn't too far, the Moon is), you need more shielding. If Reed had built a SpaceShipOne sort of ship, one that was intended to stay close to Earth, he wouldn't have needed any radiation shielding. That "stretching his brain" thing is lame. It doesn't matter if it's canon or not, because Marvel has thrown continuity to the wind over the last 2 or 3 years. You can't follow anything now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyWKramer Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Last I checked, that was only true in the Marvel Mangaverse (and possibly Earth X). Neither one of which is canonical at all. We are talking about the idea of Reed expanding his brain, to improve his intellect above the already-high level it functions at? That was, I believe, established by Grant Morrison in FF 1234 and *is* canon. It does *not*, however, account for his typical functioning. Reed just standing around has an obscene intellect, one that transcends any living real-world human by several magnitudes (the closest might be Stephen Hawking). In game terms, you have to go with a bare minimum of 30, which is listed as "epic human." When Reed does the "cerebral expansion" routine - which, to date, we've only seen him do when he is in an isolation chamber, surrounded with stimuli-dampening equipment - he temporarily makes himself become even smarter. Through somehow altering his own neurology *and* by shutting off external stimuli so he can focus 100% on intellect, he gains a boost to his already-impressive intellect. The exact degree of boost is unclear, but in FF 1234 it allowed him to figure his way through one of Doom's plots. Anyhow 1) the ability is canon. It was referred to in this week's issue of WOLVERINE, of all things; and 2) the idea some have suggested, of mimicking any of the FF on 350, is patently silly. You could have made the original version of Sue on 350 - the one who could turn herself invisible and turn others invisible (Invisibility UBO and UAA), and that was it. You could probably build the very first version of Ben on 350 - as bricks go, he was probably more or less Ironclad back then. You could have built very, very early Johnny Storm back then. But even then, you'd be hard-pressed to build Reed unless you used super-questionable constructs such as a Skills VPP. Even then, Reed had incredible intellect and a boatload of skills - and I'm sure anyone who has ever tried to build a good Batman analogue can tell you how much *that alone* can cost. Toss in starting stretching powers *at least* as good as Zig-Zag. By FF 50 (the first appearance of Galactus), Ben had become vastly more powerful than his starting point. He was already able to hit hard enough to make the Silver Surfer know he'd been in a fight. By that point Reed had made numerous technological break-throughs which still have not been duplicated or surpassed in the Marvel Universe by anyone except possibly Doom (they tend to work in different areas, not overlapping, though Reed grants Doom as being the superior in terms of things such as Temporal Physics). Heck, one of Reed's very first in-story inventions - unstable molecules - had not been independently duplicated by anyone in the MU last time I looked. By that point, Sue had started to develop her force field powers. These have grown by leaps and bounds over the years. By every account - both in terms of documented in-story feats and by statements of Reed, Doom, the Watcher and others who would know - Sue is easily the most powerful of the FF in terms of sheer, raw power, and someone - I beleive it was the High Evolutionary or Apocalypse, though I'm not sure - referred to her as the single most powerful baseline (i.e., not mutant or Inhuman or whatever) human being on the planet. Point-wise... she's very tough to build. She can do a lot of her tricks at once, meaning you're talking an EC or an obscenely large VPP or MP for most of them, and she has duplicated many of her high-end stunts often enough to indicate you need more than Powers Skill to represent them. In building her, one has to keep in mind the raw power she's demonstrated - she's used her FF containment barriers to contain and move entire large buildings, and her fields can withstand the Hulk's full-strength battering for a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Worldmaker Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Part of the reason that the heroes of the CU are so underdeveloped is because we' date=' the people who play Champions, are suppossed to be providing them. If you think the CU needs a team of 700pt powerhouses to stop the mega-villains, then round a group of players and create them. It's that easy.[/quote'] Damned straight! These guys could take down Takofanes or Destroyer... especially if we used all of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metaphysician Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Takofanes would simply do a Presence Attack' date=' and everyone except Major Victory will be wetting their pants and sucking their thumbs in a corner screaming for Mommy.[/quote'] He wouldn't even need to haul out the extra +60, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffreyWKramer Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Originally Posted by jackalope Part of the reason that the heroes of the CU are so underdeveloped is because we, the people who play Champions, are suppossed to be providing them. If you think the CU needs a team of 700pt powerhouses to stop the mega-villains, then round a group of players and create them. It's that easy. Well, the problem with that, again, is that at the default starting point of 350, characters that are designed for that purpose and are not built on uber-cheese constructs will simply *fail*. You could give each member of the Champions Duplication (x4) and they would still lose a fight with Dr. Destroyer. Eventually your characters who start at 350 could easily have the XP to face DD as a team, but there's currently not anything in the official CU that explains how the world would continue to fare well until then. That's why some argue that for the sake of internal consistency, it would make sense for there to be a few official NPCs out there who are tough enough to do the job until the PCs get to that point. Building higher-point characters is of course a viable option - one I am doing in the New Sentinels campaign. Eventually they will be taking on Dr. Destroyer, Skarn and beings of that caliber. Of course, some consider those point levels to be cheesy in and of themselves, but what can you do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metaphysician Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Being a Threat is not the job of most of them. Screwing with whatever plans the enemy might have IS. But you do have a point... hold on while I fix things. (just need to edit Qu a bit... and possibly clone the brick... who does a 32d6 Move Through on a target who WILL have 0 DCV at the time... and who will have Major Victory suppressing them) The Suppress ain't gonna do a damn thing against most of the major villains. Its just too small. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metaphysician Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? I'm sorry, but I don't think Gary's list is a "good" list if we're referring to cheese. It includes many areas of potential abuse, but singularly, things like "cumulative" and "+8 OCV to head" have excellent reasonable usages and are not inherent cheese. I can imagine either being justified. If it's a list of "potentially easily abused" areas, sure, yeah, but I think to disrespect all of these various ideas carte blanche is blatantly unfair. Which I think some people (not necessarily even Gary who posted it) are doing in their praise of the list. PS - my other point being that these could be credibly built into a character that might beat a much more-powered character. Not I. Earlier, I specifically said some of those ideas are not inherently abusive. However, almost all of them are abusive if used extensively on a 350 point character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metaphysician Posted October 31, 2004 Report Share Posted October 31, 2004 Re: Schmucks? Doesn't matter; No More Earth' date=' No More Problem. [/quote'] Dr D and Takofanes have Life Support. Dr D, in particular, also has space resources. If the Earth disappeared from under them, it would be inconvenient, but hardly fatal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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