Always use the biggest gun

[Mike W]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

Well, I think limiting CSLs falls into game balance. Few characters have more than three levels that can be applied in a given situation, often only two.

 

Even aside from that though, there are a lot of ways to add flavor to the combat:

 

1. Terrain - moving fights indoors or out for example, makes a difference. The guy who likes to hover 4 or 5 hexes above the combat can't do that in many indoor fights.

 

2. Battlefield Control - Related to terrain, but in many ways much different. This refers to who occupies what part of the battlemap and who is dictating match ups.

 

3. Make sure that tactics matter. "Set up" moves like legsweep, Flash attacks and rules that give you bonuses for creative combat(like OCV bonuses for using Acrobatics to do something unexpected) all help.

 

4. And don't forget things like Defense Maneuver, Combat Sense and Analyze Style. They can change how the combat works drastically.

 

I find that this makes a big difference. We've had three different characters in the current group that had martial arts, but they had different power sets and none fought the same, even though they had a number of overlapping moves. And while certain characters have favorite moves, you can do things to make them alter their favorite tactics. For example, the guy who likes passing strikes suddenly has to fight someone who is more mobile than he is.

[sinanju]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

Hmmm.

 

There's a set of minature wargaming rules called CROSSFIRE. It has an approach I've never seen in any other set of rules for seizing the initiative. Most games have set turns: one side moves, then another side moves, then the first side again, and so on ad infinitum. If you realize that the other side is trying to maneuver his units to accomplish a particular goal--even if your "army" couldn't see it--you can start trying to counter that.

 

CROSSFIRE works rather differently.

 

One team begins with the initiative (usually established in a scenario description). The controlling player can move any one of his units as far as he wishes in a straight line. If no enemy unit fires on it (either because they can't or they choose not to), he can move another unit (or the same one again). If an enemy unit fires on the moving unit it stops moving at the point where it was fired on; if the fire is ineffective, the active player continues his turn. If the fire is effective, the defending player has SEIZED THE INITIATIVE and now HE gets to move units as he chooses, until the other player can successfully wrest the initiative back from him.

 

This changes the dynamic of the game drastically. Suddenly you have to balance aggressive moves against the possibility of losing the initiative and having the enemy counter-attack or otherwise foil your plans in a far more realistic way.

 

I mention this because the same concept might be applicable to individual combat in Champions.

 

Martial Artist-Guy and Bad-Ass Thug face off. MAG is faster, so he takes the initiative and acts first. He can move, attack, whatever--and until and unless BAT can successfully interfere, he keeps acting (ignoring the speed chart for the duration). If MAG punches BAT and does ANY damage (even just a little stun), he keeps attacking. If BAT dodges, blocks or the next successful punch does no Body and no Stun, MAG loses the initiative.

 

Once BAT interrupts him, BAT takes the initiative and can keep doing things until MAG regains the initiative. If continuing to hold the initiative depends on succeeding with every attempt, choosing the manuevers and assigning Combat Levels becomes crucial--and you're going to pay attention to them. Repeatedly using the same boring attack every time is just ASKING to get your head handed to you.

 

This is just off the top of my head; I have no idea how you'd integrate this with Speedsters or other serious disparities of power, but for characters of roughly comparable speed/power, it might work well.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

One thing that I've found makes having a variety of attacks more attractive is the new Multiple Power Attack rules. By the rules you're not supposed to combine two attacks that do essentially the same thing - like an Energy Blast and an AP EB, or two Martial Strike Maneuvers that only have different CV modifiers - but an EB plus Flash, or a Martial Strike plus a Takedown, can be combined to good effect in a single Phase, and certainly lend themselves to colorful descriptions.

[Ki-rin]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

CROSSFIRE works rather differently...

Fascinating. I'll have to see if it can be applied to HERO.

[zornwil]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

I liked Chromatic's comments (not just because I know him) as well as Courtfool's, the former being correct about SFX and that these attacks are really just titles, while CF's point is one we GMs ought think more about. The more we support, via bonuses, "crazy" creativity, actually the more we enforce the genre. We get too caught up in realism when the genre in question really may not be suitable for that.

 

I wanted to add, in any case, that there's nothing wrong with villains building abiltiies suited specifically to what a character has habitually done. That's what they'd do in real life. And if a player is particularly effective, the come-uppance will likely be even more brutal. It seems fair to me.

[Guest C--]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

It's easy to fight the guy who only uses Martial Strike. That's because you know he'll always have +0 OCV and +2 DCV. You don't have to worry when you allocate your levels that this time, he might go in for a Sacrifice Strike and get a much better chance to hit you, while sacrificing some defense. If you know he's got only a handful of maneuvers, you know how best to allocate your levels.

[Lamrok]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

I wanted to add' date=' in any case, that there's nothing wrong with villains building abiltiies suited specifically to what a character has habitually done. That's what they'd do in real life. And if a player is particularly effective, the come-uppance will likely be even more brutal. It seems fair to me.[/quote']

 

Once upon a time, my passion in life was foosball (table soccer). When I was in college, I was damn good at it. At a fairly large university, with lots of table and lots of players, I was top dog. My pull-shot was nearly unblockable. Then, there was this one guy who decided he was going to beat me (there were a lot of guys who took an unhealthy obsession in being the one to beat me, but this guy was a standout). He watched me play, studied my tactics, and practiced a lot. He finally challenged me (was a real jerk about it), and, for the first time since I learned the game, my offense was shut down. He played the psych game well - talking trash is part of the game, and I'd always been immune, but, seeing my offense shut down and hearing the taunts was a memorable experience. I can still remember the experience of flailing about unable to get anything to work, and feeling anger begin to build (anger is the enemy in games like that. You lose your cool, you lose the game.)

 

This is why I had backup offensive sets. Sets he'd never seen before. Once he lost the advantage of knowing how I ran my offense, I beat him handily. Showing up prepared counts for a lot, but there are ways to negate this. I think of this match from time to time when building Champs characters. It is very important to me to have characters with more than one way to win.

[Old Man]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

Even if the player's character has only one attack, it should be encouraged to use that one attack in creative ways. Supposing the character in question has just an EB with the special effect "purple". You can spread the beam, for one thing, or use it to knock over a building on the bad guy, or try a called shot with it to knock him over, or something. Hell, confront him with a bad guy that's immune to purple, such that the PC has to knock over buildings or fire through a prism or something. Artillery pieces are boring and should be killed off.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

Even if the player's character has only one attack' date=' it should be encouraged to use that one attack in creative ways. Supposing the character in question has just an EB with the special effect "purple". You can spread the beam, for one thing, or use it to knock over a building on the bad guy, or try a called shot with it to knock him over, or something. Hell, confront him with a bad guy that's immune to purple, such that the PC has to knock over buildings or fire through a prism or something. Artillery pieces are boring and should be killed off.[/quote']

Woo! Killed by the color purple!!! Almost as bad as a super-intelligent shade of the color blue.

[proditor]

Re: Always use the biggest gun

 

Ki-Rin had some really good points imho, and I just wanted to illustrate it a little more.

 

Let's say you have a guy with Martial Strike, Offensive Strike, Martial Dodge, Martial Throw and Martial Block. That's a pretty generic set of moves. Now give him 2 levels in Martial arts and two in HTH combat. And for yucks and giggles, let's give him three KS in various styles. Jujitsu, Kung-Fu and Muay Thai for example.

 

All of a sudden, he has a WIDE variety of moves based on how those levels are used. And even though he hasn't done a lot of study in grappling arts, he obviously gets some of it (The levels in HTH).

 

So let's say a combat runs with the main PC doing the following mechanically:

Martial Strike +2 OCV, +2 DCV

Aborts to Dodge

Offensive Strike +1 OCV, +3 DCV

Martial Throw +3 OCV, +1 DCV

Offensive Strike +2 OCV, +1d6 damage

 

And here's the play by play:

 

I watched Steel serpent advance across the courtyard, arrogance twisting the slight smile on his lips into a sneer.

 

"So, you tempt fate again?" he said, "This time you will share a grave with your teacher!"

 

I said nothing in reply, but I launched forward into a jumping knee strike that staggered him as it connected with his chin.

 

It looked as if he was going to drop, but it was a ruse and I hurriedly backflipped away from the legsweep that he tried to catch me with as I landed.

 

This time, the surprise was on my side as he finished his failed move and ran straight into a spinning heel kick to the temple. Momentarily dazed, the serpent could only wave as if under the spell of a snake charmer as I executed a hip throw to take him to the ground. Once there, it was a simple matter of delivering a crushing Tiger Claw to his head to rob him of his senses.

 

 

Summing up:

Now that hip throw might be something else if the levels were allocated more to defense. Perhaps then it's a straight arm clothesline.

 

But really, when you get down to brass tacks, if you have a guy in your campaign who is using Martial Strike, with the levels always allocated in a certain fashion, then yes, by all means make him pay for it. The above example is taken from a rusty recollection of the fight between Iron Fist and the Steel Serpent when the later had taken the power of the Iron Fist from Danny.