Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

[Rene]

It's a common maneuver of stretchy heroes in comics to grab many opponents at once or grab huge monsters. But in HERO you can only sweep-grab as many enemies as you have limbs, and a normal-sized human can't grab huge critters.

 

So, how to build this ability?

 

Keep it in mind that I just don't like the Entangle solution for stretchy-guy grabs that appears in UNTIL Superpowers Database, I much prefer to simply buy extra STR with "Only to Grab" Limitation.

 

Should I just add Area Effect to the Extra STR? Or to the character's full STR? Shoud I buy the Area Effect as a Naked Advantage? Is there other ways?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: I realize that Extra Limbs can deal with the multiple grabs thing (though you'd be forced to use the Sweep Maneuver and make lots of rolls), but not the grabbing giants part.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

 

So, how to build this ability?

 

 

Meeb the mutable ameboedal hero has Area affect on his STR as a naked advantage, stretching and the has the "extra limbs" to get as many psuedopods as he needs. Works for us.

 

Meeb is often thrown by the brick at agents and he gloms them all, knocks them out and moves to the next squad.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

It's a common maneuver of stretchy heroes in comics to grab many opponents at once or grab huge monsters. But in HERO you can only sweep-grab as many enemies as you have limbs, and a normal-sized human can't grab huge critters.

 

So, how to build this ability?

 

Keep it in mind that I just don't like the Entangle solution for stretchy-guy grabs that appears in UNTIL Superpowers Database, I much prefer to simply buy extra STR with "Only to Grab" Limitation.

 

Should I just add Area Effect to the Extra STR? Or to the character's full STR? Shoud I buy the Area Effect as a Naked Advantage? Is there other ways?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: I realize that Extra Limbs can deal with the multiple grabs thing (though you'd be forced to use the Sweep Maneuver and make lots of rolls), but not the grabbing giants part.

 

Correct, Extra Limbs is all you need for grabbing as many as you can accurately handle. As far as grabbing giant things... I'd say the Stretching along covers that all by itself (depending on SFX and its Modifiers). If you have 5" of Stretching, you can grab something 5" tall. Ta-da!

[Rene]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

Thanks for the answers, guys.

 

Buying Area Effect just to be able to affect someone big seems a tad too unfair (even though some kind of variant of the Area of Effect: Line seems to mirror the stretchy guy tangling several persons nicely, while Area of Effect: Radius would represent the smothering bit).

[Sean Waters]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

Call me old fashioned but I'm of the opinion that stretching is far too expensive anyway (cf: telekinesis - for 60 points you can have 40 STR TK. The same 60 points would get you +30 STR no figured (making it 40) and 8" of stretching. I'd say the TK is far more effective), so the solution I'd suggest is this: apply common sense. Now I don't like that solution as a rule, but it seems to me that the only reason the rules say you can only grab as many things as you have limbs is because that's all you can normally do 'in reality'. If you have stretchy, bendy limbs then it seems to me you could loop them around more than one target. Now a normal human has a width of 1/2 hex - let's assume they have a round cross section, so that's a little over 1.5 inches around.

 

Let's call that 2", rounding. Therefore you can use 2" of stretching yo wrap a limb around someone and grab them. That's in addition to the normal allotment of possible grabs. If you had 10" of stretching and an opponent standing next to you then another 2" away and another 1" away you could grab all of them using a stretchy limb and then grab someone 1" away from them with the hand on the end of the limb and still have both legs, another arm and your head free. The closer they are the more of them you can grab, obviously. If they were all standing packed together you might treat them as a single target: seven people standing together would require about 5" of stretching to wrap around.

 

What you can't do is say "I've got 10" of stretching - that's 10" per arm!".

 

Anyway, is an answer for your multiple grabs, what about your big targets? Same principle - just work out jow many inches of stretching you need to encircle them. Working witht he growth table (and rounding) here are the heights against inches to grab required:

 

1: 2

2: 3

4: 6

8: 13

16: 25

32: 50

64: 101

 

As you can see, it rapidly becomes impractical to grab anything over 4 hexes tall as you need far too much stretching.

 

Anyway, hope this is useful.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

Call me old fashioned but I'm of the opinion that stretching is far too expensive anyway (cf: telekinesis - for 60 points you can have 40 STR TK. The same 60 points would get you +30 STR no figured (making it 40) and 8" of stretching. I'd say the TK is far more effective)' date=' so the solution I'd suggest is this: apply common sense.[/quote']

I agree with you in general about the common sense approach of number of limbs, stretching distance, etc., but I'm not sure you example of TK vs. Stretching is all that dramatic. To be sure, the range is much more limited on the Stretching, and it has to be a bit more direct, but it also doesn't suffer range penalties, and can give you some additional velocity damage. Maybe this isn't so obvious at the value you mentioned, but it can grow more so.

 

I too think Stretching is overpriced (in a way), but more because of Growth than TK. For 15 points, Growth doubles your reach, whereas Stretching simply adds a fixed number of hexes. To be sure the Growth also makes you much easier to hit, but for large Active Point totals Stretching really has no way to compare to Growth in terms of the (combat) reach it offers, and I find that to be a little backwards, seeing as the whole point of Stretching is to increase your reach. For low values Stretching is obviously more advantageous, but I'll buy 105 points of Growth (128" reach, plus a whole crud-load of Str, Body, Stun, etc.) and 70 points worth of DCV levels way before I'll buy 175 points of Stretching (87" reach); and it just gets worse from there.

 

EDIT: P.S. - I know my example was pretty darn overboard for most campaigns, but I raised it to the point where the difference becomes absurd to really show the difference the two mechanics introduce.

[GreyGuardian]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

why not just by extra limbs linked to stretching only useable for grabbing multiple opponents? the special effect is: there are no extra limbs it's just a stretching power.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

I agree with you in general about the common sense approach of number of limbs, stretching distance, etc., but I'm not sure you example of TK vs. Stretching is all that dramatic. To be sure, the range is much more limited on the Stretching, and it has to be a bit more direct, but it also doesn't suffer range penalties, and can give you some additional velocity damage. Maybe this isn't so obvious at the value you mentioned, but it can grow more so.

 

I too think Stretching is overpriced (in a way), but more because of Growth than TK. For 15 points, Growth doubles your reach, whereas Stretching simply adds a fixed number of hexes. To be sure the Growth also makes you much easier to hit, but for large Active Point totals Stretching really has no way to compare to Growth in terms of the (combat) reach it offers, and I find that to be a little backwards, seeing as the whole point of Stretching is to increase your reach. For low values Stretching is obviously more advantageous, but I'll buy 105 points of Growth (128" reach, plus a whole crud-load of Str, Body, Stun, etc.) and 70 points worth of DCV levels way before I'll buy 175 points of Stretching (87" reach); and it just gets worse from there.

 

EDIT: P.S. - I know my example was pretty darn overboard for most campaigns, but I raised it to the point where the difference becomes absurd to really show the difference the two mechanics introduce.

 

Excellent reasoning re: growth/stretching.

 

On the stretching adds damage: so do (most) movement powers and at the same sort of rate AND they are cheaper (OK: AND you take some of the damage, but that's rarely a problem). Moreover, you are unlikely to ever add more than 4 or 5 dice with stretching: it is just too expensive!

 

The range penalties for TK are also a good point, but it only costs 9 points for +3 levels with TK, which solves the problem up tot he range of most stretching. TK is still the better bet generally: and there is no problem with multiple grabs!

[prestidigitator]

Re: Stretching/Multi-Grab, Area Grab Question

 

why not just by extra limbs linked to stretching only useable for grabbing multiple opponents? the special effect is: there are no extra limbs it's just a stretching power.

Nice one (rep)! Why not? That's so ridiculously cheap after Linked that there's no reason not to do it! The only problem is that all of those, "extra limbs," are considered non-primary, so you do have an extra little -3 OCV to worry about. Add Ambidexterity or a few really cheap PSLs that are applicable only to this attack, and you've got it!