Issues/concerns around Flash

[Sean Waters]

Not in concept

 

There has been talk of buying Flash Defence not being In Concept, whatever that means. Well, Concept rarely survives contact with the enemy IME.

 

I mean, how often is Flash 'In Concept'? There may be a number of characters in comics who have it or could use it but do we see our favourite heroes stumbling around every week (or every year for that matter) clutching their eyes and shouting 'He flashed me!'. OK, bad dialogue example, but you get my point?

 

As for other senses compensating, well, if they are not targetting senses, you get half OCV, which in the average game probably means you are down 4 or 5 points, which means you'd probably have to be very lucky to hit anything. If you don't feel the need for flash defence or a backup targetting sense when your enemies use flash a lot, then you have a ridiculously soft GM and I want to come and play in your game. Moreover (and if you think good hearing compensates you are not applying this rule) the sense check takes a half phase, so against a HtH combatant who is blinded, a ranged attacker or a HtH attacker applying move throughs and move bys will be unbeatable.

 

Also have any of you ever considered how devastating the combination of Sight Flash and Ventriloquism is?

[Fox1]

Re: Not in concept

 

I mean, how often is Flash 'In Concept'? There may be a number of characters in comics who have it or could use it but do we see our favourite heroes stumbling around every week (or every year for that matter) clutching their eyes and shouting 'He flashed me!'. OK, bad dialogue example, but you get my point?

 

Well, you don't really have much of a point here.

 

The truth is that you don't see many flashes in comics. Of the ones you do see, they tend to be rather short in length of effect (easily represented by 2-4d6) and dealing with the problem (or failing to) is often the point of the encounter.

 

Main-stream comics are not ruled by exotic attacks, instead it's generally the big four: EB, HA, RKA, and HKA.

[tesuji]

Re: Not in concept

 

I mean, how often is Flash 'In Concept'? There may be a number of characters in comics who have it or could use it but do we see our favourite heroes stumbling around every week (or every year for that matter) clutching their eyes and shouting 'He flashed me!'. OK, bad dialogue example, but you get my point?

 

I seem to recall jubilee using her fireworks to "take out" guys frequently, though not usually the big bads. She was all heck on minions and goons however. But i am likely remembering the xmen tv series rather than actual paper comics. I really dont recall a jubilee from the last time i read an xman comic.

 

As i think i said way back, the challenges are fitted to the characters if the game works at all. if none of the players built flashproof characters and the Gm CHOOSES to make flash a problem for the campaign, its not the system thats at fault. if none of the players built flashproof characters and the Gm doesn't CHOOSE to make flahs a problem for the campaign, its not the system thats doing well.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not in concept

 

Well, you don't really have much of a point here.

 

The truth is that you don't see many flashes in comics. Of the ones you do see, they tend to be rather short in length of effect (easily represented by 2-4d6) and dealing with the problem (or failing to) is often the point of the encounter.

 

Main-stream comics are not ruled by exotic attacks, instead it's generally the big four: EB, HA, RKA, and HKA.

 

Good Lord, but you're difficult to agree with:

 

And that have been my point from day one.

 

It's better (from a comics sim PoV) to control the amount and freq. of Flash up front than it is to pass Flash Defense around to every character in the game.

[Fox1]

Re: Not in concept

 

Good Lord' date=' but you're difficult to agree with:[/quote']

 

Sorry. I read it as another statement that flash defense should be common.

 

I take back the post, you were saying something else.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Not in concept

 

Sorry. I read it as another statement that flash defense should be common.

 

I take back the post, you were saying something else.

 

Well, to be fair I was sort of saying that, but only if flash is common in the game too, so don't feel too bad

 

I don't particularly like heroes having flash attacks, darkness attacks, drains and so on. I like my heroes pretty basic and my villains more complex (at least in build - usually pretty easy to break, but quite dangerous until you do). I like it that way because it is easier to run and because most of the characters in the source material are not that complex, at least the heroes, so they have to find innovative ways to defeat the bigbad.

 

If a munchkin team set out to wreck a campaign (or a villainGM set out to wreck the PCs), it is easy enough - you just make sure that every attack power can be thrown by at least one of them, and they all rotate attacks until they find an opponent they can take down.

[Fox1]

Re: Not in concept

 

I don't particularly like heroes having flash attacks' date=' darkness attacks, drains and so on. I like my heroes pretty basic and my villains more complex (at least in build - usually pretty easy to break, but quite dangerous until you do). [/quote']

 

I certainly agree with this. It makes for far more comic like games IMO.

[Fox1]

Re: Not in concept

 

I seem to recall jubilee using her fireworks to "take out" guys frequently' date=' though not usually the big bads. She was all heck on minions and goons however. But i am likely remembering the xmen tv series rather than actual paper comics. I really dont recall a jubilee from the last time i read an xman comic.[/quote']

 

Jubilee is one of the rather few characters that have flash. I gave her a couple dice sight/hearing in a combo power with a low level EB.

 

She basically trades one of her actions for part of someone else's phase. Not much, but it can be major important in a team battle.

 

Other Marvel flash users (off the top of my head) there's Ironmail with his uni-beam (not a lot of dice there, basically same combat use as Jubilee), Dazzler, and Manta (Imperial Guard).

 

Dazzler and Manta are the big gun flashes.

 

Dazzler could in concept burn your eyes out, but in practice she seems to be about a 6 dice sight flash in the comics.

 

Manta has 6+ dice and may even have EB AVLD- Flash Defense on top of it. She at least combines a heavy flash + EB. However I think all of her appearances has been as a villian so she likely doesn't count as we're talking about Heroes.

 

Certainly some of the gun bunnies (Punisher, Nick Fury) have used Flash-Bang grenades at various times- the 2-4 dice level flash attack.

 

I'm sure I'm leaving people out (VPP people for example that don't seem to use their power in such a fashion). Even so, the difficulty I have coming up with names is a good indication of how quite uncommon it is in the source material.

[Arkham]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Originally, Dr. Strange's primary attack power was the Flash attack from the Eye of Agamotto, which only affected 'evil people'...

[Dust Raven]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Sigh.

 

Just how many times do I have to say it. I'm concerned ONLY with pure and up front Flash Defense.

 

Dang, people can't read in these threads.

 

Okay, then I guess we're done with that then, since that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about various methods of defending against a Flash attack. I choose not to limit myself.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

No way, not spending he money on something I don't give a flying leap about.

 

Besides, you've listed your best example with information from there- and it frankly doesn't work for me.

 

Suit yourself. Granted, from what I understand, they sucked (I haven't read them either, or wouldn't recomend paying for them). I'm just stating my sources. Does seem weird that you automatically invalidate something just because you don't feel like checking the cited resrouces though. Just because you haven't read a certain fact (or theory) doesn't make it false.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Not in concept

 

Well' date=' to be fair I was sort of saying that, but [u']only [/u]if flash is common in the game too, so don't feel too bad

 

...

It's not just Flash/Flash Defense that falls into this category. It's any nonstandard attack. Mental Powers, NNDs, etc. The difference between them has nothing to do with frequency, it has to do with effectiveness. An attacks of these sorts either is incredibly effective (compared to a similar level of a more traditional attack), or a waste of time. The fact that it could be a waste of time is the balancing factor, during the overall course of the game. Traditional attacks (of the expected power level) are never a waste of time (and even if the target has enough DEF to ignore the damage, there's always KB from those attacks).

 

The difference between Sense Affecting Powers and the others, is that there is more than one type of effective defense against it. You can have Flash Defense, you can have additional Targeting Senses, you can have really good PER rolls, Combat Sense and even Clairsentience.

 

Sean, you did mention something about a blind HTH fighter being at more of a disadvantage than a blind ranged fighter when against targets who are at range. This should go without saying, as the HTH fighter is at a disadvantage to begin with. I had a single 125 point VIPER agent with a 10d6 blaster take down the team's brick (Flight 20" and DEF 30) in less than 2 Turns. The brick looked unbeatable, but kept taking KB and could only reach he agent with a full move maneuver that didn't have much chance of hitting. Having a ranged attack is powerful, and an advantage often overlooked and underestimated.

[Fox1]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Suit yourself. Granted' date=' from what I understand, they sucked (I haven't read them either, or wouldn't recomend paying for them). I'm just stating my sources. Does seem weird that you automatically invalidate something just because you don't feel like checking the cited resrouces though. Just because you haven't read a certain fact (or theory) doesn't make it false.[/quote']

 

As I said, your description of the event didn't provide enough fuel for the concept for it to be worth checking.

 

But frankly, one-off events in comic books (or anything from alternate timelines) generally don't impress me. Characters often see strange power-ups and power-downs. I look for consistency or something that I just plain like because it really really makes sense.

 

This way I avoid things like making Scott's blast able to shatter an entire freakn' mountain, or Colossus having normal human eyes when armored up.

[Ehreval]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Flash isn't any more unbalancing than anything else. From my experience with Hero, and gaming in general, I've seen two sane policies that most gm's can implement.

 

1) Tightly control pc and npc powers in both variety, level and details.

2) Make the whole book legal with very few limitations and let folks go to town, both the good guys and the bad.

 

I follow the latter course in my current game, set primarily in the current vein of mainstream team comics with some elements of the previous "ages" thrown in. (Major influences include the Wade and Morrison stints on JLA, the current run of JSA, Ellis' The Authority and Silver Age Avengers, with hints of Planetary and Morrison's Doom Patrol constantly hovering around the edges.) The characters are about 525 to 550 points right now.

 

A supervillain well call Mr. Brain-in-a-Jar decided he needed to control the heroes home town in order to enact his diabolical plot. He quickly realized that the most important first step was taking out the hero team, so he gathered his forces and laid a nice little ambush.

 

Part of the ambushing team was a character with a large (but small-radius) visual flash attack. She caught a group of four pc's in a tight cluster for the effect and rolled 21 body. Yup. I was being mean and wasn't holding anything back.

 

I followed the book's suggestion and allowed anyone who made a high enough dex check (who had an action they could abort to) attempt to save themselves. One of the four heroes succeeded and managed to get out of the radius of the flash.

 

Another hero took the flash full in the face, and it nailed him hard even through his (reasonably-sized) flash defence. However, this guy has danger sense built with analyze, discriminatory and targeting. There were some things he couldn't do, but he definitely wasn't taken out of the fight and even accounted for a couple of the baddies while blind.

 

Two other characters were facing away from the center of the flash. I'd built the power so that it only worked to half effect if you were looking away. One of those characters was a martial artist with enough blind fighting on his sheet that he should have been functional -- and if the player and I hadn't both failed our int checks to remember it was there, he would have been fine.

 

The fourth character, my party npc, was pretty much horked for the fight.

 

So I launched a devastating flash attack, and 3/4 of the targets were, by hook or crook, good to go.

 

The bottom line here is that what has been said earlier in this thread about consensual reality is dead on: My players want and expect me to throw random horrors like the 21-body flash attack on them without warning, and many of them are prepared for it -- though sometimes inadvertantly -- as a result.

 

There's nothing wrong with pc's being built who can withstand exotic attacks, if that's part of the style of the setting.

 

I also question whether or not flash attacks are really that exotic, as flash-bangs are standard equipment for swat teams, counter-terrorist forces and others in the real world. I would honestly expect to see the better grade of cop in a supers world carry them as part of a standard equipment load.

 

To the poster who put forth the idea that characters stocked with defenses against exotic attacks are likely not working from concept... That's simply not true for my player base. Much depends on the concept in question and the type of concept your players tend to go with.

 

When your character lives in a world where hyper-intelligent apes, brains in jars, extra-dimensional Nazis, genocidal giant robots, Lovecraftian horrors, demon invasions, spandex-clad mutants and the like are a daily-to-weekly threat, I don't think the uber-sunglasses are out of line. In fact, they seem downright boring.

 

Ehrreval

[Fox1]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

To the poster who put forth the idea that characters stocked with defenses against exotic attacks are likely not working from concept... That's simply not true for my player base.

 

I say they were not working from concept, but rather working from the game itself.

 

By your own description of your campagin, I think everything you stated confirms my statement.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Originally' date=' Dr. Strange's primary attack power was the Flash attack from the Eye of Agamotto, which only affected 'evil people'...[/quote']

 

What? Like players?

[JmOz]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

A RADICAL IDEA ON CHANGING FLASH ( I have not read the whole thread BTW)

 

Raise the cost (15 points)

 

You count stun, this is the number of phases you are blinded for

You count the body, this is how much stun you have taken from the attack

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

A RADICAL IDEA ON CHANGING FLASH ( I have not read the whole thread BTW)

 

Raise the cost (15 points)

 

You count stun, this is the number of phases you are blinded for

You count the body, this is how much stun you have taken from the attack

 

Did you mean segments above, rather than phases?

 

To me, this makes flash more powerful, moving from an average of 3 segments per 15 points to 3.5 segments, and adding some incidental STun damage.

[JmOz]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Actualy, yes I ment segments, good catch

 

To put a spin on it

 

10 points per d6 non targetting sense

15 points per d6 Targetting sense

[Sean Waters]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

A RADICAL IDEA ON CHANGING FLASH ( I have not read the whole thread BTW)

 

Raise the cost (15 points)

 

You count stun, this is the number of phases you are blinded for

You count the body, this is how much stun you have taken from the attack

 

My that is radical: a 60 point flash (currently a 12 segment/1 turn blindness thang) would now be 14 phases, or a little over 2 turns even for a speed 6 character, PLUS they take 4 STUN. I quite like the idea of flash causing a little stun actually, but I think that the increase in flash duration is too much, unless you encourage practically everybody to have some level of flash defence. I don't get the impression that many people think flash is underpowered as it stands...

[Sean Waters]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Actualy, yes I ment segments, good catch

 

To put a spin on it

 

10 points per d6 non targetting sense

15 points per d6 Targetting sense

 

OK then, just over 1 turn: still ups the ante...

 

One of my biggest problems with flash is that it does work in segments rather than phases: it does seem to me that someone who moves and metabolises four times faster than you should be able to shake off the effects more quickly...

[Ehreval]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

I say they were not working from concept, but rather working from the game itself.

 

By your own description of your campagin, I think everything you stated confirms my statement.

 

Okay. Which of the following is not following concept? (I'll use the characters from my above example.)

 

A martial artist so skilled that from picking up on cues like heartbeats and subtle wind currents he can determine the likely location on an enemy.

 

A spider-man type whose most effective power is a truly stunning degree of danger sense.

 

A cat-girl thing with amazing reflexes that lets her leap away from where a grenade is about to land.

 

Or a brick type who has nothing he can really do to defend against powerful flash attacks other than cover his eyes and hope for the best.

 

-- Ehreval

[Sean Waters]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

In fact, that's a 'feature' of exotic attacks, isn't it? Both adjustment and flash attacks have recovery rates independent of the subject. I wonder why, when, for instance damage recovers at a subject dependent rate (and you can rest on your phases to get it back even quicker).

 

Here's a thought: perhaps recovery should be at a set rate too, rather than being a characteristic, and we should remove the concept of resting on phases you are not otherwise using.

 

Hmm...

[Fox1]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Okay. Which of the following is not following concept? (I'll use the characters from my above example.)

 

Playing that game is a waste of time.

 

Here's your own statement on the matter:

 

1) Tightly control pc and npc powers in both variety, level and details.

2) Make the whole book legal with very few limitations and let folks go to town, both the good guys and the bad.

 

I follow the latter course in my current game

 

It's difficult to think of a better way of saying "We build characters to take advantage of the rules first, and fit a concept around that second".

[Ehreval]

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash

 

Playing that game is a waste of time.

 

Here's your own statement on the matter:

 

 

 

It's difficult to think of a better way of saying "We build characters to take advantage of the rules first, and fit a concept around that second".

 

Playing that game is a waste of time because you know you'll lose.

 

If that were the case, I'd have said it succinctly, just as you did.

 

I've had enough of your mindless negativity. Congratulations, you're the inaugural member of my ignore list.

 

-- Ehreval