Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

[Derek Hiemforth]

Okay, here's my dilemma. I've got a speedster character in a standard Superheroic campaign. He has many of the normal abilities you'd expect of speedsters. He's got a good, but still human-level, STR (15). He's got some dice (8) of Armor-Piercing Hand-to-Hand Attack (hyper-velocity strike). He's got a "Speedster Martial Arts" package, including a Passing Strike. He's got a good amount of movement (25" in combat).

 

None of these things, by itself, is particularly heinous. The highest Active Points of any of his abilities is the Hand-to-Hand Attack (8d6 AP; 60 Active Points). And I didn't deliberately attempt to stack these things up to be hideously effective... they're just the kinds of effects he should logically be able to do.

 

But holy cow! Using the standard damage adding rules, he can whip out a whopping 16d6 Armor-Piercing Passing Strike! And his Move Through is 19d6 Armor-Piercing!

 

I don't want to be cheesy power-monger guy, but it also feels weird to deliberately nerf my own character (by doing such things as taking the +v/5 element off of his Passing Strike --which would save one whole point in exchange for losing 5d6 AP damage -- or buying his hyper-velocity strike as no-range EB instead of HA, just so he *can't* add his STR or Martial Arts to it). It seems wrong to spend more points in order to be less powerful.

 

I dunno... I'm just kinda looking for anyone's input. What have you done when faced with this kind of situation?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

I ran into the exact same problem when I built my first serious Martial Artist. I failed to take into account how damage stacked.

 

My solution was to reduce the AP of all my attacks to 40, it seemed to take care of the issue. And gave me more points for Skills.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Actually, I've been in this position before quite a bit. It's an annoying bit to deal with. When I tried not to nerf myself, I found it wasn't fun. When I whacked myself with the nerfbat, I always felt a touch dissatisfied. My personal thoughts: go work on another character concept and mull over this one later. Not much help, I guess, but I can say I sympathize.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Rather than change the Martial Maneuvers, what about limiting some of the HA dice so they don't add to maneuvers which add velocity damage. That way, you can still do the 8d6 AP hand attack if you're not running, but it will have a reasonable cap when you are running.

 

I'm assuming the 11d6 AP HA (8d6 + STR) wouldn't be out of line with campagn norms, so it seems reasonable that passing strike could do a bit more damage (requires movement, which means using your other half phase, accelerating and exposure to risk koffmartialthrowkoff.

 

The move through is going to injure you as well, so I wouldn't be too irked to see it do even more damage. If it more than doubles the HA, don't you lose the AP?

[BlackSword]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

But holy cow! Using the standard damage adding rules, he can whip out a whopping 16d6 Armor-Piercing Passing Strike! And his Move Through is 19d6 Armor-Piercing!

I had something similar with a speedster (though I didn't have the armor-piercing:eek:), in the end I didn't worry about it. To get up to the full damage move-by or move-through requires getting a full head of steam and concentrating on a single foe. But since I could move everywhere and had several AoE HtH attacks, or a good enough OCV to perform multiple move-bys or grab-bys (for disarms), my speedster was much better off in the crowd control position of the team. So I could and occasionaly did get a heinous move-by, I usually had other priorities. Also if your character is a runner a simple way to defeat the attack is to fly up 1".

 

I guess I would say not to lose sleep over it.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

But holy cow! Using the standard damage adding rules' date=' he can whip out a whopping 16d6 Armor-Piercing Passing Strike! And his Move Through is 19d6 Armor-Piercing! [/quote']

Well, without the AP this wouldn't be too far out of like in most supers campaigns, given the trade-offs involved in using Move-By/Through. (How much damage is he going to take from that 19d6 Move Through?) So you could just consider dropping the AP. Or better yet, Limit it so it doesn't work with Move-Bys/Throughs. (SFX justification is that you can't strike a precise enough blow while moving to get the AP benefit.)

[JohnTaber]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Move By/Thru and MA PC tend to be very cheap and effective...especially at 350 points. I would simple cut off the AP and maybe the MA. Get more speedster type frivolous stuff...transformation to complete tasks quickly...the ole Flash TK whirlwinds with his hands...etc...

[Kenn]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Either remove the armour pirecing, or cut the number of dice down in the hand-to-hand attack. Without the move through or passing strike, its already the equivilant of a 16.5 DC attack. As I understand the "standard Superheroic campaign" power levels, you're already well over. If you cut the hand-to-hand attack down to just 3d6 AP HTH, then the just-stand-and-punch move will be 6d6 AP or the rough equivilant of 9 damage classes. Not great, but not bad either. But this is a speedster, who's forte is movement. Which means he shouldn't be great when he's standing still. But when he moves and does his 11d6 AP passing strike he'll be awsome, and his 14d6 AP "sacrifice" move-through will be spectacular. The way a speedster should be.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

I just try not to mix non-weapon based HA's with Martial Arts.

 

The logic being that the typical Multipower 'ultra-slot' cost will be about the same cost as the typical MA manuever.

 

Also,

The optional rules for adding damage to Advantaged HA's from movement mitigate the abuse by making you prorate the bonus.

 

Using these options the damage for moveby and movethroughs with 25" movement will turn into +3 DC's for a 12d6AP moveby (8 HA + (15/2)/5 STR + 25/(5*1.5) Move) and +5 DC's for a 16d6AP movethrough (8 HA + 15/5 STR + 25/(3*1.5) with an end cost of 7 not counting movement.

 

16d6AP is nice but the half damage if no knockback is done should make it prohibitive.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Guys, I understand what things I can do to make my character weaker.

 

The dilemma is more around the point that doing these things saves me little or nothing on the character's cost...

[JohnTaber]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Guys, I understand what things I can do to make my character weaker.

 

The dilemma is more around the point that doing these things saves me little or nothing on the character's cost...

 

You are such a min-maxer Derek...jeez loueez...

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Nerf rhinos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What?

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

I asked Steve a question related to this back in December.

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39575

 

On page 101 of UMA (The Ultimate Martial Artist) there is one paragraph that would appear to have a lot of impact on the many recent threads discussing combinations of Martial Arts and HA's (Hand to Hand Attacks).

 

Quote:

ADDING EXTRA DC TO MANEUVER DAMAGE

...(1st paragraph, non-essential to this question)...

They do not add to any other sort of damage: not to damage used with non-martial arts maneuvers,

not to unarmed attacks bought with the HA or HKA Powers

, and so forth.

Question:

Does anything in the old FAQ, current FAQ for 5ER or the more recent Combat Handbook change this rule?

 

Thanks,

 

HM

And Steve's response was no.

[Jaxom]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

Guys, I understand what things I can do to make my character weaker.

 

The dilemma is more around the point that doing these things saves me little or nothing on the character's cost...

 

Ok, it is rare that I would say this, but...

 

Forget the points.

 

This is one of those times when you need to ask a couple of very different questions.

 

1) If you perform a Move By or Move Through, are you going to tear your own arm off? And what if that is a brick with some KB Resistance?

 

2) What does the GM have to build to fight you? If you are so nasty that he has to create the immovable object to give you a challenge, how are you fellows going to feel?

 

3) Does making something to deal with you imply that everyone else in your group is turned into a fine red mist?

 

 

 

There are just some combinations that are not meant to be made. Most of them are marked with the "!" but everyone once in a while you run into something like "Tunnelling, Usable as an attack, Straight Down Only, Fills in behind". Sure, it's legal, but do you *really* want to invite your fellows and GM into that genre?

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

This thread was mostly a joke. I guess it was too subtle.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

 

This thread was mostly a joke. I guess it was too subtle.

 

Humor w/IPE