Boll Weevil Posted February 24, 2007 Report Share Posted February 24, 2007 Hey, Boll Weevil again with a question about, well, Boll Weevil. BW has four arms. Each arm has a stinger barb on the ulnar side of the forearm. The stinger itself is a small HKA with a linked NND venom. OK, in my games Inherent isn't really an issue as a Drain stinger would not be allowed. Personal preference, YMMV. 1. Would you consider a stinger in this location to be restrainable? I could see him using it to get out of a net-SFX Entangle but it IS on his arm which is restrainable. 2. If your answer to #1 is yes, would the fact he has four arms make the Restrainable worth less? 3. If I still have a case for restrainable stingers, do I take the Limitation on both the HKA and the NND venom? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmadanNaBriona Posted February 25, 2007 Report Share Posted February 25, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers Hey, Boll Weevil again with a question about, well, Boll Weevil. BW has four arms. Each arm has a stinger barb on the ulnar side of the forearm. The stinger itself is a small HKA with a linked NND venom. OK, in my games Inherent isn't really an issue as a Drain stinger would not be allowed. Personal preference, YMMV. 1. Would you consider a stinger in this location to be restrainable? I could see him using it to get out of a net-SFX Entangle but it IS on his arm which is restrainable. 2. If your answer to #1 is yes, would the fact he has four arms make the Restrainable worth less? 3. If I still have a case for restrainable stingers, do I take the Limitation on both the HKA and the NND venom? Hmmm.... This is a case where I'd probably allow a bit of flex room on the Equipment Doubling Rules and have you buy a "single" stinger with restrainable, then pay the extra +10 points to have four of 'em, and use the MPA rules for a full out 4 stinger attack, otherwise it's a built in excuse for taking Two Weapon fighting, Rapid HTH attack, and/or a load of Sweep levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boll Weevil Posted February 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers Crap! I forgot about question #4. Since you brought it up (repped!), yes I suppose I need four stingers. I like your take on it. Makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spidey88 Posted February 25, 2007 Report Share Posted February 25, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers I'd be inclined to think restrainable would apply full-force. The lessened effect of it, due to Boll Weevil's polybrachial physiology, would be covered by him having to pay for extra limbs - that is, extra limbs sort of assume grabs and such will be harder anyway; but if reasonable measures are taken, he'll have no easier a time escaping those uber-manacles than his improperly-constructed two-armed robot double. I'd say "no" to restrainable on the venom. Kind of feels like double-dipping to me, but hey - it's more a gut feeling as opposed to a dead-set opinion. Feel free to disagree! As for MPAs with the extra limbs - ouch. That could be almost game-breakingly nasty, especially if Boll Weevil posesses the proportionate strength of a circulionid! Again, gut feeling here, but wouldn't the "paying extra for more claws" be wasted points if one was to go for the "Two-weapon fighting + sweep levels" route as opposed to the "MPA" route for the four fists of fury? Not arguing with anything presented - just thought it'd be something important to keep in mind, and again, feel free to correct me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boll Weevil Posted February 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers Thanks all for your input. I appreciate calling it like it is, I am not trying to be abusive....that's what his ginormous Dexterity is for I was just looking over BW's old, yellowed character sheet from 1983ish. I had originally bought his Secret ID as a Psych Lim since he has four arms. Everyone knew Eric Nidae was Boll Weevil but he was a bit crazy. I think I was watching a little to much A-Team at the time and Boll Weevil was the Abnormals' Murdock. Twenty plus years later and the phrase "Thinks he has a Secret ID" still makes me chuckle. BW paid four each of the additional arms a la carte. He also had "martial arts" paid at a flat rate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spidey88 Posted February 25, 2007 Report Share Posted February 25, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers Four-armed bug-man + Murdock? That sounds almost too awesome to be true! He must have been a blast to play. Seriously, though - I don't see anything wrong with making sure that Boll Weevil gets a lot of utility out of having four arms. After all, Phidippus - my PC/main NPC in my current Champions campaign - has six arms! I'd be a hypocrite to say "don't do it!" when I've taken steps to ensure Phidippus' buttkicking capabilities... If BW's defense is his ginormous DEX (and correspondingly high DCV), many of the options for giving him extra arm attacks (eg. 2-weapon fighting + OCV bonuses to sweep, or autofire on his STR) will reduce his DCV to half. That may, in and of itself, be enough of a balance factor, depending on who he's up against. Besides - it's not like another character couldn't achieve a similarly nasty offense by doing the same things with an energy blast, right? With two-weapon fighting, pretty much anybody could make four HTH attacks in a round at a -4 penalty - buying OCV bonuses to counteract that doesn't seem too crazy, as long as a) the individual attacks are reasonably modest, or BW uses the "alpha strike" infrequently, perhaps only in dire situations. At any rate, as long as BW doesn't overshadow the other players, I say go nuts. BTW - though this has little to do with the topic at hand, for a small amount of points, you could give BW something like: + 3 to all skills, only for skills based on manual manipulation (not sure offhand what the limitation would be, maybe -1/2 to -1), only to counteract time modifier (-1, if memory serves from TUS). This could represent the fact that when it comes to tasks requiring manual dexterity, eg. assembling a Lego spaceship, BW can use all his hands in unison to get things done really fast - always one step down the time scale. My two cents. Cheers! Oh - one last thing, Boll Weevil - considering your little avatar guy, you might have noticed what my mood is... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzMike Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 Re: Four-armed Restrainable stingers 1. I wouldn't necessarily buy the stinger as restrainable, because you don't buy your strength as restrainable because you use the strength of your arms. So no. But if the stingers are break-off-able and re-grow-able without doing any harm to Boll then you might have a case for them as restrainable or focii. 2 and 3. Moot really. 4. I'd simulate the 4 stingers with Autofire x4 and 6 penalty skill levels to counteract autofire penalties. I'd make the NND linked to the stingers, but probably wouldn't put autofire on that too. Instead I'd just make it one hit otherwise it seems broken to me. It depends how big it is. You could always put the stingers themselves in a multipower and have a variety of stunts you can do with them, and then link the venom to the multipower. Also to simulate the four arms I'd add some OCV levels based on the multiple attacker bonus (+3 OCV) and some extra STR, only to escape grabs and entagles (+10 STR). Hmmm... I should re-build a couple of many armed characters too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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