How to build BouncyMan?

[BenKimball]

I was recently reflecting on how I would convert characters from my old GURPS Supers game to Champions. Everything was pretty straightforward until I got to Harlequin, the clown/acrobat with the rubber body.

Harlequin was built with the GURPS Supers Bouncing advantage (p. SU37). It reads:

Bouncing: 12 pts/lvl

Your body is rubbery and bouncy. For every level of Bouncing, you get DR 1 vs. crushing damage. For every 5 full levels, you get an additional PD of 1 (maximum PD 6) versus any physical attack. Every three levels gives you one level of Super Jump (p. 46)

Okay, this seems straightforward. Simply buy PD and Leaping, perhaps in an EC. But GURPS goes on:

Use the Jumping skill to initiate and control a bounce. In general, your bounce distance is 90% — if you jump from a 10-story building, you can bounce to the top of a 9-story one. You must make at least one full 90% bounce after any vertical fall, though you can go in any direction. You do not have to bounce after a horizontal bounce or a jump; you can make a short bounce, or just stop.

You take no damage from intentional rebounds from inanimate objects, as long as you make your Jumping roll. You can jump out of an airplane and, if you roll well, you'll be unhurt. But slams, failed rolls, and uncontrolled bounces cause normal damage. Note that the Super Jump ability gained free with each 3 levels of Bouncing will reduce the damage you take if you do fail a roll after you fall.

For slam attacks, each level of Bouncing works like a level of Increased Density (p. 41). When someone fails a slam against a foe with Bouncing, he is knocked back 1 hex per point he failed by. If you want to Slam someone by bouncing into them, you must make a Jumping roll to hit them, before any other Slam rolls.

Phew. Okay, so now we've got the 90% thing. I have no clue how to build that in HERO. Lots of extra Leaping, with a limitation Only after vertical fall? Except it works horizontally.

 

Then we've got Damage Reduction, apparently, with RSR, so that when you hit the ground after the aforementioned 10-story fall, you're unhurt. Except in GURPS you take no damage, not a 75% reduction. Lots of PD again, I guess?

 

Finally, we get to the part I'm really curious about: attacking. It seems to me (and to the artist for GURPS Supers, apparently, for he drew it) that the coolest attack maneuver for BouncyMan would be the Move Through. He bowls in like a giant racquetball, knocks his foe back 30 yards, and rebounds to the place he started from having taken no damage.

 

Wow, this post got long. Sorry about that. To recap: (1) It's really hard to hurt BouncyMan with a physical attack, (2) BouncyMan can move very quickly when bouncing and can survive a fall from any height, and (3) BouncyMan loves to bounce off of you and knock you around.

 

If anyone actually made it this far, I'd really appreciate your input and advice.

 

Cheers!

Ben

 

P.S. If you own GURPS Supers, check out the writeup for the bouncing hero Tien Tiao on SU116. Massive extra credit for posting a HERO conversion of him.

[Snarf]

Then we've got Damage Reduction, apparently, with RSR, so that when you hit the ground after the aforementioned 10-story fall, you're unhurt. Except in GURPS you take no damage, not a 75% reduction. Lots of PD again, I guess?

You can already use leaping to counteract damage from a fall. You "jump", at the instant you hit the ground and reduce the fall distance by that much. If you want totally immunity to falling, maybe you could buy a very limited form of flying to supplement the leaping.

 

Finally, we get to the part I'm really curious about : attacking. It seems to me (and to the artist for GURPS Supers, apparently, for he drew it) that the coolest attack maneuver for BouncyMan would be the Move Through. He bowls in like a giant racquetball, knocks his foe back 30 yards, and rebounds to the place he started from having taken no damage.

Maybe you could just buy a Physical EB with lots of knockback. I attempted to translate it with move through rules and it started getting really complicated.

 

This is definitely one of the powers I miss from when I switched over from GURPS. I never got a chance to try it out in a game.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: How to build BouncyMan?

 

Originally posted by BenKimball

Wow, this post got long. Sorry about that. To recap: (1) It's really hard to hurt BouncyMan with a physical attack,

 

Lots of PD and/or damage reduction (maybe not resistant - will BouncyMan pop?)

 

(2) BouncyMan can move very quickly when bouncing and can survive a fall from any height,

 

Consider whether his move should be leaping or running. Short bounces that permit him to corner woud be better represented as running.

 

"Survive the fall" could be as easy as Gliding - only prevents falling damage, or limited flight. Depending on how much you've boosted his PD and leaping, it may not even be an issue (but remember the leap only works if he's not stunned/ko'd to begin with).

 

and (3) BouncyMan loves to bounce off of you and knock you around.

 

I buy into the Move Through (he's already got tons of PD). Maybe buy his STR double knockback (but I'd make you advnatage the move through DC's as well). Hmmm...what about a damage shield that only does Knockback (maybe including extra knockbak) and only acts if you do a move through or someone else does a similar attack on you? That way, anyone who does a move through on BouncyMan is also in for a suprise.

 

Maybe some Knockback resistance as well - "He just stays put, but YOU take 15" Knockback"

[Talon]

1) Really hard to hurt: No problem, just buy lots of PD and/or Damage Reduction. It might be hard to do this on a budget, but the rules are there.

 

2a) Move quickly when bouncing: I would suggest Triggered Leaping (with Persistent and/or the "auto reset" options from DH); that way, he bounces even if someone tosses him off a building while he's unconscious.

 

2b) Survive any fall: Since there's a maximum falling damage amount, you just have to buy enough defenses to cover it. 30d6 is rarely going to do more than 120 STUN and say 35 BODY; 120 PD, only for falling, Requires a Skill Roll, does the trick.

 

3) Bounce off people: The Triggered Leaping covers you bouncing back, and Double Knockback should cover making them move.

[BenKimball]

Great ideas, guys.

Originally posted by Geoff Speare

2a) Move quickly when bouncing: I would suggest Triggered Leaping (with Persistent and/or the "auto reset" options from DH); that way, he bounces even if someone tosses him off a building while he's unconscious.

 

3) Bounce off people: The Triggered Leaping covers you bouncing back, and Double Knockback should cover making them move.

I'm not very clear on Trigger. Does it force the triggered power to activate in a specific way? I.e., BouncyMan gets thrown from a skyscraper. He hits the ground and his Leaping triggers automatically. Does he now immediately bounce back up, or does he simply have lots of Leaping inches to use as he sees fit? (Either way could fit the concept.)

 

Also, I do see BouncyMan being vulnerable to pointy objects. I don't think he'd bounce out of a spiked pit, for example; I think he'd pop. Maybe Vulnerability: 2x BODY to physical attacks with sharp objects? Or could I generalize that to 2x BODY from killing attacks? (Wow, that's dangerous.)

 

To keep him playable, maybe his bouncy form is different than his normal body, and the disad could be replaced with an Accidental Change (to normal human body, when "pierced").

 

Cheers!

Ben

[Talon]

Originally posted by BenKimball

I'm not very clear on Trigger. Does it force the triggered power to activate in a specific way? I.e., BouncyMan gets thrown from a skyscraper. He hits the ground and his Leaping triggers automatically. Does he now immediately bounce back up, or does he simply have lots of Leaping inches to use as he sees fit? (Either way could fit the concept.)

 

Officially, the character has no control over how the power gets used -- or rather, he makes the choice when the Trigger is set. In this case, I would suggest having the Trigger be "in keeping with appropriate laws of physics". That way, he tends to bounce in the "logical" direction, and can try to control the direction by hitting the surface at a different angle or whatever.

 

If the character could do fairly unrealistic "bounce whereever I want to" stunts, I'd add another power: straight Leaping and/or Flight that worked when the character was consciously controlling his direction.

 

Also, I do see BouncyMan being vulnerable to pointy objects. I don't think he'd bounce out of a spiked pit, for example; I think he'd pop. Maybe Vulnerability: 2x BODY to physical attacks with sharp objects? Or could I generalize that to 2x BODY from killing attacks? (Wow, that's dangerous.)

 

I'd recommend making this a limitation on his physical defenses -- that way they cost less (and they are probably going to be pretty expensive!).

[JMHammer]

Bouncing Boy

 

I remember building the entire Legion of Super-Heroes back in the early 1980s. Bouncing Boy was pretty easy to build using HERO and was a fun character for the players to play or play with. If you don't know BB, he was kind of a chubby guy who could inflate himself into a very large, bouncy, resistant ball-shape (most artists drew him with his relatively tiny head, arms, and legs sticking out in the appropriate places...) and had developed a great deal of skill deflecting himself off surfaces and using his own resilient body to absorb attacks or slam into enemies. He was so good at this that one time, caught motionless in the center of an anti-grav chamber and about to be shot by a goon with a big gun, he managed to use a sneeze to propel himself into a wall and then get a good bounce to take out the bad guy! Bouncing Boy also tended to lose - and regain - his powers more often than any other character, FWIW.

 

If I correctly remember the way I represented Bouncing Boy, I gave him a few levels of Growth to represent him inflating (BB wasn't always bouncy; he had to "inflate" to do his thing) and pretty much everything else was linked to the Growth. (I suppose that under current rules all this stuff could be purchased as OIHID instead of linked to the "inflating" power.) I used Growth because when inflated he could do Move-Throughs on small groups and I wanted to represent the fact that his body was wider - much wider - than normal, a hex or two across. The extra Strength from the Growth was limited (he couldn't use it to pick things up and throw them, for instance, but he could use it as part of the damage on his attacks or to "catch" falling objects or knock things out of another character's hands).

 

Linked to Growth were Superleap (under the current rules, just extra inches of Leaping with some non-combat multiple), a little extra ED and a lot of extra PD, a tiny amount of resistant ED and a good deal of resistant PD (even knives and bullets didn't penetrate him when he was inflated, they just sunk in and popped out again), non-resistant PD Damage Reduction (I used 50%, I think), Missile Reflection (physical attacks only), extra h-t-h damage only for Move-Bys and Move-Throughs, and a good number of 5-point skill levels in "bouncing" (used for Leaping, Move-Bys, and Move-Throughs, which I allowed the character to apply to DCV vs ranged attacks if he was in motion or to make bounces with a ranged attack if using a weapon).

 

BB also had a few useful noncombat skills (he was the primary instructor at the Legion Academy, etc.), all the usual Legion paraphernalia (Flight Ring and so on), and some basic combat training including some simple martial maneuvers so he wasn't a total waste of time in combat even when deflated.

 

Whoever played him usually had a good sense of humor and a good feel for the special effects. Any GM handling a game with such a character should allow the player to play the special effects as much as possible.

[Hugh Neilson]

Originally posted by BenKimball

Great ideas, guys.

 

Also, I do see BouncyMan being vulnerable to pointy objects. I don't think he'd bounce out of a spiked pit, for example; I think he'd pop. Maybe Vulnerability: 2x BODY to physical attacks with sharp objects? Or could I generalize that to 2x BODY from killing attacks? (Wow, that's dangerous.)

 

 

Just don't make (all of) your PD resistant or hardened.