"Uh ... you can *do* that?"

[CrosshairCollie]

Reminded of a time I did this in a game ... have you ever had a moment where your GM forgot about some power your PC rarely or never used until such a time as it turned out to be the 'one thing' that could stop the bad guy or otherwise hose the whole scenario?

 

As I said in the thread in question, I had a character with a weak teleportation power (he was the son of the Fox of Crime) that he never used because of a high END cost and a Stun side effect that always occured; his primary offensive/defensive powers were a battlesuit. I went without using the power for months, until we ran into someone who used a force wall and psychic powers (which, of course, bypassed the FW entirely). I got close enough to teleport into the wall and hit him with a double-knockback repulsor blast ... got an odd mix of 6s and 2s for good body but not much stun, at which point he burst out of his own Force Wall and was gang-tackled by the rest of the team.

 

I need to re-create that guy.

 

Anyway, anybody else got any good "Oh crap, I forgot you could DO that!" stories?

[Guest steamteck]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

I had the opposite as a GM. My wife had a super agile character with a puny ST 5 TK. There was the idol trap like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. She did the whole rush in there and dodge all the traps and afterwords I asked why she didn't use her TK.

[nexus]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Well obviously dashing in and doing it the hard way was more exciting for the audience. Gotta keep the fans happy or your title might get canceled

[Greywind]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

I had a blaster that could dump all his power into an explosion. High end cost. Ended up being more than his END was to start with.

 

Shapechanger changed into a humming bird. Real wacky build. The character took on the physical stats of the bird. Something like 1 or 2 PD, maybe. Same with ED. More maneuverable than my character, but not as fast. Changed inside a building. I chased him down the hall and blew.

[Greywind]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

I had a blaster that could dump all his power into an explosion. High end cost. Ended up being more than his END was to start with.

 

Shapechanger changed into a humming bird. Real wacky build. The character took on the physical stats of the bird. Something like 1 or 2 PD, maybe. Same with ED. More maneuverable than my character, but not as fast. Changed inside a building. I chased him down the hall and blew.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Yeah, I've had this happen more than once.

 

Low-damage Megascale explosions are wonderful for disabling the mini-thugs keeping the rest of the team from taking on the big baddies.

[Nerdnumber1]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Yeah, I've had this happen more than once.

 

Low-damage Megascale explosions are wonderful for disabling the mini-thugs keeping the rest of the team from taking on the big baddies.

 

Hope you were nowhere near a city. 2d6 damage is the same as a punch from a fully grown adult. Babies don't have all that much defense. Anyway, what kind of game were you playing that justified a low-damage megascale explosion?

[Sketchpad]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

I was in a game where this happened. We were battling evil versions of the Legion of Superheroes' founders when one of the players, a mage, was cornered by the Saturn Girl character. Not thinking about what the hero had for abilities, the GM was about to lay waste to his mind when the player ripped off a 30d6 Blast that he'd been sitting on for quite some time. Now mind you, a side note here, we had just started playing Champions and had NO idea of limitations (in fact this was the eye opener ). So anyway BLAM!, there went the villain (who also had a x2 Vulnerability to energy attacks), stunning the other two so we could punk them

[aylwin13]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Just two sessions ago I had one of those moments. A Genocide attack squad followed a couple of PCs back to our junkyard HQ. Complete with an anti-grav battle tank. My char, Paladin (powered armor w/ an energy-emitting battlelance) steps up to face the tank, Instead of going with the Cutting laser (6d6 RKA) to open the tank, he goes with the EMP from the 'lance (15d6 Dispel Tech & Electronics; 20" AoER). It was just enough to shut down all of the tanks systems. The GM just looked over and said something like, "oh yeah, you have that don't you?"

[Cygnia]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

This is something that I forgot I could do, but in a different way.

 

My very first Champions game, I'm running Osprey, a metamorph who could turn into a winged form with claws and a sonic scream. The GM has me going up against an air elementalist, who's got a double knockback wind blast.

 

I end up taking out the elementalist and afterwards, the GM and other players complimented me on the fact that as a newbie, I had the good sense to actually pick up the tactic of not flying around the air elementalist.

 

I blink.

 

I forgot my character could fly.

[CoreBrute]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

I had one of those moments, on the GM side of things.

 

This was my first time GMing, so I didn't really understand the character sheets at the time. Anyway, one of the characters, a teleporting ninja, collected all the papers from a lab they had nearly destroyed and then flipped through them and memorised all of the papers.

 

Then I remembered she had Eidetic Memory and speed reading.

 

Another time in the same campaign our resident superman Esc character used X-ray vision to glance at every piece of a UNTIL building and then memorised it with his Eidetic Memory, so even though he couldn't remember what any of it meant, he could transfer the plans to our geneius mentalist who could understand and sell the technology.

 

Since then I have always hated Eidetic Memory.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Hope you were nowhere near a city. 2d6 damage is the same as a punch from a fully grown adult. Babies don't have all that much defense. Anyway' date=' what kind of game were you playing that justified a low-damage megascale explosion?[/quote']

 

Oh, it was limited heavily, and set up mostly as a suicide attack if necessary (pretty well literally, IIRC).

 

And no, nowhere near a city. More like up on the alien carriers prepping a Death Star scale attack of their own. I figure ripping the ship in half is a reasonable risk to stop something like that....

[Hyper-Man]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

...

Since then I have always hated Eidetic Memory.

 

I find it's always a good idea to look at the actual Power build behind Talents before automatically granting them 'absolute' abilities.

 

from 5er page 89

 

Eidetic Memory Cost: 5 Character Points (+5 to INT Rolls, Only To Recall Memorized/Perceived Information (-2))

[Killer Shrike]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Sure, a gazillion.

 

One that I recall fondly...I was playing Major Savage (though earlier in his career, with a bit less points than the version currently up). The Millennial Men were raiding a warehouse front of Wayland Talos, and inside were some mooks, Armadillo, and a Desolid energy being whose name I forget.

 

PRIMUS had the building surrounded, but it was reinforced and very defensible. A classic standoff requiring the timely intercession of costumed vigilantes...uh...I mean superheroes.

 

 

So, Savage did a Heat Scan (IR Vision) of the building and picked up the heat signatures of some of the agents, but the energy being was putting off so much "noise" it was masking the center of the building. So...going in mostly blind then.

 

Savage and John Wrath hammered out a quick tactical assault and mobilized War Man, Chitin, and White Dwarf. War Man and Savage did a vertical envelopment from opposite sides via sky lites on the roof, Wrath took the office door, and Chitin and White Dwarf assaulted via two side by side loading doors on the back side of the building. It was a good overall plan and we timed it well for excellent effect, though Wrath did get hung up on the door thanks to a blown roll (giving birth to the oft-mocked "That door was tougher than it looked!" quote and leading the player to buy Analyze: Obstruction skill as a joke).

 

The fight was going well initially, with Wrath taking down the agents and their fancy high tech guns like cake, fulfilling his role as uber-agent-whacker. White Dwarf and Chitin were way overpowered vs the Agents and less efficient, but worked thru a few nonetheless and then engaged an up-gunned Armadillo and a few more agents in a great slugathon.

 

War-Man and Savage encountered Agents on the roof; War-Man bumped into two or three, Savage encountered I think 5. War-Man took his agents down fast and jumped the gun a bit, assaulting into the building rather than holding for Savage to maximize the shock value.

 

This is when the desolid energy being got busy; she promptly shined War-Man with a brutal high-die Flash vs sight and radio. War-Man radio'd it to Savage in the blind.

 

Savage was still tied up by a couple last agents, and in the meantime the energy villain managed to flash both Chitin and White Dwarf. Wrath went nimble and was still loose, but had no way to affect desolid. In fact, non of the heroes present did. Everyone had a kind of "uh oh" look on their face.

 

Savage finally shot out the last agent who was in a good sniping position behind some heavy equipment on the roof. I held an action to get back-to-backs and then dropped down into the warehouse and flew to a good position, then anchored to a roof support beam in an inverted position using his surface cohesion boots, and on the next action zapped the desolid energy character with his Focused White Noise Pulsar: Sight, Hearing and Radio Groups Flash 13d6.

 

 

The GM was like...wt#! I forgot you had that.

 

Savage rained down some firepower while the flashes faded off the other MillMen, and pegged the energy being again when she started moving around in a meaningful fashion again. The fight quickly turned in the groups favor. The remaining agents went down or fled, the desolid character finally fled, and Armadillo tunneled out of there (we got him later).

 

Good times.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Swing from chains dangling over a lava flow the Heroes made DEX Check after DEX Check. Coming back my character failed his DEX Check and the rest of the Heroes failed to save him.

 

My character plunges into the lava below and burns/drowns to death. Along with the unique artifact we came to recover.

 

After the session, looking forlornly at my character sheet I notice something I forgot.

 

Boots of Flying

 

DOH!

 

QM

[A_Pail_Rider]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

The first character that died. The team is surrounded, we're getting beat like h***, we have to get to the Magufin to save the city, we're rolling for s***.

 

My character has a "escape" power: Desolid for one Phase, takes a minute to recharge. But I don't use it to escape---I go Desolid, drop thru the floor, the floor below that, and into the computer that runs the base security. Then go resolid in the middle of it. It goes blooey, and the rest of the team blows through the mooks and (eventually) saves the city.

 

The look on the GM's face when I said "I go desolid, drop thru to the computer, and wait to go resolid in the middle of it" was priceless. So were the cheers from the rest of the team.

 

If your gonna die, make it important.

[A_Pail_Rider]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

The first character that died. The team is surrounded, we're getting beat like h***, we have to get to the Magufin to save the city, we're rolling for s***.

 

My character has a "escape" power: Desolid for one Phase, takes a minute to recharge. But I don't use it to escape---I go Desolid, drop thru the floor, the floor below that, and into the computer that runs the base security. Then go resolid in the middle of it. It goes blooey, and the rest of the team blows through the mooks and (eventually) saves the city.

 

The look on the GM's face when I said "I go desolid, drop thru to the computer, and wait to go resolid in the middle of it" was priceless. So were the cheers from the rest of the team.

 

If your gonna die, make it important.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

A few of those stories, sure. But what comes immediately to mind is an incident that achieved legendary status within our group. Kind of the reverse of what is asked for in this thread. Specifically, a Referee designed a kick-ass NPC, and forgot to build in one detail which (literally!) blew up the entire campaign. I can fully attest to the accuracy of the following, since I was kibitzing for the entire debacle.

 

Years ago. First edition 'GURPS: Supers'. Some guys at our gathering place decided to give it a try. They created a sort of 'Super-mercenary' group, hiring out for various jobs (mostly legal, sort of).

 

First assignment was tracking down a super group that had just made off with a quantity of gold bullion. The PCs figured out where the loot had been stashed (an underground vault W-A-Y out in the middle of nowhere) and set out to recover it. They arrived, ascertained that the bad guys were not around, then proceeded to remove the gold from the vault and stack it outside (one PC was due to fly in a C-130 for the pick up).

 

Unsurprisngly, the bad guys showed up in the middle of all this, and attacked. Most of them were fairly standard supers. The exception was a particularly sicko GM creation called (pause) CAPTAIN CANCER. CC's schtick was having constantly regrowing tumours all over his body which, if detached, would explode with great force. Basically, this gave him a never-ending supply of hand grenades. Furthermore, if CC was physically injured, this would result in a random number of detached tumours and inevitable explosions (the more damage done to him, the larger the random number).

 

Obviously, this was NOT a dude to get into a close quarters fight with. The PCs were aware of this. Which is probably why, when CC showed up, the PC Brick grabbed a gold ingot and THREW it at him before he could close the range.

 

Yep, you guessed it. Critical success. And maximum damage. Then the GM rolled to see how many tumours detached. Yep, he rolled a very large number indeed with at least a couple more Crits in the mix. Which led to a quite large and impressive explosion that obliterated Captain Cancer's entire team. The PCs were on the fringes of the effect, so they took a few lumps but were clearly ahead on points. Players start celebrating having taken out an entire squad of bad guys with ONE gold brick.

 

The GM starts to describe how a definitely-worse-for-wear Captain Cancer is now standing at centre of a fair-sized crater.

 

One Player says casually, "Okay, so Captain Cancer is immune to his own explosions, is he?"

 

This was one of *those* moments, where somebody asks what seems like a perfectly reasonable question - and the other guy's response is to freeze, go pale and forcefully apply the palm of one (or both) hands to forehead. In this instance, that is precisely what the GM did. Then he frantically began checking his notes for the good Captain.

 

No. Captain Cancer was NOT immune to his own explosions. He took more damage, which detached more tumours, which increased the explosion further, causing still more damage .... and so on. The GM's damage rolls maxed out at least a couple more times. So, what they had was a kind of runaway cascade effect. At some point, CC died, which increased the magnitude of the explosion even more.

 

The end result was an explosion that (somebody calculated weeks afterwards) was "slightly" bigger than what hit Hiroshima. It killed off most of the Characters and removed just about all of the surrounding landscape. To say nothing of most of the gold. The only "good" thing was that all this happened in a remote area, so no innocents added to the body count.

 

Two survivors. The first was the PC in the C-130, who was several miles out when it all hit the fan. He had a wild ride, but survived.

 

******

 

The second survivor is the centre of an interesting postscript to this disaster. He was the resident Wolverine-type, down in the underground vault when Captain Cancer blew up.

 

Based on the group's very limited grasp of the rules (which, in fairness, could not have possibly anticipated anything like this), the Character in question ended up at negative fifty-three Hit Points. Since he had Regeneration, there was a chance for survival, but it required a lot of Health rolls. Fifty-three, to be exact, rolling fourteen or less on a d20 everytime, with any failure meaning the Character's death. if successful, the Character would then be at zero HP, whereupon his Regen would kick in and begin Normal healing.

 

The Player took this ruling in good humour, and started rolling. He expressed curiousity as to just how far he could get before the inevitable happened. The first dozen rolls came and went, all below the required number. He was laughing. Next dozen, same results. Third set, the laughing has stopped, and the Player is starting to sweat. People from the rest of the gaming area start coming over to watch.

 

By the final lot of die rolls, he is shaking so much that it worries everybody else, He makes it, and his Character actually survives the impossible. It was then retired with full honours - the Player rightly felt that NOTHING could possibly top what that Character had been through.

*

*

[Korvar]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

The GM starts to describe how a worse-for-wear Captain Cancer is standing there at Ground Zero. One Player says something like, "Okay, so Captain Cancer is immune to his own explosions, is he?"

 

This was one of *those* moments, where somebody asks what seems like a perfectly reasonable question - and the other guy's response is to freeze, go pale and forcefully apply the palm of one (or both) hands to forehead. In this instance, that is precisely what the GM did.

 

Important GM skill: learn to say "Yes. YES HE DOES." and sound like you mean it

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Important GM skill: learn to say "Yes. YES HE DOES." and sound like you mean it

 

In hindsight, maybe.

 

On the other hand, this was over twenty years ago, and a very common tendency then was to follow rules and write-ups in most games as closely as possible. NO ad libbing or retconning just because things were going pear-shaped, that was considered ... unsporting, I think.

 

I am also certain that the Referee NEVER anticipated that the final explosion would be as big as it was. His biggest concern, to start with, was mainly having his scenario for the night get terminated before it began. He then got stuck with this bizarre feedback loop, where the more damage the NPC took, the more additional damage was generated.

[Korvar]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Reminds me of the Draconians from Dragonlance. They all had some kind of "death scene" which inconvenienced the person who killed them, ranging from turning to stone (trapping your weapon in the statue) to huge explosions. If I remember correctly, there were Draconian types that were arrayed as army unit whose death scene would likely kill others of their kind - so if you killed one of the unit, you would get a cascade, until they were all dead...

[Vulcan]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

In our game, it's more like the GM says, "I allowed that?"

[Silbeg]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

In the last session of my FPCA (Champions) campaign, there was a situation that screamed that sort of thing.

 

Chaos, the team's super-mage, had just been flashed (for the second time that night), and his player was ready to give up. Another player then suggested that he could add a special sense to his Magic Pool, or even a spell to give him the Combat Sense Talent.

 

He then changed his pool to add this ability (as well as a STR enhancement to give himself some HtH punch), and engaged the gadgeteer/martial artist that had blinded him. This helped turn the fight around, and the team ended up defeating the villains.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

Reminds me of the Draconians from Dragonlance. They all had some kind of "death scene" which inconvenienced the person who killed them' date=' ranging from turning to stone (trapping your weapon in the statue) to huge explosions. If I remember correctly, there were Draconian types that were arrayed as army unit whose death scene would likely kill others of their kind - so if you killed one of the unit, you would get a cascade, until they were all dead...[/quote']

I had that happen once. Our characters were faced with an army of Draconians, iron golems, and clay golems (it's a long story involving the GM being a bit too enamoured of just letting players pick whatever number they wanted for their stats... to the point where my character, actually developed BY THE BOOK was the legendary one, not the gold-dragon demigod of strength, because she started out at level 1 instead of 150....)

 

At any rate, the GM had this epic battle planned.

 

Then I looked over the Draconians, and dropped a fireball right in the middle of the golden ones. The ones who set off a Lightning Bolt when they die.

 

They were in the middle of the exploding ones.

 

Commence cascade disaster that annihilates 90% of the army, and left the remaining 10% (iron golems) slowly dissolving in pools of acid.

[Bloodstone]

Re: "Uh ... you can *do* that?"

 

My mystic archer used to do this all the time, thanks to an ever expanding repertoire of techno-alchemical trick arrows. At an average cost of 1 or 2 pts per Ultra Slot, it was pretty easy to start with a huge list of abilites on the points I was give. And at that cost, 2 or 3 new arrows could be researched after a successful adventure.

 

To this day, there are at least a half dozen arrows in his MP that never saw action (plus a big list of ones that wouldn't fit in the MP yet ... or that I didn't think the GM would approve).

 

One of my favorite magic arrows was the Monkey Paw Arrow. Carved out of enchanted loadstone it was mystically attuned to Robins ring. One the arrow was activated, any action he made with his hand the little stone paw would imitate. It also unerringly returned to him, so long as he didn't shoot it too far. In other words, this was the SFX for a limited form of Telekinesis.

 

Pretty much everyone forgot about that arrow until we got into a fight with a BBEG that drew most of his power from a very obvious and very accessible focus