I wonder how many have stopped using Champions/HERO for similar reasons to this?

[Ninja-Bear]

That's OIF. Bond had 12 seconds to remove it.

It was still in combat with a (very active) opponent trying to stop him. I still say OAF - universal

[Tasha]

An Accessible Focus is one that’s easily taken away from the character, or of whose benefit the character can easily be deprived. An Accessible Focus can be hit by a Grab or other nonranged attack (see Chapter Three of 6E2), or by any Ranged attack (such as a Blast or thrown rock). There’s a -2 OCV modifier on attacks against Foci, and the attacker must state before he rolls his Attack Roll that he’s trying to hit the Focus. If he makes his Attack Roll, he’s Grabbed the Focus (if he made a Grab) or hit it (with a nonranged or Ranged attack).

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'd call the parachute OIF, because it wasn't a one-phase operation to remove.  OAF means something easy to remove, a simple act (if you hit) such as taking away a club or a hat.  Something with straps and clips that takes longer than a phase to remove I lean toward OIF, and if it takes a turn, then definitely.

[massey]

The parachute was an OIF, but it's also got the limitation Real Equipment (-1/4) which means it's easier to remove than a standard OIF.  Plus, the agent didn't actually pay any points for it.  If he wasn't just a random guy who existed purely so Bond could steal his parachute, and instead he was Parachute Man, with 10" of Gliding, OIF, and he paid for it, then Bond would actually have to knock him out and spend a turn removing his parachute.

[Greywind]

Wasn't it Jaws?

[massey]

Might have been.  It's been a looooong time since I saw Moonraker.  Point remains, though.  Jaws doesn't have "parachute" on his character sheet.

[Tigereye]

Might have been.  It's been a looooong time since I saw Moonraker.  Point remains, though.  Jaws doesn't have "parachute" on his character sheet.

Neither did 007, but you don't see that slowing him down!

 

It actually takes several actions, if you can define it in a Hero System sense, for Bond to get the chute off of the pilot of the plane he's been pushed out of by Jaws (and how Jaws managed to hide on a Jetstream commuter plane is beyond me - maybe he was hiding in the restroom).

 

The pilot leaves several seconds before Bond, forcing him to use beaucoup Skill Levels in Combat Piloting - Skydiving (Advanced) (not to mention a die or two of Luck) to catch up to him, wrestle and punch him, stun or KO him long enough to make a Grab maneuver on the chute, unlatch it and put it on himself (it takes an extra couple of seconds - 007 botches the first DEX check). The pilot regains consciousness long enough to make a Wilhelm Scream. (AAIIIEEE!)

 

Jaws actually did have a parachute, but it didn't work. He ended up crashing into a circus tent, starting the opening credits, and which was a prelude for what was to come...(as if you can't guess, I'm not fond of Moonraker, the movie. It had about as much to do with the book as I, Robot did with its source material.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

If I had the Hollywood clout and billions of dollars I'd reboot the Bond franchise, filming each book in the time as period pieces accurate to the era and books.  They would probably not be as big a box office smash but they'd be damn fine films.

[Greywind]

Eh, Moonraker was mostly them sitting around and playing cards. Extremely boring in an action movie franchise.

[massey]

Better than anything with Timothy Dalton in it.

[Tigereye]

The card game is only one chapter, and is definitely not boring as it establishes the characters of Hugo Drax (and for that matter, M) quite well. It's a good bit of foreshadowing of Drax's villany - his need for control and bullying brashness. (He's a Fifties version of Donald Trump, complete with orange hair!) The book has several excellent pieces, including having a section of the Dover Cliffs being dropped on 007 and his Scotland Yard female assistant, a car chase scene, and an extended climax with Bond and the policewoman in the launch site for the first described atomic ICBM (written in 1955, and using hydrogen and fluorine for fuel!). It also has a genuine twist at the end, for which I will not spoil, lest ye read the text below...

 

 

Bond doesn't get the girl at the end - she's engaged to be married to another member of MI5, and for once his gallantry prevails over lust

 

 

It would make a superb adventure for Pulp Hero, and not a bad one at all for a Dark Champions film noir.

 

People are so addicted to action nowadays - but it's the quieter moments that help build character, in Champions and elsewhere. There, I found another reason to run Hero System - when you're not fighting, it's great for building character!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I actually liked Timothy Dalton as Bond, he was very true to the books.  He got a pretty awful script to work with in License To Kill, unfortunately.  Someone had been watching too much Miami Vice.

[Metalman]

 

 

I think that 6e is actually the better edition over 4th. Yes there are things that I miss from 4th and wish made it to 6e unchanged. 6e isn't perfect either, but it's a huge step in the right directions.

 

 

4th didn't kill the system, did it?   I think 5th was the best in terms of support and modular aspects.   Who cares if Bricks and DEX based characters got a break, at least we had hero games.

 

DND changed their system a lot and pathfinder came in and cleaned their clock.   They are going back to simple now with DND next.

[Tasha]

4th didn't kill the system, did it?   I think 5th was the best in terms of support and modular aspects.   Who cares if Bricks and DEX based characters got a break, at least we had hero games.

 

DND changed their system a lot and pathfinder came in and cleaned their clock.   They are going back to simple now with DND next.

 

Everyone complained about 6e's encyclopedia style of explaining the rules. So we edited them down and got all of the goodness of 6e with the lightness of 4e rules and page count.

 

I love 6e because I can make the character I want and I don't have to buy stats up that aren't needed to fit either the Character Concept or Campaign.

[Balabanto]

Some simple concepts get eaten by 6th, though.

 

Growth is actually the worst 6e offender. If a character's only power is to change his size, Growth becomes prohibitively expensive and conceptually confusing.

 

Stretching is also kind of problematic. This power hates people in Champions who don't belong in the top ten percent of income. How big is the table you play Champions at? No, really. I mean this. For a mere-smear 54 points, you can have 36 Meters of Stretching at Half-End that doesn't cross inrtervening space. This will pretty much guarantee total battlefield control, as you are in hand to hand combat with everyone on the map at all times, and they are not in hand to hand combat with you. No game system should ever punish people for not having a table big enough to make a character operate at an equal level of effectiveness. Mr. Fantastic was never meant to be this fantastic.

[Greywind]

Mr. Fantastic has to cross the intervening.

[Tasha]

Some simple concepts get eaten by 6th, though.

 

Growth is actually the worst 6e offender. If a character's only power is to change his size, Growth becomes prohibitively expensive and conceptually confusing.

 

Stretching is also kind of problematic. This power hates people in Champions who don't belong in the top ten percent of income. How big is the table you play Champions at? No, really. I mean this. For a mere-smear 54 points, you can have 36 Meters of Stretching at Half-End that doesn't cross inrtervening space. This will pretty much guarantee total battlefield control, as you are in hand to hand combat with everyone on the map at all times, and they are not in hand to hand combat with you. No game system should ever punish people for not having a table big enough to make a character operate at an equal level of effectiveness. Mr. Fantastic was never meant to be this fantastic.

 

No you aren't in hand to hand combat with everyone in your stretching Radius (18" radius or 36" diameter, most folk have a table that is nearly 3' wide) Also you need Line of Sight to see where to put those limbs (2 prehensile limbs unless you bought extra limbs). So you have an incorrect interpretation of those rules.

 

Growth is to make Growth Potions and Characters like Giant Man and Goliath. The power is very easy to understand. Now it might be difficult if you are used to a different writeup of the power that appeared in an earlier edition, but that's not the fault of the rules.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well they can still hit you, you're still stretching they just can't hit any of the bits connecting your fist with your body as I understand it.  In other words, you have a disembodied or portaled or solid fist on a desolid arm, etc.  So they can hit your hand as you punch them.  But I might be misunderstanding how the advantage works.

 

Still, I don't see any difference between that and, say, blasting someone anywhere on the battlefield.  You aren't in HTH range of them either.

[Balabanto]

No you aren't in hand to hand combat with everyone in your stretching Radius (18" radius or 36" diameter, most folk have a table that is nearly 3' wide) Also you need Line of Sight to see where to put those limbs (2 prehensile limbs unless you bought extra limbs). So you have an incorrect interpretation of those rules.

 

Growth is to make Growth Potions and Characters like Giant Man and Goliath. The power is very easy to understand. Now it might be difficult if you are used to a different writeup of the power that appeared in an earlier edition, but that's not the fault of the rules.

 

The problem with Growth is that it is now modular in 15 STR units instead of 5 STR units. That's why I said the simplest characters whose only power is to change their size get the short end of the stick. The tightly unified concept should not receive the shortest end of the stick. Not to mention the awkwardness of characters who can only become a certain size that is in between the two units. Partially limited Growth is an incredibly awkward construction. When we tried to "granularize it", it failed. 8.33 points per microlevel is one of the most horrible breakdowns I've ever seen.  I'm not doing the math here, but trust me, my playtest group did the math on this about ten times and we were not happy with it.

 

Technically, Tasha, you can be in hand to hand with anyone and anyone. Because of one simple rule. The power of the combat maneuver, grab. As long as I can target an opponent, I can relocate them to any place that my stretching can reach assuming my grab is successful. It doesn't matter how many limbs I have. And stretching is so cheap that even the largest battlemap available, assuming 2m per hex, is incapable of making a dent in the issue. This is way more effective, cost-wise, than teleportation usable against another, even with limited range.

 

I think it might be time for a discussion about battlefield control and what you think it means versus what I think it means. If a character has the ability to consistently lock down and eliminate threats with little opposition relative to it's point cost (Such as bricks or martial grab martial artists with large amounts of stretching), then that character may be too effective for it's general point cost. Your argument about line of sight doesn't make any sense, because why would anyone target someone they can't see? Your argument is based on the fallacy that people will target untargetable opponents. Furthermore, Stretching allows you to be in hand to hand combat with anyone within the range of your reach. It may be a full phase action to do so, but the point is, that if your stretching doesn't cross intervening space, who cares how many targets I select? If you can be in HTH with someone, it isn't just that you can attack them! You can block them, too! And that's where it gets screaming broken, IMHO, because the most powerful thing in any game system is always action denial. If your super-stretchy guy doesn't cross intervening space and he can block physical attacks (Which he should be able to, block is a basic combat maneuver), then he's just gained the ability to deny 3-4 actions per turn. Very useful against agents, but against supers, much more so, because they have no ability to observe the stretching and there are less of them. Simply telling someone their interpretation is wrong doesn't prove anything. Plus, I get a surprise maneuver bonus on the first couple people I block because my Stretching is effectively partially indirect and people have no idea of it's origin point, if it doesn't cross intervening space.

 

As for the power being easy to understand, there's a difference between a power being easy to understand and correctly simulating the powers of a character or group of characters. I'm aware that the power is easy to understand. The problem is, it became so simplified that it didn't address the most basic needs of the power.

[Greywind]

Sounds like your stretching build falls under "abusive build" and should be re-looked at because of. That's a flaw in the game being played. Not in the system.

[Balabanto]

Sounds like your stretching build falls under "abusive build" and should be re-looked at because of. That's a flaw in the game being played. Not in the system.

 

The problem with that is that under the old rules, Stretching was fine. It functioned. It made sense. This power was rebooted in 6e and there really wasn't a need for it. I play the ball where it lies, Greywind. I have to. I write for the system. A GM can say 'that's abusive', sure. But how can that not be a flaw in the system? Mathematically, if something works the same way every time, and it's broken, that's a flaw in the system. A flaw in the game being played is when a construction comes up that violates the social rules of the setting.

[Greywind]

Just because you can build something, doesn't mean that you should. That's been tossed around since 1st.

[Beast]

Stretching gets no range mod built in to it

there is nothing that says you cannot grab the stretching limb and pull the stretcher w/ a waited move

an entangle is going to run through the portal for those that have "does not cross intervining space"

and no reason you can't haul that character through his own portal

I have 2 characters that use stretching
Precision creates a telekinetic cloak that will mimic his arms and stretch in their place

Blip is a teleporter who does the "does not cross intervining space"
I just make sure of who I attack and always return my limb back to avoid grabs
I fully expect 1 day that a waited  move will slap me

 

This is where the foes ( of the Stretcher ) should learn and get experience to deal with you in the future

Well they can still hit you, you're still stretching they just can't hit any of the bits connecting your fist with your body as I understand it.  In other words, you have a disembodied or portaled or solid fist on a desolid arm, etc.  So they can hit your hand as you punch them.  But I might be misunderstanding how the advantage works.

 

Still, I don't see any difference between that and, say, blasting someone anywhere on the battlefield.  You aren't in HTH range of them either.

[Tasha]

You see, There's really none of the problems with stretching that you see. First, you can only Pull characters to yourself, Second moving that character takes the same time as moving to that character (ie half your stretching inches = Half phase, more than half to all of stretching inches = full phase). Also many GM's will rule that grabbing someone will end the shrinker's combat phase. Also it's implied that you need enough strength to move the target.

From 6e1 pg 286
"A character with Stretching can reach out, Grab a character or object that’s within the range of his Stretching, and pull it to him (assuming he has the STR to move it). (He cannot pull himself to the Grabbed character or object, he drags it to himself.) If the target is an object, this typically takes a Full Phase Action. It only requires a Half Phase Action if the total of (meters Stretched + meters the character has to pull the object) is less than or equal to half his Stretching and the object is non-resisting. If the target is a person or the like, the GM may rule that making the Grab ends the Stretching character’s Phase. However, since characters can Grab and Squeeze, Slam, or Throw, most GMs allow characters with Stretching to Grab and Drag To Myself as part of one Attack Action. The GM may allow a Grabbed character to have an Action that takes no time to brace himself or use STR to resist being dragged."

About Does Not Cross Intervening Space. (also 6e1 pg 286)
"A character cannot use Stretching with this Limitation to reach out, Grab someone, and drag him to the character, nor to reach out and drag himself upward, except with the GM’s permission."

So the power can't be used to drag people randomly across the game map. esp if they have Does Not Cross Intervening Space. in fact someone with Stretching + DNCIS can't drag anyone anywhere. So they lose that part of stretching altogether when they take that advantage.

Say what you like about Steve's writing. When it comes to writing rules that are well thought out and not full of holes. He's a top notch rules writer.

[Ninja-Bear]

I thought too that to hit an ooponent in h-t-h with stretching that there still is a range penalty.