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Ridiculous Feats and stats?


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Is there a way beyond GM Fiat to do off-the-scale feats of strength or speed?

 

example: In Episode 1 of Symphogear GX, main character Hibiki punches between 100 and 150 feet in height of the middle of K2 (reducing it from the 2nd to 3rd tallest mountain) in order for a crashing space shuttle to fly through the gap.  this is 100-150 feet in height and somewhere around 1-2 miles in diameter. Hundreds of millions of tons of solid rock.  STR required to do this is easily in the high hundreds, if not 1000! 

 

In Superman, Supes flies so fast he goes back in time

 

In Justice League Unlimited, the Flash does 8 Movethroughs on the Lex Luthor/Brainiac merger, where he runs clean around the planet in under a second

 

But modelling any of these straight would seriously skew point values well out of the scale of normal gameplay.  Is there something in the mechanics that allows this cinematic 'push well above your stats'?

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These are examples of powers that, if a character could do this, they would do it all the time in a Champions game rather than once in a while when the script calls for it.  If the Flash was as fast and powerful as he's been depicted in special circumstances through the years, all the time, the Justice League would hear about a problem then the Flash would be dusting his costume off a half second later saying "what's next?"

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Two methods come to mind. 

One option would be to plan particular moments as "off-scale" and just ignore the rules for a bit during those moments.  Tell the players that everyone with an idea should roll off, best roll gets to narrate how the problem is solved.  Player Fiat, if you will. 

The other option would be to down-scale challenges (the mountain is DEF 3 BODY 20, about right for two 12 DC characters to take out with a pushed attack each) and up-scale narration ("Alright, Flash, you with your move-through, roll your 16d6.  Ok, that's the KO.  The Flash pivots on his heel before vanishing off to the east.  An instant later, he slams into Lex from the west in a streak of light, then again, then again and again.  Lex reels under yadda yadda yadda").  In general this makes the game more "cinematic" since actions can have larger impact than is "realistic". 

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Some of those could just be SFX of fairly standard powers.

 

I'm not seeing offhand how to do the mountain-shortening punch in any reasonable amount of points.  Hmm... perhaps Major Transform 1d6 (from mountain to shorter mountain), DoT (?? intervals, every Segment).  He punches, the vibrations reverberate until a middle section of the mountain blasts out.  How much BODY does a mountain have?  Or would you just need AoE Cone Megascale, and affect the BODY of each "hex" of stone?

 

Superman traveling through time is simply Extra-Dimensional Movement.  Add on some Extra Time, maybe some Side Effects to Environment covering his path around the world, and the rest is just SFX.  If he doesn't have that power on his sheet, he probably has the Power skill and the GM can allow him to use that specific power, once.

 

Flash's 8 Movethroughs are just SFX of a really powerful HA combo, perhaps again with some Side Effects to Environment covering his path around the world.    Again, if he doesn't have that power on his sheet, use of the Power skill could allow its use once.

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25 minutes ago, ScrewySquirrel said:

Is there a way beyond GM Fiat to do off-the-scale feats of strength or speed?

 

example: In Episode 1 of Symphogear GX, main character Hibiki punches between 100 and 150 feet in height of the middle of K2 (reducing it from the 2nd to 3rd tallest mountain) in order for a crashing space shuttle to fly through the gap.  this is 100-150 feet in height and somewhere around 1-2 miles in diameter. Hundreds of millions of tons of solid rock.  STR required to do this is easily in the high hundreds, if not 1000! 

 

In Superman, Supes flies so fast he goes back in time

 

In Justice League Unlimited, the Flash does 8 Movethroughs on the Lex Luthor/Brainiac merger, where he runs clean around the planet in under a second

 

But modelling any of these straight would seriously skew point values well out of the scale of normal gameplay.  Is there something in the mechanics that allows this cinematic 'push well above your stats'?

Case 1: Generally attacking Large Objects (Mountain to Planet Size) is not very effective. Wich is why APG II 113 introduces several new Damage Models for "attacking and destroying large objects". One of those might be better at supporting your case 1.

 

Superman flying so fast he goes back in time (basically a time machine similar to Star Trek 4) is one of those powers that nobody ever mentioned again. Not even the same movies in that continuity. Mostly because it is hilariously OP, as HISHE keeps reminding us every time they use it.

 

The flash explicitly said "I can never go that fast again. If I do, I will not come back."

There were several similar cases for each Hero of the Teen Titans. Like Cyborg Defeating Brother Blood. Or any of the other titans defeating their villain.

There are two common parts:

- they were the only solution to a problem

- everything in the story worked towards this being the only solution

- they are always one time solutions

 

I doubt that it can be translated to a RPG setting at all. There is one fundamental divide between a RPG table and any work of Fiction:

- in a work of Fiction, the Author controls the Protagonist, the Antagonists and the Environment.

- on a RPG table, each Player controls one Protagonist. While the GM controls the Antagonsits and Environment. All the rules realy do is resolve the inevitable conflict if two authors try to direct the course of a story.

But if you really want to try, here is my best advise:

 - set those story moments up with the Characters player. Those stories exist solely to show how awesome the Chracter is

 - alternatively, it could be a fallback option for really rotten dice luck. Or when you accidentallty design a villain too OP (like LuthorBraniac).

 - within limits, something like Heroic action points might come close.

 - maybe make it a sort of token each player can use once per Campaign. A "Heroic last stand".

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I'm not visualizing the mountain punch.  I don't really understand what is being described.

 

As far as the Flash's trick, I played a high tier speedster for several years.  There are several ways to do it.  For a Flash type, I'd recommend having a movement power with enough Megascale to go around the planet in basically one action.  Something like:

 

20" of Flight, only in contact with a surface, megascale 1"= 1000km.  That'll get you halfway around the world in one action (so you can effectively go anywhere on Earth).  Then you sweet-talk the GM into letting you do the around-the-world punch in a single phase.  After all, there's no game mechanic reason to do it, it's purely to look cool.  Once you've hit the level of speed where you can go anywhere on Earth in one phase, looping around the Earth is just cool visualization.  If he won't agree on that, then going up to 1"=10,000km is only an extra +1/4 advantage.

 

The Flash then puts his hyper-speed VPP into pure D6s of Hand Attack, and he does Passing Strike after Passing Strike.

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16 minutes ago, massey said:

I'm not visualizing the mountain punch.  I don't really understand what is being described.

 

 

 

Imagine stacking up dominoes to make a stack say, 12 dominoes high. Imagine flicking your finger at it and knocking off the top 4 dominoes.

 

Now imagine it again but instead of a stack of dominoes imagine a mountain, and instead of a finger flick imagine a superpowered punch.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Now imagine a palindromedary

 

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17 minutes ago, massey said:

I'm not visualizing the mountain punch.  I don't really understand what is being described.

 

The way I’m seeing it (and it’s totally likely I’m wrong) is if you imagine a game of Jenga, but instead of gently sliding out one stick you flick out all three sticks in one level, causing a gap in the stack for a split second before the top of the stack drops down to fill the void. Imagine it done so quickly that, like a table cloth swiped from under some dishes, everything returns to its original position unjostled, only one rank of Jenga sticks shorter.

 

Now, Imagine this as the mountain, with a space shuttle hurtling through the gap before the mountaintop settles down onto the rest of the mountain. 

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Quote

The question, though, is if such feats can be modeled in the game other than GM Fiat?

 

No, what I'm saying is that this stuff doesn't belong in a game, unless you want a game of such absurd power and vast abilities you have to throw Gods at the players in waves to slow them down.  Trying to model this stuff would break your game, not make it cool or like the cartoons.

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Just now, Christopher R Taylor said:

No, what I'm saying is that this stuff doesn't belong in a game, unless you want a game of such absurd power and vast abilities you have to throw Gods at the players in waves to slow them down.  Trying to model this stuff would break your game, not make it cool or like the cartoons.

Maybe the problem is in how you're trying to model it. 

The example object table suggests that a 60 STR superhuman will struggle to rip a safe door off its hinges, smash a boulder, or crush a car.  Does this mean 60 STR is too low to be The Thing or Thor or Superman?  That your GM can't let you be one of those hulking muscular superstrong comic characters in a 12DC game?  Of course not.  It just means the object-durability model is wrong for the desired game. 

If your GM decides to run Jet Pilot HERO, does your Raptor have to buy hundreds of points of movement to dogfight at mach 1?  If your GM is running 75+50 Robot Detective HERO does everybody's first 50 CP have to go into "Life Support: Is Robot"?  If your GM is running some fantastically over-the-top rule-of-cool action game does it mean you have to slow down and figure out the exact mechanics of every flashy power stunt or apply, may Bay forgive me for uttering these words, real world logic to things like "You can punch through an entire mountain but not a human villain."?  No!  HERO is a toolkit.  It does what you want, because you can change what you don't like. 

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Chris has it partially right.  On a regular 12-15DC game, these are impossible mechanically.  To model them, it seems like its GM Fiat 'describe what you want to do, the cooler it is, the more likely you are to suceed!' (possibly with a Power skill roll as a stunt.)  Modelling that punch as a power (Or Flash's round the world movethroughs) is too prohibitive in cost.  Most of the time these are one-off 'Moments of awesome'.  The GM Fiat can be houseruled as a 'Once a session' limit or something, but there really isn't a good way to do it already in mechanics other than stretching the Power skill like taffy

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6 hours ago, ScrewySquirrel said:

But modelling any of these straight would seriously skew point values well out of the scale of normal gameplay.  Is there something in the mechanics that allows this cinematic 'push well above your stats'?

 

Pushing is probably the most rules-valid route to take. GMs can allow pushing beyond normal limits in situations of extreme need. Granted, this does put the mechanic back within the "GM fiat" field that you seem to want to avoid. However, as you note, such effects are well out of the scale of normal game play, so there's really no way to avoid a GM deciding whether to permit it.

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Its not about the modeling, its about what the players do with it.

 

If you let a player character do x in one game he's gonna want to do x in every game.  If he can blow a mountain in half and fly under it, he's gonna wonder why it takes so many hits to put that Viper agent down. and for good reason.

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1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its not about the modeling, its about what the players do with it.

 

If you let a player character do x in one game he's gonna want to do x in every game.  If he can blow a mountain in half and fly under it, he's gonna wonder why it takes so many hits to put that Viper agent down. and for good reason.

Why are you throwing normal humans at mountain-punch-girl?  At that scale of effect every opponent should be described as superhuman and/or go down in one hit. 

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1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its not about the modeling, its about what the players do with it.

 

If you let a player character do x in one game he's gonna want to do x in every game.  If he can blow a mountain in half and fly under it, he's gonna wonder why it takes so many hits to put that Viper agent down. and for good reason.

 

One quick and easy explanation, from the GM’s point of view, is because the mountain doesn’t fight back whereas the VIPER agent does. I realize this just kicks the can down the road for a future standoff between GM and players, but this seems to be the point where the rules invoke game balance and dramatic sense as determining factors in the GM’s decision. It’s just a moment of drama, not to be reflected in normal rules and power builds. 

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How about:

 

Extraordinary Success:  Multipower, 140-point reserve,  (140 Active Points); 1 Charge which Recovers every 6 months (-4), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Perceivable (-1/4), Requires A Roll (Power Tricks Skill roll, -1 per 20 Active Points modifier; -1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4); all slots Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2)

   3f Extra-Dimensional Movement (Any Dimension, Any Location corresponding to current physical location) (42 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2)

   4f Extra-Dimensional Movement (Any Point in Time, Physical Location Same As Starting Location) (67 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2)

   9f Tunneling 10m through 21 PD material, Fill In, MegaScale (1m = 10 km; +1 1/4) (139 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2)

   8f Luck 28d6 (140 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4)

 

Real Cost: 44pts. 

 

Add abilities/powers to suit. It only recovers every 6 months, so they can't use it all the time. Maybe once every few adventures, etc... If they want to waste it taking out a Goon then they can, but they can save for when they really need a cinematic amazing success use of power, etc... 

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