Balabanto

Oh, one more addendum. If you believe getting hit in the back all the time is a problem, put your back to a wall, where they can't attack via rear hex facing unless they have a ton of extra points over their opponents.

Running has no turn mode. Block makes everything about your ocv and not your dcv.

Tracked Underground Machine and Underground Exploration Vehicle are done! Only one vehicle rmeains...

Underground Hover Transport is done. I'm finishing up Tracked Underground Machine tonight.

Why don't we try this another way, since I seem to be having so much trouble explaining this? I grab you. I do not throw you or what have you. You are grabbed. I squeeze you, or not, it doesn't matter. If I don't throw you, or release you, or pull you/move you indirectly using stretching, my action ends. The character is still grabbed. See, this is the part people missed, I think. You can pull him to you as part of a grab, which is a full phase action. However, if not, attacking ends your action. On my next phase, I use the grabbed character as a club, also using stretching. I smash him into character C. Where does he wind up? Is he adjacent to character C? Is he adjacent to me? Well, logically, he's just been repositioned, because attacking ends your action. So as far as the combat rules are concerned, he's adjacent to the position where Character C may or may not be. (Possible Knockback) However, I did not pull the character towards me. Nor did I only move him. I used the grabbed character as a weapon. So why is moving someone around (Less valuble and powerful) not within the rules according to this interpretation when beating the snot out of Character C (More powerful and MUCH more valuble) is?

To what are you "Adjacent" That's what reach governs. You are considered adjacent to any location within your reach. That's the point. The target is not necessarily considered "adjacent" to you. But you are "adjacent" to him, because you can reach him.

Stop putting words in my mouth. It isn't civil. The fact also exists that I can, as part of my action, move a target to any hex adjacent to me without stretching if I grab him. So if I buy stretching, my character suddenly loses his elbows and all forms of side to side movement? The fact is that you're only reading the power, and not the combat rules governing grab and reach. You're literally saying "If I have growth, I cannot choose into which hex I place the target," because as far as granting reach is concerned, Growth and Stretching are the same. The only thing reach does is change your Hand to Hand combat distance. You're also not covering the part about what indirect means for stretching. (I.E. I can stretch my head around the corner, look in a window, target an attacker and pull that character out of the room on the other side, assuming my casual STR will allow me to do so. Furthermore, I can stop the use of stretching at any point along that distance, effectively repositioning him.) Plus, now we get to another reason why you can't possibly be correct. It leads to min-maxing, where I estimate the distances that my fellow heroes move in a turn, and buy just enough stretching to make sure that when I reach out to grab someone as you suggest, and pull them towards me, that the target can't possibly make it to me with the amount of stretching I have. Rules shouldn't be there to encourage rules lawyers to abuse them. And that's what your interpretation does. Remember that characteristics create the body of your character, skills are what your character is skilled at, and powers modify what your character can do in combat. The combat rules, on the other hand, work the same for everyone. That's why your interpretation makes no sense. This is why we reason from effect in Champions. You're going to have to be content to believe what you believe, and I'm going to have to be content to believe what I believe.

This is why we reason from effect in Champions. Telekinetically generated Hands function differently from the amazing Bungee Cord dude. Not everyone can and should be able to do this.

This is a physical complication and a power with a weird special effect. You buy Life Support (Breathe Water) as if it were air for 5 points and give him an OIF for 3 points total. All you're doing is flipping the medium for his base breathing source. Then you take this: Physical Complication: Seriously, infrequently. Character obeys the drowning rules without life support equipment. (Cannot take recoveries, etc) That's all you have to do.

Not at will. You still can only do it on your DEX or with a held action. You can't just up and do this as a freebie. That IS ridiculous. " The point is basically "If I can squeeze bob or throw bob, why can't I just move Bob around within my zone of reach? If I can be in hand to hand combat with bob, and grab bob, what is to prevent me from moving him three hexes to the right?" Well, obviously, if I can't lift bob, because he has 10 levels of DI, this tactic will fail. The grabber does have to be able to lift/carry/move the target. The basic functions of the STR chart still apply to this maneuver. If I can only lift 200 pounds and Captain Obesity weighs 2000, he is moved zero hexes!

Yes, but proportion counts for something. Stretching and Growth both grant reach. This is an issue about reach, and how reach works. Not an issue about stretching and how stretching works.

Any grab will serve that purpose, Beast. That's my point entirely.

I think you don't understand the part about Stretching being partially indirect, or how reach works in Champions. All stretching does is grant additional reach. See the part about partially indirect. The path of the Stretching can be altered. (See indirect, Champions Complete 107) Everything else is a part of the grab maneuver, how many meters the stretcher chooses to move the grabbed character, and, most importantly, where the grabber chooses to stop. He can choose to stop at any time, and not use all his stretching. This means that the target can effectively be repositioned to any point within the character's reach as long as he has enough stretching left to cover the distance. Ultimately, this isn't a build question. It's a combat rules question. This is all about how grab works in conjunction with a power, not about the power itself. And that, I think, is the core of where you and I differ. By the way, for those who want stretching to have a range modifier, it's a -1/4 limitation. (Champions Complete, page 86) Obviously if everyone in the game world has to play by those rules, the limitation is worth no bonus. And someone else like Ghostdancer's post, please. He deserves it. That was hilarious.

"The total amount of stretching his body can use," does not mean "The total amount of distance that the grabbed character can be moved." If I can use telekinesis to move a character, then I should be able to use my STR to move a character a near/equivalent distance. You can declare that it is, but nowhere in the passage does it say that stretching is a movement power. It just grants reach. And if reach works the same way it does with growth (As it should), you should be able to relocate that character to any point within your zone of reach. Stretching the body part means that the body part is stretched. It has nothing to do with the combat maneuver that you are performing. You keep moving to build questions rather than how the combat rules work. If I martial throw someone, the target falls. But it's the attacker's choice into which hex adjacent to the attacker he falls. Now let's apply stretching to that. Into which hex does the thrown character fall? You can't possibly tell me that the thrown target is automatically forced however many meters of stretching it is to be adjacent to the stretching character. You also can't possibly tell me that he's limited to falling in the hex that he's in. Let's look at Avengers as an example. We have Hulk smashing Loki around like a tin can. This is grab and throw, or grab and smash, or whatever you call it. Hulk doesn't let go of Loki. But he is forcibly repositioned. Loki doesn't get to choose what hex he wound up in. The Hulk decides. "Hulk decides! Puny philosophers!"

And in your home game, that's absolutely awesome, and I 100 percent support you! Champions is meant to be house-ruled. It's the entire point of a toolkit based system. However, what it can't do is change the mechanics or wording of rulebook text.

Sadly, no. Hand to Hand combat never has any range penalties.

Yes. But 6e1 is gone! Only Champions Complete is now the definitive reference. "A character using Stretching has greater than normal Reach. His base meters of stretching add to the base 1m of reach he already has. The Reach provided by stretching does not reduce or otherwise affect the character's range modiifier for making ranged attacks." However, grab is not a ranged attack. What reach does is increase the distance by which a character may be considered in hand to hand combat with somebody. Every single rule that you have quoted is gone. Like it never existed in Champions Complete. Champions Complete is the newest (Declared Final) version of the rules. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, to prevent a character from grabbing a character, pulling it to him, and then repositioning that character anywhere in the character's stretching radius according to the Champions Complete book. It's all part of the same full phase action. (See grab and throw, grab and squeeze, grab and movement, etc) You can default to an earlier edition of the rules, but it's still not the definitive edition of the rules. Nor is there anything in the rules that says the character can stop pulling the character towards him at any point. Now you CAN argue that the character can only forcibly move someone up to the full distance of their stretching value per action, and that will partially prevent what you're talking about, if the target is at the very edge of the character's stretching distance. But that's a very weird interpretation of how limbs work. "I can only make my arm move forward and backward, I can't move my arm side to side." See Grab and Movement, Champions Complete, page 150. The Grabber can move and bring the victim along, subject to normal rules of transporting other characters. So the character's position is completely up to the grabber. The grabbed doesn't have to be adjacent to him. He can be anywhere that the grabber desires. Obviously, common sense applies unless the character is super-amoeba man. He shouldn't be able to forcibly relocate people to places his shoulder blades won't allow him to move them. But, nonetheless, you are quoting rules for the game that don't exist anymore. The game should be able to be played with only Champions Complete, or there would be no point in printing it.

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.

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.

4f is where they put you when you're not fit for military duty.

UHT-7 has been completed. Tracked Underground Machine is next.

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.

Well, it looks like this vote is swinging in a single direction, so we'll put together some underground vehicles and I'll post another update when each vehicle is done. Currently we're at 130301 words and 262 pages. Your four vehicles will be PTAH UHT-7 (Underground Hover Transport) PTAH TUM-4 (Tracked Underground Machine) PTAH UEX-3 (Underground Explorer) PTAH AUMAV-2 (Armored Underground Military Assault Vehicle)

The final map and object defense table have been completed. I will compile all your votes after 24 hours and if the decision is vehicles, I will begin building them right away.

Wait for the Champions version. I paid for the special cover via the kickstarter and gave them artistic freedom, so I don't even know what I'm getting.