DasBroot

Hal was lucky to escape Mon-El.  He's not getting past Big Blue, who has more experience and (inexplicably) more power.  At his full potential there's no barrier he could raise that could hold Superman and no blast that could harm him.

Watch out with Darkness. Lot of grumbling in my group when the big bad built Darkness to Mental Group into his secret base to prevent someone from going 'He's over there' at the start of the game.

Mind Scan at a useful level isn't cheap.  Darkness to a single sense group IS.  While there are other examples of that in the game (a 50,000 point blast will be thwarted by a 40 point desolidify without the right advantages or special effects) this one 'feels' more like the GM is targeting you.  (Hence while it would benefit *everyone* in the game to have this power it really was limited to the campaign enemies main base). 

30/20 is NOT a little power, in my opinion...

Desperate strength:  +30 STR (30 Active Points); 1 Charge (-2) RC 10

"It's over Prime."

"Never!" *Star Trek hammer blow*

Donald Trump tweeted a snark attack at the Mayor of London...

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/politics/donald-trump-london-travel-ban/index.html

 

Regardless of what his intent may have been, who did that support?

The same person it always does: Himself.

Adam Warlock, even without the Gauntlet (I don't think he's meant to have it for this contest) due to venue.

I thought that picture was Doctor Doom for a second. 

Indeed.  If they're confined to the arena of battle (the Bubble) she can't just sit higher than he can jump and nuke him from orbit until he gives up / gets knocked out (though he doesn't really get knocked out much anymore anyways - it doesn't seem possible to power creep a guy who can lift mountains yet Marvel has).

It IS outside of Olympus and I'm not counting Bill and Stormbreaker out  quite yet - god imbued power to control lightning vs god powered lightning seems like a challenge to me.

Manhattan could probably do all that SIMULTANEOUSLY in the blink of an eye - duplicating more Herc's for full effect if needed.

Yep.  If this was an MMO forum there would be a dozen threads a day screaming "Nerf psi damage!"

Dio - The Last In Line

Rush - Working man

Hmm.  Hadn't realised strength directly reduces crushing damage.  I'll have to look that up in CC.

As for the throwing damage - throwing damage would be 14d6 (somehow) but I'd have a hard time saying it wasn't the full 49d6 (minus strength difference, apparently) for dropping it on your head for failing to clear your body when thrown due to size.  

It's just a another reason that this deliberately silly build is rules breaking silly and should not be done with any seriousness - lest you end up with a WW2 era Sherman tank being thrown 100 meters to land on a small yapping dog and failing to flat out kill it because someone took strength 10 and 240 points of 'only for lifting strength' and thus threw a tank into something for 2d6....

Stevie Nicks - Stop Dragging My Heart Around

That is kinda silly, considering that Throw Distance is factored based on the objects weight versus your maximum lift. So anything that increases your max lift should also be increasing your throw distance.

Indeed throw distance IS factored by lift - I didn't limit that.  The mountain was near his maximum lift (245 str to lift vs 250 strength) so... two meters. Unless he's holding the mountain by the very lip (and suspension of disbelief only goes so far even in a superhero game ... at least *try* and get closer to the center of gravity before lifting a mountain, please) .... splat (49d6). 

Theoretically he could throw a tank dozens of meters for his 70 str damage (14d6), since the tank has a body/pd higher than 14 - if he hit the broad side of a barn throwing an improvised weapon that distance due to stacking OCV penalties from aerodynamics and range.

And it was more than kind of silly - it was *super* silly.  The original, original concept was to be able to lift a mountain but be unable to open a pickle jar.... but the players kind of fell in love with the poor lunk so I made him useful by increasing his non-lift strength to match the DC cap.

Consider:

Super stealth suit:  (Total: 34 Active Cost, 22 Real Cost) Invisibility to Radio Group and Infrared Perception , Persistent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (26 Active Points); OIF (-1/2) (Real Cost: 17) <b>plus</b> +4 with Stealth (8 Active Points); OIF (-1/2) (Real Cost: 5)

That makes you immune to some of the auto-see through stealth whammies and makes you very sneaky to anything not them.

Invisibility to Sight, Radio and Hearing Groups , Custom Adder (Doesn't work on normal sight -5), No Fringe, Persistent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (61 Active Points); OIF (-1/2)

I used a custom adder to put the normal sight exclusion in instead of limited power because the sight group is worth 10 and normal sight is worth 5 alone - so the entire group excluding it should also be worth 5.  

The most obvious problem is 'Detect'... detect what?  I know the builder doesn't take it into account due to its limitations but I believe you'd have to specify what Detect you're invisible to (3 points shouldn't counter every possible detect out there, always and forever).

That said most detects are tied to the one of the groups you're already invisible to (especially if you throw in radio), so it's probably a non-factor.

It's really expensive. 

 One thing that generally frosts my ass is the tendency for players to be very reactive to the game before.  The "Oh Crap we got hit by a ton of drains!" purchase of Power Defense and such.  I like players to develop their characters organically and grow as such.  

This. I see it all the time.  Get hit by one little drain and suddenly the group gadgeteer whips up single continuous renewable charge OIF generators that do 3d6 stun when they first get turned on that need to be touched to activate for everyone to spend a few character points on: 

Power Defense (15 points) (15 Active Points); 1 Recoverable Continuing Charge lasting 1 Minute (-1/2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (-1/2), OIF Durable (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4)

Which leaves me with the position of either specially targeting them with enemies that pack Dispel Power Defense for some reason (lots of it and which will ensure that they spend 3 more xp on making it x4 AP difficult to dispel in the future), have high dexterity and entangles, spend time hammering on the durable focus (which, admittedly, is pretty fragile by default) ... yes, lots of options but all of the sudden if I want to make those disadvantages on the bargain basement generators to mean anything I have to go out of my way,

I can't fault them for it ... it's *technically* organic evolution: you are faced with a challenge and you, as a team, rise to do something about it... but it does indeed 'frost my ass' sometimes. 

Of course, half as strong in Hero terms is... 5 points less

Yeah, that's always struck me as funny - especially with high strength characters.

A 10 point roll on a strength aid takes a character able to lift 100 tons (60) to 400 (70)... and adds a whopping +2d6.

Somehow I just don't think the physics involved in something being able to exert an extra 300 tons of lifting force translate to adding the force of a senior citizen with a baseball bat to the mix.

I like it, mind you - being able to lift super heavy objects is more of 'neat' effect in superhero comics than utterly dominating - and I don't know about most games but in mine there's very few four hundred ton objects laying around the battlefield for someone who Pushes with a 60 strength to capitalise on.

(That was actually a joke with a ridiculously super strong NPC in one of my games one time: He was built with a partial limitation on his strength so that it only applied to lifting after strength 70.  He could lift a mountain - literally - with a strength of 250 but what's he going to do with it?  Throw it two meters and squish himself?)

Strong episode, dull ending.

The show's renewed, execs

I see two approaches here. First, if it's four lower power NPCs and one "Boss Villain", then why would they not focus on the most dangerous target? Even if the bad guys are about equal in ower, one opponent downed beats 5 taking a bit of STUN. So can we do something to make the minions a target as well? Maybe they are hard to bypass. Maybe if they are ignored, they also use Teamwork. If they are not targeted, hey, toss all skill levels into OCV and damage bonuses - who needs DCV if they aren't shooting at you?

 

I can recall playing a 2.5 - 3x DC norm for defenses game and thinking I should drop all the villains' defenses about 10 points and add 3 DCs to their attacks - now hits would average 16 across the board instead of 6, and fights would end faster.

The 'minions' often do use teamwork if applicable (soldiers of VIPER, etc) - 6 damage three times is annoying to a character with 50 stun but if that 18 stuns them? That *feels* dangerous.

Also I have had some success with the 'For the Queen!' approach - a minion basically being a damage shield for their boss by leaping in the way and taking hits.  One of the most 'dramatic' (read: annoying) fights involved a mystical deathknight with a dozen flying shields that were Followers and not focus/manifested power Deflection.  It took them nearly a full turn of trying to guess how much Speed this guy actually had (and some complaining that you're not allowed to Block both ranged and melee in the same phase) before figuring out that the shields were separate entities using held actions.  

Overall, though, unless every fight is a gimmick fight it's very MMO - Aoe down the minions (or ignore them), focus fire the boss.  I already scribbled down some notes I've gleaned from the dynamic combat thread, though, for future sessions. Mwahahaha.

Funny you throw those numbers in your last paragraph, though - my current game *is* 2.5 x average DC armor cap and my 'damage' enemies are built *exactly* like that (+3 DC for -10 armor).  Damage sponge enemies are built the reverse - with 3.5 DC armor and -2 DC attacks.  

Given the existence of passing strikes (and their rise in popularity in my gaming group) I'm leaning towards allowing a move after an attack (but not breaking up movement - that will still be the domain of the 'passing' style attacks).

But only a move.  Nothing else .. including zero phase or no time actions (such pool assignment or any non-movement power activation of any kind). Something like "Any planned zero phase or no time actions, such as power activation, must be taken at any point in the segment before an attack action."

If the rest of the characters (PC and NPC) are built to a similar model. expect combats to grind out over a long time. Not a huge issue if that's what the group wants, of course, but that will be the result when a character loses, say, 20 STUN a turn and recovers 15.

Indeed.  I've seen that fairly often and I *try* and avoid it ... but empirically every time I play and aim to take 20 or 30 stun through armor and after post 12 recovery during a full phase (to be defeated in two to 2.5 full combat turns if I have 60 stun) I end up taking 40 or 50 due to the fickleness of dice.  So I usually aim to take 15 and expect to take 25.  And then end up taking 5 or 10.

Especially in DC and defense capped games it's a balancing act.  Nobody wants to be taken out in the first segment twelve so there's a lot of building around 'averages' with a 'just in case' aspect but as soon as you have average anything in a controlled environment it can turn into a slog (defense cap set to 3xDC or higher) - or a blood bath (defense cap set to 1xDC). 

(Important enemy NPC in my games, for example, are meant to be defeated in 2 full combat turns if the dice co-operate.  Less important but still named in 1.  Anything else ranges from 1 hit to less than a full turn.  Since it's not uncommon for said 'important' enemy to weather 30 attacks against them per full turn there IS a lot of dcv, reduction, and defense juggling involved.  There'd be less if they'd ever dealt with the minions first or broke into mini-fights like in the comics where each person fights an enemy while the toughest guy keeps the 'boss' busy until the others step in to help ... but they... don't.  Teamwork rolls and full focus fire all the way.)

I don't want to see him hurt but I wouldn't mind a barrage of shoes that rivals the ear scene in Men in Tights (10 seconds in)

Sounds like an interesting thread.

Damage Negation hurts my head.

I'm fond of what I call 50/50/50:  I pick a defense number that I want (say 30) and buy 15 rD, 15nD, and then 50% normal Damage Reduction.  If I do it right then I'm taking a little damage every hit with a solid backup for 'what do you mean Lord Soth's fireball does 20d6?' occasional super attack.  So versus an average DC 12 hit of 42 I'd be taking 6 but if there was a great roll (60) I'm happy taking 15.