Christopher R Taylor

Right, what you do is use the actors for the expressions and movements and enhance them with CGI to give the full effect, I can see a lot of opportunities there.

It wasn't bad, I liked the weapon too, the kinetic device. It wouldn't do remotely the kind of damage indicated but its a cool idea. I liked it pretty well as just a dumb action movie.

We're probably 10 years or so from really being able to do that, and maybe a good start on computer voices, too. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper to do animation and games if you could just type dialog and then tweak it for emphasis.

Yeah I agree, its not Marvel that's the problem here. Batman murdered pretty much all of his villains as well, except Scarecrow. Superman killed Zod. Its a flaw with the films and I do understand it from the perspective of the studios, but... they haven't really tried the alternative much to see how it works, either. Granted, they have tremendous pressure to not be creative or try new things, from the board and investors, but still. There are exceptions. Batroc wasn't killed in Cap 2 (he just didn't have a name or costume). Yellowjacket isn't necessarily dead, but is highly unlikely to return. Scarecrow as I said is alive. Most of the X-Men villains make it through each film. And those movies did not lose money as a result.

Yeah the problem with Superheroes in comics is that you need pro wrestlers to play them and almost none are able to actually act well enough to pull off a movie.

Well, its required for using an AVAD, as the rules are written. Because of some of the price changes, and how normal defenses apply against KA, its probably more valid to just treat the body damage as AVAD, which would negate the need for the "does body" part -- it necessarily does body. That would just add +1/2 to the cost, making each die 7.5 points, which is closer to the cost of killing damage. Still more, making that 1d6 KA sword now 22 points. Another option would be to handwave the AVAD avantage and just treat KAs as if they had it but without the build or cost. You just declare it a killing attack, now it costs the same as a blast, but acts differently. The problem with this approach is that now you have two kinds of damage that cost the same, but one of them has body damage that ignores normal defenses...

OK, well this is probably a good point to drop in the concept discussed here months back of dropping "killing attack" as a power entirely and treating it as an AVAD normal attack. Its kind of like what Duke Bushido did with their group but it works like this: Killing attacks are Blast with AVAD (vs resistant defenses), does body. That ends up a +1 1/2 advantage (so a d6 costs 12.5 points) and a limitation. You treat the damage exactly the same as a normal attack, you count the dice, add 1 for each 6 and take away 1 for each 1; there's your body damage. It acts like a KA in terms of defenses, but doesn't have a special damage multiplier roll. To make it act just like KA, a limitation that makes the stun defended by normal defenses is useful as well. A few tweaks are necessary to make this work best. For example, hit locations would not be multipliers like they are now, but instead probably should be additional dice; the KA to the head gives you +4d6 like a haymaker, for instance. And increased stun multiple would be more dice, that only do stun, not a multiple. This system has a slight drawback of some increased complexity in the build but significantly more simplicity in play. Further, it streamlines combat so there's only one kind of damage, Rather than two different systems. It makes "damage class" effects much easier to figure out; martial arts would just be dice added, for example. If you couple this with a system that Tasha mentioned, where damage is 3 points per d6 with a mandatory "ranged" or "adds to strength" modifier (so its roughly 5 points per d6) then the system becomes even more compact and doesn't require two powers for normal damage. This creates some odd looking builds where the power is built with "ranged" advanage and then "no range" as a limitation (or "strength adds damage" advantage and "strength does not add damage") but it does make for a more streamlined set of rules.

Not so much. Its what audience have been given. Studios expect that because as Bigdamnhero noted, they see these as action flicks, not superhero flicks, and that's how it goes in Die Hard and Commando.

Huh, Karl Urban doesn't really seem big enough to be The Executioner to me.

Sure, but you know what a big part of what made Star Wars work so well? Darth Vader coming back. You know a large part of what made the prequels suck? Killing the most interesting bad guy in the first film.

Yeah the fly by is the worst, people on the ground yelling and firing arrows bouncing off its scales, getting that nasty cone effect breath, hover a bit and blind everyone with wing buffet, slap someone with the tail flying across the field, fly by again...

That said, a low magic game where a "dragon" is basically just a fire belching komodo dragon would be cool too.

We need a cute name for Thanos and Death like Bradgelina. Deathanos?

Yep, I loved that article. Using wing beats to kick up dust, etc. My dragons have all that stuff. Dragons in my game are freaking terrifying to face, but a group of well equipped, smart, and capable heroes can survive a battle and beat them. Its fun because they're basically the master villain. All that stuff you had to fight to get to them were just minions, now its all of you against this one nearly invulnerable killing machine. Its tough not to kill party members with that 4d6+ killing attack bite plus the tail lash, and breathing 10d6 flames once a turn. But its a very memorable battle. And that wasn't even an ancient one with magic and tougher scales.

Indeed, and for most superheroic games, that's good enough for the win. That's the joy of comic books, it doesn't always have to make sense. It just has to fit the genre an be fun and exciting. Who cares if it makes sense that yellow blocks Green Lantern? That's how his powers work. We need more of that and less "I figured this out scientifically to the last minutae" in gaming, I think.

That's why the last line in the Avengers film was so fun: battling the Avengers is to "court death." Yes, well...

But Captain America is almost never actually called that in any films. I think its mentioned once in the first movie, but then most of the time its just "Captain," if anything and quite often just his name. His costume is more of a costume than most, but few. The only really consistent use of code names is in Ant-Man, which was deliberately done more light-hearted and comic book feeling than the rest. Its not like the comics, at all. Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four all are outside Marvel studios so they are under different rules. Also, I'm pretty sure Fabian Niswhatsisface and the rest in charge at Marvel find superhero names, secret identities, bright costumes, strong moral character and all the rest sort of embarrassing old fashioned stuff they are cooler than, so that translates into the MCU as well.

I like em both, even though they're basically the same guy

I think that's very accurate. That's why they don't often even wear costumes, or have code names (except in DC, so far). Iron Man is the only guy with a costume and code name, but he instantly gave away his ID and changes the costume several times each movie. That's why the villains are just disposable bad guys, not repeat villains. Excellent point bigdamnhero. No wonder you're so damned big.

Well, special effect goes some ways toward that but yeah; if you cannot use your HTA to help break out of an entangle, for instance, its probably worth a 1/4 limitation. It makes sense; your baseball bat hits hard but it won't break out of a net.

Yeah the advantage of Ultron is that he can always come back. My money is on Vision doing a mind wipe on Ultron, not on him being wiped out.

I suggested damage be decoupled from strength the stat in the 6th edition discussions a couple years ago, along with losing jumping distance. It was debated, some said "you always hit harder when you're stronger!" and others said "it would make strength more balanced and builds which do more damage with strength can buy it," but in the end Steve just dumped leaping and kept damage.

I built characters with HA and variable advantage, it was a really powerful effect. Enough dice to make it work well and lots of variety, very simple build. With a 1/2 variable advantage I still had 8d6 to play with.

Then so is Blast and KA and everything else that deals damage. The "problem" isn't with those powers, its with STR. Characteristics, as I noted above, are given a cost break to make them efficient so certain builds aren't excessively expensive. You can't compare powers with stats, it doesn't work.

I agree, they need more supervillains. So far its been aliens, Loki (kinda), Ultron and zillions o' robots, lots of Hydra agents (and not even Nazis??), Bucky and more Hydra agents, Other Avengers, and then a small handfull of villains like Yellowjacket and Whiplash and... whatever those fire guys in Iron Man 3 were supposed to be. Mostly, the Avengers fight each other and the sadz. More villains, please. A team of villains.