Christopher R Taylor

If you want a character to just appear to be different things, like the octopus, its just flat out shapeshift, use touch for how its shaped (and thus appears to be formed as) and sight for the colors and believable in pattern etc.

Stretching allows a character to "ooze" through smaller openings, basically you can fit through any opening the size you can make yourself small enough to fit through:
 

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for every doubling he has to halve something else (and vice-versa). For example, he could double his height, but would have to become half as wide or thick at the same time... a character’s ability to fit through small spaces when using Stretching is governed by his smallest dimension. For example, if he can reduce his height to one-eighth normal, he can be as little as 25 centimeters tall and can fit into openings as small as 25cm.

So basically you can fit through small openings by stretching to be longer, for example.  It takes 5 points to be able to do this, each 5 points a doubling you can stretch to. 

Shapeshifting allows you to shrink or grow your form slightly, so you might be able to use that to fit through something slightly smaller using that. 

Desolidification would work to allow you to fit through anything, stack on some limitations like how it doesn't protect from damage and cannot pass through solid objects and it works.

If you wanted, you could also add in the maximum amount of bonus damage your martial arts totals into the naked advantage cost. "STR+Martial Arts damage 45 points"  Then you can have your armor piercing area effect punch.  But be aware of this rule: Advantages are not optional. So your punch is ALWAYS area effect armor piercing.  Sorry miss hostage.  Sorry about your cafe Mr Grocer.  Sorry about the Batmobile.

And GMs be very cautious with this kind of build, it can crack your campaign's structure and limits very quickly and cheaply.

I think a few lines of clarity would be useful:

Martial Throw either does, or does not do full throwing effect. 

Martial throw either does, or does not work as a moving attack -- or requires a full move element to gain this ability. 

As I said, the rules are a bit ambiguous right now.  I'm fine as always with GMs doing what they want (doesn't that go without saying?)  I'd just love to know how the official rules are supposed to work.

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As I read the Martial Throw maneuver, it's neither of the options CRT opened with.  The velocity component is the opponent's velocity, not your velocity...that is, if your opponent is charging at you, silly person that he is, your throw gets to use his speed against him.

I would agree with you on this, and that's how I understood it, but in the 6th edition martial arts book on page 249 it says:

If a character uses a Martial Maneuver with the v/10 Element (or v/6), such as a Martial Throw, he doesn’t take damage if he fails to do Knockback to the target.  The v/10 Element doesn’t impose any requirement on characters to do Knockback or suffer damage — that’s one way in which they tend to be better than the standard Move By or Move Through

And the only way I can figure how to interpret that is that they think you can do a martial throw by crashing into/going by your target.

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 I for one have no problem letting a 30+ STR character use his martial maneuver to throw someone 10+ meters.   The character paid for the STR so let them use it.

But he doesn't have to use a martial maneuver.  He can just grab someone and do it, right?  But none of that answers the basic question :/

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Despite its baffling popularity, it does a p$ poor job of it.

Good, bad, or indifferent, its meant to simulate martial arts.  Which are different than just grappling or brawling.  Grabbing something and throwing it is not the same as how martial arts works.  The rules seem to indicate that you get the same results and it acts the same, but aren't very explicit or clear about it.

As for the argument that martial artists are not typically gigantically strong, sure.  But they also balance on leaves, run up walls, etc in movies and other source material.  Its just not part of the genre to legsweep someone and send them flying for meters.

I can't run games any more so

OK all of that doesn't really answer the question here.

Is a martial throw supposed to have identical effects of a grab and throw or is it a different beast?  The book isn't clear. Also

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You base your understanding, as you say, on martial Arts.  The game doesn't. 

The purpose of the martial arts maneuvers is to -- get this -- simulate martial arts.  As opposed to other kinds of ordinary combat.  That's why they exist, as a mechanic to let players have characters who use martial arts.  That's why they are a separate section from both normal and optional combat maneuvers in a section called "Martial arts maneuvers."

Now we all know that "martial arts" has a pretty wide definition in Hero, including things like football moves or professional wrestling, but its still to simulate specialized distinct combat, different than the usual stuff other people use when they fight. So yes, the game does base the "understanding" of martial arts combat maneuvers on... martial arts.

So, this came up on the Discord server, and I honestly am not clear on it now.

How much is Martial Throw like a Throw maneuver?  I have always played it as a knockdown move, at most maybe a meter or two away.  As in, Martial Throw is not the same as Captain America flinging his shield around, its Batroc flipping Cap to the ground.

However the rules seem to make it sound like Martial Throw is just a better throw that doesn't require a grab.  So you can legsweep someone across a room? In HSR 2 it says this:

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[Martial Throw] is in effect an advanced version of the Throw Combat Maneuver...  that applies only to characters

In Hero System Martial Arts 6th edition, its put this way:
 

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in Maneuver listings, this is indicated with use of the words “Target Falls,” “He Falls,” or “Opponent Falls,” instead of “Throw.”

So is it a knockdown or flinging people all over the place?  

Also, the Martial Arts book suggests that you can do a martial throw at the end of a half move, for velocity damage.  I always interpreted the velocity damage element to be you taking down a moving target, not you moving into a target and crashing into them.  But again, in the rules:

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If a character uses a Martial Maneuver with the v/10 Element (or v/6), such as a Martial Throw, he doesn’t take damage if he fails to do Knockback to the target.

I base my understanding of the martial arts rules on, you know, martial arts, and I cannot recall any example of a martial artist running across the room to crash into a target and blast them flying, much less throw them around like a ragdoll.  Even if you extrapolate martial arts into stuff like professional wrestling, they still aren't throwing someone more than a meter or two.

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It quickly gets to the point where normal people are unable to properly deal with those characters. What happens when criminals gain abilities, technology, or something else that is more than normal law enforcement can deal with?

From a comic book perspective, that's how characters like The Confessor, Spider-Man, Batman, Daredevil, The Question etc all were written: they handle this stuff.  From a Champions campaign perspective, I have long wanted to run a police campaign with very low-end heroes as cops on a special squad (like Alphacore, but they're more powerful).  You can do regular police stuff, special situations like SWAT engagements, and low end superheroes as well as mobsters, etc.

There are a bunch of great 5th edition books I'd love to see converted to 6th, but its such a minor change it doesn't feel like its worth the time and effort.

Of all the early Spidey villains, Kraven actually is one of the most interesting.  That miniseries of his death was incredible.  Another later one I liked a lot was Puma, but he  hasn't been used much.  Spot was one that is really cool because he started out with no idea what his powers were or how to really use them, and decided to become a criminal which ended terribly, but he got better

Its wildly out of concept for the character but I figure the GM felt bad for the player who thought they had a neat idea and it turned out to be not nearly as useful as they first believed.

That is my favorite type of Champions to be honest, even if players prefer to be more powerful.  The problem is that experience points necessarily result in a growth in power and then a growth in the power of the enemies to create a challenge.  I had several players who just didn't care about experience at all, and I think I would like most games if they were more static in terms of character points.

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The original idea which Stan Lee was going for Reed Richard's super identity is that when he stretches, it was supposed to be painful for him to do so. But that was soon dropped. (Sue was supposed to be fully invisible 24/7 and had to wear clothing to be visible, Jonny could only flame on for about 20 minutes...the only character to keep his power drawbacks was Ben being transformed all the time).

I really like those concepts on their own but it would have made a pretty miserable Fantastic Four.  It would have been more Doom Patrol (they have a stretcher don't they?  I know Metal Men do).

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The powers of the FF were much weaker in the early days: Sue could only turn invisible with no force fields, Ben needed several blows to completely smash through an admittedly very large log, and Johnny's fire could be momentarily doused by a wet mop.

Yeah they were weaker, especially Sue.  Being invisible has its advantages (especially for the original concept of the comic) but its not very useful against guys like the Mole Man.  I cannot actually remember when she got her force field which Byrne so brilliantly used.

Stretching is a power set I haven't done a lot with other than "this creature has tentacles" but it can be interesting if done well.

You know what makes Aquaman cool?  Um... nothing.  I like the character Jason Mamoa plays, but he's not Aquaman and he's not a superhero.  He's just a dudebro with powers.  Namor is a lot more interesting because he's such an arrogant jackass.  You can make an interesting water guy but not Aquaman.

I think its best to just ignore the implications and consequences of high tech and superheroes on economics unless its for a specific one-shot scenario.  Why?  Because if you make the world so different and so alien to what we have now, it damages immersion and ease of understanding the world.  The main purpose of superheroes is to engage in power fantasy: here's what I'd do if I had x power/someone ought to do something about this problem.

See, Superman's very existence would change society, culture, and science.  He would transform the world.  But the comic books about Superman were about him beating up evil landlords and dictators, stopping mobsters, etc.  Why?  Because nobody put a cape on and jumped from things pretending to fly because they wanted to play out the socioeconomic impact of superbeings.  They wanted to be the guy that beat up the villains, bullies, and criminals.  They wanted to play out what it would be like if someone actually was powerful enough to stop the mafia or corrupt politicians.

If you make the world too different from what we now understand and live in, you lose that entire feel.

Its fine if you want to do a future-tech, sci fi Champions game, and everyone knows that going in.  But you can't have it both ways.

Morbius is, to me at least, a great character with an interesting background but they didn't do a very good job with the story.  I think Jared Leto did the best he could with what he was given but the writing was bad. Not Madam Web bad, but not good enough to carry a movie about a pretty unknown character.

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They greenlit the scripts. They bear responsibility for the result. Particularly since the same writers did both, and Sony already saw how Morbius turned out.

Yeah, and since Marvel is also involved with the Spider-Man movies, and they have their input, you can't really give Sony too much credit for how they turn out, either.  Marvel has not exactly covered its self in glory lately, but as Bazza says, Sony's own stuff looks more like early Superhero movies that were largely cheese rather than, say, Blade or MCU product.

I think Sony's biggest problem is that they are cheap but using writers who put out a very tepid near-fail in a second film is questionable judgement as well.

Marvel has a few more "successes" like The Marvels and they will go out of business.

Yeah they have five years to put out each film, and they are putting out like one a year.  So they aren't struggling to keep their licensing, they're trying to make money but are cheap and not doing very good work.  Now, it takes about 3 years to put out a modern movie (especially with CGI) so they can't just sit around 4 years and crank something out.  But a 5 year deadline doesn't explain this release schedule:

Venom: 2018

Into the Spider-Verse: 2018

Venom 2: 2021

Morbius: 2022

Across the Spiderverse: 2023

Madam Web: 2024

Incidentally I think the Tom Holland Spidey movies count as Sony movies under the contract which would pad the release schedule even more, but I cannot say for sure.  So there's more to it than just "we don't want to lose our ownership"

Yeah its not impossible, however unlikely, that Madam Web will make money in rentals, Blu Ray etc.

But as for licensing, you can go quite a while without losing the license/rights for a character.  For example between Superman IV killed the franchise and Superman Returns was from 1987 to 2006.  So Sony isn't required to make crappy Spiderman side character movies every year to keep the license. 

My best guess is that they figure they have their own little cinematic universe that they are trying to create with as little effort and money as possible and at first it was working.  Venom, inexplicably, made a lot of money.  Even Morbius made a handfull of cash.  But its been diminishing returns, and Venom 2 was a huge bomb.

Almost nothing whatsoever has changed in basics of combat in Hero from the first typewritten pages.

Yeah the trailers looked awful, I'm not sure why Sony keeps doing these.