M&M - Cataclysm City [OOC]

Forged Fury · Nov 28, 2016

Basic questions:

If my "to hit" bonus is a +10 with a punching attack, does that mean that my strength can't be higher than a 10 since that is the damage level for the attack?

Also, can someone explain the Grab resistance check? Is my STR the DC or is this an opposed check?

Shayuri · Nov 28, 2016

Your Strength can be higher. But you won't do more than 10 damage rank. It's artificial, but it protects the system from someone sacrificing negative points on a bunch of things to get ridiculously game-breaking defenses or attacks.

I believe it's an opposed check? I need to look.

Okay. from the SRD:

Make an attack check against the target. If successful, the target makes a resistance check against your Strength (or the rank of a grabbing effect) using the better of Strength or Dodge. If you win with one degree of success, the target is restrained (immobile and vulnerable). Two or more degrees leave your opponent bound (defenseless, immobile, and impaired)

Okay, so first you make an attack roll, a melee attack roll (unless you have some kind of 'grapple at range' power). If your attack roll hits the target's defense, the target makes a check against a DC equal to your Strength. This resistance check works kind of like a Toughness check against damage, in that your margin of success against the target is actually a measure of how badly the target flubbed his check.

So you'd be using your melee attack, and if it hits they have to try to equal or exceed your Strength using either their own Strength bonus, or their Dodge bonus. If they fail that roll, you apply one of those two effects (restrained or bound) based on how badly they fail.

Forged Fury · Nov 28, 2016

Thanks.

That grab thing seems a bit weird. I mean, a PC with STR 10 is considered moderately superhuman according to that chart. But an average STR 0 person would have a 55% chance of breaking that grab, assuming a roll of 11 or higher on a D20? It's how I read it too, but it doesn't seem quite right to me.

ETA: Reading a few forum posts around the web, some people are saying the DC is 10+STR? Not sure where they are getting that from, but it makes a bit more sense to me if that is the case.

Shayuri · Nov 28, 2016

Str 10 is huge, yeah. And yeah, it's a bit weird. It's possible I'm missing something fundamental...the SRD is very terse in its rules information. I'll check out the actual book when I get a chance and see if there's a nuance being lost.

KahlessNestor · Nov 28, 2016

Shayuri said:
Kahless, the nemesis idea is really funny/cool, and I'd be more than happy to work with you on a shared antagonistic background.

Forged, the character as-is isn't permanently in his transformed state, though it wouldn't be hard to make him so...and that would also give you summore points to spend.

The way the tradeoffs work is that Dodge and Toughness are considered to be on a kind of balancing fulcrum. If both are equal, their maximums are the same as your Power Level. In our cases, that's 10. If you reduce one maximum, the other maximum goes up. So if your Dodge is maxed out at 8 (ie - you can never have more than that), then your Toughness is maxed at 12.

Similarly your attack bonus and your effect rank is that kind of a scale. So your Affliction 10 means you can have an attack bonus of 10 with that attack as well.

There IS a limit on how many points you can 'swing' the arms of this balance. And in general you will not want to hose Dodge TOO much, or you become easy meat for things like Multiattack and Power Attack and so on. Your Impervious is really good at 9 ranks, but that still only blocks damage ranks of 5 or lower. You're bulletproof, but most super-level attacks will go right through that.

Great, [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION]! Willing to hear any ideas you might have for their relationship too. Kind of thought about giving her magic vulnerability loke Superman, too, which gives Sandra an edge. Though not sure how to do that in MM yet.

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Shayuri · Nov 28, 2016

The easiest way is via a Complication.

Something like Vulnerability: Magic, which means attacks with the Magic tag would do extra damage, I believe.

Or you could use something like a Power Limit complication on her defenses, Does Not Work on Magic, which means she might bounce bullets but an elfbolt would still draw blood. That's the Superman way. It has the advantage that she's not helpless against magic...it's just dangerous to her in ways other things are not.

KahlessNestor · Nov 28, 2016

Shayuri said:
The easiest way is via a Complication.

Something like Vulnerability: Magic, which means attacks with the Magic tag would do extra damage, I believe.

Or you could use something like a Power Limit complication on her defenses, Does Not Work on Magic, which means she might bounce bullets but an elfbolt would still draw blood. That's the Superman way. It has the advantage that she's not helpless against magic...it's just dangerous to her in ways other things are not.

Okay, cool. I'll look into that.

I am assuming anything we don't use in initial creation carries over when we get powers? How is the build-out happening? Just wondering if it's worth making a full PL10 build.

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Forged Fury · Nov 28, 2016

I think we're making our PL2-5 character and then our PL10 for what we become, however we become.

Shayuri · Nov 28, 2016

Yeah, I went ahead and designed both forms. My PL10 form has everything my PL5 form has, because the transformation to super powers in my case is just a 'YER A WIZARD HARRY' moment, not a mutation or something. Forged's character has more variation between his forms, and in some ways has lost quite a bit in exchange for his powers...

Forged Fury · Nov 28, 2016

Yup, build-wise, my two are the exact same character, but the attributes changed due to the transformation increasing and decreasing them, rather than building a new character with natural attributes at those levels. Still has the same skills between the two forms, but less capability in the Heap transformation due to his drop in Intelligence. The powers and advantages come from the new form. Otherwise, no real difference between the two.