There's a Wild Card's character that has that power..she's mondo dangerous but not overpowering.

The Closer

That's an awesome name for a pathetically weak character that either has no offensive power(s), or has only quirky annoying powers.   d:D

Which reminds me, wasn't someoing going to run a V&V sidekicks game?!?!?
Was that GM Bones' idea?

Kinda like "The Tick" TV show, a V&V game where all the sidekicks do their thing -- but no one has a single really useful power.  HA HA  (Even telling the concept makes me chuckle!!!)

Okay, so I just dropped 10 Large Nuclear Bombs. Average damage was 212 hp.

So, that is going to knock anyone who gets hit unconscious (212% chance) and knock them back 1,000 feet or so.

This got me thinking how to do "knock back" damage.

Should it be calculated like falling damage?

In this case, assume the character hit had 5 basic hits. After flying back 200 inches, it hits the ground (structural rating = 4).

That would be 447 points of damage, but the first half of that would be taken by the earth (223 leaving a 55 cubic foot crater).

Or, it could just be treated like a thrown weapon, which would be substantially less damage (1d4+2d8).

Normally, I tend to run knockback damage like falling damage. However, if the victim 'rolled with' any portion of the damage I assume the knockback was 'controlled movement' and that they managed it without actually striking anything. I also tend to let anything that can reduce the damage actually reduce it.
My reasoning behind this is that, even at minimal levels knockback can be extreme. Assume a 200 pound man shot with a pistol takes six points of damage from the shot. The guy flies ten feet through the air and takes two more points of damage from hitting the ground, plus leaves a man-shaped depression in the ground about an inch deep.
I hope I haven't figured that wrong, because those figures have changed the way I handle knockback for a long time.

I do it like a thrown weapon, myself.

There is a Knockback Rules table in the back of one of the old V&V Villain compendiums that I use. It had damage for distance then you calculate damage for weight as a thrown object. Now, I only inflict full damage if the victim actually hits a perpendicular surface. If they are sent tumbling along the ground I halve the damage. In both cases damage can be rolled into power.

In addition to this I don't generally allow any knockback from being shot by firearms (maybe 5 feet at most). The reason is one episode of Mythbusters they shot at a hanging carcass with firearms up to a 12 gauge shotgun and it did not get thrown back significantly at all. Most of the bullet's energy either passes through the body or is transmitted as hydrostatic shock which expands perpendicular to the wound track.

Yes, but this is comic books, which are more like moves than real life.

That said, I generally don't do knock back for firearms either.

Well, as you may have observed, in addition to being a pathological rules tinkerer I also have a spot for at least a tiny bit of versimilitude. :)

So how does a group use "team work" in a V&V game?

*Focus fire on one foe
*Hit from multiple sides to try to get a flank/rear for one of them

What else?

Are there ways for one character to improve the odds that another character hits or harms a foe? Would the "special attack" rules cover that?

Well, besides taking specific 'teamup' power stunts (ie when team does maneuver X they get bonus to hit or damage), I'm thinking about maneuvers:

Fastball Special (big tank throws a melee striker)
Drop the Package (teleporter/flyer drops a ranged hitter into the enemy)
Charge 'em Up (shoot/punch your absorber teammate)
The ol' 1-2 attack (first range attack is water, second is ice, or similar 'combining' elements)
the 'what/where' maneuver (ie darkness and alternative targeting senses or nightvision goggles, etc), similar to
the 'fake out' (ie illusion hero tells the teammates to ignore the 'giant veloceraptor' in the field, etc)

Hope those are helpful ideas?
:)

Seen a bit too much of the "power up the absorbing guy" tactic recently. :)

Not enough on OUR team (speaking as an absorber)
and too much of those baddies.  :D

That villain has absorbed aprox 7 attacks in one melee!

I've played Osc for 1-2 years and have absorbed 2 attacks!  Meh

Can you absorb physical attacks?  Vos should direct her attacks at you.  Of course, she'd miss. ;)

As 'master of vibration', Osc can absorb 'any kinetic' attack.  Goes to PR score, tho.  not that exciting -- but it got stuck into a Special Weapon that is pretty sweet when you put all the stuff together.

Uh, the Spec Weap is not like Cap's shield or anything -- kinda how I want a Sp Weap to operate -- but it's pretty cool.  And Osc can upgrade it, etc, bc it's his lab experiment.

The most *efficient* way and the way that is smoothly covered in the rules is to coordinate attacks so the foe is attacked from 4 side. That makes the foe have to choose who to give the +2 flank bonus and the +4 rear bonus to.

The things that Oscillator suggested are interesting but each have their limitations:

The charge-up is limited to duration of holding the charge (Backlash has his held damage bleed off every minute until it is gone). It can also encourage a bit of meta-gaming where people pump damage into the absorber prior to a combat but with a duration you have to know *when* the combat is. I mean it would have been easy to have Backlashed charged up with boatloads of damage potential but I extrapolated damage he would have taken from the firebirds. Being able to hold a charge indefinitely is....well, it is simply game-breaking potentially. That is one thing I like about the Absorption rules is that you have to sacrifice actions to absorb incoming attacks, making it a tactical decision.

The "Fastball Special" is useful but the thrown PC also takes damage from striking the target. It might be half damage, I am not 100% sure. I know a move-thru is half damage taken by the attacker.

The other ones are adjudicated on a situational basis I would imagine.

Actually, most of them were from comics.

And of course, it wouldn't make sense to hurl someone that would get hurt by getting thrown / impact.  That's why Colossus throws Wolverine (fast regenerate), Beast (tumbles), or Nightcrawler (who teleports but keeps his momentum).

I'd treat a Fastball Special 'power stunt' as follows:
+ both teammates would need it as a level up
+ both teammates would have to hold actions to go on same phase
+ on the throw phase, throwing teammate chucks & gives thrown hero move bonus, velocity bonus, and optionally 'flight/jump' equivalent for a few phases (depending on distance)
+ on the following phase, the thrown hero could attack with velocity bonus, surprise attack (if unseen/unobserved), maybe a chance to lower (or totally negate) any damage from landing, or similar.

For V&V games that really go for awhile, I'd want to ENCOURAGE teams to develop power stunts as a team, mix moves with eachother, and so on.

I don't think I'd give villain groups team up abilities, unless that's their specific power set.

In the game I'm in, we have a cat-hero would is superstrong and a rubber hero who is superstrong, and both have special abilities related to falling.  So maybe they could throw eachother, or better yet throw a flyer or similar...?
*Actually, Oscillator can absorb kinetic damage, so theoretically Osc could hold an action and be thrown into a bunch of villains, dishing out damage AND absorbing the damage he takes!!*
Hey, thanks for the idea!

(Will have to wait for later tho, Osc just got KO'd.  Meh)

Often, Wolverine wasn't shown as being thrown into the target so much as being thrown just close enough that he could attack with his claws as he passed by.

The lack of grappling rules came up in a game. Wondering what rules if any people have created or adopted for their games?

Im a new player in a game, rolled Transmutation -- among other things.

Anyone else had it / seen ither player with it?  Howd it work out?

I was surprised it is almost like Absorb, mutant power, or psionics in terms of potentially broad scope.

Think we've got a solid power now, but it was a trip coming up with this.

(Char will be called 'Radiant Enchantress' in game.)

I had a gorgon type character, Mandusa, that could transmute people to stone, it was very frustrating for the villains who had to wake up out of it. Costs a lot of PR, i was always tired.

Its def a lot of PR, but that could also be a 1-hit KO.

It changes a target from one thing to another for 8pp. It can not just kill a living character.

Do not quite see how it is that broad a power.

Actually, the power transforms one thing to another.  It could be a living creature into an inanimate substance, as we have so far discussed.  But I also found these examples online (from V&V books):

Shee-Ariel from Dawn of DNA
Transmutation: 38 inch range, PR = 8 per attempt. Able to change anything into anything, though gasses must remain gasses and liquids remain liquids, etc. Only matter can be transmuted. Lasts five minutes, or only two minutes if an animate object is rendered inanimate or an inanimate object is animated.

Mystico from Most Wanted (vol. 3).
Transmutation: Anything to anything automatically on a hit except that the target's sentience and animation cannot be affected; i.e. a brick could be turned into a dead, inanimate body or a human could be changed into a thinking, animate brick. PR = 8 per success. 52" range.

Mystic's Device: Rod of Power: Range = 30 inches.  Turns victim non-corporeal until the victim saves vs. Intelligence on percentile dice. Attacks as transmutation. Four changes per day.

I see those examples as pretty broad power scope.


True.  But it takes them out of the fight for awhile, esp if they are rock or mud or whatnot & then shattered somehow.  (Rules say re-assembling should allow them to come back somehow.)

The thing to remember with Transmutation is that it requires an action and PR of 8 to affect one target. By itself, that reduces the power to manageable. Defining it as a taser-beam and stating it transmutes consciousness from alert to inert makes it equivalent to another power (Paralysis Ray), so it should be reasonable. Maybe it could transmute the moisture in the air surrounding the target from gaseous to solid, thereby covering the target with 2d8 cubic feet of ice; again we've made it equivalent to another power, and therefore it should be reasonable.
There was a character in a game I played many years ago (not my game, nor my character) who had Transmutation defined as changing one element to another. He wrote up effects for changing several elements to other elements, and had to go through the inventing procedure to gain new effects. The GM tried to limit each effect so it was less effective than a traditional power by half or more. Transmutation became another form of Magic Spells in this case.

It's one of many powers I've always thought of as the drywall mud of character creation, i.e. malleable enough to fill the cracks
• Animated Servant
• Bionics
• Body Power
• Chemical Power
• Heightened Senses
• Magical Spells
• Mutant Power
• Pet
• Psionics
• Special Weapon
• Vehicle
• Willpower