Star Master:
Actually, that's the reverse of what I've always felt about thrown brawling weapons. According to the throwing rules, the velocity damage is based on the distance traveled prior to impact. To get the full 2d8 you would have to hit the target at a range of 121" (at -2 to hit).
If you were to propel an object 121" within a single phase (about one second) it would be traveling at 412 mph, so 2d8 doesn't sound bad.
However, throwing a fastball at a target and getting a 70 mph damage bonus means the ball travels about 21". Therefore it would do 1 pip for weight and nothing for velocity. So if the Astounding Green Bulk gets hold of a grapefruit, run up to him. If you're within a football field or so, he can't really hurt you.
I can see where you are coming from on this but I don't think it truly pans out that simple. From a rules perspective it is highly penalizing (and not very comic-like) to not allow acceleration damage to telekinetic, magnetic, and thrown attacks. Magneto could take ball bearings and make them as deadly as bullets in a fairly close range. And many telekinetics in the comics use light objects at high velocity to cause impressive damage. Going with the distance travelled thing you could posit that if you are right at the barrel of a gun the bullet would do no damage because it didn't travel much distance at all and that is definitely NOT the case.
That being said, if you can step in *close* enough (and this is important) to something being thrown so that the thrower does not reach full extension that could absolutely reduce the velocity and resultant damage. A thrower needs full extension, spin, or whatever to get that last snap that imparts the acceleration and velocity to the object thrown. I saw a sports science program where a woman threw a softball 65 feet at about 70 mph and she absolutely shattered the meter they were using. Professional fighters can strike with 1000 lbs. of force and there is no way their fist weighs that much. It is the acceleration and the snap along with the weight that imparts the damage. I would personally not try standing 10 feet away from someone who can throw a baseball 90 mph and count on not being hurt. That ball leaves the hand at essentially that speed, maybe catching a moment of acceleration upon leaving but after that it begins to decelerate slowly due to distance, gravity, and air resistance. The same goes for an arrow; standing right at the arrow when it is released may be much less damaging but 10 feet away and you are dead, it is going fast enough to kill you.
Going towards how you are thinking velocity works (and it does look like that in the rules but doesn't make sense) really nerfs any kinetic accelerator types, and they can start out hard enough taking a while to get to some decent damage as it is. Ultimately I feel that if you have enough room to get a fully extended throw, spin, launch, etc. that is the velocity for the turn and what gets hit takes damage based on that velocity. It realistically doesn't get there in one second just like realistically when a person has an action and moves 50" they are not in one place then 1 second later are 250 feet away. It actually makes sense to break the movement down into phase increments to show progression towards the destination. It isn't even that hard to do but is a bit busy (but the GM would do it and it doesn't slow down a PbP game); divide 15 seconds by the amount of phase increments according to initiative. The result is how long each phase increment is and movement is effectively divided among those phase increments so if you move on 20 for example, you start your movement then and in the intervening 15 phase increments you are moving towards your destination. I actually did something like that early in my game when Oscillator wanted to intercept the thrown grenade, fly it to the soldiers, drop it, then angle up to phase into the ceiling. Only teleporters get to instantly move in one phase increment from one location to the next, any other movement takes time. Just look at the jumping rules (as weird as they are); your jump takes place over a number of phases, why should other movement be any different? I think they abstract it to make it simpler perhaps but it logically would be the same.
In putting these thoughts down it actually brings up a problem I have with how falling damage works. As written it really does look like for the whole turn you are hovering in the air then between turns you fall the appropriate distance. For me it would make more sense to break down each turn's worth of falling into phase increments using what I mentioned above, so every phase increment the person would fall X distance based on the total acceleration. That would prevent weird shit like when Silver Dragon blew out the supports over Ba Kien but he was able to just step out of the way because as written it wouldn't fall until the turn was over.
I think my biggest problem with the velocity damage chart is it reads wrong; 1d4, 1d8, 2d8, 2d10, 3d10, etc. is a max damage progression after the initial 1d4 of 4, then 8, then 4, then 10 for every increment after that. It sits odd on my OCD tendencies. Changing the chart to read like this: 1d4, 1d8, 1d12, 2d8, 2d10, 3d10, etc. makes the damage progression after the initial 1d4 more logical; 4 to the 1d8, 4 to the 1d12, 4 to the 2d8, then increments of 10 after that.
