The NEW Vanguard TEAM UP! Haunt Issue #12 with special guest star Steeplejack!

DavidMcMahon wrote:And
WOW!  I can now Stretch 2-3 MILES with Stretching 11!  Mt. Everest is about 5.5 miles tall, so the Haunt could stretch halfway up the mountain!!!  12 Stretching will let me stretch OVER Mt. Everest!!!

Steeple_jackuk wrote:

DavidMcMahon wrote:And
WOW!  I can now Stretch 2-3 MILES with Stretching 11!  Mt. Everest is about 5.5 miles tall, so the Haunt could stretch halfway up the mountain!!!  12 Stretching will let me stretch OVER Mt. Everest!!!

So that is like, you getting ahead of yourself.  Or maybe when they say, "He's so full of himself" that is a literal description and not a snarky comment

Sj

Admin wrote:Dave E

Spirit is Steeplejacks weak link. There's no real way to get huge amounts of spirit but for 210HP that goes from 6 to 9. A good start. OR Spirit to 8 (120HP) and Influence to 8 (70HP) might be more useful. Makes him 'harder to hit and damage' and adds a point to initiative. Total cost 190HP leaving 234HP. Agonisingly shy (21HP) of raising Dex but you could up Influence/Spirit to 7 instead and raise Dex + associated stuff to 14 with 39HP remaining.

I agree with Gadgetry. I have always maintained that all characters can be tweaked/changed if something isn't working or never gets used. I don't expect you to be an expert in the game and the way the campaign goes is mostly down to me so Steeplejack hasn't needed to use Gadgetry.It may still be useful at some point and fits in with his background as an inventor but maybe drop it to 4 making him a professional rather than world-class inventor (cost 49HP). That would hand back 72HP.

Detective 7 costs 66HP giving him 6HP remaining. Any good? Detective missing from the sheet does seem to be an oversight given the type of character he is (cautious, thinks before charging in rather than a brick and world-class thief - which hasn't been much use either). If that treads on Haunts toes (Detective is his big thing) maybe Detective 4 instead for 31HP and 41HP remaining maybe to spend on some senses.


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DavidMcMahon wrote:Miss Victory was kinda of designed the same way.  She's a brick, leap in and smash.  So I feel what you are talking about  

Then she got mental blast to give her a bit more variety.  But then again the Haunt is the same way, he uses Omni-Arm to attack, the variety is in adding in Stretching and what his arms look like.  So he can attack at range and up close.

But Steep has Earth Control as well as martial arts.  The big limitation of needing earth or naturally occurring ground to use it is a big drawback.  How about buying off that limitation instead of getting a new power?  So like when we are on the ocean, there is earth under the sea so ripping up the sea floor, summoning that earth to use would then be possible.  

There is the range limitation to deal with.  So if the sea floor was more than a mile down [range of 10] you couldn't summon it.  Also there is the burn out.  You might want to buy it down if not off totally.  Not sure what it would cost to get rid of those two limitations or get rid of one of them and buy down burn out to 4 or 2.  But it might be doable and still have points left over to spend elsewhere.  Paul would have to figure that out.

That would give you a fairly reliable ranged attack with "Earth Blast" from the control.  Then you could work on building up the strength of your Earth Control to equal that of your martial arts.  Then you would have a strong close in attack and a strong ranged attack.

Or you could have him develop a new power.  There's lots of powers you could choose from.

Admin wrote:OOC to ditch the drawback costs FIVE times as many points as you orginally got for it.

Therefore to remove the limitation of loss of powers on artificial surface/regeneration only working in contact with earth costs 500HP

The Catastrophic Burnout saved you 48HP initially. To drop that from Catastrophic to Serious Burnout will cost 80HP. To drop it to minor burnout costs another 80HP and you guessed it to ditch the weakness completely costs a total of 80HP x3 (240HP).

DavidMcMahon wrote:You can already do an Earth Blast with Earth Control but if you wanted another one without disads then it would be 150 for the Base Cost.
You would be better off getting a different type of power at a cheaper price.

Here is a few, just listing their BC of x10 to purchase:

1. Electric or Flame Being 100 HP BC [provides defense against a specific kind of attack, has weakness against opposite kind of attack, causes damage to anyone who is touched or touches the character]
2. Omni-Arm 100 HP BC [shape your hands/arms into whatever you want - lobster claws, hammers, etc.  Haunt has this]
3. Plant Control 100 HP BC [can use existing plants to attack foes]
4. Plant Growth 100 HP BC [can make plants grow]   *Get both of these powers and carry lots of seeds on you and you can make plants grow to giant size and then use them to attack or restrain foes.
5. Shouting 100 HP BC [go for a dramatic monologue and everyone is 2 APs range who fails their roll most stop and listen.]
6. Sleep  100 HP BC [put people asleep for however many APs of power you have though they can make rolls to try to wake up every round]
7. Stretching 100 HP BC  **  I would suggest this one as it allows you to make long distance hand to hand attacks such as ranged grappling or crushing maneuvers as well as punching.  Obviously the Haunt has this.  It has other hand to hand combat maneuvers that the Haunt hasn't really every used, such as Enhanced Grappling and Body Grappling.  You could easily say that this is an extension of your Earth Control and that this is you getting an Earth Body and punching and kicking with extended Earth Arms and Legs.
8. Super Breath 100 HP BC [1 AP wide corridor of breath that does not take multi-attack penalties.  For some weird reason the knockback caused by the power is considered killing attack though the person who uses it doesn't take HP reward penalties for this unless a foe dies as a result of the knockback.]

All other attack skills would cost 150+ HP to buy them.


If you want to save your points for next time I would suggest looking at:

1. Bomb 200 HP BC [you cause an explosion around you in the ground attacking everyone and everything.  For a +1FC, you can control how big the area of the explosion is.  For a -2 FC, you can reduce the damage by -2 AP for every AP past the first one.   Hard power to use in my mind unless you get initiative, jump in the middle of the bad guys and let off a blast, doing damage to everyone in the AOE.]
2. Attraction/Repulsion 150 HP BC [attract or repel things and people towards you or away from you.  Go way to pull someone out of range into your hand combat range or push them away if they are too tough.  And if our GM allowed it, could use it to pull someone into you so fast that it basically becomes knockback damage into your force shield]
3. Flame Project 150 HP BC [call it a lava blast, a super hot earth blast]
4. Gravity Increase 200 HP BC [using pseudo-mad scientist comic book reasoning, you are increasing the density of the earth under the person thereby increasing gravity.  Actually, you could use this same reasoning for Attraction/Repulsion]      

Sorry to hear about your mom.  My step-dad went through that as well and my younger sister handled all of that with a bit of help from my two younger brothers.  I managed to see him just hours before he died.  Hadn't seen my family in years due to the cost of travelling across the continent and not having much vacation time accrued due to medical issues.

Admin wrote:OOC I would suggest hanging onto the points Dave. Once you get another stash you can pay off some of the drawbacks or go crazy with across the board improvements. Another bonus is that you won't be caught short for hero points.

Probably the best thing to do is think about what kind of hero you want Steeplejack to be. I thought of him as an agile brick with a secondary power of controlling naturally ocurring rocks, soil and earth. Adding something like energy blast turns him into something else, and he can use Earth Control to (sort of) fly on a hunk of muck. For effective uses of the power I'd suggest looking up Terra from the new Teen Titans. The comic book projected her as quite the popwerhouse but I think Steeplejack's main shtick is his astonishing agility and fighting skills plus (now) his vast superhuman strength. He's not far now behind Haunt in that respect yet when they started adventuring together they were quite some distance apart in terms of power.

Your call. I'm aware you aren't conversant with the rules in the way me and David are so I'd just like to reassure you that tweaks and changes are fine as far as I'm concerned. If you have stuff on your character sheet that you never used and probably never will (hello gadgetry) then you can take those points and spend them at the initial lower character creation cost instead of the much higher improvement costs once gaming has started. That goes for everyone. We are more about the roleplay than rules and hamstringing a character because of choices made years ago that turn out to be ineffective isn't my idea of fun.

Anyway, if you need more help, suggestions or ideas let us know but otherwise I'll start cooking up the new issue. I also have Haunt to update and David M if you can check that over for iffy bits and let me know if it's ok that would be appreciated.

Admin wrote:OOC Checked it, 70Hp to raise Influence, 60Hp for spirit so it's right. Have to post this way as every time I try editing a post it spits out a 'you just posted this recently' - yeah and I want to edit it. Oh never mind. I'm happy we don't have any (or at least many) of the issues we had when we first started out.

New issue coming up in next day. Assuming I can see properly.