I was playing with another group, and they had a set of house rules they played with to make the fights more like some of the animated series fights the head of the group was a fan of (Justice League Unlimited, Ultimate Avengers, etc. I'm a fan myself).
To get me familiar with the rules they use, we did a "scrimmage," a la Heroclix style, where we played as two teams fighting it out (a good idea to give someone an idea of a new set of house rules, actually).
Here's a summary of the house rule set they used, followed by my impressions:
Some general aspects of the rules:
1. Any time anyone is successfully attacked, they had to make a Endurance FEAT roll vs. both slam and stun, separately; even if the actual damage suffered due to Body Armor, etc. was zero. This had a minus based on the relative difference b/t the attacker's Strength and the Defender's Endurance. The attacker's FEAT roll resulted in either full damage (red) or lesser (-1 or -2 CS for yellow and green respectively).
Ex: The Hulk hits Spider-man and actually lands a punch at full damage. Spider-man must make an Endurance Roll v. both slam and stun (separately) at -60 (Unearthly 100 - Incredible 40). If the Hulk's player had rolled only a Green or Yellow FEAT, the Spider-Man player would have had to make an Endurance FEAT v. slam & stun at -10 and -35 respectively.
2. A character could choose at the beginning of the combat whether to fight an offensive or defensive fight.
a. An offensive fight was as normal
b. A defensive fight had some differences; first the offensive player had a minus from their attack roll based on the relative difference b/t the characters Agility.
Ex: The Hulk attacks Spider-Man, who is fighting defensively. The Hulk had a -40 to his rolls (Amazing Agility - Good Agility).
b. (cont) The downside to fighting defensively is that the defensive character can only attack if the offensive opponent misses or fumbles.
3. A character could also choose to hyper-dodge, which played pretty much as described under the "House Rules" section version noted on this web-page.
Impressions:
1. First, the fights really did feel like the modern superhero cartoon fights.
The teams we were playing were the Hulk, Captain America and Iron Fist vs. Thor, Spider-man and Shang-Chi.
Especially when the Heavy Hitters went at it, people went FLYING. We all played up that angle of smashing through buildings, cars, etc. Also, since opponents often ended up 1 or 2 areas apart because of slams,
characters often threw stuff at one another, like lampposts, trash cans, car parts, etc. which is also like the cartoon fights.
2. Agility actually counted for something. At one point, the Hulk was stunned, and the character playing Spider man "ran interference," engaging Thor by just Hyper-Dodging around him. Thor never scored a hit (rolling at -30 made it difficult, especially with Spider-Man rolling at least -1 color shifts with the hyper-dodge). However, it only counted when the character chose defense; Thor's player decided Thor would never fight defensively (which makes some sense) and so never made use of his superior agility vs. the Hulk.
3. The fights became not a contest to grind the other guy's health down, but rather a contest to land that one good stunning shot that would end the fight. They felt more like a fight, in other words, which rarely devolve into characters literally beating the health out of each other, but rather one scoring that one decisive shot.
4. The characters with ranged attacks have incentive to use them. In a later scrimmage, Iron Man was fighting Hulk. He had to stay away, because he couldn't afford to get hit, really, and tried to stay at a distance and snipe.
Criticisms:
1. I can't help feel that characters with a high Fighting score should have a better shot at hitting even a faster character; good fighters can deal with speed. Maybe not, though, when I think about it.
2. A light weight absolutely cannot chance being hit by a heavyweight. If Thor had ever hit Spider-man in the earlier example, Spidey would have had to make a stun and slam roll at -70 (Unearthly 100 - Remarkable 30), and have sustained 100 points of damage to his health. This encouraged the faster characters to fight defensively and hyper-dodge often.
3. It was a heck of a lot of fun, with everyone really getting into the characters being knocked all over the place and throwing debris at one another.
What do you guys think? I'm not decided yet, but the house rule set (the group's head calls them "slugfest rules") is interesting.
Comments?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2008 04:16PM by civet5285.
