Super Stats/Armor Rating (split from the Kaiju thread)

[eliakon]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

[Razorwing]

The problem with this is that technically no one would be able to inflict damage on such a perfectly armored creature. Even a Natural 20... which is usually considered an automatic hit... will just bounce off such an armored hide. Giving it the Invulnerability power would have been just as effective.

Okay... yes with some of the bonuses to strike from different powers, it may be possible to actually hit an AR that is in excess of 20, but for practical reasons AR has never been allowed to go over 19. A Natural 20 is always supposed to hit whether one has any bonuses or not.

As for doubling up on a power... there are some powers where that is acceptable... and some where it isn't. Doubling Sonic Speed creates an insanely fast character... but not one that can't be taken down. Doubling up on Hardened Skin however potentially creates a character that can't be damaged due to an AR in excess of 20 (though such a character would need to be fairly experienced to reach that high of an AR).

One does have to use a little common sense.

Combining a very high AR (17 to 19) with massive amounts of SDC (1000s if not 10,000s) could be a challenge even for Mega Heroes. There really is no need to have an AR in the 20s or 30s that very few beings would be able to hit (even when adding their strike bonus with a Natural 20).

[NMI]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

Runaway's power - Sonic Speed I believe, is doubled because she did take it twice... err Coffin gave it to her twice. Bill Coffin admitted at one point that he wasn't that familiar with the HU-niverse hence some of the various NPC's that bend/break the rules as written.

I have more to add about the stacking of bonuses, but I need my books. Will reply this afternoon.

[eliakon]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

Runaway's power - Sonic Speed I believe, is doubled because she did take it twice... err Coffin gave it to her twice. Bill Coffin admitted at one point that he wasn't that familiar with the HU-niverse hence some of the various NPC's that bend/break the rules as written.

I have more to add about the stacking of bonuses, but I need my books. Will reply this afternoon.

I was assuming that to get it doubled you would have to take the power twice.
But I would say that by putting in her description that her power works this way because she took it twice it means that, at least for NPCs, taking (at least a signature) power twice is legal. Since this is an NPC 'zilla not a PC, and since the 'nigh unharmable' is sort of the signature we are going for here......

[Razorwing]

One doesn't need an excessively high (20+) AR for these monsters to be "nigh unharmable". A combination of very high AR (16 to 19) and thousands of SDC (even 10s or 100s of thousands) will make such monsters incredibly tough without making them nearly impossible to hit even for Mega Heroes.

Even with this, physically fighting such monsters is usually a futile effort as by the time such a monster can be defeated, it has likely destroyed the city or whatever it was doing. More often than not, finding other ways to fight these "Forces of Nature" is the key to stopping these kind of beings. True, you may need to attack such a monster to get its attention or distract it long enough for such alternative solutions to be used., but even here, making it impossible to inflict damage (with an excessive AR above 19) only works against such creative solutions. If you can't harm the monster, you can't easily get its attention.

[The Artist Formerly]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

So you have a hard time with me extrapolating from the hard AR powers about explosives, but you have no problem with this? Huh.

Also, out of curiosity, what were the other powers in this build?

[Regularguy]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power

Imagine combining it with Karmic Power!

[eliakon]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

So you have a hard time with me extrapolating from the hard AR powers about explosives, but you have no problem with this? Huh.

Because the powers in question offer specific unique differences from the normal rules on AR.
Each of the powers has a DIFFERENT modification...this suggests that they are not in fact a wholesale modification to the AR system
Where as Runaway explicitly states that she was allowed to double her powers buy buying her power twice. This is not a variable, Its not like the APS powers where each power has a slightly different ability that differs from the baseline.
(note that the baseline nAR says that explosions bounce off of nAR for instance, but do not offer immunity to all bullets...)

[The Artist Formerly]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

So you have a hard time with me extrapolating from the hard AR powers about explosives, but you have no problem with this? Huh.

Because the powers in question offer specific unique differences from the normal rules on AR.
Each of the powers has a DIFFERENT modification...this suggests that they are not in fact a wholesale modification to the AR system
Where as Runaway explicitly states that she was allowed to double her powers buy buying her power twice. This is not a variable, Its not like the APS powers where each power has a slightly different ability that differs from the baseline.
(note that the baseline nAR says that explosions bounce off of nAR for instance, but do not offer immunity to all bullets...)

You're not allowed to pick the same ability twice. That's in the rules too. And the NAR rules don't say that explosives bounce off. Rule on page 18 HU2E mentions punches, bullets and lasers.

Runaway's powers were a 'special' written by Bill because he missed the rule on not doubling up, and in this case, was basically okay because he was teasing his upcoming Mutant Underground book. That he didn't write. And she wasn't overbuilt.

Ultimately, if you need 400 foot tall lizard laying waste to your city, go for it. What the hell do you care what I think? It's just a silly idea. It's silly when superman beats up on a Godzilla stand in, it's silly when Dum-Dum Dugan lead agents of shield against it. The thing weigh so much that it can't walk. There is no flesh source that could support such a weight. Then again, this game is full of silly ideas. It wouldn't fly in my gaming group. We'd spend all night making fun of it, rather then trying to save the day. But if you group is having fun, knock yourselves out.

[eliakon]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

So you have a hard time with me extrapolating from the hard AR powers about explosives, but you have no problem with this? Huh.

Because the powers in question offer specific unique differences from the normal rules on AR.
Each of the powers has a DIFFERENT modification...this suggests that they are not in fact a wholesale modification to the AR system
Where as Runaway explicitly states that she was allowed to double her powers buy buying her power twice. This is not a variable, Its not like the APS powers where each power has a slightly different ability that differs from the baseline.
(note that the baseline nAR says that explosions bounce off of nAR for instance, but do not offer immunity to all bullets...)

You're not allowed to pick the same ability twice. That's in the rules too. And the NAR rules don't say that explosives bounce off. Rule on page 18 HU2E mentions punches, bullets and lasers.

Runaway's powers were a 'special' written by Bill because he missed the rule on not doubling up, and in this case, was basically okay because he was teasing his upcoming Mutant Underground book. That he didn't write. And she wasn't overbuilt.

Ultimately, if you need 400 foot tall lizard laying waste to your city, go for it. What the hell do you care what I think? It's just a silly idea. It's silly when superman beats up on a Godzilla stand in, it's silly when Dum-Dum Dugan lead agents of shield against it. The thing weigh so much that it can't walk. There is no flesh source that could support such a weight. Then again, this game is full of silly ideas. It wouldn't fly in my gaming group. We'd spend all night making fun of it, rather then trying to save the day. But if you group is having fun, knock yourselves out.

1) Where, exactly, in the rules is it that you can't pick a power twice?
2) pg 66 "Any rolls to strike below the creatures Natural Armor Rating may hit and even sting (like a slap), but inflicts no damage! Bullets and explosions bounce off harmlessly, stabbing swords skitter across the armor plates, scales or skin, and so on....."
3) What the intention behind Runaway's power is we may never know. All we have is that she was written, the manuscript was approved, and it was published.
4) And yeah its rather unlikely....but considering the group includes a Cat-girl, a person who got powers by being bitten by a radioactive gerbil, an a sentient ex-household appliance.....yah strict realism was not exactly the strong suite of this particular game.

[The Artist Formerly]

In the Kaiju thread I was talking about how one of the things that made Kaiju threatening was ludicrously high stats. While the idea of a PS score in the tens of thousands didn't raise any eyebrows some people expressed disbelief at the idea of massive nAR stats.

The easiest way to get such a stat is to simply combine a nice base nAR (race, an APS, eugenic category, ect) and then take the Hardened Skin minor power (doubled as per Runaway)
+2 to your armor rating at level 2,4,6,8,10,12....just as IS that would be nAR 23 at level 12. If your base is higher than 11 though.....
At level 8 something with a starting nAR of 17 would have an nAR of 25.
if you start with nAR19, at level 12 you would have a whopping 31.

And if powers are allowed to be taken more than two times.....

So you have a hard time with me extrapolating from the hard AR powers about explosives, but you have no problem with this? Huh.

Because the powers in question offer specific unique differences from the normal rules on AR.
Each of the powers has a DIFFERENT modification...this suggests that they are not in fact a wholesale modification to the AR system
Where as Runaway explicitly states that she was allowed to double her powers buy buying her power twice. This is not a variable, Its not like the APS powers where each power has a slightly different ability that differs from the baseline.
(note that the baseline nAR says that explosions bounce off of nAR for instance, but do not offer immunity to all bullets...)

You're not allowed to pick the same ability twice. That's in the rules too. And the NAR rules don't say that explosives bounce off. Rule on page 18 HU2E mentions punches, bullets and lasers.

Runaway's powers were a 'special' written by Bill because he missed the rule on not doubling up, and in this case, was basically okay because he was teasing his upcoming Mutant Underground book. That he didn't write. And she wasn't overbuilt.

Ultimately, if you need 400 foot tall lizard laying waste to your city, go for it. What the hell do you care what I think? It's just a silly idea. It's silly when superman beats up on a Godzilla stand in, it's silly when Dum-Dum Dugan lead agents of shield against it. The thing weigh so much that it can't walk. There is no flesh source that could support such a weight. Then again, this game is full of silly ideas. It wouldn't fly in my gaming group. We'd spend all night making fun of it, rather then trying to save the day. But if you group is having fun, knock yourselves out.

1) Where, exactly, in the rules is it that you can't pick a power twice?
2) pg 66 "Any rolls to strike below the creatures Natural Armor Rating may hit and even sting (like a slap), but inflicts no damage! Bullets and explosions bounce off harmlessly, stabbing swords skitter across the armor plates, scales or skin, and so on....."
3) What the intention behind Runaway's power is we may never know. All we have is that she was written, the manuscript was approved, and it was published.
4) And yeah its rather unlikely....but considering the group includes a Cat-girl, a person who got powers by being bitten by a radioactive gerbil, an a sentient ex-household appliance.....yah strict realism was not exactly the strong suite of this particular game.

1)Under selecting super abilities.
2) Good catch. Never noticed that before Even still, that may be a nod to soft NARs, or just a brief touch over the concept, doesn't mention it when it's defined on page 18 and in hard ARs have that limiter on it, and I think it's valid. SDC explosives of sufficient damage value will inflict MDC in MDC games, so I think it still works. Most powers consider explosives as 'specials'. Solid metal that is man shaped and animated should be the toughest stuff there is. And blowing metal up is not a simple thing, I can't imagine lizard scale being tougher then that.
3) I totally know what Bill was doing when he wrote her. He was posting here at the time, we called him on her, Captain not appearing in this book (Raptor Red is on the cover of Century Station, but that was supposed to be Haven who wasn't properly translated, so we named him and Bill thought it was funny so Red is in Gramercy Island), and Firefly at the time. Palladium has tons of missteps like that. Poke through the books, see how many times you can find someone with a mental attribute of 16 (IQ, ME, MA), then explain them to me. NPCs just don't often meet the rules requirements. Which I suppose works for both of our arguments.
4) Whatever makes your games fun. So some guy on the internet thinks things should be another way. Big deal. You haven't listed anything that's convinced me to change my mind. It doesn't look like I've done much for you either. Nice to limber up the grey matter a bit.

Sentient, household appliance... Now that's cool. Tell your player some guy on the internet said "neat!"

That Analytical Genius character I posted about, he had a possessing entity take over his kitchen, which was full of Doc Brown (back the Future) style upgrades. Tried to kill me. On three separate occasions. I thought it was Modulus the first two times...

[NMI]

One doesn't need an excessively high (20+) AR for these monsters to be "nigh unharmable". A combination of very high AR (16 to 19) and thousands of SDC (even 10s or 100s of thousands) will make such monsters incredibly tough without making them nearly impossible to hit even for Mega Heroes.

Even with this, physically fighting such monsters is usually a futile effort as by the time such a monster can be defeated, it has likely destroyed the city or whatever it was doing. More often than not, finding other ways to fight these "Forces of Nature" is the key to stopping these kind of beings. True, you may need to attack such a monster to get its attention or distract it long enough for such alternative solutions to be used., but even here, making it impossible to inflict damage (with an excessive AR above 19) only works against such creative solutions. If you can't harm the monster, you can't easily get its attention.

For a "Giant" or Kaiju, one could go with these abilities in general ...

Growth
Hardened Skin
Impact Resistance
Impervious to Melee attacks...
bamn -- what hits and potentially does damage will either be negated or reduced.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Remember, that sometimes this sort of thing happens in comics/movies. Doomsday waded through the JLA like they were tissue paper and even superman 'died' fighting him to a standstill which still didn't 'kill' doomsday.

In Marvel, many times the fights with the Juggernaut had alot of the same sort of problem. You couldn't take him by 'force' you had to get creative.

Kaiju ...ehh.. they're not quite the same. they can be 'hurt'. You see them hurt one another and such, but still, in theory you could treat them as a challenge that can't be countered by punching them with your face, over and over.

Doomsday had to be chained to a meteor and flung into space on a trajectory which (Should have) bypassed stellar objects for 1000s of years. The Juggernaut needs his helmet removed so psy's can get him. Etc.

Again Kaiju aren't quite the same. They just need something of equal strength/power to take them down, but if your group doesn't have a spare Godzilla laying around... they could handle it in alternate ways.


Thing is, I don't agree that Kaiju are ---------THAT---------- tough. AR's of 30 or anything. They beat each other up quite well and they're basically just flailing at one another with tails and claws and teeth and the occasional energy blast. A high AR? Sure. 18 or so? Sure. Totally. 1000s of SDC? Sure. But they're not totally unkillable. They're just very big with corresponding SDC.