[Basic] Advantage of the Week (#19): Catfall; Super Jump

[Leynok]

Originally Posted by naloth

Super Jump probably needs fixed. It's almost insignificant at low levels but can be game breaking if you invest in it (acceleration = massive slams) as an attack power.

As a test, I decided to see what someone with 10, 20 and 50 levels of Super Jump would be able to do from a slam, assuming average other stats (5 Basic Move, needed for jump distance and 10 HP for slam damage).
Needless to say it gets stupid fast. 10 levels did 239 dice of damage. 244668 dice of damage... and 50 levels... 1,576,259,869,579,674 dice of damage. (Disclaimer, that they may not be exactly 50 levels, I may have double counted, or missed a count a few times, but even assuming I missed a few counts, it won't change from being a stupid amount of damage).
From my understanding is enough to destroy, or at least cripple a planet. for 500 points.
Super Jump needs fixing, quite badly.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Leynok

As a test, I decided to see what someone with 10, 20 and 50 levels of Super Jump would be able to do from a slam, assuming average other stats (5 Basic Move, needed for jump distance and 10 HP for slam damage).
Needless to say it gets stupid fast. 10 levels did 239 dice of damage. 244668 dice of damage... and 50 levels... 1,576,259,869,579,674 dice of damage. (Disclaimer, that they may not be exactly 50 levels, I may have double counted, or missed a count a few times, but even assuming I missed a few counts, it won't change from being a stupid amount of damage).
From my understanding is enough to destroy, or at least cripple a planet. for 500 points.
Super Jump needs fixing, quite badly.

That isnt the fault of Super Jump so much as the Slam rules which have thier own threads on fixe and such.

[whswhs]

Super Jump is different in kind from Flight. Flight is continuous movement; the sort of jumping you see in martial arts films, where you continue to move, touching a surface every second or every few seconds, could plausibly be mechanicked as a variant on Flight, or perhaps as a variant on Brachiation. Other sorts, a kangaroo's movement or perhaps even a rabbit's, seem effectively to be forms of Enhanced Move (Running). But some forms of jumping are discontinuous movement: You go from point A to point B and stop, or you take a run up to A and then jump, or you run to A, jump to B, run to C, jump to D, and so on, as in a rooftop chase. And that's what Super Jump is intended to mimic. It's kind of akin to Warp.

It's important that Super Jump as defined in the Basic Set doesn't necessarily boost movement speed. If you have Move 6, you can jump 6 yards in a second, 12 yards in 2 seconds, 18 yards in 3 seconds, 24 yards in 4 seconds, and 30 yards in 5 seconds—all of which have the same movement speed of 6 yards/second (roughly 12 mph). At that point you reach the upper limit of 5 seconds per jump, so jumping (say) 60 yards gets you to 12 yards/second.

And, yes, exponential growth does lead to absurd high end results. But that applies to strength, too; I worked out in GURPS Supers how many levels of Strength you need to buy to be able to smash a planet with one punch. (Note that you also have to buy a lot of Damage Reduction if you don't want to turn into a thin red smear on a crater.) The answer to that, though, is for the GM not to allow enough points to buy that ability, or not to allow it to be bought up to that high a level, or to set a cap on quantity of damage—all of which are legitimate if you're not running a high-end supers campaign.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

exponential growth does lead to absurd high end results.

True. On the other hand, linear growth leads to people complaining that they can't produce properly impressive effects to match their notion of "high fantasy" mages destroying cities or continents, or for that matter four-color Silver Age supers that can destroy planets.

Any ability with geometric growth is likely to deserve a cap for any particular setting. This could be a hard cap, or a soft cap created by increasing the costs at more than a linear rate.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

True. On the other hand, linear growth leads to people complaining that they can't produce properly impressive effects to match their notion of "high fantasy" mages destroying cities or continents, or for that matter four-color Silver Age supers that can destroy planets.

Oh, I absolutely agree. In fact one of the strengths of Champions as a system is its consistent reliance on exponential scales (with the one exception of Speed: number of actions increases linearly, not exponentially). You really need exponential growth in capabilities to get into even low-end supers territory. But the fact that you need to use something doesn't exempt you from the need to use it appropriately.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's important that Super Jump as defined in the Basic Set doesn't necessarily boost movement speed. If you have Move 6, you can jump 6 yards in a second, 12 yards in 2 seconds, 18 yards in 3 seconds, 24 yards in 4 seconds, and 30 yards in 5 seconds—all of which have the same movement speed of 6 yards/second (roughly 12 mph). At that point you reach the upper limit of 5 seconds per jump, so jumping (say) 60 yards gets you to 12 yards/second.

Originally Posted by p. B89

Your Move while jumping is the greater of your normal ground move and 1/5 your maximum long jump distance (thus, your maximum jump never takes more than five seconds). For instance, if your long jump were 100 yards, your jumping Move would be the greater of 20 and your normal ground Move.

Yes, I did change the method of emphasis from italics to bold text since default quoting in this manner italicizes all the text in the quote and I don't know how to counteract that. ^^'

[Flyndaran]

Well, poop. I bumped the thread with on point questions, but everyone's discussing previously mentioned sub-topics.

Does this mean that everyone actually agrees with Super Jump's pricing?
The previous posts and threads didn't give me that impression.

I'm thinking of realistic animals not comic book supers. Some articles I found listed human athletes as standing high jumping 0.6 meters, but many gibbons capable of easily reaching 3.5 meters.
Should they really need to buy 2+ levels, and would that really give 20+ points worth of advantage?

(They jump differently that all other super jumpers as they use incredible technique utilizing arms and torso rather than massive leg strength or inhuman bouts of explosive power.)

[Gef]

Count me with the lot who thinks they're overpriced, generally...but you can fix 'em.

In conjunction with Flying Leap, Super Jump starts to look a lot better, especially with maneuverable. It's not unreasonable for a cinematic character to have MV 8, that's base jumping distannce 13', doubled for super jump to 26', tripled for Flying Leap to 26 yards, doubled with a running start to 52 yards, with the capability to swerve.

For Catfall, of course it stacks with the better base falling distance, and I like to replace the part that overlaps Acrobatics with a +6 bonus to that skill for the purpose of reducing falling damage. Then default Acrobatics becomes straight DX, and Acrobatics 10 or higher become pretty reliable. Would you allow a penalized roll to mitigate further, like -1 per additional yard? In that case, Catfall with my house rule gives you 6 more yards.

What's really awkward is a race, or a super based on animal function, with multiple enhanced modes of movement. For these guys I find that the Alternate Ability rule works well. Treefrog-boy gets Clinging (25) with alternates Flight (Gliding, Winged; 2) and Super Jump 2 (4) as alternates. If he loses his grip while Clinging and the fall lasts over a second, he can glide out.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Well, poop. I bumped the thread with on point questions, but everyone's discussing previously mentioned sub-topics.

Does this mean that everyone actually agrees with Super Jump's pricing?
The previous posts and threads didn't give me that impression.

Some people are comparing it to Flight with which I disagree with.
It really isEnhanced Movement (Jumping) at half the price.
I think in that way it is fairly priced. It gives you the same movement increase but with less control and instant ACC plus includes a few other drawbacks and features.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Some people are comparing it to Flight with which I disagree with.
It really isEnhanced Movement (Jumping) at half the price.
I think in that way it is fairly priced. It gives you the same movement increase but with less control and instant ACC plus includes a few other drawbacks and features.

I simply cannot see why being able to jump 4 feet high instead of 2 feet is worth the same 10 points that doubling your running speed costs.

For realistic games, I think 5 points per level for the first three levels or so seems far more sensible.