Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

To start, I think it is broken as heck... but it looks legal.

Someone built a ranged attack using two or three dice in a Supers game. Gave it Cosmic (target cannot dodge/ block etc) and cosmic (bypasses non-Cosmic DR). Gave it a couple other things like Homing and Low Signature.

So far so good. It's a gravitic attack of some sort that does crushing damage.

Then they gave it Very Rapid Fire, Selective Fire, and Autofire high enough that it fires well over 100 rounds with each attack. Possibly as high as 300 or even higher. They specifically did *not* give it Cosmic (always hits).

This I has a problem with

Is Selective really powerful enough on it's own to prevent this power from causing insane collateral damage and/ or civilian casualties every time it is fired at a target? As written, Selective seems to say even if the target or targets are in the middle of a packed crowd you can spray hundreds of dice of unstoppable death into the room and nobody other than your intended target or targets even get their hair mussed.

Unless of course you roll a 17 or 18 on the attack. In which case the building and maybe the entire block dies.

Would I ever allow it in my game if I was GM? Heck no. But I need solid rules to stand on when arguing with this person as a fellow player.

Help?

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

Well, actually, you don't need rules. You're the GM; you have the right to decide whether to accept a character as appropriate, rules or no rules. If, for example, you're running a Justice League style campaign, and someone wants to bring in a hero with powers of mass destruction, who uses them without restraint and has a long body count—well, you can say, "No, that's not appropriate for this campaign." So that's something to consider.

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

It's not. "Can't Be Dodged" isn't a legit Cosmic. There's no such thing as "Selective Fire". There's "Selective Area" but that only applies to area effect attacks. Autofire is not area effect.

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

Does it have Selective Fire or Selective Area?

p.B108, under "Rapid Fire":
Selective Fire: You may designate a
RoF 5+ attack as Selective Fire, allowing
it to fire as if it had RoF 1-3. This
costs an extra +10%.

also p.B108, for Selective Area (+20%):
You may add this enhancement to
any Area Effect (p. 102) or Cone
(p. 103) attack. It lets you choose
which targets within your area are
actually affected.

and directly under that, because the name is so similar and is relevant later, for Selectivity (+10%):
This enhancement lets you turn a
trait’s other enhancements off and on
at will.


It seems that someone is mistaking Selective Fire for Selective Area or vice verse. Without seeing the build itself, I can't say for certain.

As it is, Rapid Fire, Selective Fire dials it back to semi-automatic fire, which lets him limit the number of shots fired, but he has to choose that when he uses the ability. Note that suppressive fire with this ability may be possible, due to its high RoF, but that would use the full RoF; I personally would insist on adding Cone and Selectivity to the build if he planned on using it that way on a regular basis. With Cone, everything in the target area would get hit.

Selective Area would mean that he wouldn't hit bystanders in an AoE attack, but the Area Effect or Cone would have to be built into the ability to be able to add Selective Area.


Clear as mud?

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, p. 8:

Cosmic: No active defense allowed (+300%)
Only for attacks that the target can dodge, block, or parry. Your target gets no active defense against your attack, no matter how fast or skilled he is. If your attack roll succeeds, you hit. The victim’s DR and other purely passive protection work normally; see Irresistible attack (above) to fix that. This enhancement doesn’t prevent resistance rolls; see the introduction to Cosmic (p. 6) for more details.



So yes, it is legal, subject to GM approval.

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

Hmm not really my area but I think it looks legal at first glance. It does have two "4 eye" cosmic enhancements in there though, but that's the GM's call (and you're looking from a rules POV not a GM POV)

What's the points level of the game?

Ultimately there are plenty of OTT builds that can be done, the system does rely on GM final say to rein them in.

My chosen defence against it would be to see what it uses to home in on targets with and counter it

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

The defense against this is simple...

Give targets have more HP.

Blind him/impair vision.

Obscure targets so he can't see them.

Attacks from behind.

Put afflictions on him to lower his skill.

Etc etc...

Generally, if you let people take a lot of cosmic mods, this sort of thing happens =) It's cosmic! Generally only cosmic deals with cosmic.

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

Theres selective effect in Power ups 4 pg16:

• Attacks with Rapid Fire. An attack with Selective Effect
and Rapid Fire can hose down an area that contains both
friend and foe without risking a “friendly fire” incident.


Can't dodge is a +300% god-like cosmic "4 eye" effect, as is ignores non cosmic DR (the two combine badly of course)

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

If all they're going for is the ability to hose an area down and be sure it doesn't affect anyone they don't want it to...that's exactly and explicitly what Selective Effect +20% does, yes. PU4 p16, at least, is clear on this. You do have to be able to specify which people you want to hit, or which people you want to not hit. Unless you've got exotic senses that would let you recognize them you can't hose down a building and tell your shots to ID and kill agents of HYDRA.

Re: Need help fighting the dreaded MinMaxer.
 

3d Crushing Innate Attack (Cosmic (No Defense Roll) +300%, Cosmic (No DR) +300%, RoF 300 +300%, Selective Effect +20%, Low Signature +10%, Homing (Para-Radar) +90%) [168]

This gives an attack that deals 3d damage with a +7 to hit, an acc of 3, a 1/2D of 10, a max of 100. This means that if he successfully locks onto a target 100 yards away (aim maneuver), he gets skill 10 + 3 (acc) + 7 (RoF bonus)= 20 to hit. On average, he will hit 10 times, and his opponent cannot defend, and will take approximately 100 damage (that ignores DR). That's a very dead human. However, the attack moves at 10 yards per second, so it would take 10 turns to get to the human (and its entirely possible to outrun. It won't travel farther than 100 yards). The results of a 10 yard attack would be the same.

By comparison, 168 points will buy you 33 dice of innate attack, with a bit to spare. Assuming a skill of 14, aiming will result in a skill of 17, so you hit the target on a 13 or less, which is quite reasonable. If your target does not defend, you'll deal an average of 110 damage, though DR will apply to this one. Hitting 100 yards away would only happen on a 7 or less, but would do so instantly, and if the target was unaware of the attack, he still wouldn't be able to defend.

If we want a more accurate attack, we might do an innate attack burning 12 (RoF 15 +100%, Acc +8 +40%). Assuming skill 14, if we aim for 1 second, we have a skill of 28. At 10 yards, that drops to skill 24, and at 100 yards, that's skill 18. Thus, at 10 yards, your opponent will be hit 14 times on average, and will need to dodge with a margin of 13 to avoid all of them. If hit 14 times, he'll take an average of 560 damage (DR applies, of course). At 100 yards away, you'll "only" hit 8 times, and your opponent will need to dodge with a margin of 8 to avoid them all. If hit all 8 times, he'll take 320 damage (DR applies, of course).

So, the attack isn't really that twinky. Some fairly basic attacks are potentially twinkier. I'd argue that in comparison to my third attack, it's only really better if you have some kind of ridiculously high skill (a few hundred points), or if he wants to attack A LOT of NPCs all at once by spraying his attacks around. He also has an advantage against high DR targets, but he's at a disadvantage vs high IT:DR characters, or mountains of HP. Frankly, though, I think I could apply some armor divisor and still handle most reasonably defended supers.

Basically, his attack looks like most 150+ point attacks. They're ridiculously powerful, and you have to be careful how you balance combat at that range. I don't really agree with letting people build whatever powers they want when you're in the 1000-point range, because you can too quickly attacks that are completely useless vs some characters, while they'll completely obliterate other characters, and the average player, when handed 1000 points, is generally just trying to get rid of them, rather than thinking "How can I make this character tactically interesting to play?" which is really more of the way a GM will think when designing templates and power sets.