[Supers] What's the point of making Mêlée-oriented characters?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Kromm

And Bill's point is almost as important. Objectives have to be taken. Killing everybody from afar is rarely possible . . . Some people will take cover behind things with too much DR and HP to blow away, while others will themselves have too much DR and HP to blast and need to be wrestled, pinned, and cuffed.

This could be double-underlined. Even if opponents don't have lots of DR and HP, the ability to kill them isn't terribly useful if you're playing, as is traditional in superhero comics, crimefighters rather than military special forces. Damage-dealing is frequently useful, but ultimately you have to rely on non-lethal ways of dealing with opponents.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Then there are non-brick melee fighters. These guys customarily put all the points they save by not buying ST, HP, DR, or ranged attacks into active defenses and mobility. This makes them useful scouts and skirmishers, which are also valuable roles not directly connected to doing damage. Bad guys can't just ignore some ninja type spying on them and pelting them with nickel-and-dime attacks; sooner or later, he'll see something that will mess up their plans or drop enough small change to punch their ticket. But if he's able to zip in, hit, and zip out faster than they can run, and capable of dodging bullets, then they'll have to commit an inordinate measure of resources to stopping him.

When I was running a character in what became the playtest campaign for GURPS Supers, she was the team's combat monster—and almost entirley of this type. She had ST 9, and only light improvised body army, put together from motorcycle gear mostly. But with DX 19, Basic Speed 12, incredible running and jumping, and a Dodge that almost always exceeded 16, she was amazingly successful in a fight, not least because she could evade an enemy gunman or blaster's line of fire and get close enough to disarm or incapacitate them. You can do some pretty amazing stuff if you shamelessly push for high Basic Speed.

Bill Stoddard

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In actual play, the most annoying and arguably powerful heroes are this last type. They have stupidly high DX, Basic Speed, Basic Move, Dodge, Extra Attacks, and weapon skills, and spend most of their time not being hit whilst throwing unavoidable Deceptive Attacks many times a turn. If they have Luck and/or are allowed to spend points to convert nasty hits to flesh wounds, they basically just run up and win. Sure, the blaster may get a dozen shots in the interim, but these mostly get dodged or force the bad guys behind cover; even if you allow Deceptive Attack with ranged combat, range and cover penalties eat into it. Once the ninja or swashbuckler gets in the enemy's face, the fight is over, although there may be a delay while the brick lumbers up and does the actual clapping-in-irons part.

And to pile on, the thing about high-DX ninja types is that if the game is TL8 or higher, then a couple of points in Guns means that your obscenely hard-to-hit and sneaky melee sword nickel and dime guy has just picked up something that can do 7-15d damage to the better part of 500-1000yds.

The versatility of high stats, esp ST, DX, and IQ, is hard to overstate.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So what's the incentive, aside from 'but I wanna be an agile amazon/big bruiser/cool cutlass wielder'?

This is really enough. The superhero genre is first and foremost about wish fulfillment. It is secondarily about coolness.

Most of the players I've run in Super's campaigns would MUCH rather run a character that lets them mimic the exploits of Wolverine, Batman*, Spider-Man*, and the Hulk than Cyclops, The Human Torch, or Green Arrow.

Most of the most popular characters in comics either lean towards melee (like Wolverine and most of the Bat-family) or are balanced melee and ranged fighters (Like Captain America and Superman). Range focused and purely ranged fighters (like the Punisher and Green Arrow) are much less popular.



*Yes, I know they have ranged attacks, but they are primarily melee fighters.

[Kalzazz]

My favorite and first Supers RPG character was pretty much a ranged guy, basic idea was like Curt Schilling++

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Most of the players I've run in Super's campaigns would MUCH rather run a character that lets them mimic the exploits of Wolverine, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Hulk than Cyclops, The Human Torch, or Green Arrow.

My last campaign, with 1,500-point supers, had a blaster, two bricks, a teleporting brick with a ranged attack, and a mentalist.

Bill Stoddard

[Anthony]

Ignoring the whole business about ST, let's look at balance for innate attack (melee) vs innate attack (ranged), and that we want to be able to hit on 16-, with a DX of 10, and that we're using crushing attacks. Here's what we need to be able to do so every turn:

• 10-yard ranged attacker [36]: skill 20 [36]; net +0 on IA
• 10-yard melee attacker[160]: skill 16 [20], basic move 13[40], flight [40], enhanced move 2 (x4; cosmic, no acceleration) [60]; net -20% on IA.
• Breakeven point: ranged is 5/die, melee is 4/die, breakeven 124d
• 100-yard ranged attacker [60]: skill 26 [60]; enhanced 1/2d x3; net +15% on IA
• 100-yard melee attacker[255]: skill 16 [20], basic move 11[30], flight [40], enhanced move 5.5 (x48; cosmic, no acceleration) [165]; net -20% on IA.
• Breakeven point: ranged is 5.75/die, melee is 4/die, breakeven 111d
• 1000-yard ranged attacker [84]: skill 32 [84]; enhanced 1/2d x3; enhanced range x3; net +45% on IA
• 1000-yard melee attacker[355]: skill 16 [20], basic move 10[25], flight [40], enhanced move 9 (x512; cosmic, no acceleration) [270]; net -20% on IA.
• Breakeven point: ranged is 7.25/die, melee is 4/die, breakeven 83d

Huh. So somewhere in the range of 500 base points, melee just beats out ranged because it's cheaper to fly up and punch than to boost your skill and range. Of course, this ignores any other utility of super-high skill or super-fast flight. It also ignores the fact that you can rapid attack with melee -- it takes +6 skill (24 points) to reliably rapid attack, while it takes +2 skill (8 points) and a 40% advantage (200 points on our 500p attack) to hit twice with rapid fire; counting things like that, I'd say that melee on IA is reasonably valued for attacks in the 20-40d range.

[Kromm]

"Not getting hit/hurt" is the bit people keep leaving out. Bricks have lots of HP and DR. Swashbucklers have stupid-high Dodge scores. Both tend to assume give-and-take, and build accordingly. While a GURPS rules expert could dispassionately analyze things and decide that his blaster will have defense, or count on distance being armor, actual play doesn't bear this out at all. Most blasters are seriously poor at defense and soaking up damage, and in a modern-day setting, you really can't count on the foe not having a hidden sniper 1,000 yards away . . . Brick can just take the hit, while ninja guy will likely have Precognitive Parry or Enhanced Time Sense or the like. Blaster just dies.

After 31 years playing RPGs, it's my belief that surviving is more important to combat success than hurting. The PCs standing at the end of the fight are rarely the damage-dealers. Usually, they're the tough guys and the mobile guys. They might have lower body counts, but they're the ones smirking and scraping their pure-offense teammates off the floor.

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The PCs standing at the end of the fight are rarely the damage-dealers. Usually, they're the tough guys and the mobile guys. They might have lower body counts, but they're the ones smirking and scraping their pure-offense teammates off the floor.

This. So very this. As the player with the overwhelmingly defensive mindset, I am always amused at how often I have to carry the Barbarians of the world off the battlefield with a broken leg.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

After 31 years playing RPGs, it's my belief that surviving is more important to combat success than hurting.

Survivability just increases the amount of time you can use your offense. In terms of being useful to a team, you need enough offense that the opposition can't simply ignore you in favor of dealing with the legitimate threats, and once they've deal with the dangerous people they can pound on the hard targets at will.

In any case, the thread was melee vs range, not tough vs squishy.