MP - Annihilator from Death Duel with the Destroyers

I was thinking one day about why anyone would exile General Ar Torrester rather than just kill him.  I mean, if history has taught us anything, it's that people with skills and leadership qualities can be dangerous, even in exile.

Then it occurred to me:  Annihilator can put on a spacesuit, climb aboard an assault shuttle with a crack strike squad, then simple disintegrate holes in enemy spaceships - he can literally destroy an enemy armada by venting them into space.

Annihilator could wipe out an enemy spacefleet by himself.

That is the kind of weapon that gets put into a box and kept track of, because it is too valuable to destroy, and Heaven forbid, someone would find a way to use it again some day.

Mighty Protectors

Strength 16 (Carrying Capacity 312 lbs., Basic HTH d6+1)
Endurance 11 (Save 10, Heal 1.0)
Agility 32 (Save 14)
Intelligence 13 (Save 11)
Cool 17 (Save 11, Initiative d6+1)

Hit Points 24
Power 72
Physical Defense 6
Mental Defense 3
Move 24 (see below)
Inventing Points 7
Wealth d8+1
Luck 10-
Weight 220 lbs.
Total Cost 89 + 216 - 20 = 285

Abilities

• Disintegration: A) Disintegration Ray, Damage 2d10, Range 16”, PR=2 (20 CP)
• Durability: Hit Points +7 (7 CP)
• Experience Levels: Attack +2, Defense +2, Skills +2 (20 CP)
• Flight: Acceleration 64, Top Speed 256 (87 MPH, or 174 MPH with Push) (20), Modifiers: Fast Acceleration (+5), Hyper-Flight (Warp 10) (+10) (35 CP)
• Force Field: A) Personal Force Field (Force Bubble), Protection Kinetic 6, Energy 6, Biochemical 6, Entropy 6, PR=16 (20), Modifiers: Area Effect (7” dia., Adjustable, Perimeter) (+7.5), Range (EN”) (+10) (37.5 CP)
• Heightened Agility: AG +18 (included above)
• Heightened Attack: Damage +4 all attacks (17.5 CP)
• Heightened Initiative: Init +4 (10 CP)
• Knowledge: Native Language (Native, Literate), English Language (Fluent, Literate) (4 CP)
• Power Blast: Damage 2d10, Range 14”, PR=1 (20 CP)
• Regeneration: Heal 1 Hit Point per round of rest (17.5), Modifiers: Unlimited (+5) (22.5 CP)
• Speed: Acceleration 24, Top Speed 48 (96 with Super Speed) (2.5), Modifiers: Fast Acceleration (+2.5) (5 CP)
• Super Speed: Add +1 turn per round, PR=2 per round (10 CP)
• Wealth: d8+1 Wealth roll (7.5 CP)

Gear
None


Weaknesses
Low Self-Control: Arrogant and ruthless; no compunction about killing  (Uncommon, Character Hook) (-7.5 CP)
Nemesis: Hunted or opposed by various factions on this backwater planet Earth, as well as worthy opponents back in Civilization (As powerful, Rare) (-7.5 CP)
Personal Problem: Works for Dr Armageddon (Rare) (-5 CP)



Combat Summary
Initiative: d6+4/d6+4 (avg 15/7)
Unarmed: Attack 19-, Damage d6+5 (avg 8)
Power Blast: Attack 19-, Damage 2d10+4 (avg 15)
Disintegration Ray: Attack 19-, Damage 2d10+4 (avg 15)

Living Legends

PHYS 16 (CON 22), REFL 22, DEFT 22, INTL 11, COOL 11, VITL 16, Mass 100 Kgs (d4 Mass effect), Fame 6

Multi-Power
a. Disintegration: 1d10 untyped (43), Range [12”] (+0), NRG Cost [1 per use] (-2), Multi-Power (-3) [25 CP]
b. Power Blast: 2d8-1 Energy [pure energy] (37), Range [12”] (+0), Multi-Power (-3) [25 CP]

Shield: 6 vs. Biochemical, Blunt Kinetic, Energy, High Temperature, Low Temperature, and Sharp Kinetic (7), Innate (+3) [10 CP]

Armor Generation: 5 vs. Biochemical, Blunt Kinetic, Electromagnetic, Energy, High Temperature, Low Temperature, and Sharp Kinetic (13), Area Effect [13" dia., shapes, perimeter] (+9), Brittle (-4), Range [12"] (+3) [38 CP]

Heightened PHYS: +6 (6), CON Only (-3) [4 CP]

Heightened Speed: +2 levels (34) [34 CP]

Speed Bonus: Ground move x2 (3), top speed and acceleration (+3). Acceleration 16”/turn, top speed 48”/round [4 CP]

Flight: Acceleration 20”/turn, top speed 288”/round (16) [16 CP]

Regeneration: 1 Hit Point per round of rest (8) [8 CP]

Skills
Leadership: (COOL/G), +2 levels, d10 effect (5) [5 CP]
Shield: (DEFT/G), +0 levels, d10 effect
Tactics: (INTL/S), Interstellar Space, +2 levels, d8 effect (5) [5 CP]
Weapon: (DEFT/G), Disintegration and Power Blast, +1 level, d12 effect (2) (+3) [3 CP]

Weaknesses
Low Self-Control: Arrogant and ruthless; no compunction about killing  (Uncommon, Character Hook)
Nemesis: Hunted or opposed by various factions on this backwater planet Earth, as well as worthy opponents back in Civilization (As powerful, Rare)
Personal Problem: Works for Dr Armageddon (Rare)

Villains and Vigilantes

Identity: Zorbac Ar Torrester
Side: Destroyers
Sex: Male
Experience: 15,699
Level: 5
Age: 104
Training: end.

Powers:

1. Flight: 176 miles per hour or 774" per turn, plus Hyper-flight.
2. Power Blast: Range 14". Damage 1d20. Power cost 1 per attack.
3. Heightened Agility: +18
4. Speed Bonus: +86" per turn to ground movement.
5. Force Field: Defensive screen and force bubble use only.
6. Regeneration
7. Disintegration Ray: Range 16". Damage 1d20. Power cost 2 per shot.

Weight: 220
Basic Hits: 5
Agility Mod.: -
Strength: 16
Endurance: 11
Agility: 32
Intelligence: 13
Charisma: 17
Reactions from: Good:-2 Evil:+2
Hit Mod. (1.4) ( 1 ) ( 3 . 1 ) ( 1 . 1 ) = 4.774
Hit Points (24)

Damage Mod.: +4
Heal.Rate: 1.25 per day or turn
Accuracy: +5
Power (72)
Carrying Capacity: 572
Basic Hth. Damage: 1d8
Movement Rates: 145"/774" flying
Det. Hidden: 10%
Det. Danger: 14%
Inventing Points: 6.5
Inventing (39%)

Boilerplate

Mighty Protectors and the Monkey House Games logo are trademarks owned by Monkey House Games, ©2017 Monkey House Games. All rights reserved. Made in the U.S.A.

Villains and Vigilantes, Living Legends and the Monkey House Games logo are trademarks owned by Monkey House Games, ©2010 Monkey House Games. All rights reserved. Made in the U.S.A.

Unofficial Living Legends Companion written by Patric L. Rogers, Copyright © 2010-2017 by Monkey House Games. All rights reserved.  (Note: For compatibility reasons, and because Jeff Dee asked me to, I used only the core Living Legends rules on this character, and not any of the optional rules I developed in the Companion, e.g. skill cost saving rules.  I did the original LL hack back in 2011.)

Death Duel with the Destroyers written by Bill Willingham, published by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

Converting Mighty Protectors to Marvel Superheroes Advanced Set and vice versa

Converting Mighty Protectors to Marvel Superheroes Advanced Set and vice versa.

(see also FASERIP, and scroll down to the "linked systems" section)

MSH has power ranks that are neither linear, nor geometric, in progression, but do a good job of capturing the flavor of the source material.

MP has geometric progression, where essentially every 2.5 CP doubles the qualitative value, even while adding only +1 to the effect.

Now, this applied across the board. So, someone with IN 15 is twice as smart as someone with IN 12 and four times as smart as IN 9.

The translation between games gets a bit weirder when you realize in MSH +1 Column Shift increases success by +5%, and MP success increases +5% with either 2.5 CP or +6 to a BC. (Unless it's Knowledge, where +15% to a Specialization is 2.5 CP, and +15% to a Skill Background is 5 CP…)

(Image poached from Brian Adam's MP Writeups Blog)

Anyway, let's just use the BC Table to make it all work

MSH Rank	Strength Range	MP BC Range	MSH Examples
Feeble		7 or less
Poor		6-8	Hulk’s Agility
Typical		9-12
Good	300 to 600 lbs	13-16	Talented Athlete
Excellent	600 to 1200 lbs	17-19	Thor’s Agility, Dodgeball Champion, Tough Mudder Endurance Champion
Remarkable	1200 lbs to 2 tons	20-25	Captain America’s Endurance
Incredible	3 tons to 20 tons	26-34	Olympic Gymnast, Captain America’s Agility
Amazing	21 tons to 60 tons	35-39	Spiderman’s Agility
Monstrous	61 to 100 tons	40-41	Hulk’s Endurance
Unearthly	100 tons to 200 tons	42-44	Thor’s Endurance
Shift-X	200 tons to 400 tons	45-47
Shift-Y	400 tons to 800 tons	48-50
Shift-Z	800 tons +	51+

Strictly speaking, I exaggerated the Unearthly and higher range, because otherwise the geometric progression of MP literally collapses it to “ST +1,” instead of a range.

Another quirk of MP is that while the qualitative value doubles, the quantitative value, that is the effective die roll, only increases by 1.

This means you get a weird effect, such as we all know the Hulk can smash thru battleship armor without breaking a sweat (after all, the Hulk’s Strength is Unearthly, while Super-Heavy Battleship Artillery, which can destroy a battleship, is “merely” Amazing), but in MP this equates to approximately +3 damage, which given that common, everyday steel has an SR of 11, means that in MP the Hulk isn’t guaranteed to breach a bank vault door, let alone destroy a battleship with one punch.

You can see where Brian Adams ran afoul of this by looking at his various MP adaptations of Marvel characters. Brian made the reasonable design decision to give characters like the Hulk and Iron Man enough raw power that they can reliably destroy most targets (in MSH, Iron Man’s Repulsors exceed Super-Heavy Artillery in damage potential, and still don't match the Hulk’s Strength without overload mode), but this also means that effectively, in MP, Iron Man’s Repulsors have the “in world” equivalent power of the Death Star for power output (given geometric progression).

MP is not unique to this problem. It certainly goes back to the early days of gaming, where VnV 2e had the same geometric progression, but the dice scaled differently. In VnV 2e, it felt a little less weird where Behemoth did 6d10 damage, and Mountain Man - 8× stronger than Behemoth - did 9d10, or effectively +16 damage. I mean, yeah, of course 8× stronger is +16 damage!

Jump to MP, and 8× stronger is +3 damage. Erk.

(Hero System, at least thru 5e, when I stopped playing, had its similar problem where ×2 in-game power resulted in +1d6 Stun, +1 Body, which doesn't feel like ×2, either.)

(model Spiff Zaya)

Basically, just don't think about it too hard :)

Now, tangentially, MP does have a mechanic to help retain the feel of both “reasonable power,” AND “reliable damage,” i.e. Heightened Attack (and its cousins Natural Weaponry and Weakness Detection).

For my build of the Hulk, I would do something like this:

• Strength 42
• Natural Weaponry Attack +4, Damage +10

This gives him an average damage of 23 points, which is a 16-foot deep hole in an “average” steel wall, with one punch.

So, there you go. Some notes on converting from Mighty Protectors to Marvel Superheroes and back again.

(model unknown)

(MP Android Body)

MP - Water Walking

This is one of those "just thinking out loud" kind of blog posts, and sharing to see what you think.  My daughter is 5, so I've seen a lot of episodes of PJ Masks lately. One of Gecko's powers is "Super Lizard Water Running."

The ability to run, walk, or stand on water gets modeled in lots of different ways. Some games, like Champions, modeled it as a modifier to Flight, while others, like Mutants and Masterminds, as a modifier to Super Speed. And GURPS, which pretty much has a power for everything, just has a power for walking on water.

Might Protectors buries "Water Walking" under the Speed ability, as a modifier.

This creates a bit of an odd duck, where for 2.5 CP a character can buy:

Speed: Acceleration 16, Top Speed 16 (-5), Modifiers: Fast Acceleration (×2) (5), Water Running (+2.5)
Final Cost: 2.5 CP

Now this is an "odd duck" for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn't always make sense to modify a character's top speed, especially since highly agile (like the basilisk lizard) or strong characters (like Gecko), might normally be able to move faster than 16.

Second, it's a toss-up if it's implied the character has to keep moving the whole time, or implied that "Water Running" also includes "Water Standing."

I think the solution is a side-step called "Physical Ability: Water Walking."

Physical Ability (Water Walking): The character can move across the surface of water, as if it were dry land. This includes the ability to stand, walk or run. The character can voluntarily sink at any time. Cost (2.5 CP)

This is essentially identical to the Speed Ability Modifier.

I considered a more fine-grained split, like "can move across water as long as doesn't stop moving" for (+2.5 CP) and "can stand on water" for (+2.5 CP). I don't think this is inconsistent with Mighty Protectors, overall.

However, the precedent of "multi-medium movement mode" has been established under both Flight and Speed, where the power can also be used underwater for (+5 CP). With the two Modifiers under Speed, the precedent already written, making "can stand on water" cost extra is both overkill and excessive hair-splitting.

For a character like Gecko, modeled after lizards, such as the water-running "Jesus lizard," the player and GM can decide as a SFX that he has to keep moving and can't stand still, but there isn't any CP benefit to it.

Similarly, I have a gadgeteer, written up in Heroes Unlimited (of all things) (Mighty Protectors hack in development), who made boots that allow her to stand and walk slowly on water, but running results in her breaking the fragile water tension, and sinking.

Following that same precedent, however, I'm choosing to interpret "Speed usable for running on land and swimming in water" does not automatically confer water walking. The ability to move ones limbs quickly enough to produce rapid swimming speed isn't the same as being able to walk on water.

So, what do you think?