The problem I refer to is specific to a supers campaign, that a "brick" with enough strength and toughness to take on a main battle tank is hellaciously expensive, whereas a character with another concept can pose an existential threat to governments on far fewer points. While ST and DR may be fairly costed in other genres, a government that has lots of tanks is less worried about the human equivalent than they are about the guy who can mind control the leader, replace him by shapeshifting, steal official secrets with telepathy, predict the stock market, locate submarines anywhere in the world, create fissionables out of thin air, wipe out a city with repeated application of a 1HP wide-area malediction, or open a gate through which an army can pour into the capital for a decapitation strike.
There are ways to build a brick on the cheap, but they're clunky, for instance start with Insubstantial and use limitations to strip away everything except the part where he can only be harmed by attacks with Affects Insubstantial. Or Affliction (ST bonus, Cumulative, Cosmic No Roll, Enhanced Duration, Reflexive, Self Only); the guy uses this ability on himself for free, continuously, so multiply the bonus by duration in seconds and that's the net benefit. Not sure if it's allowed, but applied to anything but ST for a brick in a comics genre, it's very broken. With Altered Time Rate, you get a guy who can live his whole life while the universe blinks.
The obvious thing to do seems to be changing the cost, to make a brick posible on the 500pt I allow for all those other scary people. Tentatively using an exponential formula, that's just as clunky: Pay for level X, and get level Y, where for X greater than 25,
Y = (X-25)^2/2+25
(round up), otherwise Y =X.
That means things are normal in the human range and a bit beyoond, but after 25, you get 26, 27, 30, 33, 38, 43, 50, 57, and so forth. One thing I like about it is that you can buy no level of ST where damage fails to increase over the previous level. Another thing I like about it is that with creative limitations, you can manage a kiloton lift (buy ST 72, get ST 1130) with a 500pt character and have something left for being tougher, too: Enough DR to stop small arms, Diffuse to limit damage from larger attacks (especially important against grab-n-smash by another brick under Technical Grappling rules), and Damage Reduction against those area attacks that Diffuse doesn't stop. Yeah, it takes a thoroughly min-maxed design, but it's doable.
What I don't like about my method is that it's almost as clunky as the alternatives that I'm trying to avoid. Has anyone here come up with something more elegant?
Thanks,
GEF
There are ways to build a brick on the cheap, but they're clunky, for instance start with Insubstantial and use limitations to strip away everything except the part where he can only be harmed by attacks with Affects Insubstantial. Or Affliction (ST bonus, Cumulative, Cosmic No Roll, Enhanced Duration, Reflexive, Self Only); the guy uses this ability on himself for free, continuously, so multiply the bonus by duration in seconds and that's the net benefit. Not sure if it's allowed, but applied to anything but ST for a brick in a comics genre, it's very broken. With Altered Time Rate, you get a guy who can live his whole life while the universe blinks.
The obvious thing to do seems to be changing the cost, to make a brick posible on the 500pt I allow for all those other scary people. Tentatively using an exponential formula, that's just as clunky: Pay for level X, and get level Y, where for X greater than 25,
Y = (X-25)^2/2+25
(round up), otherwise Y =X.
That means things are normal in the human range and a bit beyoond, but after 25, you get 26, 27, 30, 33, 38, 43, 50, 57, and so forth. One thing I like about it is that you can buy no level of ST where damage fails to increase over the previous level. Another thing I like about it is that with creative limitations, you can manage a kiloton lift (buy ST 72, get ST 1130) with a 500pt character and have something left for being tougher, too: Enough DR to stop small arms, Diffuse to limit damage from larger attacks (especially important against grab-n-smash by another brick under Technical Grappling rules), and Damage Reduction against those area attacks that Diffuse doesn't stop. Yeah, it takes a thoroughly min-maxed design, but it's doable.
What I don't like about my method is that it's almost as clunky as the alternatives that I'm trying to avoid. Has anyone here come up with something more elegant?
Thanks,
GEF
Has anyone solved the brick problem?
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