In looking over the various defensive maneuvers one can employ in this game, a close examination of the Universal Table shows Dodge to be pretty weak. The Dodging character can at best gain a result which reduces an opponent's FEAT roll by -6CS. That sounds good - until you realize that even someone shifted to Shift 0 still manages to hit the Dodging character on a roll of 66 or better. Am I missing something essential here, or is this maneuver rather lame?

On the other hand, if the GM chooses to invoke the "Impossible FEATs" optional rule, this maneuver becomes a whole lot better. Does the optional rule apply to this? I'm curious to hear other people's take on this.

Those modifiers are in addition to the other possible column shift modifiers (range, size, speed if target is moving, environmental conditions, etc.)

Also, certain attacks like machine gun and laser / light speed energy projectiles require prerequisite levels of Agility (plus modifiers, if any) to even attempt to dodge, and the impossible FEATs rules make those work even better. For example, it would take someone with Incredible Agility (natural or with modifiers added) to dodge machine gun fire, and the feat result must be Yellow. Red for Remarkable. Excellent or below Agility can't even attempt to dodge machine fire (hopefully the shooter sucks)

Then battle effects (color) take over. Shifted to Shift Zero makes any ranged attack miss (white) 65% of the time. The difficulty of the dodge and the skill of the attacker scales against each other dodging (if successful) adds to the difficulty of the shot along with the conditional modifiers.

Someone who can bullseye a dodging tiny Ant-Man riding on the roof of a car traveling 60 miles per hour from a tenth of a mile away in the dark probably has Unearthly or greater Agility

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Dead Sidekick
Someone who can bullseye a dodging tiny Ant-Man riding on the roof of a car traveling 60 miles per hour from a tenth of a mile away in the dark probably has Unearthly or greater Agility winking smiley

Agreed. However, the Advanced Player's Book states (pg. 15) "No FEAT may be shifted to the left below Shift 0 or to the right above Shift Z." That means that Willie Lumpkin wearing a blindfold and staggering drunk can still hit Ant Man in the above scenario 35% of the time. Unless the GM chooses to invoke the Impossible FEAT rule, of course.

I'm not trying to be nit-picky here - just trying to figure how folks like Spider-Man, Cap, Daredevil, Black Widow (etc.) manage not to get killed regularly by untrained mooks in a routine fight. With the rules as written (unless I'm missing something fundamental), anybody can score a basic (green) hit against anyone else - regardless of the ludicrousness of the situation - 35% of the time. And that seems a bit...unlikely to me.

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Descartes Demon
I'm not trying to be nit-picky here - just trying to figure how folks like Spider-Man, Cap, Daredevil, Black Widow (etc.) manage not to get killed regularly by untrained mooks in a routine fight. With the rules as written (unless I'm missing something fundamental), anybody can score a basic (green) hit against anyone else - regardless of the ludicrousness of the situation - 35% of the time. And that seems a bit...unlikely to me.

Cap hides behind his shield. There is no FEAT roll required for that.

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Dead Sidekick
Also, certain attacks like machine gun and laser / light speed energy projectiles require prerequisite levels of Agility (plus modifiers, if any) to even attempt to dodge, and the impossible FEATs rules make those work even better. For example, it would take someone with Incredible Agility (natural or with modifiers added) to dodge machine gun fire, and the feat result must be Yellow. Red for Remarkable. Excellent or below Agility can't even attempt to dodge machine fire (hopefully the shooter sucks)

I know some people won't like this, but I allow anyone to make a Dodge check --regardless of Agility rank-- for even attacks like machine gun fire and lasers. Moving targets are harder to hit than stationary ones. Lower Agility means lower chances for success and much lower chances for anything but minimal success. Most likely success will be a Green FEAT, which means the shooter is going to be at -2CS which will only reduce their accuracy by 10%, but it might be the difference between a Green or a Yellow FEAT.

I agree on all parts, Descartes Demon .

It does have some effectiveness vs large numbers of mooks (be they crooks, soldiers, terrorists or even drones or robots; it's all relative), however.

As an alternative, you can use what appears to me to be a secondary rule idea about the matter in given feat intensities to "dodge" (which I suggest treating as an evade/negate attack entirely effect using agility). Deadsidekick mentions the intensities, but those make NO sense for the dodge presented in the (advanced?) rules, which is simply moving in zig zags & so forth.

And yes, FASERIP needs the GM to make up house rules or else just override the rules in plenty of cases; sometimes in shifts below zero (or CL1000), sometimes about life/death (aunt may CANNOT be instantly killed by even a 100 megaton nuclear bomb at ground 0, and she can survive attacks of such potency fairly often). Great game systems still have errors; them being so blaring as they are for FASERIP is a good thing, it makes them obvious & easily dispensed with, as opposed to infinite, but genuine, arguments often found in some games.

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GenghisDon
And yes, FASERIP needs the GM to make up house rules or else just override the rules in plenty of cases; sometimes in shifts below zero (or CL1000), sometimes about life/death (aunt may CANNOT be instantly killed by even a 100 megaton nuclear bomb at ground 0, and she can survive attacks of such potency fairly often). Great game systems still have errors; them being so blaring as they are for FASERIP is a good thing, it makes them obvious & easily dispensed with, as opposed to infinite, but genuine, arguments often found in some games.

Unless Aunt May is being used as a player character, Aunt May dies instantly. If Aunt May is being used as a player character... then I have to wonder what kind of deranged mind is leading her into ground zero of a 100 megaton nuclear bomb blast.

probably doc oc

she's merely the example though; it's sometimes too hard to die/be killed in the game.

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GenghisDon
probably doc oc

she's merely the example though; it's sometimes too hard to die/be killed in the game.

I meant what kind of deranged mind as in player mind who would use her as a PC in a scenario where she ends up at ground zero of a nuclear blast. As an NPC, I wouldn't even give her rolls under the rules --just dead old lady time. But a player character should always have a chance, so I'd allow the appropriate FEAT rolls as indicated under the rules to give her a slim but still possible chance to survive. But again, what kind of deranged mind...?

uh, most villains?

NPCs will often be placed in deadly peril, and it makes no difference in the rules if they go down to an excellent attack or a shift Z one; they get an end. roll, which is pretty decent odds, really. One can look at it as a feature, to give players more time to handle such things, but it still comes across oddly in play; and even more so if the players start to metagame/just take the rules into account ("well ,we have at last 2 rounds before we have to save Johnny & Jane bystander")

you focused in on the SH Z example, but that's just the extreme/absurd case, it's a rule issue plain & simple.

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GenghisDon
uh, most villains?

Unless you're referring to players as villains, I think you're missing the joke.

yep, we have gone right past each other

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GenghisDon
yep, we have gone right past each other

I was asking what kind of player would play Aunt May as a PC and take her into a situation where she is at ground zero of nuclear blast.

But also, even in the context of NPC actions in the story, most villains probably would not guide an elderly lady into that situation... maybe a handful of sadists and nihilists would, but most would consider her too insignificant or possibly not be looking to inflict that kind of harm on the elderly without some kind of excuse beyond "I'm evil, let's do that."

we are still going right past each other...does it actually matter if it is ANY human being? Soldiers, Olympic athletes, politicians, Wall street financiers, grocery clerks, grade school children, retirement home senior citizens, mobsters, nurses, nuns, ironworkers, lumberjacks, heck, even archeologists at ground zero of nuclear blast.

They all have pretty good odds to survive in the game, rather than be shadows on a wall, at best.

If you play Spider-Man or Captain America or some other hero and you're at ground zero, I'd have to assume that you're guiding them to heroic act like stopping the bomb or rescuing someone else who might be there. Aunt May... not so much the heroic type. I wouldn't call her bad by any stretch, but I wouldn't expect her to run into a burning building or to jump in front of a bullet to save someone else. Being at ground zero with Aunt May as your player character is just reckless endangerment of a sweet old lady.

ok, you house rule NPCs to use other rules or whatnot. Still a problem for cap or spidey but I hear you

I agree that Dodge sucks in Marvel.

Spider-Man has always been shown to dodge bullets, blades, etc., often many at a time. With RAW in Marvel, if you throw three mooks at him he will probably get hit every round by at least one of them, even if they close their eyes and shoot in a random direction, but keep reading....

I think the over-arching problem is Marvel combat arose from the D&D mindset. Grubb and others focused a ton on combat in their game design because that's what you did in those days. But what was lost in translation was the combat rules were meant to be abstract, not a model of real-world, or even comic-world, combat.

What's that mean to this discussion? We can't literally translate actions and results to cuts, bruises, and broken bones.

A character's health does not really translate into how many times you can hit them with a punch before you knock them out. The health score is based on FASE. One's skill in Fighting, one's ability to dodge blows, one's ability to "own" the battlefield with your Strength, and your stamina and raw toughness (Endurance) are all factors.

So, when a mook shoots at you and scores "a hit", it should not be literally translated into blood on the ground and a hole through your gut. It's more that you DID dodge (health points from Agility), but the act of dodging wore you out a bit and you simply cannot do it all day. Maybe the mook punched you and you parried it, but that also took energy and maybe bruised your arms up a bit.

That's what Health truly represents: that unique combination of skill, raw ability, and raw toughness. This sum of stuff allows you to endure more action and combat than the normal man. It doesn't always mean you can take 100 bullets in the chest without stopping. And sooner or later you are just too worn out to keep parrying, ducking, bobbing, etc, and that one shot lands that knocks you out!

Thinking of the combat as abstract and not a realistic blow-by-blow account will help the rules make more sense. Grubb should have done a better job of describing this in the rules, but again, I think this was understood int he halls of TSR at the time, and at other publishers as well.

It's taken me along time to realize this, hope this helps here.

Aunt May gets nuked lol. Okay... Health depleted, Endurance check for rank loss every round she's unconscious and burning in a flaming radioactive crater... She dies six seconds later...

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Thrudjelmer

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Dead Sidekick
Also, certain attacks like machine gun and laser / light speed energy projectiles require prerequisite levels of Agility (plus modifiers, if any) to even attempt to dodge, and the impossible FEATs rules make those work even better. For example, it would take someone with Incredible Agility (natural or with modifiers added) to dodge machine gun fire, and the feat result must be Yellow. Red for Remarkable. Excellent or below Agility can't even attempt to dodge machine fire (hopefully the shooter sucks)

I know some people won't like this, but I allow anyone to make a Dodge check --regardless of Agility rank-- for even attacks like machine gun fire and lasers. Moving targets are harder to hit than stationary ones. Lower Agility means lower chances for success and much lower chances for anything but minimal success. Most likely success will be a Green FEAT, which means the shooter is going to be at -2CS which will only reduce their accuracy by 10%, but it might be the difference between a Green or a Yellow FEAT.

I'm really interested in this ruling you do. I do something very similar where I use the color scheme as a sort of level of success in what we've termed as opposed checks and then the normal intensity feat rules in other ability checks. Like mind control normal rules, punching someone you get a dodge roll.

I've been playing FASERIP since 1984 and one notices through trial and error of a rule set what works or doesn't at ones rpg table.

Spiderman dodging thug gunfire was a problem. So I house ruled AGILITY could be used similarly to BLOCKING that took damage off the attack by -6, -4, -2 +1 to the PC'S agility rank. Like going with the blow to the extreme. I allow it for melee attacks also .

It allowed Spiderman ( or other high agility PC'S ) to " neutralize " the 6 points or 10 or 20 , 25 etc damage done by gun or ranged weapon fire.

so if Spiderman rolled a Green result with AMAZING 50 agility , -2 CS provided 30 points of protection to the attack.

Many judges I know allowed anything that drops the attack below Sift 0 was a miss. regardless of the roll.

thugs rolling a 66 on the dice and Spiderman rolling a RED -6cs to attack , I side with Spiderman.

Heck, some of the other issues in this thread I " fixed " ( my words , not law ) like negative health points and endurance checks

which also helped with the uselessness of PULLING ONES PUNCH in the game.

a lot of what my house rules did was to strengthen the game rules and the options possible but mechanically weak or pointless

I always ruled that Spider-Man's danger-sense worked as an automatic dodging, unless the player specifically overrode the "reflex" to remain in danger. That way Spider-Man could always be dodging while taking other movement actions at full range at the same time, including declaring dodging atop the automatic dodging. This usually wasn't necessary because the Danger-Sense boosted initiative so Spidey could pre-empt his opponent's ranged attack actions.

Yes, Spider-Man can trash the X-Men by himself just like the original Secret Wars

Spidey was in an ALL-DEFENSE mode during that fight.

Cant dodge Xavier's mental powers!!

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G.A.W.
Spidey was in an ALL-DEFENSE mode during that fight.

Cant dodge Xavier's mental powers!!

But Xavier did have to come off the bench