Knockback houserule

[Zaran]

I'm a bit unfamilar with the rules. When you say add 15 to the damage for the DC does that mean you add 15 to the DC to resist ? So a DC 25 would be a DC 40?

[rstehwien]

MEGS is pretty much the poster child for "don't do this" with knockback, since it could easily knock a target back far enough that those without strong movement powers would never be in the combat again. There are some intrinsic problems with the kind of progressive movement system MEGS and M&M use here anyway, but this just makes it really bad.

(In the DCH1 game we ran, one of the PCs actually managed to knock a villain out to the orbit of Jupiter, because of tricks you could pull with 1e Magic Link).

Yes, my MEGS game had the "Hawkman Incident" during a demo. We all grabbed randomly a character card to do a team battle so everyone could see how the game worked before making characters (hero/villan orientation didn't matter for teams). One team had Black Adam, Hawkman, and a few others. Everyone chuckled at the person who had Hawkman.

On Hawkman's first action he flew up to Superman and attacked figuring he would end his misery soon. Hawkman then rolled an astronomical number of doubles and knocked Superman out of the solar system. After the stunned silence, someone on Superman's team said "Screw Black Adam... everyone take down Hawkman!" . Hawkman didn't last long after the laughter died out.

[rstehwien]

I'm a bit unfamilar with the rules. When you say add 15 to the damage for the DC does that mean you add 15 to the DC to resist ? So a DC 25 would be a DC 40?

Intention is to add 15 to the Rank... so the DC is the same as the damage DC.

[rstehwien]

Hey, take this and combine it with Legend's houserule for Ranked Range Effects and we'd finally be getting some GREAT use out of that handy Ranks and Measures table at the beginning of DCA!!!

Do you have a link for that? I've been trying to find that (saw a few posts about using the measures table for range).

[rstehwien]

After watching several epic JLA and Avengers battles on the recent cartoons, I've thought of just allowing people to declare intention to knockback and take a -2 to hit and add an "Improved Knockback" advantage that allows you to ignore the penalty. Then have crits always do knockback when appropriate for the descriptor.

The battles in cartoons/comics have knockback happen all the time and Paragon's rules don't cause crazy "knock people off the planet" knockback. For that you could make a Move Object based KB that uses the throwing range.

Thanks again Paragon.

[badpenny]

I love the rule, but questions:

Why no damage from knockback impact if Push does/can do damage? If you're clobbered by a powerhouse and you go flying 250 feet into a brick wall, shouldn't that require a Toughness check when you smack into the wall? Again, if Push can do damage....

Second, What about Parry in terms of making the KB resistance check? In HTH combat, it makes more sense for a martial artist to slip the powerhouse's punch then to dodge it, and isn't that why the defenses are split: Parry for Close and Dodge for ranged?

I've missed knockback in 3e!

[rstehwien]

Why no damage from knockback impact if Push does/can do damage? If you're clobbered by a powerhouse and you go flying 250 feet into a brick wall, shouldn't that require a Toughness check when you smack into the wall? Again, if Push can do damage....

I think because you already took damage from the attack and it may not be desirable to have knockback double damage. Push on the other hand didn't do damage unless they hit something.

Second, What about Parry in terms of making the KB resistance check? In HTH combat, it makes more sense for a martial artist to slip the powerhouse's punch then to dodge it, and isn't that why the defenses are split: Parry for Close and Dodge for ranged?

Makes sense.

I've missed knockback in 3e!

I did too as the "its a complication" just didn't work for me... otherwise those JLA battles I've watched were handing out hero points each attack. Also "its a complication" isn't well explained for the villains suffering complications at all.

[Unbeliever]

We allow you to substitute Knockback for a Daze result. I can post the full rules if you like. It's been pretty simple and straightforward, though I often forget about it.

[Paragon]

I love the rule, but questions:

Why no damage from knockback impact if Push does/can do damage? If you're clobbered by a powerhouse and you go flying 250 feet into a brick wall, shouldn't that require a Toughness check when you smack into the wall? Again, if Push can do damage....

Push doesn't double-dip. There are serious balance issue with doing damage to people twice in one attack, and its problematic in all the few places it occurs. I thought not making it a regular feature of getting a crit was probably a good idea.

Second, What about Parry in terms of making the KB resistance check? In HTH combat, it makes more sense for a martial artist to slip the powerhouse's punch then to dodge it, and isn't that why the defenses are split: Parry for Close and Dodge for ranged?

I've missed knockback in 3e!

That was based less on slipping the attack than rolling with it, and the fact M&M doesn't use Parry for a number of other areas where it'd normally be expected to be the case. For example, if you have a melee based area attack, you still resist with Dodge, not Parry, and Grapple resistance is based on Dodge, not parry. I certainly see no harm in substituting Parry for most of those (except that, if there's going to be a difference either way, I expect it to be Parry being lower, since virtually no one wants a Dodge lower than their PL permits, and people who are already vulnerable to melee attacks because they stinted a bit on Parry didn't seem to need to be double-smacked).

[Paragon]

I did too as the "its a complication" just didn't work for me... otherwise those JLA battles I've watched were handing out hero points each attack. Also "its a complication" isn't well explained for the villains suffering complications at all.

I found it pretty unsatisfactory too, but I always found the 2e version a little too frequent, and making a separate roll every attack struck me as a bit tiresome.

[gamemaster72]

I just came across this topic and I really like the ideas being presented here...

:
I love the rule, but questions:

Why no damage from knockback impact if Push does/can do damage? If you're clobbered by a powerhouse and you go flying 250 feet into a brick wall, shouldn't that require a Toughness check when you smack into the wall? Again, if Push can do damage....

Push doesn't double-dip. There are serious balance issue with doing damage to people twice in one attack, and its problematic in all the few places it occurs. I thought not making it a regular feature of getting a crit was probably a good idea.

I also had the same question, but then I realized that the extra 5 damage that come from the crit could also be described as extra damage from crashing.

wrote:
Also, look at the flip side, if based on crits, then PCs who want to do knockback more frequently will see the way to do that is by buying more increased critical, which may not be particularly suited to their character design, but would be hard to pinpoint and reject as a GM. But it will be odd to have a bunch of increased critical bricks running around, which this rule would promote.

That would be why I included the Improved Knockback Advantage; it does the same thing at increased efficiency if all you want is the knockback. So honestly, there's no reason to take the Increased Crit if that's all you want.

I don't think I like the idea of new advantages, for the simple reason that if they exist, some of the established DC Heroes *should probably have them, and then I have to go through the book and change character sheets.

To solve the problem mentioned by slaughter, you could just remove this from the crit rolls completely, and just rule thatif a character rolls a 20 on their damage attack, they have a chance to do knockback. If you don't feel that's often enough for your game, you could lower that number anywhere from 16-19 (I'd probably choose 17 or 18) so all characters would have the same chance of causing knockback, regardless of how many ranks for Improved Crit they have. Using this idea, you could still incorporate the same Improved Knockback Advantage that Paragon described; Improved Critical would have no effect on this roll (since, as Slaughter pointed out, Improved Critical is generally meant to inflict more damage, thought that doesn't necessarily imply more force). This is an option I'm leaning toward.

Instead of a normal attack, a person can attempt a Push: a Push takes a -2 on the attack roll, and uses the attacker's Strength to attempt knockback as indicated above with no need for a critical hit. An Advantage called Improved Push will eliminate the -2 hit penalty.
Unlike the case with normal knockback, a push can do damage to the target if he hits an obstacle.

Just a quick question on this one. How do you treat damage to the character from being pushed. Is damage equal to the strength of the attacker? The toughness of the object hit? The Knockback damage rank? And how do you handle those weird situations like being pushed into glass, spikes or other materials that would cause damage on touch?

We allow you to substitute Knockback for a Daze result. I can post the full rules if you like. It's been pretty simple and straightforward, though I often forget about it.

That sounds interesting and I like this idea too because of it's simplicity. I'd be interested in hearing more about this rule also.

[danelsan]

so, what you guys think of the Knockback rules presented in the recently released Gamemaster's Guide?

[rstehwien]

so, what you guys think of the Knockback rules presented in the recently released Gamemaster's Guide?

meh

I prefer Paragon's and will continue to use it. Also had nothing for pushes and such. Knockback, pushes, and the move object (only to move things away) have been one of the weakest parts of 3E for me and continue to be so. I run my fights like battles you see on superhero cartoons (JL and Avengers mostly) and people are always being knocked around, thrown, etc.

[danelsan]

so, what you guys think of the Knockback rules presented in the recently released Gamemaster's Guide?

meh

I prefer Paragon's and will continue to use it. Also had nothing for pushes and such. Knockback, pushes, and the move object (only to move things away) have been one of the weakest parts of 3E for me and continue to be so. I run my fights like battles you see on superhero cartoons (JL and Avengers mostly) and people are always being knocked around, thrown, etc.

Just to make sure people new to the game don't get any wrong impressions, I feel the need to point out that the knockback rules for 3rd edition are very similar to the ones for 2nd edition

[Paragon]

so, what you guys think of the Knockback rules presented in the recently released Gamemaster's Guide?

meh

I prefer Paragon's and will continue to use it. Also had nothing for pushes and such. Knockback, pushes, and the move object (only to move things away) have been one of the weakest parts of 3E for me and continue to be so. I run my fights like battles you see on superhero cartoons (JL and Avengers mostly) and people are always being knocked around, thrown, etc.

Just to make sure people new to the game don't get any wrong impressions, I feel the need to point out that the knockback rules for 3rd edition are very similar to the ones for 2nd edition

Just a note: I never found those entirely satisfactory on a number of levels, either. That's why I mentioned you could substitute these in 2e if you wanted, too.