Reflective Protection: Worth it?

[cochramd]

Recent lurker, first time poster. Skip to bottom of page for TL;DR version. I'm going to be playing a Juggernaut expy (hereafter referred to as 'the Indomitable') at school this year. Since the game is PL8, I decided that spending 80 points to be immune to all physical and energy damage was a bad idea. Instead, I bought absolutely no defense at all, gave myself a Dex Score of 1, didn't put any points into my Reflex save and put it all into Impervious Toughness. I gave him 5 ranks of Growth (further penalizing Defence) and 6 ranks of Density, and was able to accumulate a total of 17 Impervious Toughness(This may or may not have been a terrible idea on my part, but bear with me)

As it stands, the build is complete, though it may undergo slight adjustments before game time. So I have begun to scrutinize what I have and plan how I will spend future power points. (Although my GM prefers to hand out a fair portion of our power points as things that he controls, to encourage roleplay over rollplay and to curb everyone's inner munchkin) One thing that I liked in Ultimate Power was the Reflective extra. However, I find that it has the same issues* as Impervious, with less of the benefits. This does not arise from Impervious making an attack futile and Reflective making it self-destructive; they are balanced in that regard. The issue stems from Impervious applying against all kinds of attacks and providing a handsome bonus to knockback while Reflective only protects against melee, ranged or one common descriptor.

Then there's the meta-game issue: The Indomitable is 10 feet tall, has 6 ranks in Density(which is Noticeable by default) and many of his other traits are Noticeable. He will definitely draw gunfire from mooks, but I doubt that many mooks would dare engage him in melee range given the choice, especially after they learn that bullets do nothing. In fact, some supers may adopt the same strategy. Which is fine, I guess. It's sort of like I got a lot of ranks in Fearsome Presence for free. Problem with this is that it makes Reflective(melee), which is what I want, less useful.

TL;DR: Between meta-gaming and mechanical benefit for point investment, is the Reflective extra really worthwhile? Additionally, am I correct in thinking that Reflection(melee) will wreck anything that has been used as a projectile weapon on me?

*Chiefly, the first 6-10 ranks are primarily to deal with minions and NPCs who haven't noticed how high your Impervious Toughness is. Most sensibly built NPCs of comparable PL will have a way to get around that level of Impervious, whether it's on their first strike or the second. To become invulnerable to most comparable supers requires heavier investment. This means that only the points you spent in the higher ranks count for anything in serious fights. There's also the issue that the GM can find a way around it without much trouble if he finds it too frustrating, but I suppose that's true of everything.

[FuzzyBoots]

First off, having a tradeoff greater than your PL is something most GMs would never let you get away with. +/- 5 or half-PL, whichever is lesser is generally where people draw their limits. For that matter, a number of people limit Impervious to PL so that characters who choose the attack side of the tradeoff have some chance of beating your Impervious (take, for example, the Martial Artist versus Battlesuit setup. Maximum damage of +10 with Power Attack versus Impervious 12).

As for Reflective being useless, I agree that someone who's metagaming will say "Hey, he's got Impervious 10, I'd better switch to a higher damage attack" but if all you get is "He shows no damage from your attack", you don't know if he made his toughness save or not. It's a trifle harder for the GM, because he has to act like he doesn't know the player stats when choosing NPC tactics. Personally, I think that Reflective is a bit limited by being tied directly to Impervious. I've occasionally played with it being equivalent to Strike (Aura, Limited to when Toughness save is made, Limited to common descriptor, Grants additional save [reflex]) on characters which comes out to the same cost as Reflective, but not tied to Impervious and thereby giving attackers a reason to keep taking pot shots in the hopes of breaking through the Reflective and/or dodging the return fire.

[kenseido]

Welcome to the boards.

So first thing I noticed is your Trade Off is pretty high at -8/+8. Generally, the rule is Trade Offs are limited to 1/2 PL, and even that requires GM approval. If your GM lets you have Toughess of 16 in a PL8 game, with Impervious, there is little that can hurt you. Also, Impervious Toughness can not be bought higher than Toughness even though it only protects you from attacks one rank lower than the Impervious.

Reflective seems like it would definitely be PL capped, since it does involve damage and no attack roll. No attack roll means no trade offs. I do know most people think Reflective protection is better than Deflect, cost-wise. But I think you need to really talk with your GM about this concept, because this character would be a game breaker.

[cochramd]

I've talked to the GM, he's fine with the level of Impervious. I'm hilariously vulnerable to Snares(at least until I break out of them) and Dazzles. I weigh 5 tons and have very poor balance. I am melee, but possess no movement powers. It's all balanced in his mind. He also says that the cap on Reflective is PL, though he's starting to be tempted to smack me.

The group agreed long ago that Impervious can be applied to the toughness bonus from CON (in fact, you can clearly see that the Paragon and Powerhouse archetypes have Impervious applied to their CON bonus) and that such Impervious is just as Innate as the CON it is applied to.

My concerns about the metagame are that while Impervious and Reflective themselves might not be Noticeable*, everything that contributes to the sheer magnitude of my Toughness score is. Impervious denies Autofire its advantage, which might also be noticed. Then there's the fact that Indomitable might not bother paying attention to whoever's firing at him.....of course, if they were that smart, they wouldn't minions.

*I do not know whether or not a power with the Noticeable drawback makes it noticeable what modifiers are applied to it. Also, I don't think it's possible to apply a drawback to Impervious and Reflective when they being applied to CON bonus. Which is something I would do, given the chance....

[UnkindMirror]

So first thing I noticed is your Trade Off is pretty high at -8/+8. Generally, the rule is Trade Offs are limited to 1/2 PL, and even that requires GM approval.

Just to be clear: this isn't a rule in that it's mentioned in the book somewhere.

Yes, it's generally a good idea to stay away from extreme trade-offs and many GMs have house-rules to that regard, but the 2e RAW doesn't say anything about the matter.

[Also, limiting trade-offs as a function of PL doesn't make much sense to me. A two-point trade-off changes the combat math exactly the same whether you're at PL 10 or PL 6. So I find it more appropriate to restrict trade-offs by a fixed number. Say, four.]

[FuzzyBoots]

It would probably make some sense to limit it by PL under a certain amount simply because the tradeoff feats don't allow you you tradeoff for more than you have (pre-Growth or Shrinking), meaning that prior to PL 5, allowing a fixed amount of initial tradeoff creates a potential inequity up to level of PL.

But yeah, this guy is in the extreme areas of tradeoff.

[Paragon]

It would probably make some sense to limit it by PL under a certain amount simply because the tradeoff feats don't allow you you tradeoff for more than you have (pre-Growth or Shrinking), meaning that prior to PL 5, allowing a fixed amount of initial tradeoff creates a potential inequity up to level of PL.

But yeah, this guy is in the extreme areas of tradeoff.

I'd be more bothered by that if I thought it was sensible playing M&M at a PL than low. At that point your combat capabilities at least will be weaker than many modern soldiers.