Originally Posted by
Sharpandpointies
It has been a while - I'll see what I can remember. I imbalanced their stats to prioritize attack and defense skills over damage and toughness (heavily prioritize in the case of defense). Rather than using strength for damage, I gave them a 'Strike' power with autofire (autofire adds to the damage with better hit rolls, simulating more attacks of the 'burst' hitting...in this character's case, it simulated 'a higher attack roll means more accurately hitting weaker areas' to add to the damage, another case of using one power to simulate something different) and made it a multi-power, allowing them to stun, nauseate, and weaken people, depending on what they wanted (comic book pressure points, hits to vital areas, that kind of thing) - autofire in that case added to the number people had to save against in order to resist the effect. A little extra movement, for running speed. Ridiculous physical skills (stealth, acrobatics, the like - truly comic book levels of these). An extra sense - air pressure sensing, precise and targeting, to allow them to recognize details and also fight using air pressure alone (if blinded).
The capper was a 'full concealment' power, against all senses. However, it had the modifiers 'Only in combat, has no visible effect (haha), and doesn't work against people with Superspeed'. There were a couple of other modifiers, I'd need to look them up. Essentially it gave the character the benefit of 'Full Concealment' (by the rules) without rendering them invisible, inaudible, or anything else like that. They were there, they were visible, you could see/hear/smell/sense them, but by the RULES they were considered to have Full Concealment...which meant in combat, they received the benefit of every attack that 'hits' having a 50/50 chance of then automatically missing. This was the character's 'Sense Flaws in attacks' ability - basically, even if someone managed to hit them with their ridiculous defense, there would then be a second roll with a 50/50 chance of negating the attack. The weakness against fast characters represented the idea that while they might see the flaw in the attack, they simply wouldn't be quick enough to capitalize against it. There was one sense it was weak against, as well - mental senses (mind reading).
Also, the character had immunity: fear (they were somewhat...unbalanced, mentally, and not feeling any fear was part of that) and an immunity to having their powers messed around with by people who had 'power control' (they were 'unpowered', really - all of the character's 'powers' were really representing ridiculous skills and trained or innate 'natural' abilities to do things). They had numerous weakness, as well, which made them fun.
Feats can make for a ridiculous martial artist in-game. This character had feats to swap points between attack, defend, damage, back and forth if need be, allowing them tactical choices in a fight. Feats to improve their initiative. Feats to allow them to just keep hitting people as long as they KO'ed a target and their next target was within 5' (making for an impressive kind of 'Street Level Martial Artist Blitzes Normals' thing in a single round - the character once hit a group of 12 thugs standing around 3 cars and KO'ed every one of them in a round, made for a fun description in my PbP post). Another pair of feats were 'ultimate skill: tactics' and 'master plan' to simulate seeing flaws in plans and devising counter-tactics.
The character's big weakness was that they were awfully fragile compared to other heroes. If a superstrong character managed to hit them, they were pretty much done - likely injured or 'crippled' (or the equivalent), stunned, etc (they could weather the strikes of a normal human, though with a chance of injury, and a strong human would start to stack up damage against them pretty quickly). And they could get telepathically fried, or whathaveyou. Area attacks worked decently. Massively durable characters would laugh at them (and did, though they took that in stride, finding it funny as well), though they managed to KO one once by hitting them over and over with stunning attacks until the dude failed two saves in a row and went from Stunned to KO. But they were sneaky (like, Batman-sneaky), they were solid in a fight, they were fast, and due to their personality, hilarious to play. Great searching skills and senses as well. Not group leader or most powerful, but they were a solid part of the team, helping in lots of ways.
M&M doesn't do too badly at doing martial arts (in this case, 'better hand to hand fighting'). It doesn't have specific martial art RULES, but the Feat system and the powers allows for simulation of all kinds of hilarity, including grappling, breaking people's bones and such(damage that is lethal and/or has extra effects over and above 'damage', like weakening people for a long period), debilitating strikes, adaptability, etc, etc.