Super Strength Mastery

[Player2]

I was thinking, the Ancillary power pools could be a good way to proliferate some powersets to expand on people's character concepts.  Most of the Ancillary stuff is some kind of energy... Dark, Fire, Psionic... Energy energy... but there are exceptions with some weapons like Scrappers' Weapons Mastery giving them shuriken for ranged attacks and Blasters getting Arsenal Mastery with armor and grenade and more ranged attacks.  But what's like the most iconic superhero ability?  Super strength.  No, not everyone has it, but it's almost a staple of comic book superheroes that even the heroes who aren't the Hulks and Supermen have it backing up something else.  Iron Man could be a Sentinel with his various ranged attacks plus defense/resists of his armor, but he's also a heavy hitter in the strength department.  Wonder Woman, as portrayed in the movies, could be more the Scrapper or Brute to Superman's Tanker, but she's often using a sword or her lasso and the feats of strength are just gravy.

 

So why not make a Super Strength Mastery ancillary pool?

 

For ranged ATs you could throw in Resist Physical Damage as a non-toggle armor similar to Arsenal Mastery.  Throw in a couple of the melee attacks, and depending on the AT other tools like Handclap and Footstomp for AOE soft controls... a mini Rage that's longer than Build Up but doesn't offer as much boost (or just flat out add Build Up where appropriate like Corruptors/Defenders have it with Energy Mastery).

 

The hardest part would be building on the existing content for melee ATs having Super Strength Mastery, since they mostly get ranged attacks and two of the four melee ATs already have access to Super Strength as a Primary or Secondary power set.  For ranged attacks, I say build on what we have.  Start a smaller version of Hurl by giving us a Throw Rock power that deals Smashing damage + chance for Disorient.  And maybe a bigger version of Hurl in there somewhere that's a targeted AOE.  Boosting damage on the melee as an extra power is probably never going to happen, and they already have their own damage mitigation powers... so look at other powers and maybe find a way to justify pulling off additional feats of super strength with them.

 

Scrappers have Petrifying Gaze in Dark Mastery... maybe Super Strength Mastery for scrappers could include a fear attack as the character uses one of the flex emotes or maybe that chest pounding one with Fighting pool's Tough to intimidate people with their muscles.  For Brutes and Tankers with their physique-enhancing bonus of Energy Mastery -> Physical Perfection and Psionic Mastery -> Harmonic Mind, there could be something like Tireless Strength that grants bonus to Regen and a hefty resistance to -DMG debuffs.

 

Super Strength all around!

[biostem]

Hmm... in checking the Wiki, it seems that body mastery, which, IMO is the equivalent of your proposed "Super Strength Mastery" for melee ATs, was recently renamed to "Energy Mastery".  I think Body Mastery was better, as it implied, well, a higher level of refinement and development of, well, one's own physical abilities, (which could also encompass martial arts, street justice, and so on).  For non-melee ATs, providing some less flashy/more internally developmental growth for the character, would certainly be a nice addition!

[TheMoneyMaker]

Mastery could be fun but I'd rather have SS primary/secondary for blasters with the blast set proliferated to corrs and defs, and a hybrid blast & melee assault set for doms.

 

the blast side could be primarily just hurling different sized rocks & other objects and bigger radius for hand clap. rage and crash like standard SS, too.

[Eiko-chan]

How does the Fighting pool not already represent this? 

[Player2]

14 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

How does the Fighting pool not already represent this? 

Fighting pool represents a measure of skill.  I'm talking about throwing in some superhuman strength.

[Eiko-chan]

3 hours ago, Player2 said:

Fighting pool represents a measure of skill.  I'm talking about throwing in some superhuman strength.

Boxing stuns people. Kick knocks people down. Crosspunch knocks people down. How is that just skill and not superhuman strength? What would superhuman strength do differently?

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

Boxing stuns people. Kick knocks people down. Crosspunch knocks people down. How is that just skill and not superhuman strength? What would superhuman strength do differently?

It would have a different name.

[Player2]

2 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

Boxing stuns people. Kick knocks people down. Crosspunch knocks people down. How is that just skill and not superhuman strength? What would superhuman strength do differently?

So all boxers have super strength?  Let's not make this a regular topic of conversation or else they might start developing even bigger egos.

[Eiko-chan]

2 minutes ago, Player2 said:

So all boxers have super strength? 

Mechanically, Fighting could be skill. It could also be super strength. I'm asking what mechanical difference from Fighting you envision this Super Strength pool having. Otherwise, you can just take Fighting and flavour it as being super strength.

[FupDup]

There is certainly a bit of overlap between strength/skill, like for example we could make a Super Strength character in this game and say that they're some elite bodybuilder or something (natural origin) and it would fit thematically. 

 

The important thing is that this thread is asking for an epic pool rather than a generic pool. An issue on some ATs is that they have very few options for an epic pool that fits the role of being a "natural" human (who gets stronger through training and hard work). Being an epic pool, its powers given would be different based on the needs of each AT, so for example on a squishy ranged AT it might indeed resemble the generic Fighting Pool (armor toggle and some melee attacks). But on a melee AT you'd get ranged attacks (which Fighting can never give), on some ATs like Sentinels it could give soft control powers like Hand Clap, etc.

 

On a lot of ATs our only "natural" choice is Mace Mastery, which is pretty limiting (especially if you want to be a pure blue hero so you have no excuse or justification to join the dark side temporality to unlock patron pools). 

[Player2]

11 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

Mechanically, Fighting could be skill. It could also be super strength. I'm asking what mechanical difference from Fighting you envision this Super Strength pool having. Otherwise, you can just take Fighting and flavour it as being super strength.

As FupDup says, it would be more of an epic than a standard pool, which means the contents will vary from AT to AT where as Fighting pool has a static set of choices open to everyone. As for what specifically the mechanical difference is, read the original post at the top for examples.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

give it a 

 

handclap           (pbaoe disorient)

roar                   (aoe taunt)

Furious charge  (kinda like shield charge but straight line no aoe)

rage                   (non stackable long long long cooldown build up)

 

[Player2]

4 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

give it a 

 

handclap           (pbaoe disorient)

roar                   (aoe taunt)

Furious charge  (kinda like shield charge but straight line no aoe)

rage                   (non stackable long long long cooldown build up)

 

Depends on the AT.