The Book of Taskmaster

[johnny139]

I mostly associate Taskmaster with SHIELD (so like, bunker/training room/briefing room) and with Bagalia (so bright lights, Las Vegas type city).

One thing I'd mention - I think he's probably more on the "Human" side than the "Mutate" side, since he's pretty much got the same deal as Captain America and Black Widow (injected with a variant of the Super Soldier Serum). Would it have affected testing at all if he was Human?

[Yodaking]

Not in my tests.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by MrNobody

Okay, this passes. I’ll get the OP and SP tidied up soon. Any thoughts on backgrounds?

Worth asking @Tornado if he's going to be OK with this one being released after his Nay vote for Final Editing?

[MrNobody]

I honestly trust Alex’s judgement on those kind of things but I’ll look into it.

And yeah T, I was planning to PM you at some point.

[Yodaking]

Was the pre-nay being cast related to the defense discussion or because he wanted to wait for my tests first?

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

Was the pre-nay being cast related to the defense discussion or because he wanted to wait for my tests first?

Not to speak for T, but yeah I believe it was due to the defense stuff.

YK, after playing your games, what do you think of the power? I know you had some concerns.

[Yodaking]

I didn't play him vs. any heavy hitters in my tests. Didn't want to KO him in one shot when I'm trying to evaluate his potential. My only concern was with him rolling in excess of 12 defense dice being a bit much. Anyone can look at the break down at how many extra die he did roll in my tests. I actually think it's important for low attack figures to have a chance to wound him, as he's got some scary offensive potential, so the low base defense of 3 helps keep him balanced. You can get a 1 skull hit and whiffing with 4 def. die is more of a possibility that if his base defense was 6 or something.

You know what, I just realized that I played his non-adj. def. wrong in my tests. I was adding die to his def. for all attacks and completely forgot about the 1 shield blocks all at range. He was mostly attacked by adj. figures though so it wouldn't have changed all that much. In the 2nd game he was never attacked at range at all as those WC with ranged attacks went after the counterstrike units instead. In the first game though, Raven did inflict 1W with a ranged attack early in the game, after that he was engaged with his foes for the rest of the battle. So I believe I only screwed up on that 1 att. from Raven, and I believe Wonder Girl's final attack on him did excess wounds that I didn't record as well so her extra W early made no difference.

[MrNobody]

Yeah doesn’t sound like that messed up the results that badly.

[Tornado]

I do not think the mechanic represents his abilities. He is supposed to be better than Cap yet he throws less Defense the majority of the time and it gets wonky on the high end as well.
The mechanic is more theme-y than an accurate representation of his abilities. I have seen nothing that shows he should throw less Defense than Cap when fighting against Civilians and also nothing that shows he is superior against the likes of Hulk or Thor.
Interesting that so many are cool with not accurately representing what Taskmaster can do but were dead set against the T-Rex not living up to their expectations.

[MrNobody]

I fully admit it is a slight abstraction of what actually happens in the comics. But I honestly believe that the slight abstraction feels far more fun and true to the character than a static defense boost would. The theme here is that the character is extremely flexible and adaptable, so having his defense dice be flexible and adaptable as well feels right.

It’s not like C3G represents every character’s ability completely literally. In this game, a GL can shield against 4 attacks from a regular human and be completely out of power. Someone like Grundy, Thanos, and Jason can return multiple times in a single fight. Jean Grey can go from her regular self to Dark Phoenix in one battle.

I’ve always felt it’s more important to capture the core concepts of who a character is than to capture everything they do as literally as possible. It’s not allowing him to do anything out of his power level, because going up against Hulk or Thor he is going to be less effective than 130 point Harley Quinn I.

[Tornado]

You were willing to sacrifice representing actual power level to instead achieve something else, in this case a theme-y mechanic correct?

[MrNobody]

I am willing to sacrifice an exactly literal interpretation of a character’s power in exchange for something that gives a better “feel” of the character but still feels like an accurate portrayal of the character’s general power level.