What's new
  • Welcome to the Heroscapers 2.0 site! We've still got some dust to clear and adjustments to make, including launching a new front page, but we hope you enjoy the improvements to the site. Please post your feedback and any issues you encounter in this thread.

Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

japes

japes

A Man of Taste
Site Supporter
Thing (Ben Grimm)

C3G2_Thing-Ben.png


Card PDF​

NAME = THING
IDENTITY = BEN GRIMM

UNIQUENESS = UNIQUE HERO
SPECIES = MUTATE
CLASS = ADVENTURER
PERSONALITY = GRUFF

SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM 5

LIFE = 6

MOVE = 5
RANGE = 1
ATTACK = 6
DEFENSE = 6

POINTS = 325

CLOBBERIN' TIME
Before Thing’s attack phase, you may choose an allied Adventurer Hero within 4 clear spaces. Thing has +1 Attack for each wound the chosen figure has. If Thing adds at least 4 to his Attack this way, he may attack twice per normal attack action.

ROCK WALL DEFENSE 4
If Thing has 4+ shields while defending against an adjacent normal attack, Thing ignores all wounds and inflicts 1 wound on the attacker.

FACTION = FANTASTIC FOUR
KEYWORDS =
SYMBOLS = HEAT RESISTANCE, SUPER STRENGTH
Click to expand...
WORLDS COLLIDE: Gruff and gung-ho Ben Grimm rocks the Marvel Universe as the rocky Thing, a powerhouse with a heart of gold and the backbone of the Fantastic Four

Resources and Rulings
  • The suggested figure for this unit is a Heroclix figure: Fantastic Forces #076-078 / The Thing, #206 / Ben Grimm
  • See this card's wiki page for synergies and strategies!

Credits
  • Legacy design: Griffin
  • Card art: Arkham
  • Comic creators: Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
Updates
  • N/A
 
Last edited:
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Looks good overall here. :up:

I'll float the idea of Pilot as a keyword one more time, just to check for any interest. :p

Worth noting that it's Griffin, not Griffen, just before you do too many of these with the other spelling!

CLOBBERIN' TIME
Before The Thing’s Attack Phase, you may choose an allied Adventurer or Scientist Hero within 4 clear sight spaces of him and add 1 to his Attack Number for each wound on the chosen figure has. If The Thing adds 4 to his Attack Number this way, he may take two Normal Attack Actions this activation.

Small changes I might make.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

IAmBatman said:
Looks good overall here. :up:

I'll float the idea of Pilot as a keyword one more time, just to check for any interest. :p

Worth noting that it's Griffin, not Griffen, just before you do too many of these with the other spelling!

CLOBBERIN' TIME
Before The Thing’s Attack Phase, you may choose an allied Adventurer or Scientist Hero within 4 clear sight spaces of him and add 1 to his Attack Number for each wound on the chosen figure has. If The Thing adds 4 to his Attack Number this way, he may take two Normal Attack Actions this activation.

Small changes I might make.
Click to expand...

first part, no interest from me :p

second, ah thanks...looks like I did get it right in one of them at least.

third, no opinion there as I'm not completely sure what "clear" sight means going forward.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I'm in favor of the Pilot keyword being a thing. Just because Thing won't often want to be in a VDO due his power set here, he should still be able to fly a plane better than someone who wasn't a pilot.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Yodaking said:
I'm in favor of the Pilot keyword being a thing. Just because Thing won't often want to be in a VDO due his power set here, he should still be able to fly a plane better than someone who wasn't a pilot.
Click to expand...

My comment was just a snarky comment because I think planes in Heroscape are dumb and Bat's knew where I was going. :D. But that's just my opinion and I am not going to raise a fuss if people want it. It won't impact my enjoyment.

Just wanted to be clear that I'm not voting against him getting a Pilot tag.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Oh, I wasn't in favor of adding planes myself but now they are here so I'm going to design accordingly.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Any more comments here?

Particularly the Clear sight thing Bats mentioned.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Wasn't Ronin concerned with having multiple attack actions vs. attacking multiple times per attack action? I see he's viewing the thread, so half-expecting to be ninja'd. :p (Or I could be trippin...)
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I didn't jump on this one as quickly because he's (surprisingly) way more of a thinker than the other two. Invokes phases and rolls and suchlike.

So like... definitely one where I expect some back and forth to nail things down.

CLOBBERIN' TIME
During The Thing’s attack phase, you may choose an allied Adventurer or Scientist within 4 clear sight spaces of him. This phase, The Thing has +1 Attack for each of that ally's wounds. If The Thing has +4 Attack from this ability, he may make two attacks per normal attack action.
Click to expand...

First crack at this. Sketchy areas in blue.

1. I think the timing of the power is kinda questionable but it made sense to me that if you gave him just an attack phase he'd still be able to use it. So I put it as kind of a floating thing in the phase itself. Obviously if we didn't want that to ever be a thing you could change up the timing a bit. I think as-is it's less ambiguous than a "before the attack phase" trigger if we want him to get it if he ever got a just-attack-phase activation though.

2. You could define multi-attacks as more attacks per action or as more actions per phase. I've gravitated toward the former because, as I understand it, SAs are meant to work by multiple attacks per special attack action. That said, I guess characters that can mix normals and specials (Diamondback, etc.) do challenge that a bit.

On Rock Wall Defense 4...

I'm cool with "avoids" here. I think I've been going "does not take" but "avoids" gets there more quickly and scans well.

Do we want RWD4 to work if he rolls 4 shields, or if he ends up with 4 blocks in his results?
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I do think you’re right that powers that grant you a normal and special attack within the same phase put some serious kinks in that system. It might be worth braking and looking at how we want to handle a typical multi-attack SA (and maybe like…a Queglix-style thing) in conjunction with this?
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I've been mulling it over a bit.

I think for a basic multi-attack SA I'd just use wording like what I pitched there for Thing. (Actually, looking at that again now, I'd trim it down from "make two attacks" to "attack twice", but y'know, same idea)

For Diamondback I'd probably go:

TACTICAL DOUBLE ATTACK
Diamondback has two attack actions per attack phase.
Click to expand...

(Because the normal<->special choice actually does happen twice)

I think for the Aquaman case, there might not really be an issue?

RETRACTABLE HARPOON SPECIAL ATTACK
Range 4. Attack 5.
Choose a non-adjacent figure to attack. If Aquaman wounds a small or medium figure, place it adjacent to Aquaman and then Aquaman can attack normally.
Click to expand...

It's something I hadn't fully realized until YK brought it up in my drafts thread the other day but I think it's fine to just hand out attacks that aren't part of attack actions? Like the "action" doesn't actually do anything except provide a mechanism for choosing normal attack or a special attack and give us a reference point in wording for the fact that you've made that decision already.

Queglix is an interesting use case. Honestly also a case of old-school HS wording being surprisingly concise and clear. :lol: That one I might have to come back to later, not sure I have time this morning.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I think that attack being separate from attack action makes sense and follows how the rulebook is written currently. I think that special attacks should probably work how they do now, which means you can do multiple in an action. I'm cool with Ronin's approach to abilities like this as a way of being consistent with that.

Long story short, I think what's here works.

Big change is do we want to go just Adventurer on the synergy in conjunction with making Mister Fantastic and Adventurer?
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I do think that as written the attack actions cover all the stuff that comes before actually attacking (choosing a target, aiming, etc.) whereas the "attack" is specifically the rolling of the dice. So when it comes to handing out attacks, I think it's probably more mechanically sound to hand out attack actions?
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Interesting. I think that blows up my whole architecture then. Definitely nothing I've written works. Is there a benefit to having attack defined so narrowly?

EDIT: My instinct is that attacks being inextricable from attack actions is unintuitive and not really doing us any good - renders 'attack' inert as a useful term and creates the "multi-attack SAs have to grant attack actions, which is just classic style wording but longer" problem.
 
Last edited:
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

The goal was to more clearly define things that happen during the (very complex) process of making an attack in Heroscape.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Sure, I don't doubt it and I'm not like... asking pointed questions or putting the rulebook effort under attack (or under an attack action). I'm genuinely asking if there's a reason we wanted 'attack' to be that specific, because clearly I've missed a trick here and I want to get caught back up and figure out what does work.

I feel like I've gotten a few of these sort of terse answers from you lately that don't really help me when I ask questions about stuff; it makes me worry I'm coming off badly in how I'm asking, but like... I'm very genuinely asking, and apologies if I'm doing it in a way that feels unhelpful or combative. I appreciate the groundwork you've laid on the rules and I want to make sure I'm not up-ending anything if I advocate for a different approach.

Probably my fault for not doing more to help out on figuring out the rulebook initially... I've been trying not to 'drive' on 2.0 but I've ended up backseat driving as a result.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Apologies for coming off as terse! That's 100% not my intention and I definitely appreciate the questions and the feedback. I think that's one of those "tone doesn't come across online" things where I probably have rushed my answers a bit and haven't done enough to express positivity in my responses. So definitely sorry about that one!

It's more that you're usually asking about areas where I'm struggling to accomplish the clarity I set out to, if that makes sense? :p I definitely don't think you're up-ending anything. If these aren't functional, they need updates and now's the time to do it. It's why I've been wanting to see more conversion stuff, because I really don't know how stuff is working until we get rolling on it.

Uh, my best thought here is that we have to really hash out things in more detail than probably makes sense in this thread. I posted some stuff in the Discord to that end. (Part of the rushing in posts is being home alone with Bat Kiddo, so if I've been short at all, I hope that explains it. Trying to give efficient answers, but may be lacking in diplomacy or in expressing my (authentic) gratitude for the collaboration!).
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

All good! Thought it might just be a case of 'internet tone is hard', but figured it was better to address it in case it wasn't.

I'll work with you more on the attack rules starting after work so we can nail this down and move forward.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

I think I got a handle on it after my exchange with Ronin the other day. It took me a while to work through it, but I can try to spell out my understanding of how it breaks down later. I've got to head out for a while, so it will be later tonight.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Yodaking said:
I think I got a handle on it after my exchange with Ronin the other day. It took me a while to work through it, but I can try to spell out my understanding of how it breaks down later. I've got to head out for a while, so it will be later tonight.
Click to expand...

We also discussed things for a bit on Discord today (because it didn't feel like this thread was the place to fully hash out attack phase stuff), so I'd encourage you to check out the rulebook thread there under 2.0 stuff.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

:up: Awesome, I appreciate any perspective on how to best break this down cleanly.

Bats and I had a little exchange on the discord as well, to sum that up: a big part of why Bats originally defined "attack" to not include targeting was to make sure it was really airtight that figures getting hit by AoEs were getting attacked. :)ninja:)

I think we can still retain that and get the clean SA/multi-attack functionality I was after, but we'll have to tweak a definition or two in the rulebook draft. I'm going to dig up more edge cases and before locking down exactly what I want that to look like. I'll be working on that starting tonight, but that might take me a day or two.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Okay, still some official decisions to come but I think we're definitely heading toward "attacks per attack action" type wording. Trying to tackle the rest of the stuff:

CLOBBERIN' TIME
At the start of The Thing’s attack phase, you may choose an allied Adventurer or Scientist within 4 clear sight spaces of him. This phase, The Thing has +1 Attack for each of that ally's wounds. If The Thing has +4 Attack from this ability, he may attack twice per normal attack action.
Click to expand...

I think I've heard people talk about "ally" as the term for "allied player" but personally I like it a lot more as a shortcut for "friendly figure"? I used it that way when I suggested phrasing for Sue. Wanted to bring that up because I realized I might not be on the same page as everyone else about what that means, but I think it's more useful this way.

Went with "at the start of" - I think it could also be "before" or "during", but I felt like "at the start of" made it very clear exactly when to use it and that it comes bundled with the attack phase.

ROCK WALL DEFENSE 4
When defending against an adjacent normal attack, if The Thing has 4 blocks, he avoids all damage and the attacker receives one wound.
Click to expand...

I tried to phrase this in an "it cares about the final results" way and not an "it cares about the original roll" way. I think the former makes more sense as our 'default' setting.
 
Re: The Thing (Ben Grimm) (Fantastic Four)

Fwiw I originally floated "ally" as lingo for "friendly figure" for much the same reason, but got some pushback on it being too short or easy to miss (I believe that was the reason - there's lots of moving parts all the time, so I get fuzzy on the details :p ).

I'd personally be into using it the way you did here, so long as folks were generally on board with that type of use and we clearly defined it that way in the rulebook. One thing to consider, though, is what term we'd use for your player ally? Teammate is out with "Team" replacing "Army." Partner?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top