Knockback House Rules

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FuzzyBoots
Posts: 2396
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:20 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Knockback House Rules

Post by FuzzyBoots »

I need to do a bit more poking in the DB to figure out attribution, but I was recently responding to someone about Knockback and trying to quote some houserules from the old system:
Knockback

One thing Mutants and Masterminds had never really handled well was knockback, the effect of being struck by powerful blows and blasts sending someone flying. There was a set of rules in 2e (and as an optional rule in the 3e Masterminds Manual), but they had problems and the default choice in 3e of it being arbitrary GM choice and treated as a “complication” of sorts is very unsatisfactory to me (and from what I can tell, a fair number of other people). So I came up with my own solution:

Knockback is an optional effect of a critical hit. That does not mean that it uses up any of the other normal critical hit options (you still can add 5 damage or do any of the other normal critical results). I refer to it as optional since the attacker has the choice whether to do knockback or not (to avoid situations where this rule would otherwise mean a crit is actually detrimental to the person rolling it, a low mobility melee attacker for example). Knockback is only possible with attacks targeted at Toughness (which, in 3e, appears to be only damage).

To determine knockback, take the damage of the attack (including critical damage), and add 15 to determine the DC. The target makes a resistance check using Strength, Dodge or Flight ranks at his choice.

Ranks of Growth will directly add to Strength or Flight value for this purpose; half the rank of Impervious Toughness (i.e. the part that in 3e is actually Impervious) add to it too. Ranks of Defensive Roll will add to Dodge for purposes of this roll. Ranks of Shrinking come off any resistance.

A single degree of failure causes the target to be knocked down; each additional degree will cause the target to be knocked back one step on the distance chart, starting at distance 0 (that is to say, 30 feet). Targets do not take additional damage for hitting other objects during knockback, thought the objects will (equal to the rank of the distance); its possible under some circumstances such objects could include a person (usually they''ll get a Dodge roll against the rank of the knockback to avoid this).

Other Related Rules

Instead of a normal attack, a person can attempt a Push: a Push takes a -2 on the attack roll, and uses the attacker''s Strength to attempt knockback as indicated above with no need for a critical hit. An Advantage called Improved Push will eliminate the -2 hit penalty. Unlike the case with normal knockback, a push can do damage to the target if he hits an obstacle.

Extras and other modifiers

A couple of relevant modifiers impact knockback:

Improved Knockback: This flat extra adds 2 to chances of a crit only for purposes of checking for knockback per rank; this stacks with normal ranks of Improved Critical, but a 1 will still fail in any case, and attack that misses will not cause knockback no matter what the knockback check is.

Increased Knockback: This flat extra adds 1 point to the damage for purposes of the knockback check; it is not PL capped per se, but the maximum rank of it that can be purchased is 10.'
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Davies
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Location: Edmonton, AB

Re: Knockback House Rules

Post by Davies »

This is pretty well-conceived; I especially like the 'Push' concept. I'm not sure about all the potential modifiers to the resistance check, and I can envision some forms of Flight (winged forms especially) not providing much in the way of resistance to getting shoved around. If I ever use this, I'd probably just say 'resist with Strength' and leave it at that.
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