Team Attack
One of the many advantages to the Characters of being in a super-team is that they start learning ways to combine their respective abilities to really put a smiting on opponents. How many times do we remember Colossus and Wolverine using the "Fastball Special" tactic to fling the damage-dealer specialist at a villain who thought he was safely out of melee range?
The original rules from the book for Team Attacks were not particularly rewarding in comparison to having to wait until the slowest Initiative, so for years now we've mostly been using the "Team Attack" method of each subsequent contributor trying to build on the actions of a prior attack on a particular target. This has the advantage of compensating for early bad die rolls, and of making the roleplaying interesting, but it really isn't handing anybody a boost on the game mechanic side.
A brief explanation of the original rule ...
In the official Mayfair rules (page 102 of the 3rd Edition rules, if you're curious), here's what happens when Player Characters decide to combine their efforts on a single combatant:
Everybody contributing to the Team Attack effort goes on the lowest initiative of the people contributing to the Team Attack effort. Each team member rolls his own Action Check and applies the relevant Column Shifts separately. If desired, each Player may spend Hero Points separately to improve his particular roll before any rolls are made. (And, of course, the opponent can spend points to make the roll worse!)
The GM looks at this handy-dandy chart for the relevant number of Opposing Value columns that the opponent's attempt to dodge/shrug off the attack decreases:
Team Attack Modifiers -- MEGS original ruleset
Number of Team Members attacking one target | Opposing Value Column Shifts |
|---|---|
2 | -1 |
3-4 | -2 |
5-8 | -3 |
9+ | -4 |
And that's it.
Needless to say, what's been actually happening is that each Player goes on his respective initiative, and the next Player to target the same opponent takes into account how the previous Player's action went, and nobody gets any advantages or disadvantages beyond The Cool Rule.
The 'Team Attack' rule that is used instead!
Everybody contributing to the Team Attack effort goes on the lowest initiative of the people contributing to the Team Attack effort.
Each team member rolls an Action Check. If desired, each Player may spend Hero Points separately to improve his particular roll before any rolls are made. (And, of course, the opponent can spend points to make the roll worse!) The best roll is then used to figure results for ALL efforts involved as if that's the roll that each team member had gotten individually.
The GM then applies the same modifier from the same chart (above) to weaken all of the opponent's attempts to not go along with the Players' plan.
Note that Team Attacks are compatible with most other kinds of attack, including Planned Knockback Attack, Team Grapples ( which is just a Grappling Attack ), or Devastating Attack. The exception is that Team Attack is not allowed to be used in conjunction with Multi-Attack.
An example of Team Attack in use!
The Knights Vigilant are fighting the Red Skull.
If they don't win fast, they're gonna die.
Red Skull happens to have a portable Force Field Generator on his belt; it's 5 APs of defense before you even touch his Skin Armor 6 and try to knock him out. Additionally, the Red Skull has Martial Artist of 8, which he's using to punch anybody he isn't shooting.
Base initiatives: 35 (Red Skull), 23 (Taki), 21 (Flag and Statesman), 19 (Sahara), 17 (Moon Knight), 15 (Tesla)
The party is definitely going LAST, even if they don't team up. They decide they're doing a massive simultaneous attack on this guy, hoping to batter his force field down for a split instant so at least one attack will get through to the crunchy center.
Every hero readies his best attack, and rolls initiative; the lowest roll winds up being a 24, so that's when they're all going.
Nobody has the HP to spare on trying to improve their roll, so no bidding war gets started; everybody throws the dice, and hopes for something good enough to save the day. Doug ( as Sahara ) lucks into a string of doubles: 4+4, 7+7, 2+2, 2+1: 29!
Now everybody who is part of this Team Attack resolves their actions as if he had personally rolled that 29. Additionally, on the first chart only (known as the Action Table, or "did you hit in the first place?"), Red Skull's opposing value is dropped by (6 PCs hitting simultaneously means -3 Column Shifts on that thing up yonder) 3 Column Shifts. In his case this is the equivalent of dropping from a total "don't wanna be hit" of 20 to an 11.
Suddenly, getting a high enough result on that first table to wind up with some Result APs of damage dealt is possible!
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