House clixin'

It's deeply wrong of me to smack my tiny audience with two frickin' HeroClix entries in a row, and I know it, and I'm sorry. I'm fully aware that only Mike Norton will ever read these (well, SuperFiancee will, too, but just because she's a glutton for the punishment that is my prose style). Still, it's stuff I'm working on, in between calls on the worst day on this job yet, and I am interested in seeing what any fellow clix players might think.

So, here are some mods I'm strongly considering for my House Rules:

Non-adjacent taxiing:

Flying and transporter characters meeting the prerequisites for taxiing other characters their full movement value may taxi characters that are not adjacent to them at the beginning of their movement, under the following conditions:

Taxiing character must be able to move to an unoccupied square adjacent to target character within their normal movement for the turn.

If a taxi character is attempting to taxi a non-adjacent friendly character, both the taxiing character and the non-adjacent friendly character will immediately take one click of damage when they become adjacent to each other during the taxiing character’s movement. This damage may be reduced normally but not transferred or evaded. The taxiing character may then carry the now adjacent friendly character for the remainder of its movement. It must set the carried character down as per taxi or transporter rules, whichever applies.

If a taxi character is attempting to taxi an opposing character, a successful attack roll must be made against the target opposing character as the two characters become adjacent. If this attack is successful, both the taxiing character and the now adjacent opposing character will immediately take one click of damage. This damage may be reduced normally but not transferred or evaded. The opposing character may then be carried by the taxiing character for the remainder of the taxiing character’s movement. The taxiing character must set the carried character down as per normal taxi or transporter rules, whichever applies.

If this attack to taxi is unsuccessful, the opposing character may make a close combat attack on the adjacent taxi character which unsuccessfully attacked it, as a free action.

Basically, this is to allow things like, a character is being beat down by enemies, and a member of his or her team comes flying in and snatches them away from the action on the wing. This happens often in comics, but under normal HeroClix rules, you'll never see it in a game. Similarly, you occasionally see a character grabbing up an enemy character and carrying them out of the thick of the fight and leaving them in some inopportune place, if for no other reason than to get them out of the way for few seconds. This is, again, impossible under normal HeroClix rules, where you simply can't grab and move an opposing character at all, but I'd like to make it possible under my House Rules.

My House Rules already allow a taxiing character to Soar and drop a character they are carrying, so this will open that option up as an attack on an opponent, as well.

Automatic knockback -- After any successful attack that results in the target character actually taking damage, the damaged character will be knocked back a total number of squares equal to the number of clicks they actually take minus 2, on a straight vector from the successfully attacking character. If this causes the knocked back character to strike another character, both characters take one click of damage from the impact, and the knocked back character comes to rest in the square formerly occupied by the character they have struck, while that character is moved one square over on the same vector. If this causes more characters to be struck and displaced, each additional impact causes an additional click of damage to each participant.

Any successful attack as above that results from a natural doubles being rolled on the dice does knockback equivalent to the full damage taken by the target character, plus 1.

In superhero comics, when hard hitting characters smack each other, the one that gets hit generally gets knocked through the air, smashed through walls, hurled into the people standing behind them, etc. HeroClix normal rules only has knockback happen when you roll doubles, but in point of fact, it happens much more often than that in comics. As my House Rules allow every figure to move and attack, this won't be all that onerous -- if Mr. Hyde knocks Batman back three squares, the Cobra can just move three more and smack Batman again -- so I don't mind making this change.

As always, though, I actively seek the feedback of the few people reading this who actually play HeroClix.

I'm also working on a few home made feats -- POLYMORPH, that long heralded add on which will allow different figures of the same character to be swapped in and out of games as a free action (when the character can shapeshift, or change size, or something). That one's specific definition is tasking me, but I'll work it out. Another I'm thinking of is PHASE IN, whereby a Phase/Teleport character would be held off the board until his player wanted to put him or her into play, at which point, the character could be put down anywhere on the board. I need to think about that one further, too... but it's certainly something that, say, Kang should be able to do.

Okay. Move along. Nothing to see here.