[OSSR]Unknown Armies

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Post by Username17 »

Longes wrote:Now, with a melee weapon you make an attack roll (1d100<[Skill]), and then deal sum of the dice plus weapon's bonus as damage. 02-09 is treated as 12-19. Weapon's bonus ranges from +3 (knife) to +9 (fire axe). If you roll 01, then the enemy is dead or knocked out. Now, fire axes aren't exactly hard to find and keep around, so your character (Killing things up close 50%) deals 11-28. Much more consistent than what a firearm does. As a nice little bonus sharp weapons deal 1 point of damage even when they miss. Additionally on matched successes you get cherries.

This is wrong. 02-09 is treated as eleven. 2 + 9. So you do 1-17 damage plus the weapon damage. Remember that you can't roll an 18 and still hit, because a 99 always misses. Frankly, you probably can't roll a 17 and still hit, because the only rolls that do a base of 17 damage are 89 and 98, and both of those are very likely to not hit even for very skilled characters.

So practically speaking, the upper end almost always misses, which in turn means that while the average of two 0-9 dice added together is 10, the average of the die rolls that actually hit are more like 7 or 8 depending on skill. Meanwhile, the average damage on a firearm is just half your chance to-hit. This means that even a character with a skill of 40 does more average damage per-hit than a fire ax user with a skill of over one hundred.

Firearms >> Melee. It's just basic math.

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Post by Omegonthesane »

FrankTrollman wrote:This is wrong. 02-09 is treated as eleven. 2 + 9. So you do 1-17 damage plus the weapon damage.
You're misreading badly here. He's saying a roll of 02 is treated as 10 + 2, while a roll of 09 is treated as 10 + 9, and similar for all rolls where the tens digit is 0.

I have no idea offhand if that's correct but it's what he said.

EDIT: It's correct according to the description of combat Fumbles on page 54.
Fumbles cause you to take the damage you rolled - that is, the weapon bonus plus 20 points (0 + 0 = 10 + 10 = 20).
I don't feel like checking more carefully for a more sensibly placed statement of the rule, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if that was the only place it was made explicit.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Fri Jul 25, 2014 5:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

With that technicality aside, under normal circumstances guns still do more average damage, and in melee terms you need a +9 fire axe to have enough minimum damage to make arguments about consistency. To be precise, if we ignore the effects of matched success and crit success, the average damage at 50% skill is 9.4 for fists, 12.4 for a +3 knife, 15.4 for a +6, I dunno, katana, 18.4 for a +9 fire axe, and of course 25.5 for a gun with max damage at least 50.

These numbers are misleading - crits overwrite the damage calls for the roll of 01, and since 10 + 1 is higher than 1, remembering that skews things even further in the favour of guns. However, I mentioned matched successes, because a +6 or a +9 weapon does "firearms damage" on a matched success, and then get the weapon bonus on top.

Treating a crit as 100 damage, the averages become 11.18 for hand, 14.12 for knife, 17.06 for sword, 20 for axe and 27.48 for gun.

Treating a crit as 100 damage but remembering how matches work, the sword and axe average damages jump to 18.86 and 21.8 respectively. I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't more meaningful an increase... largely due to forgetting that the really big damage values are high on the table.

There's one factor I have not worked in - if your Unknown Armies table is anything like the one campaign I played, then all attacks are made with a +30 shift, so a skill of 50% in fact hits 80% of the time. Possibly 100% if he's targeting someone who themselves took a +30 shift. As I now remember the difficulties of concealing either a sword or a fire axe, for this stage of the comparison the gun will be a 12-gauge buckshot since concealment is already pretty far out of the question.

I shouldn't have expected this to help the melee lobby, and indeed it doesn't - sword and axe averages are only up to 20.41 and 23.38, while average gun damage is now 41.74. Guns are superior to swords, news at 11.
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Post by Longes »

Omegonthesane wrote:These numbers are misleading - crits overwrite the damage calls for the roll of 01, and since 10 + 1 is higher than 1, remembering that skews things even further in the favour of guns. However, I mentioned matched successes, because a +6 or a +9 weapon does "firearms damage" on a matched success, and then get the weapon bonus on top.

Treating a crit as 100 damage, the averages become 11.18 for hand, 14.12 for knife, 17.06 for sword, 20 for axe and 27.48 for gun.

Treating a crit as 100 damage but remembering how matches work, the sword and axe average damages jump to 18.86 and 21.8 respectively. I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't more meaningful an increase... largely due to forgetting that the really big damage values are high on the table.
This is horribly wrong. Crits with melee weapon kill/K.O. you with no save. Guns merely do maximum damage.
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Post by Username17 »

Longes wrote: This is horribly wrong. Crits with melee weapon kill/K.O. you with no save. Guns merely do maximum damage.
Apparently you didn't read this part:
Omegonthesane wrote:Treating a crit as 100 damage...
Honeslty, your opponent doesn't likely have even 100 hit points. An automatic KO is likely like 60 damage. Treating the crit as 100 damage is already being generous to the sword.

Yeah, I had forgotten that even though a zero is counted as a zero when reading the percentile dice, it's counted as a 10 when adding the dice together. Probably because that's confusing and stupid and makes no sense. But yeah, it doesn't make a lot of difference - only +2 average damage to the person who has a 100% chance to hit.

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Post by Omegonthesane »

Longes wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:These numbers are misleading - crits overwrite the damage calls for the roll of 01, and since 10 + 1 is higher than 1, remembering that skews things even further in the favour of guns. However, I mentioned matched successes, because a +6 or a +9 weapon does "firearms damage" on a matched success, and then get the weapon bonus on top.

Treating a crit as 100 damage, the averages become 11.18 for hand, 14.12 for knife, 17.06 for sword, 20 for axe and 27.48 for gun.

Treating a crit as 100 damage but remembering how matches work, the sword and axe average damages jump to 18.86 and 21.8 respectively. I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't more meaningful an increase... largely due to forgetting that the really big damage values are high on the table.
This is horribly wrong. Crits with melee weapon kill/K.O. you with no save. Guns merely do maximum damage.
In addition to what Frank said, if you're comparing to a fire axe, it's fair that you allow non-concealable guns, which include examples which do over 100 as their max damage. In the above case I was specifically assuming the 12-gauge buckshot, which caps at 120.

So unless you're suggesting that my example should be an Epideromancer who's had about 3 years of downtime to spam Body Like Iron until he has 250 body hits*, 100 damage for all crits seems like a reasonable assumption. It isn't generous to swords though, since it replaces a damage roll of 11 (fists) or 1 (guns) with a damage roll of "Victory".
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

Because schools of magic in UA are kinda fun on a conceptual level, I'll try to go through all of them picking out good, bad and ugly bits.

Amoromancy (Love-Based Magic), from "Postmodern Magick" p.56
Stats:
-You get minor charges for flirting with someone. You can't do this more than once per month with any single person. Seems simple, but there is a trap - the person you are flirting with must be romantically or intellectualy interested in you (possibly as a result of your flirting). Lust or physical desire doesn't generate a charge. This means that the MC has full control on your charging :tsk:
-You get a significant charge for getting someone interested enough in you to go on a date. Once per three months per person. Romantic interest condition stands.
-You get a major charge when someone wants to marry you. Once you got a major charge, you can't get any charges ever from this person.

The charge structure is kinda meh. I dislike it because it leaves too much in the hands of the MC.

Taboo: falling in love, or getting charges from only one person for a month.

The taboo is very easy to avoid, and, what I dislike, impossible to stage to leave the enemy adept without charges.

Random magic: Amoromancy's random magic is all about emotion control and perception control.

The random magic domain is ok. It's easy to understand what is and what isn't valid, unlike some of the other magic schools (Dipsomancy, we'll get to you).

Blast: Amoromancy blast is interesting. On the fluff level, the target feels all the heartbreaks it ever felt at once.
Overcome with anger, shame, and repulsion, the victim experiences a mild heart attack. He must flee the Amoromancer’s presence, probably in tears, to avoid the stabbing pains in his heart that her proximity causes.
Oddly enough, this is actualy not bullshit. The target hit with Amoromancy blast must flee, or take -20 on all physical actions. This makes Amoromancy blast a rather powerful debuff. Amoromancy doesn't have a minor blast. It's significant blast deals damage of a minor blast (melee damage - sum of digits), except to the people who had feelings towards you (here we have firearms damage - the number itself).

Formula spells: Amoromancy formula spells are decent. They follow the specified magic domain, and manipulate senses and emotions. There is pseudo-invisibility, there is pleasure spell. There is also a spell that makes someone so depressed they try to kill themself. Major Effects include creation of true love, permanently changing how everyone reacts to someone, and other brainwashing fun.

It's important to remember, that magic in Unknown Armies doesn't have saves (unless MC allows you to make a skill, in which case he'll probably fuck you over when you try to do magic yourself).
Foot in Mouth
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: For the next half-hour everything the target of this spell says is taken in the worst possible light. The target’s exact words remain unchanged, but reprimands seem overly harsh and pointless, expressions of love sound false, and sincere professions of innocence seem like clever deceptions. Everyone who listens to the target feels the same way, but the target is unaware of the effects of the spell (except by observing the effects it has on others).
Overall, this is a decent school. The effects are clear, the charging is clear, the taboo is clear (if weak). I slightly dislike it for arbitrarium charge nature, but since most minor charge generation will happen off-screen, it's bearable.

Next: Annihilomancy (Destruction-Based Magick). Some men just want to watch the world burn
Last edited by Longes on Sun Jul 27, 2014 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Grek »

How To Amoromancy:

Spend a weekend flirting with people/going on dates to build up minor/significant charges.
Pick whoever seems the most desperate; use the charges you got before to make them want to marry you.
Use the charge you got from the above step to create true love for you in, like, the mayor.
Repeat step 3 with a whole team of navy seals, successful investment bankers and police commissioners.
Harvest about a dozen minor charges and three dozen significant charges every month. Also, rule your love cult with an iron fist.
Last edited by Grek on Sun Jul 27, 2014 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

Grek wrote:How To Amoromancy:

Spend a weekend flirting with people/going on dates to build up minor/significant charges.
Pick whoever seems the most desperate; use the charges you got before to make them want to marry you.
Use the charge you got from the above step to create true love for you in, like, the mayor.
Repeat step 3 with a whole team of navy seals, successful investment bankers and police commissioners.
Harvest about a dozen minor charges and three dozen significant charges every month. Also, rule your love cult with an iron fist.
You can't use charges to get more charges, but other than that - yes. You might run into Othello problem though, where the mayor and navy seals kill you because you won't stop flirting with people. And people who already love you don't give any more charges. Most UA schools are good at making you miserable :)
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Post by Grek »

Does it actually say that anywhere? It wouldn't surprise me if there were actually a "fuck you for trying to use your powers recursively" clause somewhere in the rules.
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Post by Longes »

Grek wrote:Does it actually say that anywhere? It wouldn't surprise me if there were actually a "fuck you for trying to use your powers recursively" clause somewhere in the rules.
It does. You can't use magic to get more magic. You can, however, use Avatar magic to get Adept charges.

Mind you, you can use Amoromancy to get close to the mayor, and to get his attention. But the feelings has to be natural. You can't use it to create feelings and get charges from them.
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Post by Longes »

ImageThat's what UA games are supposed to be
Annihilomancy (Destruction-Based Magick), from "Postmodern Magick" p.60

Stats:
-You get a minor charge for destroying one personal possession of emotional value. The possession doesn't have to be yours. You can burn someone's favorite shoes, you can tear to pieces the photo of your best friend. You can destroy someone's friendship, or someone's career (though not to the point of being fired). The emotional, and not material value is important.
-You get a significant charge for destroying something of great emotional value. Favorite car, favorite books, that almost finished bachelor thesis. You can destroy someone's marriage, get someone fired, or destroy friendship between close friends.
-You get a major charge for destroying everything you (or someone else) own and entering a new town with nothing to your name.

The charge structure is interesting. Significant and Major charges have good roleplaying (the first time you do them) involved. Minor charge is something you can easily do off-screen.

Taboo: You are prohibited from fixing anything. You can't repair the roof, you can't change the oil in your car, you can't extinguish your pants when they've caught fire.

The taboo is very harsh. Very harsh. You'd better live with your friends, if you don't want to change appartments all the time. Good income also seem a must.

Random Magic: annihilomancy deals in destruction and revelation. If you want to destroy something, or reveal the truth, this is the magic of choice.

Random Magic domain is good. Easy to understand what does and doesn't fit into it. It's also useful.

So, it's not might not be immediately obvious, but Annihilomancy is about destructive Zen. It's about shredding the ties to material world, and being completely free.

Blast: Annihilomancy blast is interesting. Minor blast sets on fire every emotionaly valuable item within 10 feet from you, plus five feet for every additional minor charge. Major blast is the same, but radius is 20 feet, plus 10 per significant charge.

The problems with the blast are obvious: it's cheaper to use minor blast than to use a significant blast, and it's not very clear how much damage being on fire actualy does (though it may be clarified somewhere in the book). On the positive side, pretty much everyone has something of emotional value (wallets and credit cards count). Just try not to wear your favorite underpants when blasting.

Formula spells: Annihilomancy spells pretty much follow the random magic domain, with some exceptions.
Superficial Karma
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This spell requires careful timing, and is seen as an educational tool for the masses. Whenever someone slights someone else for superficial reasons—perhaps because they smell or because their shirt is ugly—the annihilist may cast the spell. For twenty-four hours, people react to the target in the exact same way he treated the person.
Example: Danny refuses to dance with a girl because he thinks her nose is a bit odd. Zero, our happy annihilomancer who hangs out in bars waiting for such an opportunity, drops Superficial Karma on Danny’s ass. For one day, everyone blows Danny off and makes comments about his nose just before he’s out of earshot. Maybe he learn a lesson, maybe not.
Overall, annihilomancy is a good school on both mechanical (as far as anything in UA goes) and fluff fronts.
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Post by TiaC »

So, can you just firebomb a nursing home for a bunch of significant charges? Or set a vagrant's shopping cart on fire and walk to the next town for a major charge?
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Post by Ancient History »

Postmodern Magick was often considered the supplement where the authors "lost the thread" - most people I've talked to who don't like it explained it as the adepts lacking the essential element of contradiction, but I always sort of assumed they weren't in on the joke and tried to write an actual game supplement with stuff people would play.
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Post by Longes »

TiaC wrote:So, can you just firebomb a nursing home for a bunch of significant charges? Or set a vagrant's shopping cart on fire and walk to the next town for a major charge?
Yes and yes. You'll have to convince the vagrant to abandon his clothes and friends, but yes.

Almost forgot:
Annihilomancy Major Effects
Light yourself up and level a city block. Start a cult of voluntary simplicity, or destruction, or both.
Last edited by Longes on Sun Jul 27, 2014 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

Ancient History wrote:Postmodern Magick was often considered the supplement where the authors "lost the thread" - most people I've talked to who don't like it explained it as the adepts lacking the essential element of contradiction, but I always sort of assumed they weren't in on the joke and tried to write an actual game supplement with stuff people would play.
Stolze also said that Postmodern Magick is his least favorite book, and that it's too lighthearted. I don't really know why. The magic styles introduced in this book are much better (not in power level, in terms of usable mechanics) than the core book styles.

It did introduce some stupid stuff though. The godwalker of Fool has Enlightened Tai-Chi, with kamehameha blasts and shit. The leader of Oneiromancers has a power that prevents him from sleeping, and negates penalties from not-sleeping. And he still gets charges, though by the rules he shouldn't.
Last edited by Longes on Sun Jul 27, 2014 11:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by silva »

Damn, Annihilomancy is an awesomely evocative school. Curiously, Ive never read it, and I love PoMoMa.
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Post by name_here »

I have to admit, Annihilomancy's taboo does seem out of place with the others, since it's all about destroying stuff and thus you'd expect the taboo to forbid you from destroying stuff. But honestly I don't think the "your magic requires you to not do the thing you'd theoretically want it for" shtick is nearly as clever as the designers seem to believe.
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Post by Longes »

name_here wrote:I have to admit, Annihilomancy's taboo does seem out of place with the others, since it's all about destroying stuff and thus you'd expect the taboo to forbid you from destroying stuff. But honestly I don't think the "your magic requires you to not do the thing you'd theoretically want it for" shtick is nearly as clever as the designers seem to believe.
Taboos aren't always straightforward. Dipsomancy taboo is becoming sober. Entropomancy taboo (charging by taking pointless risks) is not taking risks when you can.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Longes wrote:
name_here wrote:I have to admit, Annihilomancy's taboo does seem out of place with the others, since it's all about destroying stuff and thus you'd expect the taboo to forbid you from destroying stuff. But honestly I don't think the "your magic requires you to not do the thing you'd theoretically want it for" shtick is nearly as clever as the designers seem to believe.
Taboos aren't always straightforward. Dipsomancy taboo is becoming sober. Entropomancy taboo (charging by taking pointless risks) is not taking risks when you can.
I thought it was less fishmalk than that. Specifically I thought the Entropomancer taboo was to have someone else take a risk for you that you aren't willing to take yourself.
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Post by Longes »

Omegonthesane wrote:
Longes wrote:
name_here wrote:I have to admit, Annihilomancy's taboo does seem out of place with the others, since it's all about destroying stuff and thus you'd expect the taboo to forbid you from destroying stuff. But honestly I don't think the "your magic requires you to not do the thing you'd theoretically want it for" shtick is nearly as clever as the designers seem to believe.
Taboos aren't always straightforward. Dipsomancy taboo is becoming sober. Entropomancy taboo (charging by taking pointless risks) is not taking risks when you can.
I thought it was less fishmalk than that. Specifically I thought the Entropomancer taboo was to have someone else take a risk for you that you aren't willing to take yourself.
No, it's exactly the oposite. You can't allow someone to take a risk for you.
Taboo: Get someone else to take a risk you're unwilling to take. If you stick one of your buddies in the front line while you hang out "guarding his rear", you lose any charges you're holding. This also prevents you from callously gambling with other people's lives from the position of safety
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Longes wrote:No, it's exactly the oposite. You can't allow someone to take a risk for you.
Taboo: Get someone else to take a risk you're unwilling to take. If you stick one of your buddies in the front line while you hang out "guarding his rear", you lose any charges you're holding. This also prevents you from callously gambling with other people's lives from the position of safety
Either your definition of opposite is broken or I'm really bad at expressing myself today, because I thought that that was exactly what I said.
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Post by Longes »

Omegonthesane wrote:
Longes wrote:No, it's exactly the oposite. You can't allow someone to take a risk for you.
Taboo: Get someone else to take a risk you're unwilling to take. If you stick one of your buddies in the front line while you hang out "guarding his rear", you lose any charges you're holding. This also prevents you from callously gambling with other people's lives from the position of safety
Either your definition of opposite is broken or I'm really bad at expressing myself today, because I thought that that was exactly what I said.
Mixture of both, really. I misunderstood what you said as "Entropomancers have to let other take the risks for them" because what you wrote
I thought the Entropomancer taboo was to have someone else take a risk for you that you aren't willing to take yourself.
doesn't contradict what I wrote
Entropomancy taboo (charging by taking pointless risks) is not taking risks when you can
So, my bad mostly.
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Post by Longes »

Let's talk about Avatars for a change of pace.

Trickster, from "Stratosphere", p.76

Trickster is an all around great archetype. It's an actual archetype people can think about (unlike, say, Mystic Hermaphrodite), it has a good taboo and it has great powers. Really, the name speaks for itself, so I'm not going to go into details of what a Trickster is. Think Loky, Hermes, Smilin' Stan S. Stanman.

Taboo: Trickster can't choose straightforward way when it's possible to do a complicated con. Taking a loan - nay, making a pyramid scheme - yay.

This taboo is great. It's something that the avatar of Trickster would want to do anyway, and it, potentialy, leads to fun roleplaying experience.

Powers:*

1%-50%. Trickster is such a nice guy, that no one can stay mad at him. While in Trickster's presence, everyone with the Soul score less than the Trickster's avatar skill thinks that the Trickster is a great guy no matter what he does, or did in the past. It's possible to resist this with a Soul check, if the Trickster is asking you to do something harmful to you.

This power is great. This is an eternal "get out of jail" card. Guards bust into an oval office and see you drenched in blood, standing over the president's lifeless corpse? You smile, ask for a towel and leave. It was clearly an accident, you could do nothing wrong. Can this archetype possibly get any better?

51%-70%. Yes, yes it can. At this level you get the ability of the Perfect Lie. With a successful Avatar check you can convince any single person of the veracity of a single statement, no matter how outrageous it is. The person keeps believing that what you said is true until proven otherwise. The keyword is "proven". Memory doesn't help.

This ability... It's just so great! You can convince your enemy in combat that they need to reload. You can convince a shop clerk that you've already paid for whatever you took. You can tell someone that their name is Bobbin Threadbare, and they'll go by Bobbin Threadbare until they check their ID. The possibilities are endless.

71%-90%. You can flip-flop any check related to decieving - lying, disguise, forgery, magic tricks, etc.

Very useful, but not very interesting.

91%+. With a few props you can perfectly disguise yourself. Put on a bald wig and british accent, and you are Patrick Stewart. Paint your face black and wear a tie and you are Barak Obama. Use some lipstick and a pink ribbon and suddenly you are a gourgeous woman. The disguise is explicitly impossible to penetrate.

Conclusion. This Archetype is great in every way possible. The taboo is great, the powers are great. It's worth every skillpoint invested. As a cherry on top, it blends wonderfuly with most schools of magic. In fact, the only school of magic it doesn't blend with is Irascimancy (you need to get people angry with you to get charges, and first channel prevents that).

*Avatar is a skill you take, and you get new powers at the appropriate skill level.
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Post by Maxus »

That is so damn awesome.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

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