Cubist

Hmmm... nothing fancy on the final takedown, I think; just a hard hit, after which Jube stops himself from *really* hurting the idiot, instead choosing to duct-tape him into oblivion. After that, Jube spends a little time confirming that the fire really is out, that the ruddy shotgun blasts didn't hit anything important, and that the idiot perps did not leave any unpleasant surprises behind. Then he leaves the room to chase down the perps who ran away... only to be greeted by a pleasant surprise: The idiot perps are lying down in the corridor. Jube left the tied-up hostages in the corridor; the idiots didn't notice said hostages when they (the idiots) were fleeing blindly; the idiots trip over the organic speed-bumps, and manage to knock themselves out, or at least render themselves stunned/staggered. Jube duct-tapes these idiots into oblivion, after which he resumes his exhaustive search of the building, in order to confirm whether or not there are any more perps to be dealt with. Then, after he's confident that all the perps have been caught and taped, Jube will bring the hostages outside and report his activities to the cops. Jube will take note of those parts of the story where he made foolish errors, and conclude that he needs to get some sleep and some food, not necessarily in that order. When the cops are satisfied, Jube will run away to get the food and sleep he needs..... and that's where the curtain falls, I think.

One could ask: Why doesn't Jube use his own fire extinguisher -- the hand-held job he keeps in a vast pocket -- to 'dazzle' this final perp? The answer is, Jube's getting tired and hungry and he's not thinking as clearly as he normally does. Running on adrenaline at the moment, really. After this encounter is finished, I figure the cheetah's gonna dash back to his home and get a good night's sleep, which will be a decent endpoint for this thread. Of course, "a good night's sleep" will be only 1-2 hours long, seeing as how Jube is permanently stuck at a default tempo (acceleration factor) of 6* normal...

Hmm. I thought there wasn't any more bonfire, because Jube succeeded in extinguishing it? Of course, the smoke from the bonfire should still hang in the air for a while after the fire goes out... how long would depend mostly on the building's ventilation systems, I think... so yeah, the smoke could well be an impediment to the leader of the perps, while not affecting Jube much (if at all). Anyhow, Jube will take another swing at the perp... Third attack roll on anarchist (1d20+12=32) ... and roll a natural 20!? Yow! If I'm not misreading the rules, this should be a Critical Hit. I'll just take Increased Effect for an additional +5 on Jube's Attack Bonus, thanks, thus raising the total Attack Bonus to 12.

Ah, well. Here goes: Second attack roll on anarchist (1d20+12=29)

Jube's Defense bonus is +10, so his Defense is (10 + 10 =) 10, and that's before you start counting 'miscellaneous modifiers', so the attack roll of 15 is, indeed, a clear miss. If a base roll of 5 on 1D20 is a hit, Taking 10 should also hit -- and it will also remove any risk of rolling a 1. So: Taking 10 on the second attack roll: 10 + 12 = 22

He delays firing so he can try to taunt me? Idiot! Jubatus thought, moving right beside him while the idiot's mouth was still making the talking noises. When the idiot finally did pull the trigger, of course Jube wasn't there to be hit. And then... The cheetah paused -- just a fraction of an upshifted second. The obvious thing to do was hit this idiot with his claws... but he'd never actually done that before. Not while he was in his right mind, anyway. And sure, he'd hit canvas-covered dummies in practice sessions, not to mention slashing at targets that he'd gimmicked to record the force with which they were struck, so he had a very good idea of how many foot-pounds of force he could exert while upshifted. What Jubatus didn't know, was what N foot-pounds of force, while upshifted, would do to a living, breathing human being. Not for sure. There were cases on record of people getting crippled for life, even killed, by absurdly weak impacts... Jube steeled himself. There was no way anybody could hope to get into the heroing game without needing to hit people every now and then, and permanent damage was reassuringly rare. Still and all, he didn't need to start off hitting this idiot as hard as he possibly could... right? One tentative slash later, Jubatus downshifted to he could see what his attack had done to the idiot. Answer: Not much, apparently. "You call that a cut, Kittyboy?" the idiot said. "I got a Siamese at home whose claws are sharper'n yours!" More trash-talk, Jubatus mused. Ignore it. The idiot's second shotgun blast, like the first, missed its intended target; the fastest cat alive evaded the blast completely, without any difficulty. Whatever had been hit by the two shotgun blasts, well, Jube would worry about that after he dealt with the idiot at hand. And then Jube slashed at the idiot again, with a lot less 'tentative' on the side...

The anarchist losing Initiative? Considering that Jube's Initiative bonus is greater than the anarchist's entire roll, I'd say that's a good bet, Supercape... Just to observe the niceties, Jube's going to Take 10 for his Initiative roll. 10+31 = Initiative roll of 41. And the crowd goes wild... Jube will of course move out of harm's way. He will use his Strike 3, which has the "Mighty" Feat so his STR bonus of +4 boosts the Strike up to 7 ranks. Jube's Melee bonus is +12, so... Attack roll vs. anarchist (1d20+12=17)

Base roll for Intimidate (no modifiers yet) (1d20=14) Jube has no Intimidate skill, but he's definitely done some impressive stuff, so there will presumably be some adjustment to that roll of 14. I guess?

'First things first' was usually a good rule of thumb. In this case, however, it wasn't clear which 'things' were 'first' -- douse the bonfire, or rescue the hostages? Dealing with the idiot perps could wait, at least for the few clock-seconds it'd take Jubatus to handle the first two tasks... Having collected a number of the building's fire extinguishers while he was seeking out this room, Jube now prepped them all for active use. Then he sped inside and put them around the bonfire with their long axes parallel to the floor, 'floating' in midair at knee-height and aimed at the fire's base. After placing each extinguisher, Jube paused long enough to confirm that its smothering spray was indeed inching out of its nozzle before moving on to set up the next one. Once he'd gotten all the extinguishers set up to do their job, the fastest cat alive turned his attention to the hostages. One at a time, Jubatus moved them bodily into the corridor outside this room. After moving each hostage, Jube checked the 'ring' of extinguishers, adjusting their positions and points-of-aim as needed to ensure that they were still going to do what he wanted. Then he took the next hostage to (relative) safety. After the four hostages were out of immediate danger, the cheetah could focus on the bonfire. Keeping N fire extinguishers pointed in the right direction from in midair, all in realtime... it reminded Jubatus of a vaudeville act he'd seen on television a while ago: Plate spinning. The stakes here were a little higher than a broken plate, of course... Only after the bonfire was out, did Jubatus turn his attention to the idiot perps. He moved to a spot where none of them would be within arm's reach of him; downshifted to their tempo of 1; and said, rather loudly, "Okay! Funtime's over, people. You can come quietly, or you can yell and scream. Your choice."

Jubatus A Hero's Quickening I KAN HAZ HUMANITY? A Star is (re-) Born Jubatus' Wiki page (which may not be sufficiently comprehensive to merit a player reward, but it's here) Jube's Reputation Chart

While Jubatus could distinguish a goodly number of the specific aromas in the smoke he was smelling, he didn't recognize most of them... then again, it hardly mattered. A fire in an armory just wasn't a good idea, end of discussion -- and it could have catastrophic consequences, depending on what specific items might be ignited. After putting on his gas mask, the cheetah sped through the building, looking for the actual fire. This task was made more difficult by the fact that the fire's smoke traveled through ventilation conduits; Jube did have something of an 'ace in the hole', however. Specifically, the fact that his Timeshift worked both ways. When he upshifted, running faster than normal, the Timeshift caused light to doppler down, so that he saw by ultraviolet wavelengths; the other side of that coin was that when he downshifted, running slower than normal, he saw by infrared wavelengths. Jube didn't like to downshift that far -- the accompanying gravity boost wasn't nice, not to mention the whole slowing down thing -- but when you were looking for the epicenter of a fire, infrared vision was the right tool for the job. As Jubatus ran through the corridors, he kept an eye out for any fire extinguishers which had been installed in the building. His own fire extinguisher was very small, and he'd already used up some of its foam earlier tonight; as well, he figured that if there were any exotic materials here that would react strangely to a 'standard' fire extinguisher, he'd be better off using the on-site FEs anyway. Every time he saw an extinguisher, Jube downshifted momentarily, just long enough to get an infrared look at things and decide which direction was hottest, and collected that extinguisher.

Notice roll for the burning scent (1d20+9=11) Well, frump. Lousy dice... Jube's being able to identify an odor kind of implies that he's smelled that odor before, because otherwise, how the heck is he gonna recognize it? This is why I said that Jube's reaction to the scent of the bomb was "don't recognize it, but it's nasty". With that pitiful roll, I'd think Jubatus can recognize the smoke of common materials burning -- wood, paper, etc -- and also recognize that there are, in fact, some uncommon materials burning as well, but he won't know what those uncommon materials are. If it's an aroma that Jube has smelled before & therefore ought to recognize, perhaps he only smelled it before he turned cheetah, so the difference between cheetah-style and human-style scent impressions is getting in the way of Jube recognizing it now? In any case... It's a munitions dump. Fire is just bad news regardless, and all the more so when the fire can easily ignite a whole lot of nasty stuff which can go 'boom' and so on. Jube's going to put on his gas mask and look for 'ground zero', the specific place(s) that is (are) burning. The building itself is going to have a number of fire extinguishers in it (unless it's in violation of the fire codes!), so Jube will collect up any extinguishers he sees along the way -- his own FE is fairly small and has already been used, hence is likely to run dry at an inopportune moment, so it's a Good Thing to have more FEs on hand. Depending on how many of the building's FEs Jube gathers, he may find it difficult to carry them all in his hands, but duct-tape is good for many things -- an impromptu harness that Jube can hang a bunch of FEs off of, for instance, or duct-tape the FEs to. [later addendum] Jube's massive pile of Super-Senses does include Infrared Vision, which seems like a perfectly obvious thing to exploit when one is searching for the source of a fire. It's got a Timeshift-related restriction, the details of which mean Jube could be giving his back another opportunity to complain...

The fastest cat alive didn't even try any sarcastic banter on the running perp -- with the sound-distorting effects of Timeshifting to a tempo of 40, he and the perp were mutually unintelligible and inaudible to one another -- but in his head, he thought, Yeah, that'll work. The cheetah's fleeing quarry found himself immobilized with duct tape in the short time between two strides. After that, Jubatus served up a nice, hot helping of Duct Tape Special to the first (unconscious) perp, too, just in case he recovered quickly or was playing possum. Jubatus didn't like leaving loose ends. Before perp #3 hit the ground, Jube had transported the tied-up security guard outside, close beside the police car, where the officers in attendance could see him and deal with his bonds. The cheetah downshifted to the officers' tempo of 1 just long enough to let them know the guard was here, then he blurred back in and out, three times, carrying one immobilized perp on each trip, and leaving each perp at least 15 feet away from either of their two comrades (because leaving them next to one another, so that Perp A might have half a chance of removing the tape from Perp B's limbs, would have been stupid. Each time he re-entered the building, Jubatus was alert for any indication that his stumble, or the subsequent gunfire, had attracted any attention from whichever other perps might be in the building tonight...

Gunfire. Loud noise. Betcha the rest of the thugs have been alerted, mumble irritate annoy. Jube duct-tapes the remaining two thugs. Yes, even the unconscious one! Jube is a perfectionist, and he's not going to leave a loose end untied if he can possibly help it. He will transport the four immobilized people (three perps + 1 guard) outside, one at a time, guard first, so that the cops can deal with each one in an appropriate manner. No, Jube isn't going to make it easy for the perps to undo their duct-tape bonds; they ain't gonna be closer than 15 feet to one another! Since there had been some loud noises, Jube will be watching for evidence of other perps every time he re-enters the building to carry another person out. He's a perfectionist fussbudget, yada yada yada. Me (i.e., the player, Cubist), I'm going to assume that Jube's worries on this point are groundless, since he's responding far more quickly than any normal-speed person could hope to. If said worries are not groundless, well, leave us burn that bridge when we get to it... Assuming Jube manages to transport all four people outside without being interrupted, he will suggest to the cops that they might want to interrogate the perps, and debrief the guard... and then he'll zoom back into the building, to continue his interrupted Exhaustive Whole-Building Search in seek of more perps to take down and more hostages to rescue. Stopping to interrogate the perps might also yield information... but that would also take time, and therefore give the perps' comrades more opportunity to notice they've been invaded and put up some sort of defensive response. Better to just blitzkrieg the place, Jube thinks.

The bullet which took out the overhead light wouldn't have been much of a problem for Jubatus even if it had been aimed properly -- he could see the thing as it moved through the air, at a velocity which (to Jube's accelerated eyes) looked to be in the neighborhood of 20 MPH. Still, it would have been better if that bullet hadn't been fired at all, considering that they all were located in the storage area of a munitions dump. Who knew what sort of secondary explosions could have been sparked off by that stray bullet? But even if that weren't a valid concern, the noise of the gunfire definitely was! Jubatus raised his fire extinguisher to 'point blank' position and gave the third perp a face-full of opaque foam. To discourage any further weapons fire from the second perp, Jube moved around the third perp, making them a living shield in between Jube and the second perp. The cheetah duct-taped the third perp's wrists together behind their back...

You said the fire extinguisher trick counts as a standard attack against DC 13. I'm assuming Jube's normal Melee bonus of +12 applies, so... Attack roll for improvised 'Dazzle' (1d20+12=15) 15 is greater than 13... so that hits, yay! Or at least I think it hits... Jube is going to make a point of keeping Thug C in between himself and Thug B, the perp who is so uncouth as to actually fire bullets at an innocent kitty-cat. If Thug C is dumb enough to keep firing, well, that's his lookout, ennit?

THe post is posted! Thug A hath been thrown at Thug B, and Jube is preparing to deal with Thug C...

The first part of Jubatus' battle plan, 'recon the entire building', started off well enough. Running on the walls, close to the ceiling, felt a little odd at first, but the cheetah got used to it soon enough. And much of the building's interior proved to be deserted; as best Jube could tell, the only part of the building the perps could be in was the storage area. But things fell apart when the fastest cat alive encountered his first set of terrorists! He'd just entered a mid-sized chamber which contained, among other things, three (rather young, actually...) perps and a person all tied up with nylon rope; this last person looked to be wearing a security guard's uniform. And then Jube's lower back spasmed in pain! It threw him off-stride -- and lurching into the ceiling. The impact did far more damage to the cheetah's dignity than to his body, but between the spike of pain and the ceiling-scrape, Jube lost his concentration... ...and just like that, his Timeshift dissipated, leaving him at his normal, default tempo of only 6 times faster than normal. Jubatus recovered himself almost instantly -- certainly less than one clock-second -- but the damage was done. When he looked at the perps after re-establishing his Timeshift to a tempo of 40, one of the perps was looking right at him, and the perp's mouth was open in speech! Blast it! Jube thought. He noticed my screw-up -- he's gotta be sounding the alarm! And how many other perps heard the noise when I stumbled? In this situation, not even the fastest cat alive could afford to waste any time. Jube sped down the wall and across the floor to the nearest of the three perps; taking advantage of the Timeshift-reduced gravity, Jube carefully lifted this person up a few inches off the floor... and then gently shoved him towards the second-closest of the three perps. As the cheetah didn't want to risk giving the perp a case of whiplash, he performed this feat with exaggerated care, and then he turned to the third perp. Jube's fire extinguisher was already in one hand, even as his other hand was in process of retrieving a roll of duct-tape from his vest...

And... Jube's got a Grapple Bonus of +16 (+12 for Melee Attack, +4 for STR when upshifted, all else is nil). Grapple Roll for initial attack (1d20+16=23) -- does that succeed? Let's go with the power stunt. It's cool and it's visually flashy, so it's oh-so-appropriate for the genre.

Hmmm... three mooks, plus one hostage... doesn't seem like the mooks could have overpowered the existing security, so there's got to be some non-mook involvement here. And that hostage may or may not be what he appears, depending on how devious the 'real' force behind this mess is. Jube's goal here is to take out the three mooks fast, before any of them can summon reinforcements. Jube's battle plan: Zip up to Mook #1; gently pick him up and shove him so that he drifts on over to impact against Mook #2. Since Jube is upshifted to 40* faster than normal, a "gentle shove" from the cheetah equates to "thrown with great force" from any normal-speed person, and "drifts on over" works out to "smacks, HARD, against". Rather than wait for Mooks 1 and 2 to complete their rendezvous, Jube gives Mook #3 a faceful of fire extinguisher, after which he duct-tapes Mook #3 into a harmless package, including a gag so's Mook #3 cannot shout the alarm. After Mook #3 is wrapped up, Jube will wait (if need be) for Mooks 1 and 2 to collide, keeping an eye out for any nasty surprises which may pop up whilst he's waiting, and after said collision discombobulates the pair of mooks, Jube duct-tapes both of them into harmlessness, too. What rolls should I make here, if any? Given the difference in speed & reaction time & such, it's arguable that Taking 10 would suffice to cover everything Jube is tryna do here. Failing that, it looks like rolls could be applicable for (a) picking up Mook #1, ( hitting Mook #2 with Mook #1, and © whether the fire extinguisher trick distracts Mook #3 sufficiently for Jube to wrap him up. Yes? No? After the mooks are dealt with, Jube's next move is to massage his lower back, with the intent of preventing a re-run of the spasm which got him noticed by these yutzes. Jube will do this thing whilst upshifted, because upshift = reduced gravity = less strain on the back, which can only help. And finally, Jube will transport the tied-up guard to Outside, in front of the cop car. Jube will not untie the guard, however; he'll leave that to the cops outside. I'll post to the IC thread after we've worked out how the real events differ from Jube's desired plan.

I think Jubatus needs a minor correction: His Initiative is listed as "+7/+23"... but he's got +7 from DEX, and another +24 from the Enhanced Feats (Improved Initiative) slot in his Timeshift container, which (unless I'm overlooking something or have otherwise messed up) means he ought to have "+7/+31". So assuming I've done it right, the Combat block on his character sheet should read thusly: [b][u]Combat[/u][/b]: 12 + 20 = 32pp Initiative: +7/+31 Attack: +6 ranged, +12 melee Grapple: +16/+10 Defense: +10 (+10 Base), +5 Flat-Footed Knockback: -5, -1 Flat-Footed Ecalsneerg: what a guy!

Okay... pg 153 of the MnM 2nd Edition book says an Initiative roll is d20 + DEX modifier + miscellaneous modifiers. And the modifiers are... +7, DEX modifier +24, Improved Initiative (in the Timeshift 'container') Looks like I got modifiers of +31 -- I think. I'm not sure why Jube's character sheet has a listed Initiative value of "+7/+23", but I'm not going to fuss about it... Initiative roll *before* applying modifiers (1d20=4) Interestingly, my basic, unmodified roll did not, in fact, beat the thugs' basic, unmodified roll. Fortunately, Jube's got plenty of modifiers...

I did -- check my post which starts Okay, that's a roll of "1D20 + relevant modifiers" and look at the paragraph beginning with Jube will go for the DC of 20, in which you'll find a link whose visible text is 1d20=8. Hopefully I did it right...

Okay, a 'mere' +11, so the roll ended up 19, and Jube failed by 1. Make it so!

Okay, that's a roll of "1D20 + relevant modifiers" against whichever Difficulty Class. This is the first time I've had to make a roll in MnM, so I'm not entirely sure which modifiers are relevant; I'll list a bunch of things that might be relevant, and you tell me which ones are or aren't worth bothering with in this case, okay? +9 from Stealth (obviously) +7 from DEX? (appropriate, but since Stealth alreadyincludes DEX modifier, this would kinda be double-dipping) + (1-3) from Master Plan? (Jube *did* plan this out ahead of time, sort of, so maybe...) +2 from running near the ceiling? (i.e., "bonus from condition improving performance", assuming the thugs are unlikely to look up) Jube will go for the DC of 20, because of course he wants an in-depth look at everything! For the moment, I'll assume Jube has +11 in bonuses (from his Stealth and from running near the ceiling). The basic die-roll is 1d20=8; with just the +11 modifiers, it adds up to 19, which fails by one. However, if either DEX or Master Plan are relevant here, Jube makes this roll. If Jube failed the roll, perhaps it's because he's been going bipedal all along, and his back/skeleton finally had enough (see also: his Nature of the Beast complication)?