Yep, sounds reasonable. Do you want to RP it all out, or do you want a summation post of what Aegis finds when she goes?
ANd yes, you can all ask your questions now, you'll get answers from various peoples.
Vi, sent you a PM. Just realized that with the new forum bugs, you might not have realized it.
My family is leaving for a week vacation tomorrow with limited Internet connection.
In the meantime, Mud would like to
1. get more information about his family (which we can assume off screen)
2. recover from the whiplash time travel by digesting the new reality
3. restarting his life plan of going to school for civil engineering to better use his earth/solid-moving powers
4. develop new powers. With Snap gone, I would like Mud to pursue the Clayface shapeshifting powers of his original concept. Sacrificing the mud throwing stuff if necessary for points.
cheers
So, in theory, Pulse's mom has always been a 'low-tier' meta. Her powerset was essentially Sylar's before he started murdering people to find out how they tick (Limited to mechanical engineering). She never went to a major college or anything and instead just went with being a highly skilled and efficient car mechanic. Since she charged by the hour and had a cheat for figuring out whatever was wrong with a machine, they never got rich, but she always had business.
Her father is a mundane electrician.
Pulse would like to know what's happened to her family.
Pulse would like to learn the new languages as quickly as possible.
Pulse will focus heavily on the rise and fall of Meta Rights in the next days. She suspects that Ace f!&%ed with perceptions to change the world, so she'll be analyzing any videos he's a part of.
Pulse will be exceedingly down, and short of mindlink/telepathy, she's unlikely to actually talk about how she's feeling or why she's feeling it, instead retreating into her rabbit hole and trying to find some semblance of hope in a world that has passed her by. Assume she binge watches any Jester movies as she is able to find them.
If she -does- talk to someone about it:
She feels like she's a detriment to her team. It was her tip that took them to the bank. She was the leader, and everything went to hell. Two of her team are MIA, assumed KIA. She feels like she's always the first to fall. She feels like the closest the team has to a win is Queenie and Jester - which she clings to.
Regardless of whether she talks to someone or not, her forcefield begins to fritz out, turning on on its own on occasion.
Edit: She also focuses on which of her friends has to register and which don't. She suspects everyone is required to. And she hates being compared to a firearm. This is a really sore spot for her, because making *people* register is not at all the same as making people register for a *firearm*. Bonus danger in that they likely need to stay unregistered as they fit the description of Metas wanted for a huge bank robbery and their skill set matches perfectly. :|
Vi, sent you a PM. Just realized that with the new forum bugs, you might not have realized it.
Just got home from a day out with a friend who is visiting from out of state. I'll look for the message now.
Yep, sounds reasonable. Do you want to RP it all out, or do you want a summation post of what Aegis finds when she goes?
ANd yes, you can all ask your questions now, you'll get answers from various peoples.
If Aegis is the only one going IMO it'd be better to just do a quick recap so we don't split the party too much for too long. How long would a quick scouting trip take, if it's just a few days it could be what she does while everyone recovers since she didn't take nearly as much damage.
Questions:
How's her father?
Has the company been able to keep going?
Why was her house picked to be the hideout?
Was her room left untouched?
Private questions for Bolt when she returns:
Is mimic, the meta that tried to kill aegis in her intro, still in their custody?
Anything about Ace?
Has Whip been heard from/seen?
She'd also reassure her they can use her bank accounts if they need them.
Before I hand out EXP and such, I wanted to post this.
You've all been playing the same characters since the beginning, and you may have decided that you don't like the power sets or something, or their abilities aren't exactly how you thought they'd play out. Most of you are playing for the first time.
If anyone would like to change out characters, now is a good time. I'm not saying anyone should or needs to, I'm just saying it would be a good time if you choose to.
I don't really want to change. I've got a lot of ideas for how to grow Pulse, but Zoey has me convinced I need to specialize a bit more instead of continuously growing her organically in small chunks that make sense to her current character arc. :P
I would like suggestions on what you think she needs to be more... effective as a character. As it stands, she felt significantly less effective than Rocket, Mud, Aegis, more limited than Snapdragon, though not less powerful, and about on par with Violet.
I know that I need to get her a movement power, everyone else is more mobile with at least a super-leap ability.
Mobility is really her big weakness. Well, that and knowing which powers to use when. She was actually pretty effective blinding people when she used it (it put Paper on the defensive).
Much of the issues with the last fight were not powers, it was tactics. You might all want to ask Paper about the fight from her side, when you have the chance, to get *her* perspective on it.
That seems like something Pulse should do. She can compare notes and even play it back for her.
I think I should pick up some points in tactics, actually.
Is Ping (the headputer) able to send mental illusions through Violet's mindlink since it's mindlinked with Pulse?
Ping would need to pick up the ability to link to Violet, or Violet would need to be able to link to computers. Ping's link is to Pulse, and Violets is to human minds only. You need something to 'bridge the gap' between the two to expand the mind link group.
If Pulse picked up mind link as well, she could keep the mind link up if Violet went down, and vice versa, and then the other could re-up the link via the other person's link (meaning it would be harder to take the links down, since there would be 2 different special effects). Pulse is also fairly sure that the electrical guy was setting up his own 'pings' in other people's mind to act as mind links.
Can people intentionally fail a mental illusion effect in order to allow a lower power mental illusions to affect someone like... Violet?
Yes, you can intentionally lower both your mental defense and your ECV.
I like Aegis mostly as is but if we're going to have a good bit of downtime would a remakeish be possible? More just polishing/editing skills now that I understand the system a bit more
Should be possible, yes.
I'm fine keeping with Violet, but the costly nature of mental powers means that giving her more Oomph is not likely to happen any time soon.
I'll probably keep changing her Ultra slots to Multi slots in her power set, and expanding her immunities so that eventually she'll be immune to all but the most lethal poisons, will have stopped aging, and won't actually need to eat, sleep, or drink - but still won't know that, because she always underestimates herself.
If anyone's got a suggestion for possible power avenues for her, let me know.
One thought, you might consider a Teleport slot with the limitation that she can only teleport to where someone within her mindlink is. Basically travelling down her mindlink. A Megascale (world) teleport linked with a Megascale (World) Clairvoyance, both with limitations only to a space adjacent to someone she's linked to.
Could have been triggered by someone using their mind space to transport her.
A dispel/suppress for mental effects would be a good buy-in. Being able to do psychic rehab on the fly and actively drain the effects of the bad guys off, rather than constantly fighting them could help a lot. Not sure though.
Are you wanting to mostly stick with subtle effects?
One thing I planned to do with pulse was to buy off immunity to viruses and bacteria, and flavor it as her body being able to manage itself on a cellular level.
I do feel like I need to rework Pulse's disads. The fact that her disads are so much harsher than anything else that's been actively leveraged is soul crushing, sometimes. I'll see what I can come up with.
Teleport isn't really something that I've ever considered for Violet - it's a far more physical power, something that would have been her brother's bailiwick and not hers.
As far as subtle vs. overt, that's a whole other discussion.
Violet was intended by her creators to be the most powerful psychic mind in the world. She was supposed to be the ultimate manifestation of human potential, with no equal out there. Now, clearly, that's not the case (they were WAY off, evidently).
Thus far, the most overt power she has would be her flight. Her shield and her flight are telekinetic, while the rest of her powers are all telepathic. I could start getting her more TK powers, but do we really need a Mentalist who is also a pocket Brick? I'm not sure.
I think I've used her Presence Aid all of once in the game, which means it may not be the most useful power to keep around, especially since we have other people in the group who are good at intimidation and coercion.
She's far from the weakest mentalist, but no PC will ever be the most powerful at anything, else there would be very boring fights. :P
Superman comics are fun because the writers write him as an idiot. If you gave Batman the powers of superman, he could take over the world.
Heck, if you gave Robin the powers of Superman, he'd be able to take over the world.
Superman uses his power for every situation, but does so in the most brute force way possible. WB animation is very good at illustrating this. Back when the Superman and Batman shows were on (the ones with Mark Hamill first doing the Joker), they did a cross-over.
A train is out of control, and Superman lands in front of it, grabs the engine, puts his feet to the ties, and tears up a half-mile of track and damages the train and doesn't stop it in time to avoid the oncoming train. Batman, in the batmobile, drives up next to him as he's tearing up hundreds of feet of track and threatening to derail the train, and gives him a mocking salute, and then zooms ahead and uses a batarang to hit the track switch and switch the train off onto a different track so it doesn't hit the passenger train.
Situation solved, with minimal damage (just a bent switch).
When he's not being an idiot, he's being something else
I disagree with your assessment of Superman entirely, but that's neither here nor there.
(But I'll say this: he's not an idiot. He's a man who has the literal power of a sun inside him, and a strong moral compass telling him not to use it. There's a really, really big difference.)
The point being, regarding Violet, is that thus far, her powers have not been able to do much in the way of rendering the villains harmless. Maybe I'm just putting my attention on the wrong ones (I seem to have the knack for finding the bad guys with the most Mental Defense - it's a gift!), and I know that as the GM, you have to find ways of keeping the fights from being too easy, but I do wonder sometimes if I picked powers that won't be very useful, long-term.
That being said I'm still enjoying my character and the game, so don't worry about that. My concerns are just concerns, and I'll figure out what to do with my XP that helps the group. :)
My problem with Supes is not that he doesn't use his power. :) It's that his first, second and third solution to every problem is to use his strength to slam it or beat it down. And to continue doing so even after it's been shown not to work. Also to use the strength to 'help' when the strength makes things worse. (The best 'superman' I saw who had his powers work the way they should when Supes uses his is Hancock. Slaming into the engine of a train derails the train. Grabbing a jet breaks off the wing or tail, etc.)
So, the main things I'm wanting to do is have a little story arc with Pulse:
Her forcefield becomes always on and loses its 'protects carried objects'. This should cost:
30 points forcefield with always on, persistent, constant, strong electromagnetic fields, no end = 37.5
10 points power defense linked to forcefield (mostly always on, -1/4, strong electromagnetic fields (-1/2)) = 5.71
Total cost: 43 points from 41 points. So +2 CP to get that arc rolling.
Afterwards, I want to work on a super suit to stabilize her powers (the cool jewelry thing we talked about), which results in an OiHID Armor with Strong Electromagnetic Fields and linked Power Defense as above. This would cost 26.71 + 5.71 = 32 points without protects carried objects, or 31.43+5.71 = 37 points if she could get her ability to protect carried things back.
The freed up points of getting a super suit, would go into getting the transform/shapeshift that goes along with it, and as kitty pointed out earlier, allow me to up her defenses slightly.
Any thoughts on those future changes?
The idea is that repeated trauma has resulted in her body (her mind? Ping?) deciding to change things up a bit and stop letting the bad things happen if it can help it.
How does Pulse eat or go to the bathroom if the forcefield is always on? IE: Is this a short range thing that lasts a day or two, or is this a longer arc over months? If the former, it's not that big a deal, although it might be embarrassing, but if the latter, it's a life and death thing...
What sort of transform/shapeshift?
Leaning towards super hero costume for the shape shift/transform.
I was leaning towards long term. So it costs end to do things like eat/drink/bathroom. Showering becomes an extreme chore. However long it takes to get her Bucky ball jewelry made up/designed.
Be really, really, super careful with Always On.
Your power SFX could conceivably prevent you from touching/feeling anything if you went that route.
Yup. Except extreme pressures. I had that in mind as well. It shouldn't be super long term, as we have the money and manpower to throw at fixing it.
It'll be embarrassing at first as well (you'll be cleaning yourself up a lot in the shower until you get control of it, people might want to avoid you for awhile). Also, always on (costs endurance to suppress) would be a 1/4 limitation, not a 1/2, so you'd need to adjust your costs.
Would the Strong Electromagnetic Field side effect get bumped up by 1/4 to compensate for an 'always on' side effect?
In theory, things like showering shouldn't be that bad, since it's essentially 'take off clothes, drop forcefield, turn forcefield on'. Cause wouldn't the forcefield push off the icky grossness via SFX? (starts at skin, pushes outwards).
Oh, and also, Pulse passed the perception check with 1 more than the threshold, (dice included the -4 penalty).
Anyone else hyped for Jessica Jones season 2?
I'm hyped for it, myself. I've been mainlining S4 of Z Nation lately, though.
Quick question about Violet needing to register - how can she do that when she technically has no ID? She's a non-entity, except for her cover ID, which is in itself a complete fabrication.
Color me curious.
Ye lords, there are so many metaphors going on in this.
Yes, Violet, you're an undocumented person. If you register, you're screwed, if you don't, you're screwed. WELCOME TO THE LIFE.
:P
If Violet was 'made' in the US, she'd still be a US citizen by birth, she'd need to find a US citizen who can swear that she was born in the US.
Really what this boils down to is that I paid points for "Anonymity: No Official Public Record," and have the "Secret ID" and "Hunted" disadvantages that are wrapped around that, and the registration effectively nullifies all of those.
I'm asking how to prevent that nullification.
You can't avoid altering some of them (the book states these can be lost). You could alter the Anonymity into a Fake ID, and instead of having no Official Public Record, you could have a Fake ID, combined with the Secret ID and Hunted, which would leave you a little more exposed, but with more recourse and more freedom to move around.
@MDT Working on Aegis's powers but I have a few questions:
I am having trouble figuring out the math for multipower sets. How much would it cost for me to add Invisibility to Density Increase so Aegis does not have to worry about falling through the floor or breaking everything she walks on?
How much would it cost to buy Invisibility for her entire Density Control Multipower so that she would look the same no matter her density and not have to worry about environmental things?
What is fast healing on Aegis's skills? I was not able to find any it in the book.
Oh, for those of you who dig such things, the dead tree edition of my short story collection is now available over at Amazon.
Invisible power effects would not be the way to do that for Aegis. The way to do it would be to buy 1" of flight, persistent, always on, only to walk on objects without breaking them. That would also give her the ability to walk on even thin ice without breaking it. The special effect being that her density control allows her to exude out a density field around her to affect anything she touches, including the floor, etc, to strengthen it.
The invisibility on the desolidification would work, and it would be a +1/4 advantage, as it would be visual only (touching her would reveal she's desolid, radar and sonar would go through here, etc).
Fast healing is from Fantasy Hero, it lets you heal faster than normal. It's a weak version of regeneration. I would need to look it up, but I think it's 1 HP per hour or day or something like that.
Sorry last time we talked about it you told me IPE was the proper way to do it.
How do advantages work with multi power set ups and is there way to get rid of the knock back penalty on flight since that's part of the point of Density Increase?
I know, I looked into it some more and realized that would be a better way to do it. Sorry, should have specified that. Nothing on your side to apologize for.
Multipower's and advantages work the same way as disads. But it's better to just buy up the multipower and then apply the advantage to the slot. So you'd need to buy it up by 10 active points (40 * 1.75 = 70, 70 / 1.25 = 56, so 8 points real cost).
The flight and double knockback yes, you could buy it : 1" flight (0 endurance, Persistent, Invisible Power Effects, Always on, Only while touching surfaces, linked to Multipower, no-noncombat). The only while touching surfaces would negate the extra knockback, since you'd not be in mid-air, same as people with flight aren't double knocked back when they are standing on the ground.
I'd really like to retool Pulse's disadvantages, so, here are some thoughts on that line:
Once Pulse has a supersuit via the jewelry, is 'accidental change' brought about by taking damage a viable disad (Looks like it's 20ish based on Snap/Mud?)? Prior to getting that, I could also make her always-on forcefield a distinguishing feature. (Not concealable, always noticed) is worth 20.
I'm thinking about trading Pulse's 'I die by fire' from Susceptible to Vulnerable, meaning that extreme heat does extra damage, but doesn't instantly kill her. 1d6, very common, once per turn is worth the same as double body damage from heat attacks (20 points), and is... significantly less likely to immediately kill her.
I'm also contemplating keeping her burns as a distinguishing feature, but I'm not sure on that front, how much it would be worth, and so on.
Finally, it could be neat to buy her a rival of some kind, but I'm not really sure how wise it would be. Any thoughts, overall?
Just to note on the 'supersuit' and 'always on forcefield'. Always on isn't a limitation if you can turn it off at will by putting on the suit, since it would be under your control.
Accidental change really requires a good chunk of your powers be 'only in hero id'.
Burns would be distinguishing features, but not worth much.
Re: Supersuit and Always on Forcefield: If I were going to go that route, I'd buy variable limit: Always On/OIF. But I more plan to migrate straight from the always-on forcefield into the bucky-ball jewelry, which should appease her psyche.
Re: Accidental Change: That's very fair. The way I was looking at it subconsciously was that I could take a 15ish point distinguishing feature for 20-25 points, which was a really weird way for me to be looking at it. But yeah, 'looks funny after getting hit' is actually less of a disad than just 'looks funny, easily concealed', so there's no way that even a significant distinguishing feature makes sense for a more significant accidental change. My bad!
The burns were kind of a holdback as something that I could help to leverage off some of the super-ow disads.
Without the accidental change (-5 additional Disads), I still have susceptible->Vulnerable which is still -5 disad points (1/2 again body from heat -> 1d6 extra heat damage in hot environments per turn), which means I'd really like to dig out at least 20 more points to drop my double electric stun to half again electric stun, and completely buy off half again heat stun. So even a couple points from burns would help. Mostly, I want to just not randomly be on the floor dying from an attack that should have barely phased me, anymore :( Headshots, I'm cool with, they happen. But it really sucks to keep getting hit by a 'very common' effect (I know, says so on the tin!), and just be floored immediately, so I need to shift that in some way. I think I'd already be outright dead if I'd taken double fire damage instead of 50% more. :(
I'm looking to retool a couple of Violet's disadvantages, myself, to keep them more in line with the current state of affairs.
I've also considered having her get pregnant via IVF and a mysteriously (conveniently) previously obtained donation from Rocket, as that was something I was going to suggest in-character before all this happened.
Considering. Not sold on the idea yet.
My family is leaving for a week vacation tomorrow with limited Internet connection.
In the meantime, Mud would like to
1. get more information about his family (which we can assume off screen)
2. recover from the whiplash time travel by digesting the new reality
3. restarting his life plan of going to school for civil engineering to better use his earth/solid-moving powers
4. develop new powers. With Snap gone, I would like Mud to pursue the Clayface shapeshifting powers of his original concept. Sacrificing the mud throwing stuff if necessary for points.
cheers
I'm back. Running on 4 hours of sleep after delayed flights last night and work today.
1. Thanks. I'll do something with your detail when I get the neuron activity.
2. & 3. Same
4. I didn't see any response to this comment. Besides a rebuild, I would greatly appreciate a how-to manual on how to run him through basic combat tactics. For example, how should he a approach a higher DCV or a flyer. You've made several comments about our lack of tactics, and I would like to play through the fact that my character is smarter than I am.
thanks
Hey Mud,
Sorry, was going to respond to that later and forgot about it.
On the rebuild, I totally get it. You're basically wanting to go more for a clayface type yes? That shouldn't be difficult. Changing appearance is fairly easy. I'll have to go over the character in detail when I have time this weekend to give you specifics, but it shouldn't be hard.
From a tactics perspective, it's not really individual tactics that's the issue. The main thing is, everyone is running around acting like individuals in combat and not talking anything out or planning anything, mostly. You have mind link for planning and plotting.
On individual tactics for Mud, Mud is really going to have trouble with high DCV people. What he can do is coordinate with his team mates to make the high DCV easier to hit for his own high DCV people using teamwork skill (which you're all slowly building up). For a flyer, the old 'throw the kitchen sink' at the flyer is your best bet, just watch what is down range, you don't want to throw a mailbox at a flyer and hit a school bus by accident.
For group tactics, I think Paper and Jester provided a very good example of teamwork. They coordinated attacks, went for the biggest threat first, and worked our their strategy before combat. The group has never really worked out combat strategies as a group on who should do what in a combat situation.
Pulse's flash is an excellent way to tie up someone, especially a brick for example, while Vi is pretty good at hitting bricks and speedsters. Your group should really come up with some pairings and work on tag-team stuff, to take on specific targets in combat. Sometimes it's not worth the trouble to try to take down the big bad first, sometimes it's better to take out his minions quickly so you can concentrate on the big bad, right?
I think Pregnant Violet would be this whole logic bomb for Pulse. She's still only -just barely- pro-choice, so when it comes to 'it's your body' her emotions get twisted up a bit. Once you add in that Violet would now be risking the baby's life in addition to her own, every time she tries to help people, and adding in the emotional hormone surges, I think Pulse would probably vote for a pregnant Violet to not go on any missions she suspects could be dangerous.
The team not wanting to put the pregnant team mate (and our enemies) in more danger as a result of the pregnancy may be something you overlooked in that regard. Playing overwatch from home with your mental powers may be a required evolution for that sort of thing. Iunno.
MDT:
If I may counter some of that - Paper and Jester had foreknowledge of our team going in to that fight, and knew how best to tie us up. They were also (seemingly) incredibly well defended against Violet's mental attacks (my shoddy rolling didn't help any, either - I swear the RNG has it in for me) as well as being able to stop many of us in our tracks due to the depth and complexity (and overall effectiveness) of their illusions.
Our ability to pick and choose targets and go after them in any coordinated manner will have to fall to "If we see one of these, we do this" type solutions, because frankly, we have almost no foreknowledge of who our villains are. I say "almost" because after a few segments of combat, we're able to generally determine what kind of powerset they have. But the ability to look at them and go "Oh, that's Magenta, she deals in magnetics, watch out for any metal around her" has not been something we've been able to get.
In point of fact, both Violet and Pulse have, in character, asked repeatedly if we can't establish some kind of database about heroes and villains, and - again in character - been told that "nothing of that sort exists." Every time we have suggested that someone get on it, the other heroes either forget about it, or never tell us they've worked on it.
As I'm writing this, I realize that I might sound like I'm angry or placing blame. Please let me assure you, I'm not. I'm simply saying that in game, in character, at least two PC's have attempted to resolve the issue of "the bad guys are always better at planning than we are, and always know more about us than we do about them," and met with little success.
That being said, as it has been three years worth of time, I don't think it's unreasonable for someone (such as Pulse - I'd say Rocket if he were here, as well - or Violet, both of whom have very good memories) to look in to putting some points into a Knowledge Skill: Villains, at, say, 14- (which is a very reasonable number for most commonly known and many uncommonly known bad guys), to solve this problem.
I'm willing to throw points at that kind of thing. It's been a constant thorn in our side, and eliminating it is something that's in character for Violet to do.
Mud:
I haven't looked at your sheet, but if you're going for more Clayface style tactics (which I have to say: Doo eeet), I'd suggest things like:
- Area of Effect entangles (You gloop your opponents and pretty much anyone around them).
- Area of Effect drains (vs. movement types or vs. Dexterity, Speedsters will hate this).
- Force Walls (you put a wall made of mud in front of you).
- Buy a Martial Grab, only when using Force Walls, only when triggered by someone punching the wall, that causes anyone trying to break your wall (and who doesn't succeed in doing so) to get gooped.
- Link a Martial Throw to that grab, so the wall - which is an extension of yourself - can huck them away after they foolishly try to punch through your wall. As I recall, you have a pretty amazing strength, you'd get some good distance on them.
- Heck, buy a triggered Martial Grab anyway, so when someone punches you, they get stuck.
- I am not a fan of the Damage Shield multiplier, but given the nature of your character, a Damage Shield Stun Drain or Hand-To-Hand attack (stun only) wouldn't be amiss, when someone punches you and gets stuck.
These are all things that I did when trying to model Clayface from Batman: The Animated Series. As I'm sure Blaze's player can attest, the one time I used this villain, he was very effective at foiling the PC's as they attempted to take him down.
I think Pregnant Violet would be this whole logic bomb for Pulse. She's still only -just barely- pro-choice, so when it comes to 'it's your body' her emotions get twisted up a bit. Once you add in that Violet would now be risking the baby's life in addition to her own, every time she tries to help people, and adding in the emotional hormone surges, I think Pulse would probably vote for a pregnant Violet to not go on any missions she suspects could be dangerous.
The team not wanting to put the pregnant team mate (and our enemies) in more danger as a result of the pregnancy may be something you overlooked in that regard. Playing overwatch from home with your mental powers may be a required evolution for that sort of thing. Iunno.
I actually considered all of those things when the idea struck me, trust me.
Also, Violet's well aware of the sheer number of medications she takes (although she hasn't yet realized that half of them are unnecessary due to her body and brain chemistry giving her immunities to them), and would definitely take that into account when considering such things.
On a slight rebuttle to Vi.
Paper and Jester didn't know who had what powers when you entered the door. They didn't make plans for each specific person. If they had, they'd have started the fight by locking Rocket down, rather than letting him get in two hits before they could lock him down.
They did know a few things based on people doing things. Paper knew that Pulse had a force field, because it interfered with the confetti (she was halo'd when she turned it on). They knew there was a mentalist (but not who she was) from the mind scan (the puters told them). They had only worked out 'This is what we do with fast people' and 'this is what we do with mental people' and 'this is what we do with fire people' and 'this is what we do with water people' and 'this is what we do with people who walk through things' and 'this is what we do with bricks' and 'this is what we do with people who shoot things out of their body parts'.
Until they knew who did what, they just attacked the person who looked most dangerous. They knew Mud was a 'move through things' because he came through the door (and the confetti was inside him!). I was very careful to have them mostly respond to what you did, not knowledge on my part. If you go back and look through the fight, you'll notice that most of their team ups were reactive, not active.
As a group, you really do need to come up with those 'we do this against this' plans. That's what I was talking about up thread.