Melee Vs Range and Comic Book Supers

Just for fun… in the last few days we have left… I want to come up with an interesting question that may apply in the future (VERY far future) to some long term game design I have in mind (No MMOs.)

The question are two and simple ones: how many comic book characters are 100% pure melee and how many are 100% pure ranged?

I did a bit of a thought on this and the first ones that cross my mind are actually capable of both approaches:

• Hulk/Superman/Colosus/Thing are all capable of hurling pieces of concrete and I seen in occasions at least one of them be able to foot stomp as a linear ground range attack. Superman obviously also has his eye beams and not so long range frost breath. All can do a hand clap ranged cone shockwave.
• Wolverine is mostly melee, but he is no stranger to guns. And by this I don’t mean “common bob picking a gun” I mean he has extensive training with most firearms, not to mention other ninja tools like shurikens.
• Spiderman has his webs.
• Wonder Woman her lasso (am I crazy to think I seen her with a bow or spears?)
• Flash is the most melee centric character I can think off but his speed basically allows him to do pseudo-range by running back and forth (now that I think about it, would have been amazing to see a super speed blaster… he would “teleport” to the target punch and return to his previous position that he technically never left.)
• On the entire opposite realm, Cyclops is an expert hand to hand fighter while at close range (so are most XMen.) Characters like the Human Torch can’t just shoot fire, they can also hit you with a fiery fist.
• I had to google up Iron Fist, but the wiki had this quote: “Orson Randall, Rand's predecessor as Iron Fist, demonstrated applications including hypnosis and channeling his chi energy into projectile weapons to increase their destructive capacity.”

I have long been an advocate of the notion of "primarily melee" and "primarily ranged." I have argued often that melee characters should have at least one really good distance attack, while the opposite be true of ranged characters. I say that primarily because of game mechanics -- it's just more fun to have options, as well as allowing you to face different enemy types -- but specifically in the case of CoH because the comic book superheroes generally have a range of abilities (no pun intended), as you point out.

Like you said, Cyclops is decent at hand-to-hand against ordinary humans, but closing into melee range with him is dangerous because he can blow your head off with a glance. Nightcrawler is primarily melee, but his incredible gymnastic abilities have allowed him to hurl random objects with precision and force. The Punisher relies on his weapons, but Frank is a big guy who can kick your ***. I can't think of any time I've ever seen Wolverine use a ranged attack, even a gun. Generally speaking he *is* the ranged weapon, especially if Colossus is around. Batman is generally melee, but he has ranged gadgets. Green Lantern is almost exclusively ranged, but like Dr. Strange he's really a Controller whose powers can work from zero inches to incredible distances, so it's harder to pin his abilities down as one or the other.

How would you classify Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man? They're primarily melee, but their PBAoE can be pretty huge, to the point where they're verging on ranged abilities.

If you're designing a game, my preference would be to give people a choice as to which track to specialize in, but give them the ability to indulge in the other one, as well. Or even bake it in so that they have to choose a ranged ability or two if they're melee and vice versa.

Yea I am figuring it would be a good idea to allow the player to pick a specialty (range vs melee) and perhaps add efficiency "bonuses" (lower resource [end] cost?) to the specialty approach.

Asuming different mechanics (perhaps removing the idea of recharge at least from select attacks) I think no player should find themselves unable to execute a full attack chain of either type.

BTW on Wolverine with guns, not that rare. May had been much more common sight in the 90's. I recall seeing him on that black and yellow outfit wielding all sorts of guns a lot back then. Think it was mostly flashbacks from when he was in a team with Maverick and Sabertooth. Not sure where that stands now with all the retconing Marvel does.

So are you actually designing a game? Video or PnP?

I was trying to think of a time showing Wolverine using guns and I suddenly remembered the D-Day scene from the movie, but nothing from the comics. However, I stopped reading Marvel and DC comics in the late 80s until I picked them up again sometime after Ultimate Spider-Man was released in the hardback collections. (2002?) So I do have a significant gap in my knowledge of the Dark Age.

Think temp powers. Wolverine can pick up a gun, but that's not his thing. Punisher is good in a fight (except against Daredevil), but you know someone is eventually gonna get shot. You really have to look at the essence of a character and go from there. Even characters like Thor, who have multiple powers with devastating effects, he always resorts to hitting things with his hammer, it's his thing and hey, it it's a hammer, it's what it's for.

Perhaps even just adding flavor versus adding another attack. A fire bolt and an ice bolt could do the same damage, but the secondary effect would be DoT and Slow, respectively. It would just depend on which style of play you prefer, or perhaps what kind of enemies you're facing.

There's a neat little "Match 3 meets RPG" game on Apple's App Store that I quite like called DungeonRaid where you have four power-up slots, but you can choose from something like 8 or 10 different things to put in there. So you can start off with the exact same character each time, but switch your choices up and have a different experience on each game. That would be a fun mechanism in a dimensional superhero game.