Do you folks think that 10,000 bullets is maybe just a better ability than Carnival of Carnage, at least when thinking of using at most 2 schticks? It's been a long time since I've played and I'm mulling over schticks for a character.
2 in CoC: you can fire at mooks at 1 shot per
2 in 10,000 Bullets: you can fire at 3 targets with a 3-shot action
So, you lose some flexibility because you have to use a full 3 shots regardless of number of mooks, but you can also mix in named characters into that attack.
With 1 of each, you can fire at 2 mooks with a 2-shot action, or two named (or one of each) with a 3-shot action. I'm not sure that's better than either of the above, now that I think about it.
I like the 10,000 Bullets schtick in general. The main benefit the schtick has over Carnival of Carnage, other than the option of targeting named characters along with mooks, is the fact that you aren't hogging the spotlight with the schtick like you would be with Carnival of Carnage and its one-shot-a-kill-against-the-mooks thing.
Sure, but your chance of taking down someone with a -3 stunt could be pretty low.
I remember when I first read 10,000 Bullets that I thought that the actual suggested combination of it plus Carnival of Carnage was just broken. If one player can mow through mooks that quickly, then they will get rid of any facing the players, and then everyone will be fighting the named characters. It's going to remove an element from fights.
I once had a character take out nine bad guys in one go, but I believe he was using an AK-47 in order to do it (and I believe he emptied the entire mag in the process) which in the Feng Shui rules cuts the Outcome to take a mook down by 2, meaning he was blowing them away on an Outcome of 3 or more. He was built using the Wushu rules, but he could easily do this with just two schticks worth of Carnival of Carnage alone.
Then again, that kind of craziness is also possible with maxed-out Carnival of Carnage, which gives you the benefit of using said AK with CoC II, only you can use ANY gun in order to do it.
But 9 mooks in three shots with no penalties? Yeah. That gets a little crazy even for the characters that I like to play, especially since you can quite easily target more guys by taking on penalties and using big guns.
My group has a 10K/CoC character, and yes, it's as sick as it sounds. She's the "Designated Mook Killer" in most fights--the other PCs focus on the Named villains.
The best retort in the GM's arsenal at that point is the 'swarm' notion of Mooks, where they keep piling in at a steady rate until either the PCs flee or the Named characters are down.
Of course, things get ugly fast if that character's gun happens to jam. If the Mook-opposition is set up on the principle that 3 are going down every shot, losing 8 shots can get kind of unpleasant.
One possibility is to roll one single attack against each character for the mook horde, with a bonus for numbers, but reduce this bonus if that character took out a few mooks last sequence. If you're generous, you could let characters help each other with the mook situation, but it does encourage them to share the mooks reasonably evenly.
My last PC had both schticks in combo, and was nicknamed 'The Mookenator' by the other players. It was fun, but after about a year of play having built up to this level I felt it was a bit limiting, and meant I had put a lot of XPs into 'mooking' so when we faced mainly named characters I wasn't anything like as effective as my team mates, whereas when there were mooks they just left them up to me. They are both great schticks, but I wouldn't recommend going heavily anti-mook - at least not in our type of campaign - as it can get a bit 'samey'.
