Ice9

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' Strength, Not for Lifting includes a wider range of things than HA, such as maneuvers like Grab/Shove and resisting said maneuvers. Which costs more points - exactly what the disagreement was about. I mean, we could decide to price Blast at 15 points per d6, and with the right limitations and other powers, you'd still be able to make a character that had the full DCs of Blast allowed for the campaign. But it would be overpriced - much like "Only for Throwing Distance" is overpriced at -1.

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' Wait, buying a RKA with RBoS and extra Strength just to throw it farther? Why not just get an RKA with "Range Based on Higher than actual Strength (-0)"?

Re: Goblyn Specifically, you could replace it with: Claws: HKA 3d6-1 Flurry of Claws: Rapid Attack, plus CSLs (+6 w/ Claws, only to offset Multiple Attack penalty), Limited Power (3rd and 4th attacks are only HKA 2d6)

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' As the saying goes, sufficiently undervalued limitations are indistinguishable from no limitations ... or maybe I just made that up. But really, erring too far on the low side for a limitation is just as bad as erring to far on the high side. Any power level caps should be independent of the real cost, so the "worst case scenario" is that a player has a few extra points. Conversely, valuing limitations too lightly can pressure players toward more generic abilities.

Re: Here's the scenario Is this really an undesirable result though? From my POV, escaping from a slower character that they're not surprised by is something that I would expect a speedster to do. If you want to catch a speedster, you'll need more of a plan than "try to grab him".

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' Still too little, IMO. I would seriously put this at -3 or more. I blame Limited Power - for unknown reasons, it assigns values as if the scale were exponential (-2 being more than 2x the savings of -1) when in fact the opposite is true.

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' True, but not to that extent. If it was "Strength Only For Throwing", then sure, that's not so bad a limitation (although not trivial either), and neither is "Strength, Not For Throwing". But this is Strength only for throwing distance. Let's look at which of the functions of Strength it can fulfill: Deal damage - No Lift/carry heavy things - No Perform "feats of strength" - No Use combat manuevers (Grab, Shove, Disarm, etc) - No Resist combat manuevers - No Break free from Entangle - No Throw things a long distance - Yes That's not even close to half the uses, and "throw things a long distance" is not even equal to most single other uses, such as "deal damage" or "resist combat manuevers".

Re: Few questions about point costs I'm not going to say total points are irrelevant, but benchmarks like attack DCs, amount of DEF, CVs, and SPD are usually a much better indicator of power level. Especially when you're new to the system and/or not trying to optimize your points, it's not unusual for a character with the same effectiveness to cost many more points. For example, I've had characters with the same overall effectiveness cost: 400p - Character I created for a campaign. ~525p - Pregen character for a convention game I was running. ~700p - Character I made for fun, with no eye towards using points efficiently. If you post the characters on here, you can get some feedback on how they compare to each-other and to the default Champions power level.

Re: Lim Value: 'Only to increase throwing distance' IMO, a lot more than -1. At least -2, maybe more. Would anyone consider "Not for Throwing Distance" to be a -1 limitation on Strength? Or even -1/2? Heck, I'm not sure it would even be -1/4. When something is "less than 20% of the value", then boosting that component only is definitely not worth "half the value" - which is what -1 explicitly represents, ala Limited Power. And even Limited Power is a bit wonky, IMO. -2 is called out as some uber-limitation, but it really isn't. It's 1/3 the cost, at best - and if a limitation was significantly more limiting than that, I would assign a higher value. It's not even like none of the existing limitations goes above that. A fairly standard "Spell" limitation set (Gestures, Incantations, OAF (staff), Extra Time (full phase), RAR) is worth more than that by itself, and "Dweomer of Heroic Strength" is going to have a lot more effect in most games than "Strength Only For Throwing Distance".

Re: Invincible Actually, for some comics, I think you do want to bump the damage/defense levels up ridiculously high, because the "splat to bounce" ratio is much higher than baseline Champions gives you. By this I mean that there are often attacks that will insta-kill a normal person, such as a tank cannon, that will bounce off a given hero without leaving a scratch. To be specific: Normal Human: 8 BODY, dies at -8 BODY, 0 rPD. Attack strong enough to be ~90% fatal: 6d6 RKA Defense required to be impervious to that: 36 rPD Defense required to be usually (~75%) not even shaken (less than 10 STUN taken) by that: ~60 PD*. * I'm guessing a bit here because the actual math is time-consuming, but it wouldn't be much less, and maybe a lot more. Definitely not default Champions power levels .. nor should it be necessarily, different superheroes have different scales. But if you want to get the Superman effect, that's where you're looking at. Now if you're never going to have handguns vs tanks and superheroes vs tanks in the same campaign, then it doesn't matter so much - you can scale the numbers to whatever is convenient.

Re: Group equipment MP or VPP It's a tricky situation. I do feel that Wealth should have some effect. After all, he did spend actual points on it, it's not just purely a flavor ability. Same deal with Transform used to create objects.

Re: Magic Bow Using Monster Hunter Also maybe some defensive training: Hardened Will - +15 PRE, Only vs Supernatural Terror Slippery Mind - +5 to Breakout rolls I made one organization with a "monster fighting" MA style. Based on the idea that you want to avoid the foes as much as possible, and definitely not be in a grab with them. I don't have it anymore, but IIRC, the main maneuvers were: Duck and Roll - Flying Dodge Escape the Coils - Martial Escape Careful Jab - Defensive Strike Hit and Retreat - Passing Strike Smash the Idol - Offensive Strike

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

Re: Camera If you're already buying Transmit on the camera, and a TV to receive it, then you don't need to buy Clairsentience, IMO. And vice-versa, if you have Clairsentience, you don't need the other parts. I guess, if you were getting extremely technical, the "Transmit based" version would be to build the camera as a very weak Automaton. No movement, no abilities besides HRRP w/ Transmit, maybe Absolute Time Sense (if you can set a timer) and/or Eidetic Memory (if it also stores what it sends). Potentially a single "Language" known - ie. whatever transmission protocol it uses. Probably costs about 1 point, bought via ... Vehicles and Bases, I guess? Note that the transmission could be tapped into by anybody with a receiver.

Re: Adjusting DCV Without a house-rule, you still don't get that chance to escape until you can take an action. Also, as mentioned, for the cost of a decent drain, you get an Entangle strong enough that most characters can't Casual out of it.

Re: Adjusting DCV I'm guessing it was also to compensate for BODY/STUN/END being made considerably cheaper. With the halving, Drain STUN is on par with Mental Blast; without the halving, it would extremely strong (as much STUN as Blast does, except against Power Defense). Even with the halving, Drain END is highly effective and can really stomp certain characters. Now for DCV, I don't think it's necessary. For one thing, Entangle is much better at the job - even a 1d6 Entangle will allow a guaranteed hit if timed right, and with the "does not take damage unless specifically targetted" advantage, it can provide an entire phase of them - by which point the target will probably be KO'd. And at 5 points per rank, DCV has not gotten much cheaper from 5E.

Re: Mook/Armor combo A Multipower with a custom "non-Instant" limitation on the Summon (which I would put at -1/2) seems appropriate. Or alternately, just build both separately and give the Armor a "not while Summon is active" limitation (somewhere in the -1/2 to -1 range, IMO). So for example: 33 Drone Swarm: Multipower (50p), all slots OIF (-1/2) 3u Armor Mode: Resistant Protection (16 PD, 16 ED) 2u Coherent Swarm: Summon 125-point Drone Swarm, Totally Devoted (+1), Non-Instant (-1/2) 2u Dispersed Swarm: Summon 16x 25-point Drones, Totally Devoted (+1), Non-Instant (-1/2) Alternate method: Buy the drones as followers, and give them this power: Armor Interlock - Resistant Protection (# PD, # ED), Usable By Other, Concentration (total, throughout); plus Clinging So any or all of the drones can attach to you and give up their actions (total concentration) to provide you with a defense bonus.

Re: Which export format do you like to use at conventions? I've found custom limitations/advantage to "sum up" a group of modifiers are useful for that purpose. For example, instead of "OIF (staff), Gestures, Incantations, RAR (Thaumaturgy), Extra Time (full phase)" on every single spell, you could just put "Thaumaturgy (-2)" and define that at the start or end of the powers section. One I used recently was "Aura" which was the composition of No Range, Constant, Uncontrolled, Reduced END (0 END), and Lockout.

Re: I still don't understand why Linked is always a limitation Actually, using them together sounds more like a Combined Attack, which similarly to a 5E MPA - i.e no penalties.

Re: Which export format do you like to use at conventions? I haven't found any export formats that work quite how I want them to, so I usually just roll my own (type it in a two-column format manually). With a little formatting, I've gotten a layout that looks similar to the example characters in the 6E book. I definitely condense though - point costs, gone. Limitations on frameworks just listed for the framework, not each power separately. Abbreviations like OIF and 1/2 END, and not listing modifiers that are already subsumed by the definition of the power (such as Expanded Result Group / Limited Target Group for Transform). I haven't had any confusion with them, but I've only run a couple convention games so far.

Re: Knockback Attack Balance wise, my feeling is that an "Only knockback" attack should do DC x 2m of knockback. My reasoning for this is that hitting a wall will then do the normal DCs of damage. At that, point, compared to a normal blast, you have: - Only does half damage if they don't hit a wall + Sends them flying significantly farther - Less effect against KB-resistant targets + More effect against flying targets Which seems about balanced. So by that metric, Blast, x2 KB is not quite up to par. 3-Point Power, Does Knockback isn't either, but 3-Point Power, x2 KB goes a bit too high.

Re: Banish Demon with Extradimensional Movement (6E) The opposed EGO roll seems like a reasonable defense for the UaA, so I don't think it needs to be a separate limitation. Also, I would put Only vs Demons at a lot more than -1, unless this is a very demon-heavy campaign. That's assuming that close to half the foes the PCs face will be demons! As for the demons returning - it depends how they got there in the first place. If they're powerful enough to just travel to Earth directly, then yeah, this won't do it without something else to keep them away. But if they need a special portal, or to be invited in, then it will stop them for a while at least.

Re: Megascale costs I think this changed in 6E, IIRC, you can now scale down Megascale as far as you want. But this is definitely true. With 10m Teleportation, you can 'port out of being surrounded and still keep your DCV. With 1m Megascale, you'll be at 0 DCV if you do that.

Re: Megascale costs For pure long-distance travel, then sure, the second is better. The first does give you a bit more flexibility. Also, I'm not sure how Change Environment interacts with Megascale, but it's possible that the second version would be completely stopped by CE: -1m with Teleportation. Admittedly, a somewhat niche situation.

Re: Inverting Limitations Not unless it's very difficult for you NOT to wear the OIF - for example, you need it to survive. Even an either/or condition (you have other powers of equal or greater strength that rely on the OIF) probably wouldn't be worth that much (in the -1/2 to -1 range, IMO). If it's literally something like: "Strength, Only while not wearing a tie", then I'd call that a -0.