Trebuchet

Not to seem overly critical, but isn't a superpowered homewrecker just a little bit unheroic? Not a lot of "uphold the right" there. Doesn't your character ever have doubts about the morality of that relationship? Hmmm, perhaps a thread about superhero ethics might be interesting...

Well, I suppose those are all better than being the "blood sucking lawyer" from Jurassic Park that gets eaten by the T-Rex. And Welcome to the boards.

I do like that idea a lot, although I agree that the costs need to be carefully examined. One idea might be to double the cost for each additional type of Invulnerability. But a limited Invulnerability is very in genre for comic books. (Superman obviuosly has several broad Invulnerabilities.) My only concern would be the "I take Invulnerability to all Physical and Energy attacks for 40 points, so I can't be hurt by anything." So it would be very important to limit how broad the categories are, and this Power would require the GM's specific approval.. (I suppose if a player so wished, he could spend all of his character points on several different Invulnerabiities, and be truly invulnerable. Of course, a six year old could hold him in place, but he can't be hurt.)

Change Environment mostly allows you to create penalties to certain actions (Characteristics rolls, movement, etc.) but certain types of environments (such as extreme heat or cold) can obviously cause injuries and are allowed under the rules, although environments that cause direct harm are very expensive (5 points per single point of damage.). A Change Environment creating very thin air, such as would be found on the top of Mt. Everest, would be a good way to reduce END and REC. It may not be "unbreathable", but it would certainly be barely breathable by most characters.

You, sir, are an evil and twisted fiend. I salute you.

Based on the special effect of the attack, I would also permit any character who holds his or her breath to be immune to the attack. And in HERO, some characters can hold their breath a long time. (My martial artist can hold her breath for 13 minutes, if she does nothing else, before she passes out.)

It's an official rule. Section 426b, Paragraph 211, of the Science Fiction and Comics Writers Code clearly states that "All alternate realities are a priori assumed to be inferior to the real world, and thus those parallel realities must always be fascist or communist dictatorships." Amendments B & C of Paragraph 211 added Islamic fascism and corporate fascism as acceptable alternatives. Paragraph 212 requires that environmental fascism will always be initially portrayed as a utopia, although it must always have a hidden dark side. (See "Logan's Run", et al.)

I used to run a powered-armor character named Ranger whose powers were magnetics-based, his Secret ID was a UC-Berkeley physics professor, Dr. Kevin Green, who was the world's greatest expert on magnetism. Once a supervillain attempted to capture Dr. Green because he assumed Dr. Green must have helped build Ranger's powered armor and therefore who must know who Ranger really was (Which of course was true.). So my character was attacked not because someone had figured out his Secret Id, but because someone thought he must be one of Ranger's DNPCs. Oh, the irony! So I had this "fun" adventure as Dr. Green raced through the corridors, stairwells and basement in the Physics Department building with the briefcase containing his armor dodging students, colleagues and occasional energy blasts while desperately searching for a private place he could stop in long enough to put on his armor, which was difficult considering the villain got to take shortcuts by blowing holes in walls. Good thing Dr. Green was in good shape physically. Once he finally got his armor on, the resulting fight was brief. By then Ranger was in a really bad mood, and hey! Look! A supervillain punching bag to take out his frustrations on!

Man, that's complicated! You should make all the Marathon Men cousins so you can keep it all in the family!

I was wondering if anyone had come up with unusual twists for their character's DNPC's. I don't mean "My DNPC maintains my Invincible Powered Armorâ„¢ for me!", but more personal stuff. As an example, my character Zl'f lives with a foster family of four that she's taken collectively as DNPCs. In this family there is a boy a few years younger than she is who has developed a serious crush on her. Naturally she tries to hide her superheroic identity from him and his parents (The girl in the family is her best friend and so knows already.), but the kid already knows because he spends so much time spying on her (including a peephole into the girls' room.). So she's hiding her superhero ID from somebody that actually knows, and he's hiding the fact that he knows because he doesn't want her to know that he knows. Admittedly that's not a real weird DNPC relationship, but I'm certain Herodom Assembled can come up with stranger ones.

Besides, every pulp-era hero should get the chance to utter the immortal line: Nazis. I hate these guys! It was of course first used by Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. during his crusade to recover the Holy Grail.

I ran a scenario once where our hero team, after barely winning a tough fight on the moon, jumped in the trusty alien teleportion machine to return home to their secret HQ in San Francisco. But when they got there, they got quite a shock: Their HQ was a now memorial museum, and out front of the building on a pedestal was a life sized bronze sculpture of the team! On the base was a bronze plaque that read: In memory of the Sentinels, who together fell in battle on the Moon defending Earth. June 6, 1986 (Which was that day's date!) Below that was a listing of each of the 7 heroes' names, along with their Secret IDs. Worse, with the fall of the Sentinels, radical elements in the US Government, aided by the Minuteman robots, had seized control of America and converted it into a police state, where all paranormals were illegal unless they were government agents. The team was promptly attacked by a half dozen Minutemen, and only the fact that all data on the "dead" Sentinels had been erased from the Minutemen's electronic memory banks enabled our heroes to triumph in that fight. The Golden Avenger was now Dictator (...er, President), and along with his six regional governors, the Silver Avengers, ruled America with an iron hand. Our heroes had to find out where all the other supers were being held, rescue them, and then find out how to get back to their own universe. I do so love alien "teleporters". Nobody really understands how they work, so you can do anything with 'em. (Witness Stargate SG-1)

I was only addressing the "visibility" aspects of the attacks, not the pseudo-scientific nature of comic-book powers. It's hard to stab the enemy sentry in the back with a Light Saberâ„¢ at night and not get spotted. Not so for a normal knife. I have long used a +1/10 points Active for PER rolls. A +6 to a PER roll is a tremendous penalty, +12 for a typical superhero power would be absurdly visible. And as you suggested, I'd modify it somewhat for special effects as well.

I go strictly by special effect. A phaser blast is easy to spot. A rifle bullet from 600 meters away (Which is not considered a long sniper shot.) would be difficult to spot, and it would nearly impossible to spot the shooter unless he's out in the open and moving. On the other hand, the sniper at 600 meters probably can't see where his shot hit, and his bullets can easily be deflected by winds or characters with appropriate Missile Deflection. Not so with a laser for the most part. Same with hand to hand attacks. That Light Saberâ„¢ will slice through a bulkhead, but don't expect to do that with your trusty katana even though both theoretically do the same damage. But it will be bright and loud compared to the steel blade.

No, not in Champions. Star Hero has a pretty good listing of "rubber science" Skills, such as "Hyperspace Engineering" and "Transmat Operations".

I have a ninja character who works as a translator of books and articles (She speaks 11 languages). She also occasionally works as a translator for important business negotiations. This not only gives her the ability to set her own hours (since most of her work is done on a laptop computer), but keeping current on her language skills is a good excuse to travel overseas often.

Re: The opposite of Enraged Call it "Becalmed"? Try a low PRE, or 2X Effect from PRE attacks

Our globe-trotting team, MidGuard, is secretly headquartered out of Oslo, Norway. Since we are the "Avengers" of our world, we seldom deal with low-level crime. In 12 years we've only had two adventures in Norway, one of which happened because one of our characters got kidnapped in her secret ID. Most of our adventures take place in Europe, but we've literally been around the world and to every continent except Antarctica. (And I'm sure we'll end up there one of these days.) Most commonly visited country? Great Britain (4 times).

As long as it's recognized as an "unusual" combat maneuver I think it's all right to allow occasional Move Throughs. It has enough penalties to make it difficult to accomplish, particularly for a Leaping character who can't change course if his target moves and suffers a penalty to hit based on the range he's Leaping from. I would look closely at characters who make this a primary method of attack or buy levels in Move Through, but on the whole I think it's OK to have it exceed normal damage caps just like Haymakers. In her very first adventure, my fast martial artist tried to do a 30" Move Through on an opponent. Said opponent happened to be another martial artist, who simply Martial Threw her into the ground and put her out for the rest of the fight. Suffice it to say she is a heck of a lot more cautious about using Move Through now. In a recent adventure in my campaign, a villain brick decided to try a Move Through on our brick Silhouette. What he didn't know was that Sihouette's strength comes from 11 levels of Density Increase, so when he rammed her he succeeded only in Stunning himself. Ouch!

Heh. I guess "1984" is science fiction where the science in question is political science. Of course George Orwell intended it as a criticism of Stalinist Russia, but of course many people accused JRR Tolkein of writing about WWII allegorically in LotR. An old Army buddy of mine used to say much the same thing about Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series (Clan of the Cave Bear, etc,): "Of course they're science fiction, but the science is anthropology." Here's to my old buddy, Mike Looney!

Powers in an EC do not need to cost 0 END. In fact, the opposite is generally the case: Powers that normally cost no END are not permitted in an EC, although the GM can grant an exception. It is also perfectly legal to put Powers into an EC that normally cost 0 END (such as Mental Defense) if they are purchased with the Limitation "Costs END".

Nice to see we're not the only people crazy enough to argue about this.

In my campaign the major villain was legally (and honestly) elected the President of Columbia by promising to clean out the drug cartels and the Marxist guerrillas that have so long plagued Columbia. (The fact that he survived two assassination attempts didn't hurt his campaign at all.) He was elected and kept his campaign promise, exterminating the gangs in only a few weeks. So now the world's most powerful sorcerer (All 1600 points, 250 Cosmic VPP bit of him) rules a relatively wealthy nation, and is now looking to expand into Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru to make a "United States of South America." He's appealing to Hispanic pride, Indian resentment, and building himself a nice little base of operations for his ultimate rulership of Earth as a benevolent dictator for all eternity. (Since he's immortal, he can afford to take his time and do it right. He considers superhero interference as "quality control".) What else would Quetzlcoatl do for his people?

Remember that HERO specifies that INT is more a measure of how quickly and accurately a character processes information and not necessarily a measure of "IQ". Hence their example of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a 10 INT who works slowly and methodically. I give supergeniuses in my game INT in the upper 20s, and we have a Nobel Prize winning physicist (Bought the Perk "Nobel Prize Winner") on our superhero team with a 28 INT. She also bought a Talent to further represent her intellect, Lightning Calculator. She's our team brick.

I run a 9 SPD character, and 9 is also an awesome SPD to beat on lower SPD characters. Assuming proportional DEX:SPD ratios (i.e., characters with higher SPDs typically have correspondingly higher DEX as well), against a SPD 2 Normal a 9 SPD will have acted 4 times before the SPD 2 even gets to act. Against characters with 3, 4, 5, and 6 SPD (Easily 98% of HERO characters fall into these 4 SPDs) a 9 SPD acts in every single segment they do plus several others. That allows Blocks if necessary and still leaves available free segments to attack. Against a 7 SPD a 9 acts in the same segments until Segment 9, by which time the 9 SPD will already have acted 6 times to the 7 SPDs 5 times. I think Keneton is correct in that 8 is a more "efficient" SPD, but 9 does have it's attractions.