Naanomi

If a character with two or more Unified powers is hit with a drain that affects more than one of them simultaneously, how does the 'stacking' effect play out? For example, Hothead, a fiery hero with 10 separate Unified fire based powers, unfortunately runs into Coldspot, an icy villain. Cold spot hits him with a 'Drain All Fire Powers Simultaneously (combining Expanded Effects and Variable Effects): 1d6' and rolls a 5... Does each power lose 50 points? 5 for the drain on that power, and 5 from each Unified power also being drained? Assuming enough 'Cumulative' effect on the Drain, of course.

Re: Transforming Into Monsters? While I understand the mental/physical/spiritual transformation bit... Severe Transformation is a powerful game tool and probably one such power will be sufficient to create your monster-soldiers. Also, that power will turn people into monsters well before 12 hours... the average schmuck is floating around 10 body, has no power defense, and is taking on average 7 'Body damage' from that transform. He will be mostly monstrous in one hour, and almost assuredly fully twisted in two. And, just as an stylistic aside, ritual magic like this often involves a Focus I'd think (a 'bulky OAF' alter, or at least some 'arrangement OIF' candles and the like) How about... Twisted Transformation: Severe Transform 1d6, Improved Results Group (+1/2), Penetrating (+1/2), Partial Transform (+1/2) (37 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3), OAF Arrangement (-1 1/4), No Range (-1/2), Limited Target Humans Only (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Damage Over Time, Lock out (cannot be applied multiple times) (16 damage increments, damage occurs every 20 Minutes, -1/4) But, then again, this might be some Summoning power with a 'restrained body' as a focus... or a summon linked to a transform or something. Depends on GM and if it is an NPC power or a PC power.

Re: Need help understanding Variable Advantage How about limitations? A '-0 Variable Limitation' (for -0 itself, of course) to... tack a Linked poison onto whatever you wanted? Or some of those other 'its a disadvantage, but it can help' type situations

Re: Kill, jail, or rehabilitate, what happens to your villains? Arkham has been the subject of a variety of... poor implementation factors... that make it a model ineffective rehabilitation facility. Purposefully making people worse, experimenting on people, hauntings, curses, villainous and super-villainous staff... all have been factors over the years. But, this facility aside, the rehabilitation record of comic prisons and similar facilities is still abysmal; at least for super-villains. Mooks, on the other hand, I would imagine have slightly better results.

Re: Kill, jail, or rehabilitate, what happens to your villains? True, but none of those 'Heel-Turn-Face' ex-villainous heroes ever got rehabilitated by 'the system'... most got adopted into Super-Teams or were never really dedicated villains to begin with. In fact, I can't think of one 'went to jail, got out, was better' Hero off the top of my head... and lets not even look into Arkham's recidivism rates!

Re: Self Resurrection Regen, as written (at least in 6th) is 'persistent' and always on, unless limited otherwise. Mechanon-style 'resurrection', if written on an NPC and not a cheese-filled PC power, might actually be a power of his base (Megascale-Range Healing with Resurrection)

Re: Villainous Motivations The Inscrutable: You heroes don't and never will truly understand my motivations The Unmoral: Petty human morality doesn't apply to me, I'm (alien/god/spirit/force of nature/whatever) For My Masters: The evil I do, I do in service of a higher power (God/Cthulu/Fate/Whatever)

Re: Self Resurrection I don't like the summon method myself... you are 'Slavishly Loyal' to yourself, sure... but how many 'tasks' is the new character performing on the old one's behalf? It has that whole mechanic built in that is just 'kludgy' as a resurrection machine. NOW, a triggered Duplication (that each 'slightly different' Duplicant has a new copy of, not the same repetition of) might serve in this capacity with a bit of a stretch...

Re: Kill, jail, or rehabilitate, what happens to your villains? A mixture of all three, depending... Jail/Mental Rehab is the usual, with a few specialized rehab centers that try to turn first time or very low end Supervillains into Heroes... But very long jail sentences are common, and death sentances are not unheard of. However, as true in most comic book worlds, 'fake' rehabilitation and breakouts are a very, very common occurrence.

Re: Self Resurrection Regeneration with Resurrection, maybe with a triggered/linked Teleport if your body comes back somewhere then where your corpse lies... Steve said that Mechanon-style 'resurrection as being rebuilt' might get some particular attention in the theoretical APG2

Re: Superheat metal The APG Discusses combining two different AoE effects on one power... so... a AoE: Surface + AoE Radius Blast or RKA?

Re: Superheroes Sponsored by Corporations (Such as the NFL) Our world, in 'Coast City' (a Seattle/Portland/Silicon Valley expy), there are four competing Super-Tech companies that each have their 'field model' power-armor test pilots acting (competitively with one another) as Super Heroes that work closely with the police. At least one has moved out of the 'corporate shill' limelight into being a genuine Hero by the public's standards.

Re: Punch plus TK = ? I agree with just buying STR or HtH Attack... maybe with 1 point of some sort of Stretching/Reach construct that would let you avoid technically 'touching' the things you were punching (like... Damage Shield-y things)

Re: Creating a Linked power... need some advice AoE Trail is as you are saying... but the 'Trail' limitation just means you leave some easily trackable sign of your passing.

Re: Cybernetics I agree that it is basically just an arm, with some additional limitations possible. If it has more STR than a normal arm, buy it with the 'only for cybernetic arm' limitation, and maybe '0 END' advantage. Complications that would fit: Psychological (various) Social (if discrimination exists) Distinctive Appearance Dependence (to model maintainance) Physical Limitation (if the arm is 'hackable' or otherwise affected as machine-class mind in the setting)

Re: False Personal Information The 'False King' Scenario seems easier to me because the 'benefits' of being a king (Wealth, Reputation, Fringe Benefits, a Castle/Base, Followers) are easier to determine than the benefit of 'incorrect weaknesses'. I would buy all the 'perks' of being King, then either limit them or have a big Social Complication: Secret

Re: False Personal Information I like the 'Deep Cover' type perk... it *is* fundamentally a perk of false public knowledge about the 'real you', not hard to redirect it towards what I need.

Re: False Personal Information

Re: My character building technique (How to build Hero System Characters) All sounds like sound advice, especially the 'build towards campaign standards' bit... I always find myself tacking on CSL, OSL, 'lightning reflexes', and the like to support my character's schtick and find that I have way overshot or undershot my goals. Three things I'd add for my personal process, would be A) Put things down as they come up... if you are inspired to tack on a skill, perk, complication, or whatever as the character starts taking shape then throw it on the paper. Don't 'wait until I do my skills' or whatever, I find that characters build holistically this way come out more whole-feeling to me. Once you finish, put it down... think about the character a bit overnight, then re-write the whole thing the next day. Should go quick, copy-paste those powers that still work for you... but a night stepping away from the process then a rewrite from scratch usually seems to smooth out the wrinkles. C) If the campaign is expected to last long enough, build room for improvement. A one-shot character needs to be 'finished', but someone expecting to see a few games can skimp out on some CSLs, STUN, END, or something... the kind of things that I'd imagine real-life adventuring would quickly press improvements on for novices. The ability to build-for-improvement is one of the great benefits of a point-based system to me. Also, this might help on some complications... plan on that 'dark secret' turning into a negative reputation someday, and build around that growth. YMMV of course on these techniques, but they've always helped me.

Say you have a character who has something widely known about them... that is utterly false. Not something harmful (which could be Negative Reputation or the like) but something that could be used to your advantage. One character, who was a flashy gadgeteer stage magician, was well known to have awesome magic powers, and was concidered a legitimate practitioner of magic by the occult community... both utter BS. We had a Reputation perk which covered it well. Now, however, a character is joining the team who has taken over the persona and powers of her villainous father. Her father had big, well known weaknesses to bright lights and light based attacks. She, however, does not... and is in no hurry to advertise this fact. She also has the acting skill to ham it up enough to keep people buying it for a long time. Reputation didn't seem to fit (the +PRE/Interaction skills really didn't mechanically convey a false weakness). Any other thoughts?

Re: The Snow Storm Economaster would be hard pressed to help personally, but could hire a lot of outside help to assist en-mass. Her best bet might be to venture into the spirit world and see if she can bargain with the storm itself. The Golem would be unphased by the cold or snow, and would probably go help get the only people willing to accept its help (the homeless) to shelter

Re: Rules on Hiking? [6e] Big brick, block hallway, activate damage shield, drop speed to 1, look menacing...

Re: Detecting a Continuing effect mental power Telepathy at some level could puzzle it out... Tracking on the Mental Awareness? Clairvoyant Postcognitive Mental Awareness?

Re: How would your character rate on a villian's threat matrix? How much would they be able to find out about your character? Economaster has a publicish ID, at least in the supers and mystical worlds, and isn't exactly subtle sometimes... lots of info out there for near-public consumption The Golem while most info is 'urban legend' type info, but someone with the right intel and knowledge of supers could 'piece it together' easily Would advance agents be able to easily access pictures of your hero from the media? Economaster been on the news, meeting with congress, the UN... no problems at all The Golem only grainy 'Weekly World News' photos and video, but legitimate ones online and elsewhere Would an agent be able to discover the full extent of your weaknesses from any source? Economaster Viper doesn't seem like the most 'mystically inclined' organization, so they might not have the resources to find out or perform her real weaknesses. Her personal non-superness (without purchased help) is well established though. The Golem reports are sketchy, survivors are few... I doubt that much specific information about powers or weaknesses is widely available. How about a lowdown of your powers? would it be easy to find out? Economaster Viper has been on the wrong side of the economy manipulation before, so have prior information.The day-to-day powers are all purchased on the spot, so unless they happen to be familiar with the tech I am using that day... probably not. The Golem Although 'giant brick' isn't too hard to puzzle out a few encounters, specific nuances would be hard to find On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being Dangerous, send assassins right away) Economaster doesn't often bother day-to-day operations of villainy, but if something big were going down it could go as high as 10. Physical threat much, much lower however. The Golem doesn't often deal in big organizations like Viper, and would probably be rated more like an environmental hazard than an hero (like a haunted house might)... if they started causing problems in it's area it might go as high as an 8 but otherwise easily avoided rather than confronted, and down in the 4 level

Re: 'Registration' as training card On the cheap, for 2 points, I'd go with Familiarity with PS: Superhero, and a 1 point contact with whatever police desk-jockey manages such things in the city. Paramedics is an everyman skill in a super setting, and while the week may cover refresher courses (or justify the everyman to begin with), I don't see it pushing it into 'employable paramedic' levels.