Citizen Keen

Re: Partial Body Strength No prob. I have very tactile friends. One of my friends is 350 pounds, and I was able to carry him on my back for about a hundred yards. From this, I assume I could lift a 400 lb person and carry them (with a struggle) ten feet. This is assuming I could get a good grip. BTW, I'm not bragging about my Strength. I'm 6'6" and have a very healthy frame. I asked because I have about normal bench (130-200 lbs, depending on how in shape I am), but with my size I can carry a lot more. Just a thought.

Re: "There is no pain; you are receding...." I'd build it as Flash to Touch Group, and then with a Limitation to reflect that it's only part of the body (-1/4). Please see this thread for people's feelings about the implications of Invisibilty to Touch Group, which could also apply to Darkness/Flash.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What happens when you eat Vegemite? A: Three black squares and a purple circle.

Re: Package deal - no deal? I agree. Package Deals are used to establish norms. Without them, you'd have no idea what a baseline is. Some GMs say that the minimum for a character to be a Police Officer is PS: Police Officer and a Perk. Maybe a Watched. Others have groupings of skills and perks that end up costing the character 50 points to be a cop. Package Deals let characters know what they have to buy to belong to a certain demographic. Want to be a cop? Then you have to buy Police Officer Package Deal (and if you don't get certain skills, justify them. Maybe instead of buying a certain skill, you buy a Contact defined as Uncle Police Commisioner). Want to be a Doctor? Buy the Doctor Package. (Also, I think calling them simply Packages would simplify a great many things.) Also, they provide simple templates for GMs, and a common set of expectations for characters. A GM needs some City Guards, he can just take the Heavy Fighter Package and voila, city guard. A character can assume certain things about City Guards and Doctors and Terran Security Specialists, because the Package is the rule. There are exceptions, but the Package is the norm.

Re: Universal Driver? I think it wholly depends on the type of game you're playing. In a Dark Champions game, I'd never allow a Universal Driver talent. I probably wouldn't allow a Universal Translator, either. But in a Champions game? Certainly, I'd allow it, because vehicles aren't all that important. In a Space Opera Star HERO setting? Sure. I never saw Kirk get into an escape pod and say "I can't fly this thing!" But in a serious, Military Star HERO setting? No frickin' way. I'd go so far as to make transport familiarity even harder to procure. Genre by genre, I suppose.

Re: MnM Hero Points ("Power Stunt" "mode") I play it by ear and by how much the character makes his roll by. If he has four powers with 90+ Active Points and he makes his roll by 4, then probably up to a hundred Active Points. If he doesn't have a power over 60 Active Points and he makes his roll by 0, then he probably gets about 40 Active Points. I generally apply Limitations and Advantages based on the nature of the power, the situation, role-playing ideas and common sense. If a character is a Powered Armor kind of guy, then he'll probably get OIF on the power. If he's a Weaponmaster with a giant multipower gun, and he wants to shoot his grenade into the sand causing dust to rise up as Darkness, then it'll cost 1 charge. I generally game with good groups, so role-playing takes precedence over points, since I use the Power Skill to encourage role-playing anyway. Good luck!

Re: MnM Hero Points ("Power Stunt" "mode") I discussed in the Power Skill thread how I arbitrate this in my campaigns: This has continued to work for me as a very efficient and balanced way of allowing characters to make creative use of their special effect. It has also had the benefit of allowing a new concept definition of characters - breadth of power. Characters with a low Power Skill (or no Power skill at all) have trouble being creative with their powers. Whereas characters with a Power Skill of 17- always have a given use of their special effect ready and at hand. This can be seen in the differences between different eras of Superman. He used to be able to do all kinds of crazy things, but the writers have toned that down lately. It's like his Power Skill has gotten smaller.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: So, what witty comeback did you think up three days later? A: Oh'dark thirty.

Re: Paranoia Fun for One and All! Anyone seen any signs of the former Kara/Rachel ? What is this you speak of?

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I could eat Girl Scout cookies all day.

Re: Answers & Questions

Re: Wider, Shallower Variable Power Pools Very good observation. Rep.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What did I say to the principal of my highschool when I graduated? A: Everybody needs a little "Whoop! Whoop!"

Re: Rifts HERO Almost rebought Rifts main book today, but too expensive. Going to hunt it down later this week.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions

Re: Equipment Pools? I too would like to see some character posted. It might help clarify discrepancies among opinions of character builds.

Re: Partial Body Strength Yeah, I wouldn't count that person as Pushing. I can reliably lift a 400 lb person about once a day, if I have to.

Re: Answers & Questions

Re: Looking for Time Powers & How to do them Obviously, there can't be any corrections because there can't be any right way to do them. But what you have sounds good. I'd get the USPD - it's definitely worth the dough. And if it's still online, peak at the USPD Online.

5R lists the "Lift" in the Strength table as "the maximum amount of weight a character can usuall just manage to lift off the ground, stagger with for a step or two, then drop, in kilograms". By that standard, I probably have a Strength between 13 and 15 (I can lift a 400 pound person if I have to). But there's no way I can bench that. Only using part of my body, my Strength is severely diminished. Has anyone created some sort of conversion for the Strength represented by using part of your body? Say, if I had to lift something using exclusively my arms or legs?

Re: Answers & Questions

Re: Setting up super-prisons Remember that Hot Sleep prisons need less constrictive restraints - when you want to interrogate the villain, you need a way to restrain them even while they're conscious. It may not be cost effective (having 20 UNTIL Agents sitting around while they're conscious), but it should work just as well as the cheaper, unconscious method.

Re: Help with balancing fighters with magic users I agree. It sounds like your GM is using Superheroic rules with Fantasy HERO. While this is totally acceptable of course, if the GM hasn't thought about the implications of Heroic versus Superheroic campaigns, it can be really disastrous. Generally, for a fighter-type character, the only thing they need to pay for a good sword swinging is WF: Blades and perhaps enough Strength to lift the sword. If he wants, he can add a few Combat Skill Levels, or some Martial Arts with the Weapon Element. Most of the discussion on these boards has been about how the HERO System is inherently biased towards fighter types, and that classic mage-types are penalized. So, this is an interesting dilema, since most of my discussion experience here has been brainstorming ideas on how to make mage-types able to compete with fighter-types.

Re: Timestop The statement that you can't make something in HERO is simply an admission that you haven't tried hard enough. At teh end of the day, you can use XDM and Transform to make anything! :D :D

Re: Valdorian Age Man oh man - I can't WAIT for mine to show up.