J4y

Other than the "perching" ability I don't see any movement abilities. I'd think you'll need some increased movement speed or even a purse snatcher could be out of her league.

Why are sponges exempt after all. I mean, what's so special about sponges that they are inherently immune to TK. Is this a meta-rule? Hero Meta Rule No. 10: Sponges are inherently immune to superpowers? Ohhhh, who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

So, the characters who buy megascale on their "only movement power" which was bought to tactical levels of usefulness are not taking the cheap way out but instead getting hosed by paying more and getting much bigger headaches. They should have paid attention to HERo and bought it using a MP or bought it as a small AP with megascale different power. So you shave a couple points? I don't get where you're going with this. For a couple points, in or out of a MP, a character can go mach speeds. You want this to be cheaper? The catch is i see flash as perfectly able to run megascale down the beach. The Flash probably spent more than 2 points on his movement powers! He can reliably "hit the hex" he's aiming for. And yes, I can think of other characters that slam into buildings and miss where they're going by some distance... I don't think it's unreasonable to expect characters to have to use a noticeable amount of points to have a flexible and strong power and those that don't to be somewhat less.. reliable. It is kind of clunky to buy 2 movement powers, maybe the MS advantage could have been more elegantly incorporated into movement, but the actual play mechanic works out okay.

I think the problem is that it makes it appear that if you want the "right" rules you need to go out and buy more than just the 5th Ed rulesbook - which sort of violates the idea behind hero. I see your point, but whats 5 points here or there anyway? Just look at your GM, shrug at each other, and bump your character up by 5 points. Or, 1 if it's in a multiform. Or, 0 if it's in a multiform's multipower or....

Now let's turn this back to the original topic; Damage Shields. In the incident I just related above, if the villain had bought even a small (5 or 6d6) Damage Shield my character would not have been able to engage him with impunity. Three average 5d6 attack rolls from a DS would have rendered my character unconscious, with serious consequences for our entire team. In fact, if he'd had a DS I seriously doubt our team would have prevailed. With 9 actions you could have swept and recced and still kept him down much of the time, the damage shield would have only slowed you down. You said previously "In my campaign my martial artist Zl'f would be Con-Stunned by an average 9d6 attack." For the same cost as the damage shield he could have had a 12d6 EB and taken your character out of the battle in 2 rounds, maybe killed her outright.

To be fair, the leap should have an accuracy scale of about 1km; if the character starts leaping around any sort of populated area, he could easy start landing on (and destroying) things. Doesn't it also require some sort of sense power or you'll inadvertantly be trying to do a move-through on the skyscrapper 8km away you had no idea was there?

Heh, first thing that came to mind as a disad for an anime martial artist was uncontrolled transform to opposite gender when in contact with water. For example, many react strangely to the opposite of sex. Nose bleeds when a pretty woman pays attention to him. Loses his powers under certain conditions is a somewhat common disad. For a character from video, susceptibility to water may work From what I can tell from your description, it sounds like a character who would be on some sort of mission. Yeah, sounds like he'd be trying to get back, or get something then get back to his own world. .

I don't think many characters with DS rely on it as their only offensive option either. If you consider the comic book source material, there are lots of low defense heroes running around. Spider-Man, most of the X-Men, Daredevil, the Flash, etc, all depend on not getting hit more than on defenses. I think the majority of the X-Men probably have ranged attacks anyways and a DS would be ineffective against them regardless of their defenses. Of course, since we have no point cap in our game we don't run into the problem of a +1½ advantage making a power too expensive or large to fit into a Multipower; we just ramp up the size of the MP. Multi-powers are free points, and effectivly lower the cost of the DS. If, at the same time, you don't have AP caps then yeah, you've house-ruled/GMed the problem completely away.

The first time you're making a character you're probably thinking... okay, goal 1) Don't die, goal 2) Kick some butt. High PD/ED are much easier for someone that isn't familiar with the rules to see how they benefit the character than raising DCV is, particularly when the player is at the same time looking at how many damage classes their "kick some butt" attack is doing for the points Then you get to movement and it's like... oh, 6 hexes, that sounds like a lot. Non-combat I could run across the board and back in a turn, thats plenty! Then for speed, 10 points for +1or +2d6 if you go with strength... hey strength raises PD too, CHA-CHING!

How fast does a character have to be before you consider them eligable of dodging bullets? I understand that in more cinematic campaigns, characters often duck and cover, or find shelter from flying munitions due to luck, but I'm curious as to how fast a person would have to be to be able to avoid bullets without having to find cover, or even throw themselves to the ground. Lots of good answers, for a purely superheroic viewpoint where someone like Wonderwoman can block bullets "because she can" you just buy the power. If you're trying for "realism" and saying someone needs to actually be able to react and move fast enough before they could have the option of buying a bullet immunity skill/effect/power/ability , then if you assume close range bullets can be going mach 2 up to mach 3, about 1km/s. I'd be inclined to say any speed + movement combination that lets players go a significant fraction of that speed, say 600m/s combat (ignoring acceleration...), could "easily" avoid bullets so could buy desolid. Bullets slow down quickly so the further from the gun the slower the bullet will be going and the more time the player will have to react so if you're willing to have a limitation that you can't do it when close to the gun, you could cut the speed you need down by quite a bit.

I don't have a 5E book in front of me, so I'll probably make some mistakes here but as I see it if you compare it to just a straight EB... The main advantage is no to-hit roll, which should be a big advantage, however, using Tesuji's example of a 62pt shield giving 5d6, if you took that as a straight energy blast you'd have 12d6, you could spread that for +7OCV and still get the same 5d6 damage. +7OCV is pretty likely to hit, which makes the no-roll needed advantage seem fairly small (although I'm more inclined to think maybe spreading is too powerful or I've misread it.) The next big advantage is the fact that it can hit lots and lots of enemies. A 5d6 shield could get triggered dozens of times in a turn while a straight 12d6 EB is fairly limited in how much it can be used, however, again, spreading lets you turn a 12d6 into 6 hexes worth of 5d6, so I think very very rarely will a DS hit more targets than an EB can in a turn, making this advantage again somewhat questionable in making a DS worth it's points. So I think either the DS is overpriced or spreading is too cheap, or both. I'd be inclined to say that DS is probably a bit overpriced but at the same time +1/2 is too cheap.

FYI, the VIPER sourcebook that Scott Bennie and I are currently writing has a lot of details on the main Chicago VIPER's Nest, including maps. Steve beat me to it. I was going to point out that: 1. Chicago has one of the most active superhuman communties in the United States. 4. The Peacekeepers have been around for two decades. Their main enemy seems to be VIPER, and they recently lost their leader in battle with that loathed group. Despite an active superhuman community, VIPER comes out on top as the main enemy making one wonder what causes VIPER to be so interested in it...

A: You can shoot beams from your yes like they do in comic books; you just have to pay for it by buying Flight. Found that funny, otherwise I'm in agreement with Monolith. If Hulk wants to occasionally throw or jump really far, buy the skill with a bunch of negatives like extra END so it point-wise it's not too burdensome and it also makes it less appealing so it doesn't get used often. Tossing Nighthawk out of the battle is a good point though. Some powers end up just being too effective for their points. Thats something GMs would have to balance. Maybe allowing/requiring opponents to reduce distance by opposing with their own strength (conceptually a weird mechanic), otherwise 2 big slow bricks could hurl each other back and forth across the city forever and never really fight.

Here's where you can download it: http://home.attbi.com/~drake01/CNM4.zip Ah now I see why people were dissapointed with Solitaire leaving.

Batman being driven by fear? I just can't see that being a major element in his personality.

It's The Background People frustrated over the continual capture/escape cycle in Batman should be frustrated, however the blood of the people Joker kills when he escapes each time isn't on Batman's hands, it's on a very poorly conceptualized society/background. In Batman's universe him killing The Joker "unnecessarily" is against the law, the millions of people of Gotham want him instead to be imprisoned. Batman, being the hero that he is follows the law and hands him over to society as he's supposed to despite knowing full well he'll have to put his life on the line to protect the idiots of society who won't properly deal with The Joker and let him escape again and again to slaughter them. It's not Batman's fault he's living in a seriously screwed up society, he's doing the best that he can given the situation. Most people can put rediculously bad background, like a screwed up society as a device to keep The Joker in play, out of their mind, letting writers get away with some serious sillyness, to get on with the story as shown by The Matrix's ticket sales and it's utterly ludicrous "human battery" background.