Farkling

Real weapons are just that, Real Weapons... They are subject to needs and wants...cleaning, maintenance, breakability. Alan Quartermain's super rifle may survive explosions, falls, being used as a baseball bat, and submersion, but it wasn't bought with the Real Weapon limitation. If an AK-47 is hit by an EB or an Area Effect attack, it is likely to be severely damaged or useless afterwards. And so on. -3 OCV for lack of weapons familiarity is a completely enforcable rule. I don't have this problem. All my heroes have beams/attacks that do as much or more damage far more accurately than the AK-47. Cory woul never shoot someone with an AK-47...throw it through them maybe, but shoot It? The mind boggles. The beamer is ex-military, but won't carry firearms, his plasma aura (damage shield) is pretty much his multipower default...he imagines the ammo cooking off and the gun melting down at an inoppurtune moment. The weather witch wouldn't use firearms..psych limits interfere with that. The Archangel...never. He just wouldn't. God's wrath does not include mortal weapons. Wheels thinks firearms are beneath him, his mind is a far more accurate and powerful weapon. The cyborg lacks the weapon familiarities. Besides, his weapons are as good as or better than an off the rack AK-47. It has rarely been a problem for me, and usually only surfaces with DnD-style kill and loot players. GENOCIDE and VIPER weapons confiscated are pretty much only useful for analysis and breakdown. They have the -3 OCV for use, after all, how many heroes have been through those training classes? Now in the Superspies game...yes, they picked up stuff like that constantly, but it was heroic level Bond stuff. Only two of them actually had familiarity with military weapons, the others simply collected them. The poor Americans were shocked when they brought in the wire guided missile launcher and Natasha picked it up and said, "Ah, good. Mostly undamaged and still in workng condition. I shall conceal and secure in weapons van." She never did get to use it, but the looks were priceless.

I'm of the opinion that the REC for the Battery simply require two focusses, or is only usable at the base location. Alternatively, buy the REC at 1 (or not at all), and buy additional REC only usable at the base.

I've played a max DEX/SPD speedster in a campaign within the last year and a half (longer ago than I thought!) I had a SPD 8 in a group where SPD 5 was the highest. My DEX was 15 points higher than the highest, and my CV was atrocious. I had very little in the way of combat ability compared to the people we fought with. The GM did use the Area Effect approach, and I did a lot of holding and diving for cover. Luckily I could dive further than the AE attacks could blast. My tip is to dive towards the attacker. If he flys, get someone else in the group to go after him while he shoots at you. Then run around drawing his fire until your buddy gets the bastard. I had electrical powers that were of little use against most supers, single doses were not as useful as the multiple doses over a long period... however, I could do some really terrific damage to metallic objects. I started snatching focusses from people in combat, with move bys. I couldn't break a lot of them, but I had a temamate who could. And I made very short work of some well armored high-end agents we fought, I ran by and stole their weapons, and I even half disentegrated their tank.

Think about the DnD attack system mechanically...as opposed to HERO... HERO is broken down much further than DnD (granularity!), so has a strange feel to the "combat round" player. Think about the much touted "Attack of Oppurtunity" that is being quoted from DnD and the critique of "I can't attack and move" stems completely[/i} from the DnD system. The phase is not a combat round. The TURN is a combat round. (Actually, in the old DnD, that would be FIVE turns). In a turn there are plenty of times to move and then attack, or attack and then move. It's all in the phase actions. Fighting retreats can even be a half move followed by holding action anticipating pursuit. If there is no pursuit, you can block or move the remainder of you movement. Rarely does a fighting retreat (in my experience with combat) involve ATTACKING and moving away. If you had a successful attack, WHY are you moving away? I think some of the logic breakdown amy also come from the AC system in DnD, after all, your DEF+Armor+DCV = DnD AC. [sIDERANT] Attacks of oppurtunity in the DnD system are designed to keep most characters slugging it out until someone drops. Notice that Attacks of Oppurtunity simply grant a person seperate and FREE actions in addition to their normal actions. Really...think about. Thug moves. You get to stab him for free. Some feats will allow muiltiple stabbings. Then during your next action you get to attack AGAIN. Free DEX and SPD granted by your opponent moving in the wrong manner. [/sIDERANT] I also think the penalties associated with move bys and move throughs reflects comic book / action movie physics. They feel like they are designed to penalize you for splitting your concentration/actions. If the penalties are a problem, buy some skill levels. If the Hulk is waiting with a delayed phase, I think he should have a better chance to THUMP you as you charge him, or to step out of your way.

My mileage varied also. The Champions book is very comic book Silver by my standards, and only gives a nod to Galactic or Dark worlds. It has more decriptives in it relevant to WW2 (Golden Age) than it does to dark/wierd modern settings. You could probably afford to give it a pass...it's mostly a tour de force of the different genres, adn I think it lost a little for that. Go visit your local game store and flip through a copy...make your own decision. That's why I bought Star Hero...I flipped through a copy, and then got a smokin' deal on it. So far I'm impressed with Star Hero. I was lukewarm from the Champions book.

1 pt fluency to use it effortlessly PS/KS to use/decipher when relevant Cryptography is the special case and should inculde functional knowledge of all simple codes simply from the training, falling into the roll category, but including a bonus. A codebreaker would look at an English message written in the Mayan Alphabet and say, "this was written by an amater, only an amteur would consider a foreign language a code" He probably cannot read it clear without decoding it, but the structure and layout will give it away, since it is a simple substitution code. A copy of the Mayan alphabet would make it a routine exercise.

I let them carry cell phones for free, since you can buy them on any street corner (at Circle K). The only character who has a cell phone with survivability so far, is the character with the "protects carried objects" adder on his force field. A pair of the players buy walkie talkies off the rack when they patrol. They pretty much accept that they'll need new ones by the end of the night. One player has full HRR, and flaunts it. He talks on the cell phones, satellite frequencies, calls the base computer, monitors police bands, recieves feeds from computer expert, describes his analytic/detect powers as HUD displays, etc etc etc.

SFX:: I slow the target by increasing his mass until he cannot stand or move. Eventually he will be immobilized by the sheer weight, and will break structures beneath him. Possible Powers:: Density Increase, UAA Drain STR and Movement Entangle - no damage Drain SPD and STR Drain STR + Entangle Telekinesis Flight, UAA Of these constructs, the only ones that can do damage to the environment surrounding our target are the TK, Flight, and Density Increase, unless an RKA is linked in. 1) Density Increase, UAA. I cannot recall, in perusing my cousin's VAST collection of Legion comics, that Star Boy ever used his power to augment someones defenses, kinda removes a chunk of the DI functionality. 2) Telekinesis Functionally, this is the best SINGLE power, and belongs in the framework is the powers are frameworked. The reasons sited above are sufficient. TK can smash...it can grab...and it can be set to "push" downwards, eventually smashing the substance the charaacter is on. 3) Flight, UAA Only to push in conjunction with gravity. IF this is a constant power, it takes on some of the aspects of TK. Additionally, if a character breaks free of a 'TK Grab' he is unaffected by it all. This will simply exert a downward force that must be overcome with STR and/or mvoement (according to GM's interp). Additionally, this construct HURTS, as it performs a continual move thru against the ground...perhaps the "full acceleration" modifier should be included on it. As to breaking things, only TK can perform that function alone. I would recomend a simple KA usable against inanimate objects.

Semaphore and Morse are standardized artificial languages, are they not? They are used internationally on ships...(or is it boats)? I never thought about this one, though I should have I can see. It's very relevant to a Fantasy setup... hmmm We treated Sign Lnaguage as a language, with no literacy requirement. Two of the characters actually bought it...one out of Batman style knowledge, and the other for his DNPC. I'd list out Morse and Semaphore as Languages...and allow an appropriate PS to read them. They shouldn't need more than 2 pts of Language level, as they are not terribly complex language structures. Esperanto on the other hand, should be treated as a full 3 point language. Though four would be a bit much short of an actual sci-fi campaing I think. The ubiquitous "common" tongue of DnD is no dooubt an Esperanto also, limited to about a 3 pt max flluency. Thieves Cant isn't even that complex, as it states "professionally relevant communication for B&E, theft, marks, etc...", so rank that no higher than a 2 pt language I'd say. My $ 0.02 worth. YMMV

Good Luck. I'm curious to know how it turns out.

Normals or rogue Spielberg/Lucas special effects guys wielding experimental special effects devices. Have Skywalker Ranch's RnD Division get robbed. People running the streets with cream pie throwers, stink bombs, strobe guns, and clothes transformers/removers could provide an amusing entertainment for the players, and much oppurtunity for some innocent people to be blastes into ashes. Make the thieves from a quasi-reality entertainment show like Queer Eye or Whose Line Is It, mix in some minor celebs in tinseltown and they may manage to shoot one of their favored media stars...

The genre fiends have 15% skills purchased. The DnD refugees have 10%, as required by the gamemaster. I knew who to expect this behavior from.

I'm with ReBar on that. It'd be more in keeping with the logistics of your description to ONLY have snapshots appear to the people outside the field. Cop fires at Joe. Bullet enters field and stops. Snapshot:: Joe is looking at bullet. Snapshot:: Joe leaning aside. Bullet is on other side of field. Energy Beam is impacting the field from a different direction. Bullet exits field. Snapshot:: Joe leaning way back in a Matrix style dodge effect. Solid continuos energy beam fills bubble over his chest. Energy pulse exits field. Vernor Vinge's theoretical stasis fields have an effect similar to that. In wierd science terms, the "both worlds" effect (incredible speed and slowness) would cause an ever increasing delay at the interface point of the field. A time distortion directly on the dimensional interface that causes an interdimensional "friction" if you will. Gradually, this will build up until something breaks, either the field generator, the anchor into our dimension, or time itself. Sounds like a player searching for an uberpower capable of stopping anything the GM might come up with. Especially from your decription of the speedster. If a spedster cannot lay a hand on you, and your reflexes/speed are that high, then nothing can harm you. Where's the play/fun/risk? What will concern this character? Two things that require some additional thought:: 1) How does the normal world appear to him? It should practically be standing still. how do you plan for him to communicate with ANYONE ?? How can he interact with the world beyond his tremendously versatile combat monster effects? 2) What woul dhappen if he was bracketed by napalm or had a building fall on him? Caught in a flash flood? Fell off of a cliff? What impact does the distortion field have on this sort of real world construct?

The guns are nice idea. If you want to confuse the PER rolls further, have a few of the less attentive kids firing guns that have Stun Only with 1 or 2 levels of Reduced Penetration, so they don't hurt alot, but they do actually do BODY damage. And/or have Stun/KB but no BODY damage. No high school kids havin' fun with those guns wouldn't be using them on a setting that didn't break things. Or even a limited EB..."Stun Only when used on organic targets" Happy hunting

OOOPS. Okay. Here's my plotline (cliched) Setup) Supervillain/Mastermind has copies of surveilance tapes. (Forged or not, your pick) Villain begins blackmailing so-called hero. Folded notes are left for him with threats to release the tapes (actually pass these notes to the character at appropriate moments) Hero has to choose, villainy or facing up to the crime. Villainy will eventually be uncovered by the team or detectives. Treat his Disad as "Harmful Secret" and "Paranoid" if he worries about geting caught... If he turns down the villain demands; 1) Police/FBI get ahold of surveillance tapes 2) Press gets ahold of tapes from disgruntled officer (anti-vigilante) 3) Run it on the local "Investigators" program. "See how your heroes act while out of sight. Good for humanity or bad?" 4) Police/FBI get involved in monitoring the character and tracking actions. Possibly unearthing other questionable activities. 5) See how campaign develops from here. At the end of this sequence, you can trade out his "Code vs. Killing" for "Watched by FBI/Local Police" and "Reputation:: Killer" My favored plot. help yourself.

Rebar hit the nail on the head. Half my players understand the genre completely, the other half suffer from a DnD mindset. (loot the bodies, steal the technology, kill the enemies). One set up his character without lethal attacks to avoid the quandry. The others...well, they've had some messy accidents, and suffered the same lack of respect towards themselves. I actually warned them in the midst of a combat that if they were okay with cutting down unconscious foes, to be warned the villains would likely react in the same manner. The genre players now have a difference of opinion with one lethal character, that may well lead to a breakup of the team. The other lethal player can now see the consequences of his actions, and is playing the lethality much more cautiously around them.

I'm an X-Men fan...so you're probably right...or I'm substituting the wrong term. I don't read comics now, I spend that money on RPG supplies. 10 comics a year => 1 good HERO supplement. I have 10 years worth of comics from the 80s to 90s. My brother still collects them in modern times. He has a major dislike for the feel of Champions Universe too. Reached independently. Of course his PREFERRED titles are Batman and Peter David's Hulk. He also liked the old Batman cartoon more than I did. Maybe we just like a darker world than is typical in the CU. That's all I was trying to tell the guy, that the CU may not be to his liking. Their characters feel too...unbreakable is a good analogy...inside my head. I'm fuzzy though...I'll have to check back later.

Sorry Monolith...I do not want to get in an argument with you, but I must comment. I dislike the way frameworks are guidelined in he main HERO books, and then ignored for support book character construction. But hey, that's how CU exists, and how everybody was taught to play, so the rules rationalizations in FREd were just neglected in the update, and are neglected by the players in turn. I have always rabidly disliked "movement/defense framework" "attack framework" construction technques, and this is discouraged in the frameworking section of HERO...then the game designers proceed to instate the techniques on their Champions Universe characters. The Champions Universe exhibits MUCH of the Silver Age flavor of comics. Let's talk pre-1980's before the X-Men became hunted heroes, and the Avengers were put out of business by the US Govt. The defenses of the CU characters are more than sufficient to survive most large attacks, injury is not of a debilitating or permanent variety, and most live by the heroic ideals of the Silve Age. I did not mean to state that they were Silver Age heroes...they live in a SIlver Age universe...and I and my players have little use for a Silver Age Universe. No, I have not read CKC in detail, just filipped through it at the game store and a convention or two to see if it followed the Champions Genre layout. I have paid attention to adjudication questions on these boards. I have read a sizable amount of questions and answers arising from characters in these volumes. I have read what character writeups that have been available. I did have the old Enemies books from 3rd or 4th, and everything I've seen to date indicates that HERO has not changed their designs significantly, just updated (most of) the writeups. My apologies on the Champions pages volume. I recall that I found about half or so of the book useful. If I can figure out who borrowed the damn thing, I'll let you know what the other 40% stemmed from. The genre book does aptly cover different TYPES of Superhero genre, if I missed stating that, but the only concrete build examples provided are from the decidedly Silver Champions Universe. I am sorry if I lack credibility and well thought out critiques, I'm in the middle of finals and term papers. I liked the Bestiary. The USPD looks useful, especially to my players, of whom only one is good at "how to-ing" from special effects. I have Star Hero, and reading it will commence following Dec 16th. I even liked the genre layout in Fantasy Hero..it looks well thought out, and internally consistent worldbuilding tips are always useful. The Champions book was NOT as useful a genre piece as Fantasy Hero.

Don't need those other books. You only need FREd, some imagination, and a taste for the comics medium. I used my Champions Genre book sooo little, that I've lost it completely at this point. I know its in the house someplace...unless I loaned it to one of the less superheroically oriented players and forgot about it. Precisely. I am NOT a fan of the Champions Universe (as many folks here know), and I felt a bit put off that half the Champions genre book was the "Champions" themselves. I'm running asuperhero game, and my players are the central supergroup. Why do I need such detailed stats on a group of heroes in the Silver Age? I would've gotten more mileage out of a villain organization. Ah well....the random generator gave me a few refinements on my existing villains. And please don't tell me how useful the CKC is. It's all Champions universe, and some violation of the build rules they set forth in Hero. Bah. I think the only Genre books that will give me any use are the Beastiary and the USPD...if I can scrape the cash together FOR the USPD.

I'm not sure Active Points/5 is a good base for the roll. I'd rule for them to roll their power skill as a block mechanism. I think they should definitely have a Power Stunt (skill roll) to use their EB's as blocking weapons. Power Skill + OCV - Attacker OCV. I think. I'll need to ponder a little more.

FlameJet:: I'll be right over with a check for that robot. Sounds exactly like wha tI need. He'll melt it to slag and call the appropriate people to monitor the madwoman. Lightning:: Huh? Insert love and faith from a demon's heart? Numinous function? There are supernatural spirits bound to the programming? Mystical information on a hard drive? That's as wild as it is dangerous. Sounds like something out of an old Doom Patrol comic... It's looking for a plugin to extract a source code modification from by following a fractal expansion system. Hmmm....I'll help you. I need to track down a supernatural source of actual love and faith though. We do NOT want to use a demonic source, that's bound to be the reason the cadre is evil. Let's find some rose petals and honey from the Alfar at the very least, though I'd rather try angel feathers. Let me call a few people. I knew a young godling, he might have some tips.

Lightning:: Jesus. Not another one. Time to rewrite the security programs again. The Cold War has moved to the internet. Just who and where did this damned pop up come in from? Track that down. Destroyer has more panache than this. I should analyze the wave file too. Might be clues. Meanwhile, I think I'll send copies of that popup bug past the firewalls into the systems at PRIMUS and SAT. That will certainly get the proper people motivated. FlamJet:: Scratch one more computer. There are fires burning on his desk, and once again, he needs a new window in the office. He's hovering outside on a plasma jet, searching for Destroyer. If more of these come over the nearby systems and he hears it, he's going to need some work done on the offices too. After determining that Destoryer is NOT in the area, well, we'll be hiring a new head of computer security. The fellow that has the job now will be working for him. At a pay cut. This is NOT how we do business here. System penetration is unacceptable. We have STRICT confidentialty for our customers.

I thought there were three sizes of trees listed on the "Breaking Things table...did I remember things wrong? I guess if not, you could construct a tree with the environment table... its got those widths and DEF approximations. I'll check my book later tonight when I get home.

I'm curious about a more in depth expanation of the efects of the time distortion as well. Why DOES he appear so slow, and just how fast is he within his bubble? Do his perceptions outside the bubble see a speedy world or a slow one or a paralyzed one? As for the tree....I'm lazy. DEF+BOD of tree, x5 = STR to uproot. In combat I'm in a hurry, so that's what I'd use. The character is braced/set if he hugs the tree to heft it. Haymaker mods are more than sufficient for me to make up the DC's for a charcter making an effort. 10 STR over the required I figured should be all that's needed to uproot it. That's 3 more trees the same size after all.

Lightning: With a team to call on, Lightning will turn the henchman over for THEM to interrrogate and try searching the city with a radiation detector in hand. He runs at just under the speed of sound and has 100xspeed on his sight and hearing. He CAN search the city in under six hours, and has detective skills to boot. Without the team to call on, Lightning would break the computer files on this guy and see if the reason he's not talking and unafraid to die is relevant. If Lighting couldn't find the bomb in the city, he'd retreat to a safe distance outside the city with the henchman, watch the explosion, and then batter most of the henchman's skeleton into powder (SuperSpeed Transform). This guy needs to live with what he's done. FlameJet:: With the difficulty he has controlling his "innocents endangered" psychology, the victim is likely to be ashes or severely burned. FlameJet will call all his contacts and mobilize his construcion crews. The normal crews will be sent out of town, except for the demolition squad. They know more about bombs than anyone, and would help search. Jet will buy, rent, and even steal any technolgy in the area tat will help find the bomb, and publicly offer paid legal defense funds for any villains who can help find the bomb. He would go on television immediately. Panic and Death will result with the public release, but at least SOME people will be saved. Jet will die in the city searching for the bomb unless his plasma powers cause him to survive.