Christougher

Jokers playing poker
 

I mean, you can do anything with a class-based system, but it require building an entirely new class to cover that specific build.

Okay, we have to stop with the Ever Given jokes.
 
 
That ship has sailed.
 
 
 

As someone who likes his meat well done: I've sacrificed my hard-earned money on the altar of your restaurant, stop whining and give me my food the way I damn well want it!

If it's the system I'm thinking of, Yes.  Played a convention game where the PCs were Victorian age expies of the Justice League.  Massively entertaining game.  I did like that the rules for breaking a structure were the same rules for hurting a character.  
 
However, to address the original question of balance:  I have NO idea.  It was probably my first exposure to the system, and I didn't have the rulebook to puzzle that out, or need it to play.
 
Chris.

My wife asked me why the bottle of wine we bought yesterday was half empty.
 
I said because she is a pessimist.

To be a little fair, according to one of the D&D books that described weapons, said darts weren't dartboard sized, they were a lot closer to the lawn darts (approx a foot in length) that were eventually banned for people throwing them up in the air and landing on people.

Yesterday I crossed the street, walked into a bar, and changed a light bulb. I couldn't help but wonder, "Is my life becoming some kind of a joke?"

Q: Greg Abbot, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry are stranded on a desert island. Who survives?
 
 

From old campaigns long ago:
 
First mission of the campaign, the heroes defeated generic terrorists, but one of them knocked a terrorist into a VIP hostage, doing body damage to both.  Afterward,  as the press arrives, the hero who hates the press flees, and the other secretive hero also flees, leaving behind the only player with a "cannot tell a lie" limitation to speak on camera.
 
"And how did the Senator get injured, <superhero>?"
 
"He was...uh...struck by a terrorist. "
 
In a later campaign, a darker and grittier "street-level" game, my character was a Bullseye analogue,  able to add damage and accuracy to any ranged weapon.  Long story short, we were betrayed by a teammate and captured by my arch nemesis. 
 
Because my character could throw almost anything as a weapon, he was bolted to the wall stark naked.  After much embarrassment and frustration, I made a spectacular roll and got free from my bonds, loosening a single bolt.  Hurling the bolt, I smashed the cell door lock.  Hurling the lock fragment, I KOed the approaching guard,  and retrieved his armor-piercing energy pistol -- a very nice weapon that would be outright deadly in my character's hands.
 
Without waiting to dress, I  ran down the hallway, blowing open the other cell doors to free my team.  The character who had betrayed us (and since apologized and offered to rejoin us) was the last to be freed.  She gasped in alarm as I raced to confront my arch foe:  "Wait!  You're still naked!"
 
And thus I had the God-given opportunity to deliver my best line of the campaign:
 
"I'm not naked.  I  have a gun."

I misplaced Dwayne Johnson's cutting tool for the origami workshop.
 
I can't believe I lost the Rock's paper scissors.

"We're gonna need a bigger Bond."

Five PC's walk into a bar.
 
The sixth made his Reflex save.

No. THIS is a grate sword!

I wish I had my gaming group active and had the energy to run games these days, so I could playtest ideas.  Often when I suggest something new or alternate like this, I get jumped on with both hobnail boots and stomped for daring to question HERO SYSTEM AS WRITTEN like its heresy.  But sometimes, rarely, like with the KA rebuild idea, we have a nice, reasonable, thoughtful discussion as if we're all friends.  I'm hoping this can be one of those times.
 
At present the mental powers structures do not feel like they in any way remotely simulate mental powers in the source material its supposed to simulate.  Further, most mental powers are either overwhelmingly powerful or just worthless.  And it costs a bloody fortune to get effects that are routinely used in source material by everyone with that kind of power (like "they don't remember what happened").  And finally, the EGO+x formula makes doing major effects on a really pathetic willpower roughly the same as someone with strong will.  Since each step is 10, then the original EGO is kind of minimalized in impact.  The difference between 2 and 22 EGO is 20 points, then its just ten point blocks to get more powerful effects.
 
SO I have a potential suggestion that maybe we could discuss?
 
Instead of buying mental powers such as Mental Illusions or Telepathy as an energy blast, buy them as a transform.  Use the conceptual structure and cost framework of Transform rather than Energy blast
 
Mental powers still cost 5 points per d6, but instead of a flat roll for all effects, the cost per die for an effect adjusts how many dice you get to work with to get that result.
In other words, you buy 12d6, but a really powerful effect gives you fewer dice, and a really minor effect gives you more of that pool.  Then you roll to compare the total to the target's Ego (plus mental defense) and if you get more than their Ego, then you get the target effect.
 
The structure could look like this:
Trivial effects (do something you already would like to do, read surface thoughts, just locate a mind, etc); say 5 points per d6 Major effects (do something you're opposed to, read deeper thoughts, show something unexpected or out of context); 10 points per d6 Severe effects (turn someone into a complete puppet, read forgotten memories, etc); 15 points per d6
So if Joe Mentalist has 45 points of Telepathy, he can roll 9d6 to try for a trivial effect, or 3d6 for a severe one
 
Rolling greater an effect than the target's EGO results in success.  Rolling more than double their EGO allows success plus the target has no memory of the manipulation.
Breaking free of a long-term effect works, the same, but for every 5 points of effect you get past the EGO of the target, they are -1 to break free with EGO rolls over time.
 
To me that gives mentalists the power to do something really significant but simple, but be challenged to have a serious game effect, but still plausible.
 
If I can hash this out satisfactorily and make the math work, I want to use it for my fantasy hero setting; rebooting mental powers to be more effective and a better simulation

In the spirit of inclusiveness, I won't point out the number of times you've called me out for refusing to accept that the Champs III / 5e / 6e shapeshift rules are both horribly kludgy and completely unnecessary.    That, and, in spite of the fact that we rarely agree, I do appreciate the amount of thought that you usually put into your ideas. 
 
 
 
 
All times can be those times, so long as we can all accept that not all cows are sacred to all people.
 
Now forgive me for skipping the details of your suggested change: you've laid it out clearly enough, and Hugh has re-listed the relevant parts, so I'm going to skip straight to the conversation:
 
 
I don't think you're alone in being unhappy with the EGO powers rules.  I think the "+10" rule itself was the first attempt-- the first "coded into the rules" attempt, anyway-- to fix the problem.  Remember the early editions?  INT x1; INT x2; INT x3; etc?  Those early rules meant that your Mentalist was going to be very effective against "normals" at a lower power level, but was going to have to become an absolute specialist to have anything more than the most minor effects on supers.  As a correction, the +10 replaced the multiples.
 
I'd like to say it made a difference, but really, it only seemed to make a difference for NPCs. I have yet to see a supers player want to really emulate the source material super mentalists: incredibly mental powers; normal or even feeble physical stats.  They want the super Characteristics and defenses and movements, etc-- _and_ the high-level mental powers. Now I will say these characters _might exist_ in the source material, but not at such a high visibility that non-comicbook guys like me have ever heard of them.  I am passingly familiar with the X-man in the wheelchair with powers so strong they rotted away his hair or something.  I am familiar with the Spiderman villain who was just a _normal guy_ with lots of SFX and hypnodrugs witch which he created illusions (even the movie decided he needed powered armor.  Hunh? ).
 
I am more familiar with the pulps and the movie serials of the crazed hypnotists and mad swamis and fakirs-- all of whom were far less physically-impressive specimens than our hero, and accordingly had specialized in refining their craft to nigh-miraculous levels of effect.
 
 
With those source examples in mind, I think the current system _does_ work quite nicely for emulating those examples.
 
Still, it kind of fails in as much as it doesn't do what the players would like to do:  be powerful mentalists with SPD 5 or 6, enough resistant defenses to bounce machine gun fire, powerful blasts of energy from their eyes, and the ability to fly at Mach 6.
 
I can argue all day that the current system _does_ emulate nicely what it should emulate-- that is, examples from the source materials-- but really, if it doesn't let the player build the character he wants, then it really _doesn't_ succeed, does it?
 
My counter to that is, of course, that he "grow into the character he wants to be" using EP as the campaign progresses.
 
I won't, because I have learned over the years that this idea-- while it is pulled directly from the source material at the time I learned to play-- is popular almost exclusively in my groups (admittedly it's likely influenced by the fact that I taught the majority of my players how to play), and it anathema to most others who want to start out with demigods and perhaps build them up to legitimate godhood.  This is, of course, also valid.  It's not my own style, but if that's how another group has their fun, then they should be able to do it that way, correct?
 
 
Like Hugh, I have found "Cumulative" to be the solution to a lot of things: Aids, Drains, Transfers,....  and Mental Powers.
 
Just as an insight as to how my games have evolved to the point that I don't post builds:
 
I have always had an issue with Advantages, Limitations, and Adders.  I've always felt that if it's an Advantage, it should be able to apply to more than one Power or Power Type.  If it cannot do that, then it should be an Adder.  If an Adder can be applied to more than one power or power type, then it should be an advantage.  If something can only apply to _one specific power_, (my go-to example for this is Teleport "facing," which was a non-issue until someone thought it should be), then it should be assumed to be a basic part of the power, and characters may opt to apply a Limitation that deprives them of it.  (Thus, in my games, any Teleporter may choose to face any direction when he reappears, unless he has taken a Limitation that prevents that.)
 
It has lead to some minor power re-writes (Change Environment now affects a single "point," and is increased with the existing Advantage: Area of Effect), but nothing so drastic as to really change the game or even greatly alter the points totals.
 
 
That leads to this:
 
I have found Cumulative to be an _excellent_ workaround for lots of "how do I make this more effective without having to dump eleventy-nine points into it?" problems.  Cumulative, and a bit of patience-- you didn't get them this Phase, but next Phase they will be yours! 
 
And as for controlling runaway "cumulation:"
 
There are lots of ways to do that, too.  There is the built in limits of Cumulative, but if you feel that is not tightly-controlled enough, consider this still-experimental option I am currently playing with in a fantasy game:
 
The character is required to spend Sway (sorry: in this current fantasy game, "Sway" is the user's ability to influence magic and bend it to his will.  For supers, think "END."  Sway isn't exactly END, but this is the model we are running right now, so it's the medium in which I have to test this idea) to cast his spells, and Sway costs-out in a fashion like END: the more dice he wishes to cast, the more Sway he must put forth.
 
_However_, on cumulative spells, he must continue to exert Sway for the previous dice as well any additional dice he wishes to add at his next opportunity.  He must exert the Sway for all dice until the final effect is achieved.
 
Moving that to an END model, let's take four dice of Mind Control, which the 4e and beyond cost at 2 END, if I remember correctly.  So the Mentalist spends 2 END to use his Mind Control, but if he is looking to accumulate it, he must continue to spend that 2END even as he spends the 2 additional END for his next roll.  If he wishes to go higher still, then he must still maintain that 4 END and spend 2 more, etc.
 
 
I'm not saying that this is a _must do_ thing; it's something I'm currently play testing because I was curious to see what effect it would have on the game.
 
Still, it's a valid control over anyone intentionally "buying low" then upping his cumulative limit, etc, if that should become a problem in your game it (for what it's worth, it's not a problem in my game; I was looking to build a magic system that made "big" magic extremely difficult and extremely tiring while making "small" magic relatively common).
 
 
At any rate, 
 
I have now tossed it out there.
 
In summation:
 
Go, Cumulative!  You can do it!
 
 

 
 

I have a starship design system I created for Master of Orion.  As such, it's pretty dependent on its own breakdown of technologies.
 
However, two major points of it that might help you.  Cap the Active Points of weapons and other devices equal to the Active Points in Growth used to determine the size of the craft:  A snub fighter built on 45 AP of growth can have a maximum 3d6 RKA laser.  Limit the number of weapons, shields and other Powers to one per five points of Growth: That snub fighter can have only 9 abilites: FTL, 4 lasers, a torpedo, life support, etcetera.
 
Chris.