OddHat

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations Tales of Gavagan's Bar Uneven, but it does a nice job of mixing fantasy into a modern urban setting.

Re: Skill Quanta You could do 1 = 8-, 2 = 11-, 3 = 9+ Stat/5 or less for all skills. That's the pattern professional and knowledge skills follow anyway. I used to use 1 = 6 + Stat/5, 2 = 7 + Stat/5, 3 = 9 + Stat/5. Ultimate skill does discuss other pricing schemes. Custom skill prices are possible with Hero Designer. Ask about details over in the Hero Designer section.

Re: Costing "Requires an Extraodinary Skill Roll" Sure, just use Power Skill and Extraordinary Skills as a model. 5thER, TUS, and the USPD I&II all have examples that can help you work out the feel, but the only one you need is 5thER for the basics. There are also some guidelines and examples for this type of magic system in Fantasy Hero iirc, but again it's not a must. Very solid, one of the better Ultimate books. So long as its what you're actually going for and not an unintended consequence, its all good.

Re: [Review] The Ultimate Energy Projector In a standard game, Multiple SFX comes in handy when you don't know what the target has a vulnerability or susceptibility to. With two SFX (say "Divine" and "Fire"), you have two chances that the target might be vulnerable to your attack, not just one. Sure you can choose from a wider range with Variable SFX, but that's only a significant improvement if your character has a power or KS that lets him know the target's vulnerability. In conjunction with the optional rules in Chp 2, where there's a real chance of gaining or losing 1-3 DC with every attack depending on the SFX you're using, Multiple SFX comes into its own.

Re: Costing "Requires an Extraodinary Skill Roll" Yup, much more something from a myth and folk tale game than a D&D or High Fantasy game, unless you allow a list of "spells" characters could pull off just with the skill roll. You could do it all with just the Extraordinary Skill Rules from 5thER and TUS, but then you'd need to specifically outlaw superskill constructs (much cheaper most of the time than Extraordinary Skills to accomplish the same thing). I'd also be surprised, in a 150 point game, to see any character with more than one "magic" talent.

Re: Deflecting on a Trigger? More generally, Missile Deflection with Trigger, while legal, is an extremely powerful build. By itself, I might not allow it. Usable by others at range for missile deflection with trigger? No. I don't care if it's legal, it's an unbalancing build in all but a very few campaigns. Just no.

Re: Costing "Requires an Extraodinary Skill Roll" If you are going this route, have you taken a look through the Ultimate Skill? You can accomplish some very interesting things with extraordinary skill rolls, especially in the area of KS, even before paying extra points for a magic pool. I kind of like the idea of Wuxia style flight defined not as Flight but instead as +X" Leaping and 18- Breakfall, Climbing and Acrobatics skills, and presumably a few levels on top. Way more expensive that way, but with some side benefits.

Re: Order of the Stick Less a rant today than a discussion, an explanation of Lawful Good as he sees it, delivered by an actual being of pure Law and Good.

Re: Order of the Stick Very entertaining comic. Rich has a tendency to put commentary on how he feels about alignment and other role playing issues into the mouths of his characters, most obviously in the court case sequence and now with Roy's judgment. He's an entertaining enough writer to get away with it most of the time, but the diatribes are not OotS at it's best.

Re: Costing "Requires an Extraodinary Skill Roll" I'd just do it as RSR at -1 per 5 Active Points. -1 Limit total. For a 50 point power your players will be looking at a -10, a fair enough base line for a Fantasy campaign. I'd also suggest setting a skill cap in the campaign, unless you're OK with most PC casters scraping together the points for a 24- Magic Skill.

Re: [Review] Gestalt: The Hero Within Beat me to the review, damn it. Good job. Sorry about the proofing. We tried, but we didn't succeed in catching everything.

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations Don't miss the Terry Pratchett books, especially Nightwatch, Thunk! and Going Postal. Heavier on the Fantasy side, but an interesting look at adventures in a fantasy world with a modern Urban sensibility. Also, Undead and Unwed and the other books in the series is a weirdly entertaining comic take on life as a modern female vampire. Darklost and Mick Farren's other vampire books are a very pulpish / comic bookish take on magic in 21st Century America, pretty interesting as a potential game setting.

Re: Missile Deflection for Hand to Hand? If 20 points is a fair price for an adder that allows reflection of ranged attacks, it's a fair price for reflection of HtH attacks. If I allowed the power, I'd charge the 20 points, with the understanding that it required a successful block roll, and call it done.

Re: What if: Japan won World War 2? How about this: A deadly alliance forms between Anime geeks, Furries, Fan-Fic Writers, LARPers, CosPlayers, the bondage underground, and biological researchers at the U of C, Berkley. A party drug is released in 2003, intended to temporarily convince the user that he is his / her favorite Anime character or online RPG persona, but it all goes horribly wrong. Now, four years later, all of California is dominated by deranged cosplayers and Nihonjin-wanabees, idiots who think that Manga gives a realistic picture of daily Japanese life. And, of course, thanks to the bizarre powers granted by the drug, Manga and Anime really are an accurate picture of life on America's West Coast. San Francisco is a battleground for masked lunatics in power armor, robots and giant monsters, Los Angeles a hentai hell hole, southern California a series of genre-islands each stranger than the last. All in all, most Californians consider the situation an improvement.

Re: What if: Japan won World War 2? Wave your hand and declare it so. "A wizard did it." In terms of actual history, the Japanese Empire was already fraying at the seams when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

Re: What if: Japan won World War 2? Well, one way: If they'd never attacked the US (and there were arguments against that move made in the Japanese military), they could have hung on to Korea, Taiwan, and Shanghai, chunks of Manchuria, maybe even Hong Kong. They could never have finished taking all of China or SE Asia; they never had the men or resources. The US entry to the war might have been delayed or averted, unless Hitler in his escalating craziness decided to drag America in. Despite conspiracy theorizing to the contrary, every sign and private statement indicated that FDR did not want to get involved directly, instead hoping that the English and Russians would take care of Germany. Post war, Japan would have to deal with Mao / Chinese resistance, who/which might well have pushed them completely out of Shanghai and Manchuria, but probably not out of Taiwan or Hong Kong. The Japanese were also anti-Communist, and would have had considerable trouble from Russia / the USSR. The US might even have helped them out. Modern Asia might feature a much less developed China, a solidly linked Japan and Korea, and Taiwan and HK as Japanese holdings.

Re: Bizzare character build, please help! Repped For Secret ID: Frog. Other than the frog specific bits, the above is pretty much the build I used for one of my old PCs, a "Light Bee" spinning around inside a "Hard Light Hologram" (idea lifted from Red Dwarf).

Re: Bizzare character build, please help! It allows the character to pass through objects; add in "May not pass through solid objects" and it allows the character to pass through small spaces but not solid objects. Good for oozes, mists, and a tiny character that looks normal sized.

Re: Bizzare character build, please help! +8 or so DCV to represent the fact that he's actually tiny and buried somewhere in his apparent mass, Shapeshift for the various forms he can shape his mass into, desolid that doesn't protect against attacks or let him pass through solid objects to let him slip through small holes. Any other powers to taste. That he's tiny but looks normal sized is mostly a SFX for his powers. Most GMs would reasonably ask you to keep his other defenses quite low to make up for how hard he is to hit, so that when he does take damage it actually counts.

Re: What rule don't people know? Many players, especially old timers, miss the idea that Persuasion can be resisted in a contest of skills (Persusuasion vs EGO) by NPCs, and the option of similarly applying the skill against PCs. 5thER, p.67 It makes a good model for handling other Interaction Skills as well, if you feel like a more mechanics based approach to Interaction Skill use.

Re: Nova Blast (sanity check, please)

Re: Nova Blast (sanity check, please) I've been using "Nova Blast" type builds in campaigns since around 1992 or so, and I allow them in my current campaign; by Nova Blast builds, I mean special, limited use all out signature attacks that significantly exceed campaign averages. On the whole, I like the Comic Book feel they give to combats, the chance of suddenly turning the course of combat completely, either for or against the protagonists. I do agree that they need to be used with caution. A Wave Motion Gun / Nova Blast / Spark 8 / whatever maxed out special attack used after a couple turns or so of hard fighting when all seems lost is fun; used on Phase 12 at the start of combat it can be an anticlimactic buzz kill. I've mainly dealt with this by asking players who have all out signature attacks not to use them save in emergencies, to collaborate with me story teller to story teller. If you prefer a more mechanics based approach, a -1 "Emergencies Only" limit works fine, with the GM deciding what constitutes an emergency (based off of No Conscious Control). Requires an EGO Roll also works well here, as the player knows he's gambling when he chooses to use the maneuver, and the GM can add a bonus or penalty to the EGO roll depending on circumstances.

Re: Nova Blast (sanity check, please) Many good ideas above; I'd just add that you can always Haymaker, and that you can push a haymaker. If the player purchased a 6d6 EB Explosion w/ Personal Immunity in his VPP, a Pushed Haymaker would be a fair Nova blast in and of itself; add +4d6 EXP w/ Personal Immunity, Only when Haymakering Slot X (-1/2), 3x END Cost (or more), and you have a reasonably priced and very effective Nova Blast. Also worth remembering is that the +4d6 Haymaker is not prorated; no matter how many advantages are on the base power, you still get that extra 4d6.

Re: Superheroes, Power and Responsbility

Re: Superheroes, Power and Responsbility Yup. One of the better (and most difficult to GM well) ideas in Aberrant was the suite of super-social powers. It's something that's under-explored in the comics and sci-fi as well, though it does show up now and then. Might be that it's not used often because it's just harder to deliver an interesting and convincing story about someone Super Charming (without direct mind control) than it is about someone who can punch through a bank vault door.