braincraft

Re: Two Weapon Fighting Well, at least he paid for the trigger; that's not terrible. Especially since it sounds like his big gun.

Re: Silence is Golden

Re: Two Weapon Fighting The rule is that, for simultaneous attacks in which one or more attacks affect defenses, the defenses don't get lowered until the whole simultaneous attack routine is completed. Otherwise you could MPA a Def Supress with your attack, or knockdown and take advantage of the reduced DCV before your opponent has the chance to get up, or whatever.

Re: Looking for Veteran Henchthug Ideas Tactics, Teamwork, and Analyze: Superpowers, and KS: Superpowered Beings and KS: Underling Underground. And PS: Henching.

Re: Two Weapon Fighting You can explicitly do this with Sweep. Some people let you do this with Multiple Power Attacks, too. If you're really into it, you could even build a power to simulate combinations.

Re: Silence is Golden

Re: Silence is Golden I don't know that 'Always at maximum power' is worth more than -1/4. It's obviously less of a limitation than 'Always on'.

Re: Silence is Golden Don't make this complicated. The guy can't talk, but he can blow stuff up? Physical Limitation: Mute (All the time, greatly) Energy Blast Xd6, AoE Radius, Personal Immunity, Full power only (-0)

Re: Tracer Bullet I thought this was going to be about the Calvin and Hobbes character.

Re: Actor Package Deals You do know that he was a world-class champion bodybuilder, right? And that even years out of competition, he still possesses the approximate dimensions of a brick sh%thouse? (If anything, most of his movies downplay this; how in hell is a giant Austrian bodybuilder sneaking anywhere?) It's not like he's one of those guys who lets their body go to pot in their old age; he maintains some sort of exercise regimen. You saw him in that last Terminator movie, right? In any case, I am fairly certain that he could beat you or I handily in an arm-wrestling contest, and I consider myself to be in pretty good shape. 15 is the absolute dirt floor for Arnie.

Brutally honest

Re: American Sentinel Oh, never mind, she does have combat luck. I still think shifting some defense from her cape to an armored costume would help.

Re: American Sentinel I'd bring the damage dice down by making the HA 0 END and lowering the active points until it can be combined with the Stretching slot. I also think the Entangle might be better served by a bonus to Grab STR; possibly with another AoE slot for grabbing crowds. In fact, you could just combine this slot and the HA one (+STR only for martial maneuvers), which lets her combine it with Stretching. This also has the advantage that most of what you'd want her to do with the cape can be done with additional MA maneuvers instead of multipower slots. Something like: 40 Cape: Multipower, 60-point reserve, (60 Active Points); all slots OIF (Cape; -1/2) 2u 1) Powerful Cape: +30 STR, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (45 Active Points); No Figured Characteristics (-1/2), Only for martial maneuvers (-1/2), OIF (Cape; -1/2) 1u 2) Long Cape: Stretching 3" (15 Active Points); OIF (Cape; -1/2), Always Direct (-1/4), No Velocity Damage (-1/4), no Noncombat Stretching (-1/4), Limited Body Parts (-1/4) 1 2u 3) Huge Cape: +30 STR, Area Of Effect (2" radius; +3/4), Selective (+1/4) (60 Active Points); No Figured Characteristics (-1/2), Only for martial maneuvers (-1/2), OIF (Cape; -1/2) 6 That gives you a pretty respectable and flexible array of attack powers, I think, with plenty of room to grow.

Re: Incarcerating Gadget/Focus Villains 1. Since they're the most experienced at using the focus, and they're already a known quantity in terms of unscrupulousness/being motivated to fight the PCs, they're the natural choice to use the focus again if it comes to that. Someone with enough pull to gain access to their focus/foci could easily also have enough pull to spring them. This third party could easily be the very government that incarcerated them, offering them parole or immunity in exchange for deniable services rendered, Suicide Squad-style. 2. All of the above, plus the focus only works for the villain in question or has limited use for other users. This is especially relevant if the focus compensates somehow for a deficiency of its wielder; say a villain who is normally paralyzed wears a psychic booster helmet that allows him to telekinetically animate his body in addition to its other powers. That guy has even more interest in keeping the focus than most. 3. The villain is also dangerous without their foci, but in different ways. This is enough for them to escape and steal their foci back, or to procure new ones (similar or entirely different). This is easy to justify for gadgeteers who built their own foci. 4. A different villain takes the foci, putting a new spin on their use. Maybe the new Ankylosaur is better at using the tail creatively, surprising the heroes when what looks like the same old jobber pulls out some crazy maneuver. Maybe Warlord likes the Armadillo armor so much, he steals it from the evidence lockers and reverse-engineers it, distributing scaled-down models to his troops. Maybe Glaive's little sister is pretty upset about how you beat up her big sis, and takes the magic weapon herself to exact a little vengeance. 5. The focus is dangerous all on its own. Even after you beat up Steely Jack, rip Jack out of its cockpit and lock him away, the Steely Jack's autopilot activates at an inopportune time and causes the robot suit to seek out its master, crashing through walls and buildings to get to his cell. Or maybe the Shadow Amulet that gave Dark Smoke Puncher his powers also slowly corrupts the guards that keep it under lock and key, eventually enticing one of them to become the new Dark Smoke Puncher.

Re: Cheap and Effective Analyze Combat with +3 levels (9 points total). If you started with a high INT and/or take extra time observing your targets from a distance before you engage, you can easily get really sick bonuses on most opponents for a fraction of the price of actual combat levels. As if that weren't enough, a lot of other skills might be complementary to it, and it might be considered complementary to Find Weakness.

Re: Sonic Overpressure Attack As for the AoE, I would use either Cone or Explosion (cone), and define the cone as trailing with the wide end out behind the character as he moves. However, unless you specifically want to use this as an attack, it's not worth treating it as anything other than a special effect.

Re: Armored Suit It means that people can screw themselves on SFX. That's it. NND based on a poison dart that won't penetrate resistant defenses is less often useful than the same NND based on a heavier dart that penetrates small amounts of rPD, but I wouldn't necessarily charge more for the latter. There are lots of writeups for various agents of that ilk in various places. The first I can think of is Scorpia, of Eurostar (CKC, p.75) whose Curare Darts are NND (LS: Immunity [curare]) and 'must target unarmored hit locations, -1/2'.

Re: Armored Suit And this is the other reason. Being able to buy multiforms more expensive than your base form is stupid; why not have a 0-point incompetent normal with a 350-point Multiform, worth 1750 points, and then never switch back? Every other power of this type has restrictions to prevent creating a character built on more points than the base. Well, it's a house rule, albiet one that, I think, solves a lot of problems. Being able to put a character, or part of a character, in a multipower is balanced out by the fact that all the parts of that slot are bound together, and can only be accessed by using the whole slot. And as far as that goes, there are plenty of examples of putting Special and inappropriate powers in a multipower or other power framework. A spell that grants water breathing puts Life Support in a multipower or VPP; a martial arts stance that grants OCV bonuses to certain maneuvers also counts, or a gadget pool that lets you build a sniper scope for your rifle. It's a valid bending of the rules. Or you could just independently buy every power of every suit individually. That would make it hella hard to adjust! Or you could buy 'Difficult to Dispel' on his Multiform. Or your GM could just veto the bad guy's 'Drain Multiform' power. What the hell is that supposed to represent?

Re: Armored Suit That's exactly why. Having a sealed suit doesn't make you immune to disease and toxins; it simply cuts off the usual vectors for those things. Your hazmat suit won't help you if The Alchemist turns your blood to acid. Your space suit won't do a thing if Past Master goes back in time and laces your most recent meal with samples of the Black Plague - it won't even help if Stinger pokes a hole in it to inject you with venom. And yes, as you say, it certainly won't turn back the clock to put your gas mask on after you've already breathed in a heaping lungful. The reason those things usually work against nasty stuff is that most of that nasty stuff is built with limitations like NND (not against LS: breathing) and 'must break skin to infect' (-1/2).

Re: Armored Suit Tony Stark STR 13 DEX 15 blah blah blah Total Cost for base characteristics, skills, perks, talents, and lack of martial arts: 300 points Repulsor Rays 60 points OIHID Armor 60 points OIHID blah blah blah Total Cost for base Iron Man armor stuff including cupholder: 300 points Specialty Suits Multipower (200 active points), OIHID, can only change slots in base (-1/4), (real cost 133) *Basic Suit: A little extra everything, fairly balanced, 200 active points, ultra slot, (real cost 13) *Hulkbuster Suit: More STR, more DCs, more Armor, fewer exotic defenses, fewer munitions specialized for anything other than big smashy guys, 200 active points, ultra slot, (real cost 13) *Other Suits blah blah blah with additional real cost The multipower slots are essentially compound powers with all relevant differential points in the same slot. You can't have multi slots, unless Stark can figure out some way to wear the Hulkbuster helmet with his Deep Space suit or something. It's even cheaper than using a VPP for the same thing (unless you have a ridiculous number of iterations) in exchange for very limited configurations. It's so much cheaper than a multiform that it's kind of embarassing to even suggest the latter. I don't feel that it's unbalanced in game terms for the same reasons a VPP wouldn't be, and I think it makes a lot more meta-sense than rebuilding your whole character from scratch every time you want to switch a couple of weapons around or move points from DEX to Armor. I was going to comment on jonstryder's build, but it seems to have vanished since I started this reply.

It depends on total point value, really What makes an Advantage naked? About three cosmopolitans and a sex on the beach.

Re: Fallout (Too) a) What are his refueling needs? If he can charge up just by being anywhere, it's worth no points. If he needs to stop and rest for an hour every six hours, that's kind of a pain in the ass. What counts as 'ambient radiation'? Sunlight? Being inside a nuclear reactor? Eating weaponized plutonium? Sitting in a locked room, feeding off neutrinos? Getting an x-ray taken? Can he extend the time between recharges if he hardly uses his powers? Can he shorten the time between recharges if he pushes a lot? Why did you use this limitation instead of with a disadvantage or END Reserve? Is the answer 'to shave points'? You might get dirty looks from your GM. You're going to be toast the first time you meet Hydro-Man, or do anything near water. This is like Green Lantern being beaten up by a guy in a banana costume.

Re: Fallout (Too) Ah, I didn't read the background closely, since I was immediately struck by the mechanical writeup. In that case, you couldn't get any limitation for that. Good luck.

Re: Fallout (Too) For one, you can't just take one martial maneuver. For another, you can't just link everything off of Life Support. Not only is it persistant and costs no END, but it's got fewer points than most of the powers you've linked to it, and you can't use it at any value other than full, really, so that limitation isn't a limitation. I would have just bought all of those as OIHID, myself. I expect that once you fix the linkspam, you'll be quite a few points over.

Re: A Spell like effect of Knockdown. Change Environment 1" -7 to DEX rolls (only to knock down, -1/4; instant, -1/2) comes out to 23 active and 13 real points, costs 2 END, and is almost guaranteed to cause knockdown for anyone without very high DEX rolls. You can continue to lower the cost with whatever appropriate spell-like Limitations, or increase the power until even very high DEX rolls need to roll a 3 to stay on their feet.