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Re: I Just Shoot Marvin In The Face For my own characters, - that wouldn't really occur to Sylph, though if Alaric were around he might well check and let her know if tampering was involved. - Soulbarb has already taken that into account as her post demonstrates. - Beastwarden won't think of it immediately but if an investigation occurs he might be able to look into it, then again he might not. Depends on what Japanese law has to say on the matter; they take a dim view of telepathy there.

Re: Sub-Zero's Ice Clones That's where the GM needs to rule on what is and what is not acceptable for a trigger. How does the trigger know someone is about to attack you? Usually triggers are not based on the character wanting to invoke the power, but on some predetermined and typically very obvious effect. If I were GM, it would be a lot harder to justify a power with a trigger 'someone is about to attack me' than it would be to justify 'someone has hit me.'

Re: Sub-Zero's Ice Clones My point is that a trigger with a higher level (and physical manifestation) is better for an attack that works once. If it were continuous and uncontrolled, it would attack everyone that touched it for the duration of its existence. If the ice clone disappears the first time it is touched, then it should just be Entangle, Trigger (possibly greater than +1/4), Physical Manifestation.

Re: Sub-Zero's Ice Clones I don't really think you need the continuous or uncontrolled. You should just need the trigger. If you want it so that the character can use the power without spending actions/time to reset, that's a higher level of trigger advantage, not a continuous/uncontrolled combination. Continuous/uncontrolled are for powers that can affect an opponent repeatedly over time.

Re: Costumed Crimefighters Collective Sounds interesting, though the GM will need to have lots of ideas about how to set up interesting battles with PCs of such diverse power levels. Worth a shot!

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? It's rather amusing that you come to this conclusion, since nothing could be further from the truth. If you knew anything about my posting history on the boards, you would have realized this already. That said, in your haste to assume and to use ad hominems, you've managed (again) to completely miss the point. Yes, it's ok for the PCs to lose. Yes, it's ok for a smart badguy to have smart plans. I've had PCs lose because they didn't react intelligently to an opponent who had smart plans before. It will doubtless happen again. The PCs don't get an automatic free ride in my games, and I have been in games where that happens so I know the difference. The point that seems to escape your attention is that you shouldn't invalidate the PCs' cleverness by assuming that the bad guy is cleverer than them. If the bad guy is clever, fine. Make up your bad guy's plans to whatever degree you feel is needed. Throw in whatever contingency plans he might reasonably come up with. And then let the PCs try to dismantle that structure in whatever way makes for a good story. But when they succeed at taking a piece out of the structure of the bad guy's plans, that piece should stay out. If it's complicated to take said piece out, for instance because of backups or contingency plans, that's ok. You can give the PCs hints to that effect, letting them know their actions may have only been partly successful. If the bad guy is good at adapting on the fly, that's fine too -- so long as you give the PCs the opportunity to adapt to the bad guy's adaptations and ultimately have the potential to outmaneuver him. If the PCs can think of a way to further hamper the villain, great. If they can't, that's ok too... but the opportunity needs to have been there and not so thoroughly hidden by lack of GM exposition that it will come as a complete surprise later. The point is not to make the bad guys dumb. The point is to reward the players for being smart, whether the GM thought of that particular way of being smart or not. There is a big difference. If the players are smart, and you give them what they think is a reward, only to turn around and take it away from them when they need that reward, saying they weren't really smart after all... they will soon start to wonder why they bother trying to be smart in the first place. If you don't get that, then no amount of argument will convince you otherwise.

Re: Your PCs might be Underpowered if... ...five lashes with a wet noodle doesn't just render the team brick unconscious. It renders the whole team unconscious.

Re: Sub-Zero's Ice Clones If you make a clone and it automatically attempts to freeze the target exactly once, succeed or fail, then that's the SFX of an attack. It could for instance be an entangle or a EB. If you make a clone and it just sits there until something touches it, then does the above, then it's probably an attack with the trigger advantage. If you make a clone and it follows someone around, trying to touch them, but can be shot at and destroyed before it gets to actually do so, the most straightforward approach is to use Summon. If you make a clone and it follows someone around freezing them, but can't be destroyed except by one fairly obvious means (e.g. introducing your frozen clone to heat/fire) then you may be looking at an uncontrolled continuous attack.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? I'm not assuming any of that. Since The PC has had a Good Idea, and the GM has already said he could do it (and in fact has done it,) I'm giving the PC credit for taking obvious things like backup systems into account with his initial success. It's no harder to sabotage backup systems than it is to sabotage the primary system. I'm not going to take away his success by saying 'you prepared for the fight... but no you didn't really... and now you have to fight him without the preparations you already made! Mwahaha!' Dealing with agents, if there are any, is a separate matter. They are one Complication, the teleporters are a separate Complication. If you want to invoke a sub-complication of 'backup systems', the appropriate time to introduce that sub-complication is when dealing with the Complication it relates to. It's not appropriate to bring it up after the Complication has already been declared successfully resolved. If you did bring it up and the PCs ignored it, then that's one thing, but if you didn't bring it up then you've given them their success; it's time to move on to other Complications. There are plenty of mean and nasty things this guy can do without breaking a cardinal rule of GMing. The players are there to feel good about their PCs successes, not to have those successes stomped on by an overbearing GM.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT???

Re: Poison's FREE Character Drawing Contest - #1 We are at 16 now. It could happen.

Re: Poison's FREE Character Drawing Contest - #1 Well he's got over 10, hopefully he'll still do it anyway even if the thread doesn't quite make it to 20.

Re: Social effects I agreed with most of your comments -- mainly I just wanted to emphasize that any use of this system should be handled at least as carefully as a full combat scenario, and you've been on-board with that since the beginning. The only part I wanted to draw further attention to is this:

Re: June 2nd There are lots of other good PC games out there, you know. Of course if you were set on doing your gaming in the living room, that's another matter.

Re: Social effects Hello, Andy! I've taken a look at your idea and had a couple thoughts. The first thing that struck me is that this is not a lot unlike building extra characters to go into the Matrix, for instance, in a cyberpunk game, or building Astral Form avatars in a mystic game. As such, I think it could have some potential. There are a couple other thoughts I had, as well, but I don't think these will surprise you. 1) I don't think your proposed idea is the right way to handle most social interactions. Most social interactions should continue to be resolved quickly, using the existing skill system, because they are not really a major point of dramatic tension -- they're just bumps in the road toward the next major point of dramatic tension. The best time to pull out an idea like this is in the classic courtroom drama setting, or some similar large set-piece event, where all the PCs are present and can contribute -- just like you might choose not to play out incidental combats where the Dark Vigilante character is roughing up a couple mooks as part of his usual information-gathering methods. 2) Making up new character sheets is not hard for some, but for others it can be a relatively agonizing or labour intensive process. Even if everyone is comfortable with the idea of making extra sheets purely for social combat, there will probably be some confusion as to how to go about doing it and what guidelines should be followed. The GM will potentially have a lot of planning and thought to do to smooth this out as much as possible for the PCs. Moreover, the exact circumstances of the setting may have an influence on exactly how each character could be allowed to build their 'Social Interaction Avatar', so these sheets may need to be altered and customized for each such 'Social Interaction Battle.' 3) One thing to watch out for is that there will likely be differences between what the player can think of saying/doing, and what the character can think of saying/doing; presentation here is critical. Oftentimes the character relies on skills for knowledge/ability that the player does not posess, but in the context of a social battle where a character can be 'knocked out' of an argument... what happens if the player still has ideas and wants to contribute? Ideally, whether the players are winning or losing a social battle, you'd want the battle to be played out in a dramatic fashion, not have one PC who happens to be low on social skills get knocked out early and have to sit around waiting for it to end for a long time. A lot of thought might need to go into codifying the meta-game for this so that the level of social force that is applied after the combat is over feels right and appropriate. Given that the premise is experimental, potentially time-intensive to set up, potentially disruptive to the game if not well done, as some players will be more sensitive to the idea of their characters' feelings/thoughts being adjusted in this manner than others, I think it seems fair to say, approach with caution. That said, given sufficient caution about when to use such a system, player buy-in beforehand, and preparation, it could be an interesting experiment. It certainly seems worth trying out -- I would be willing to do so -- and if it doesn't work well, that's a lesson learned.

Re: I Just Shoot Marvin In The Face The latter depends on the tone of the game. For silver age games, you might well be right. For iron age games, maybe not.

Re: Your PCs might be Underpowered if... ...if they are in a game with a certain Shadow Lord known to feature on the boards from time to time.

Re: What would your sidekick be named? I think most PCs would rather have a partner than a sidekick. Certainly mine would.

Re: VPP based MP, help with limitation My vote is the 30 RP Cosmic VPP with a -0 lim, only carries X slots at a time. Or even skip the limit if it's Batgod, who can be assumed to know already what he was going to need, and not just Batman.

Re: VPP based MP, help with limitation So if you do want a VPP for 60 gadgets, fine. Buy one. I don't think you should get very much if any cost break for only being able to bring a certain number of them at a time, though. To me that's a -0 lim; inevitably 10 slots or so is enough to cover 90+% of the situations you might find yourself in and the Bat-shark-repellent items are just window dressing for the most part. Especially once you get up to characters that are powerful enough that getting back to the Batcave to pull out whatever specialty items they need is typically not a big problem.

Re: VPP based MP, help with limitation I still think it would be simplest to give him a MP for his 10 most common gadgets, and a small lab-only VPP or even just rely on his gadgeteering skills to come up with other gadgets in his Batcave as needed. You don't necessarily have to have a VPP big enough to hold everything he commonly carries, and in fact it's very inefficient to do so.

Re: VPP based MP, help with limitation You know it would be a heck of a lot easier just to build it as a MP and apply a limitation to the MP, as follows: (May only have 5 slots available for use at once, -0). I mean if it's focus-based, and you can only swap out gadgets in the lab, you'd have to have a ridiculous number of gadgets for the VPP to be more cost-effective than the MP anyway.

Re: What would your sidekick be named? It's a very different matter if you're talking about your own children, as opposed to someone else's children. None of my PCs mentioned above have children of their own, so if they had child sidekicks they would be taking someone else's kids into the line of fire. I don't think it's at all a stretch to call that irresponsible. If said kid is powered and has to deal with powered threats, it's up to the kid ahd his/her parents to decide what to do about that. Adding my PC's hunteds to the list is NOT going to help, nor are any of my PCs inclined to be part time nannies for powered children.

Re: I Just Shoot Marvin In The Face Ah, ok, I misunderstood based on hfergus's reply. In that event, it depends on the tone of the game. A fatal shooting of this sort still would not be appropriate for characters in a silver age game, for instance. Wounding might be another matter. Sylph would still be horrified and try to heal the person who got shot. Since she's in a game that's more silver age than not, very likely he won't have been fatally injured and she'll be successful. As for rounding on whoever accidentally shot him, that takes a distant second to saving lives. She will eventually berate the person for their carelessness... and then probably assume they'll have learned their lesson and not do it again. For Soulbarb, it depends on where she is in her career. This will be a temporary team-up sort of situation, as her only regular partner doesn't carry around firearms, have ranged attack powers (currently), or have less than full control over his powers. In her current game she's very much focused toward law, so yes the shooter will be held accountable for his or her actions and the safety of his or her weapons, until such time as guilt or innocence is determined. She'll also investigate, starting by using her Soulsight to determine whether the killing was indeed accidental, or 'accidental-on-purpose', or performed while under another's influence, e.g. mind control or the like. In the last case, if the cause is mystic, she will likely detect it in short order; otherwise it may take a bit longer. Beastwarden is in a silver-age game (more-or-less) and thus the shooting probably wouldn't be fatal; if not, he could try to heal it with his shamanic magic (or Rainfall could with hers.) I don't think any of the PCs on the team have the right powerset for this, but some of the NPCs might carry a firearm. As far as the ramifications from that point go, he's not quite familiar enough with the law to decide what to do next, and will defer to his teammates on the matter. If they decide an investigation is warranted, he'll be happy to help, but he likely won't take the lead unless they show no interest in the matter at all.

Re: I Just Shoot Marvin In The Face This wouldn't really be appropriate for most of my characters, because they are too professional to handle weapons in an unsafe manner, or have sufficient control over their own powers such that this sort of accident couldn't realistically happen, or because it just doesn't suit the tone of their game, or some combination thereof. The only one that seems worth posting is as follows: Sylph: Doesn't really understand how her powers work and they are gifts from Dionysius anyway, so if he had a reason to trigger something through her it could certainly happen. Probably not unless Dionysius wanted, but she wouldn't necessarily know that right away. Sylph already has enough trouble with Maenad coming out unexpectedly; this would just give her more to angst about. She would try to heal whoever it was immediately. If the NPC dies, then out of character, I would want to know where the GM is going with this, as it doesn't fit her game's tone.