Christopher

Something like Batman of the Future: Return of the Joker? It depends how different both Characters actually are. Do they have the same powers with slighly changed special effects (the Blast being a Bat-a-rang instead of a Pumpkin Bomb)? Something more around Carrol Ferris (DNCP) being the Star Saphire?

Psychic Link: Mind Link has rules for the "Telepathic Twin Bond". "But they also get what I call a tag team power. In M&M tearm it is reaction damage 12 only to target that the other brother has hit. So #1 does a grab, #2 hits grabbed target, #1 now gets the reaction damage go off." How about that being the special effect of a Teamwork use? Maybe exceptional levels in Teamwork? As Hugh pointed out, succeeded with a Grab gives you a free grab attack against the grabbed person (but only that peron, not other person may be affected). As the question propably heavily ties into the differences between Combat/Initiative mechanics with both game systems, it is really hard to figure out without knowing M&M. Is there any intro adventure with abreviated rules?

Sounds like either the GM did not realsie there are Caps comming with each powerlevel, or you picked a unusually high power level (we asume 400 Points on all build questions). Pointbased systems like Shadowrun and Hero need caps more then point totals, as they help you gauge what is "good enough" quickly.

For that I thought up a possible solution without having to delve into "Effortless Change" territory (I really dislike calling it a "Cosmic VPP" due to the mistakes with the special effect): http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/93314-combining-frameworks-multipower-in-a-vpp The Idea is abstract enough that it should fit to any version of the VPP/MP. What, no talking Cat-sled like in Barve and the Bold? Also what about the submarine and Helicopter with "Shark Repellant"?

None of those are offensive powers. Indeed Desolid even turns off all Offensive Powers, drastically limiting it's usefullness. DR has optional scaling rules in APG I or II. Edit: Actually it was 6E2 284 that pointed out that the fixed prices may need to be reworked depending on power Level. APG 1 has another 100% Tier for DR. And DR is still avoided by penetrating. APG 1 94 also has rules for more granular Desolidifcation. Why the brick does not fall over so quickly? Because Vertigo is a physical effect. And that guy is resistant to attacks on the physical area.

It sounds just a powersource, like the Speed Force. Or the Yellow Sun being the powersource for Superman/Lords of Order for Dr. Fate, except much less affectible. To quote the Guardian of Forever: "I was here before your sun burned hot, and will be here long after." The general rule is to only write stuff up on Sheets that mater for the character using it. How does it affect each person that multiple users draw from a finite source? Sometimes just "nothing in there" when you need it most? How about Burnout version of Required Roll? Or is there "more energy then you could image"? Then the limit is not how much can draw, but how much you can channel through your body/physical helper device (plain endurance or End Reserve to fuel the power; keep in mind that running out of end means you have to burn STUN; LTE loss can be used to limit magic for heroic campaigns). There may still be storylines where the source is in danger. But those are just storylines, like the alien attack on the city.

Knockback is a optional rule for superheroics, not a core rule (at least in 6E2 114). It is the last of the "Optional Damage Effects" in 6E2 108, On par with the extended Bleeding Rules (different from basic "Bleeding to Death"), Knockdown, Disabling, Hit Locations and Wounding. If you want to move someone, that is the basic 'Shove' Maneuver, wich is just an application of STR (normal or Telekinesis). Increasing Knockback with "increased Knockback" beyond one doubling is a STOP sign. Megascale is a Stopsign. I am not even sure if you can assign Megascale to Knockback. As I said, Knockback is an optional damage rule not a core metric of any attack (like Range or Area of Effect). Moving somebody with Telekiensis or normal STR seems inherently more balanced then Movement Power, UAA. There are only two reasons not to use TK: 1. We would need to think of a Advantage/Limitation to TK that does the same movement (skipping over space). 2. We want something that has no decent defense. The impulse to build something unbalanced is in every player. For some it is stronger, for some weaker. Especialyl D&D teaches towarsd using it. Hero does not work like D&D. It neither encourages nor needs cheesy uses of powers. Cantrip abuse does not work, because you only got 5 STR TK in that Herosystem Mage Hand Spell (tops).

The NPP drive and manned mission have a wierd, counterintuitive behavior: You can not use all the Kinetic Energy produced by the bombs. Even with the shock absorbers you crew would be squished by the sheer amount of Kinetic energy. But you can only build nuclear weapons so small (about 14 kg of Fissionable material). While you can fully control how much of that is transformed into Kinetic Drive force (you actually have to add stuff that hits the plate) you still end up wasting a lot of energy. You want to build the ship bigger and heavier so you can use more of that Kinetic energy. With smaler manned ships the "Fuel/Weight efficiency" goes down rather then up. The Drive would get more effecitve with true Fusion bombs* not because of the higher energy - but because you can scale the bombs down a lot better. Propably, that is (as we have not build any). *Our current "Fusion" bombs use a Fission bomb as detonator. So you just made the fission bomb problem worse. Interestingly the NPP flight to the moon would have propably only costed 1/10th of what we finally did. And the technology becomes better with higher total mass, as oposed to our rocket approach. For multiple understandable reasons they just decided against NPP. And then they actually banned it with that treaty (no nuclear explosions/weapons in space).

NND deals damage (mostly STUN, Drain or Transform Body). The power is still capped and well balanced and if anything is less likely to take out the enemy in one go the more you advantage it. It does not change that your CON is still used to prevent being stunned or that the enemy has to work off all your STUN. it get#s around your defenses, not your Stun or Con total. Even if you are stunned/knocke out, you can still recover. 5" TP UAA can port you off the roof. And if your character can not fly or jump hell-a high, he would not come back for the rest of the fight. The damage the character takes does not mater, he is out of the fight for good simply by distance. Even then falling down and jumping back up might take more then one phase to complete. NND in 6E was turned a lot more granular/mixed with AVAD (it was rolled into AVAD, but is still often mentioned like a seperate advantage in builds). Rather then one flat value it now has a table based on the Source Defense and the Target Defense "Commonality"*. AVAD can actually become a limitation if you move to a more common defense (like Drain or Transform to PD rather then Power Defense). And NND always shifts it about one comonality level into Limitation region. AVAD, NND (normal PD) is a -1.5 on Transform or Drain (but that might undervalue it, actually; everyone has some PD naturally) Moving a Mental Defense, Power Defense or Sight/Hearing Flash attacks to any NND is actually a +/- 0 now (+1/2 for the new rarer Defense, -1/2 for being NND). *There are example values given, but as usual the exact values depend on the campaign.

That is not exactly one of the easier parts, but at least it is not quite as hard as Adjustment powers. In Hero you can measure an attack in "Damage Classes". A 12d6 Blast, 4D6 HTH attack+8D6 STR and a 4D6 Killing attack all have 12 Damage Classes (DC). Generally every 5 Active Points is a damage class. Advantages are included into that, mostly: Not all Advantages affect how hte power hits or deals damage. Reduced Endurance for example does not. But Autofire and Area of Effect does. Step by step: 0. Find out how many DC to add in total from all sources. Just do it in one go. All sources usually give what they add in DC, Maneuvers and Combat Skill Levels are way up on that list. 1. Figure out the total Advantage value of Advantages that "Affect DC calculation". 2. Find the proper column for that summed advantage in the tables on 6E1 462 and the number of dice you throw 3. Look to the left how many damage classes that is. 4. Add the damage classes for the source 5. Go right to the Advantage Column again. That is how many dice to throw with that Basepower, these advantages and that many added Damage Classes. 6. Heroic Level games are prone to add a DC cap. Usually twice the base damage. In 6E that limit is part of both the "Real Weapon" and "STR Minimum" Limitations. You can often shortcut that a bit: With +1/2 DC affecting Advantages, every 15 AP equals 2D6 Normal Damage. With killing damage you want to keep to multiples of 3 whenever possible. Try to do the calculation in DC and things should keep manageable. For a full calculation we would need to know: Exact build of the power (all advantages). Exact source(s) of additional DC.

You just explained why they can not be part of a Fusion. It would simply not work on a P&P Table, as you reduced the number of characters/actors to play as without also reducing the number of players. There might be a few examples from the The closest things I can think off are a few Characters from Blizzards "Heroes of the Storm": Cho'gall is a "twoheaded Ogre", with two players sharing the model. One Player controls movement and physical attacks, the other magical attacks. You can only use both and you can only select them as part of a premade team. In Hero terms it would be a 2nd Character play by a different character with "Physically bound to another Character" Complication. Of a expensive altered Duplicate. : Grandia 2 has a number of bossfights. Now the mechanic of Grandia Interrupts and the Combat bar is not dissimilar to how getting Stunend and SPD works in Hero. So groups are prefered. As a result they had to place more then one actor as part of the Boss-side to be certain the player would not cheese his way through*. In earlier and minor ones they did the obvious thing and just placed a bunch of weaker mooks with the boss or having 2 bosses. Not so with the main bosses. Each of those is one model that carries multiple actors. The Tongue for example has: 1 Body, 1 Head and two Mawhands (it had a total of 4 maws; it was basically Guttony incarnate). Each of them acts independantly of the other on the Games Combat System. Stunning or sleeping one does not affect the others. But the subpeices still move with the main piece (like one of the Cho'Gall combo). Killing the central piece is viable and will win the fight immedaitely. But it is generally better to kill the smaller subpieces first, as they have less HP and have annoying combat effects (buffing, healing, damage, status effects). Basically they made a Multiple Headed Hydra as per 6E1, but with each head being totally different from the next. *In fact the final fight where they did not do that, can be cheesed through easily with one power you have in any case. I think that one was made intentionally easy. Applying both to hero: If you want to two player fusions for your Players, the two headed ogre approach from Heroes of the Storm might work. You got two actors that are somewhat tied to one another. If you have a uneven number of players (or do not know who will show up), provide the core piece. And let each player play one of the sub-pieces of the fused character (a Arm, the Head, the chest, etc.). In both cases the players still each have a seperate actor to control, with teamwork still helping. If you ask how to organize it so that X players control 1 Actor shared: That is not possible as far as anyone knows. If you do find a way, please let us know.

Rosetta found it's Lander Philae again, or rather mission control did. It was found on a Photograph made last Friday, but downloaded only over the weekend. Apparently Philae bounced off the surface a repeatedly and finall found rest in a rockformation. Unforunately with the Antenna's and Solar Panels pointing in the wrong direction: https://twitter.com/esa/status/772800879057567744 While it will not change anything about the mission, having at least found it might be beneficial for a next attempt at landing on a comet.

Damn. I seem to have a weak memory week again. I simply missremembered that part.

Normal waking up is a process that happens over minutes. That you are not at 0 end after that is nothing special. As I said, you had plenty of time to take recoveries. In case of an alarm clock, I clearly noticed the behavior of my body to start waking up or already being awake before the alarm even goes off. Unless I planned my sleep phases really poorly, at wich point I can just sleep through the alarm. We are talking about suddenly waking up. Sleep is the phase were the body drops all readiness to recover reserves. It is by definition our most vulnerable state. Being ready for being suddenly woken up and having to fight for your live is literally the last thing on the bodies list of concerns. If it had to maintain that readyness, it could not recover.

A brick has dozens of ways to defend agaisnt knockback. Form KB defense, rolling with a punch, staying on the ground or even grabbing the ledge. The difficulty to knock him back is considered part of him being a brick. None of those apply to Movement Powers, Useable as attack. That is why I do not like those builds - they plain go around any reasonable defense. That is thier very purpose of being. And among the first advices I read regarding this system in 6E was: "Every attack should have a defense". You may have to prepare for two things: One is that the player argues "the effect should not be taht expensive/is not as expensive in game system X". Point out that the point cost in Hero always reflects the relative power and that in hero the power is that usefull. Second thing if you allow it, is that the players will work to get mileage out of it. Always reserve the right to retroactively remove it if it turns problematic for the stories you try to tell. As I said, it is one of those things you may have to learn from own experience.

It was among the possible builds I proposed too. However I just learned something: Apparently the Poster GCMorris has been using 4E this whole time without telling us. We all asumed he was using 6E I guess. As my oldest resouce is one revised 5E corebook, I can not even say if Life Support in that form existed back then or how the rules were different on such a detail level.

Healing is defined as a "Power that can heal body damage". Despite it's names implications*, it can effortlessly heal non-living objects. Even with the same build. It belongs to the Adjustment Powers. Reasoning from special effect for those never works. We have thus far failed to even figure out one common special effect for power defense. *The book itself says it well: "Do not let the powers name imply anything about what it can or can not do. We simply have not found a less misleading name yet. The Description clearly says what the power can not do." If he is "non-organic", that might imply some stuff from the Automtaton Power list: Does not Bleed in particular comes to mind, but you might be tempted to add "Takes no Stun" or "can not be stunned". For a player I would highly advise against anything except does not bleed. We also need to define what the limits of that limitation is: Does he still heal normally? What if he turned into a mortal being, would the injury still be there? Could it be treated?

Wait, you have been using 4E this whole time and did not tell us in any of the threads you started? That was not a good idea. We asume that everyone is using 6E, unless they tell us they use 5E or something earlier. None of the rules constructs we gave you before might even work if you are using 4E this whole time.

6E1 246 actually mentions that LS: Longevity might not be worth anything in game. From the toolkitting section: "[...]Second, you can change the cost of some part of Life Support based on campaign preferences. For example, in many campaigns a character’s lifespan really doesn’t matter for game purposes (except perhaps as a defense for AVADs that manipulate a character’s age), so perhaps Longevity costs nothing. If the game only covers a few years’ time, what does it matter that one type of character has double the lifespan of another? Similarly, in a campaign where the GM plans to run a lot of underwater adventures, perhaps Expanded Breathing and Self-Contained Breathing are half cost (to encourage PCs to buy them) or double cost (because they’re so much more important)." (Bolding added by me) That Longevities point cost might not make sense for every campaign is as well known and predicted as the fact that Relativity does not apply in very extreme cases (like Black Holes). You do not need to invent off-chance uses for it. Just realise it had none by the books own admission.

A gas giant candle colony ship could work. Considering that all Gas Giants are basically undersized Stars. But as you said, it is definitely in the Kradesh 1 area: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-08-03

That should work out finely. However as I said before, the -12 to Hit penalty might be an issue with the destructability of the Focus. So expect teh GM to waive it for hitting this specific Focus (as you got the limitation value for a normally to hit Focus).

Always remember that taking a Limitation means you are asking the GM to make it part of the game. So do not take a limitation if you do not want it to come into play. And the GM can reduce the value to -0 if he feels he can not let it come into play. Things that need some skill roll to remove are not even Inaccessible. If removing that eye is as hard as a normal eye (Surgery), then it would be outside the scope of even a focus. The hit location penalty for hitting a eye is somewhere around -12. I need to look it up again. Edit: Found it. APG I 173 has expanded hit Locations. Eye is: -12 to hit, x5 STUN, x2 N STUN, x2.5 BODY. Paragraph mentioning that usually eyes are not covered by defenses. A -12 to hit is not eactly "easily damaged". It is still -6 and 1/2 DCV when the target is asleep, that is how low it can go.

6E2 162 (Powers and water): "Teleportation with the Must Pass Trough Intervening Space Limitation suffers the same restrictions as Running when used underwater. Other forms of Teleportation typically work at full effect underwater, but characters and GMs must keep two things in mind. First, due to the problems of perceiving underwater (see Perception And Communication, above), characters may have a much harder time perceiving the target Area. Second, and more importantly, Teleporting into an area flled with water constitutes “Tele porting into a solid object,” requiring the char acter to roll on the Teleportation Damage Table as described on 6E2 162y. Tis may effectively make Teleportation useless underwater for many characters."

While in effect Sleep also includes the following penalties: 2 times STUN damage taken 1/2 hit location penalties. Oddly enough, the DCV is NOT affected by being asleep it appears. You would still be half DCV from being prone, but there might still be a chance you turn in just the right moment. Note that "being prone" can also mean "being off balance". You can be "prone" while flying, without falling - you are simply off balance. Lightsleep (6E1 144) gives us the Background for "waking up when danger appears": "Normally a character must make Hearing PER Rolls at -6 to wake up when someone enters the room, leans over his bed, makes an unusual noise, or the like. A character with Lightsleep makes his normal PER Roll to wake up (if the other individual makes a Stealth roll, this becomes a Skill Versus Skill Contest). " I assume taking damage will instantly wake you up (unless of course that attack knocked you out). Normal rules for "using powers hidden" apply. After being unconscious (sleep or being knocked out), your endurance starts at 0. With luck you might get a post segment 12 recovery quickly because the combat just started with whatever woke you. Otherwise you have to burn your Stun, inlcuding for stuff that normally only costs 1 Endurance (dodge, using STR to stand up). Even if you are wake, you are still considered prone until you take the (usual) action to stand up. People may obviously use any trick to shortcut the standing up normally allowed. I asume normal waking up includes actively taking recoveries (in addition to the post-seg 12 ones) until you reach maximum END and earliest standing up then. 6E2 14 lists a few perception modifiers: A otherwise quiet Area gives +3. Sleeping places are usually quiet/sleeping asumes any sound will stand out. Pecepting a shout gives +2 and a Whistle +3 The use of weapons gives from +3 through +6 Do not forget that with any alarm, the character has a chance to wake up at least every phase he would normally have. So even if they fail thier first roll, they would get more.

While looking for the Drain part, this little piece I stumbeled over under toolkitting LS: "[...]you can add Safe Environments to reflect common conditions in the campaign. For example, in a Star Hero game, characters might ofen get exposed to pulson energy felds that can have negative effects on living tissue. Te GM could make Pulson Fields a type of Safe Environment, thus making it easy for characters to buy protective suits" Choke effectively works like a NND. Being chocked is effectively a "hostile environment". Generally I still think the extended Breathing (through Skin) is the easiest approach, but it still worth mentioning I think. Wich reminds me of the HSMA: For Martial Arts purposes, Choke is defined as a NND. In effect it is a continous variation of Nerve Strike. HSMA 247 goes a bit further an expands the NND defenses you can use for a Nerve Strike. And thus delves into defenses agaisnt Chokehold by coincidence: "NND 2: Rigid Resistant PD on the neck or not having to breathe: Tis is the defense for Choke Holds and other NND strikes which cut off the target’s ability to breathe. Te general comments about defenses appropriate for NND(1) apply here as well." Maybe LS: Being Chocked is a valid LS build after all? Regarding Drain and LS: I think it is drainable by default. It is only marked as persistent Standart Power.