Fenixcrest

Re: Invulnerability to Fire I'd say give him Life support intense heat, so he wouldn't be uncomfortable in high heat Change Environments and such. Then probably give him a huge amount of either resistant ED or ED Armor with "Only vs. Fire and Heat" (-1/2).

Re: April Fool's, Champions style Use a super-powered Jester. Not a vicious psycho like the Joker or the Black Harlequin; Just a super-powered prankster who doesn't know when to quit, and possibly possesses a less than fine-tuned sense of right and wrong. He could go around transmogrifying cars and public property into large, furry animals, and warping dimensions so that doors on one building go into rooms in other buildings across town. For an added twist, make the Jester the accidental change Multiform of some incredibly serious lawyer, cop, or public official.

Re: Telekinetic Silly Putty! Hm... after that update of the situation, it sounds like one of several things: A slavishly loyal Summon with Mind Link, possibly an automoton so as to have things like "Immune to STUN" Some kind of wacky duplication with 100% alteration Lots of powers with indirect, uncontrolled, and lockout, all controlled by a computer mind with Mind Link and Clairsentience Yeah, this could be just about anything.

Re: Using COMliness Indeed. I have a succubus villainess with Mind Control, RSR Seduction. Her massive COM acts as a complimentary roll to Seduction. I think it makes sense. Also, I do most of the things mentioned above with PRE Attacks and Interaction skill rolls.

Re: What character concepts make you cringe? Lessee... characters that make me cringe... In an old supers setting, there was the guy who wanted to play a precognitive gunman... o_O And his brother, who wanted to play a ruthless and corrupt corporate executive by day, powerful gadget-brick from space by night. Can anybody say Dark Champions? o__O Of course, there was one guy with a normal concept right from the start: La Cucaracha! Think of Spider-Man, but with a roach instead of a spider. His backstory was that he was eating corn chowder in some sketchy diner in Los Angeles, and when he wasn't looking, an irradiated cockroach dropped into it from one of the ceiling lamps. He was just plain fun. More recently, and this one I allowed because it's not really a Champs game, just a game with superpowered characters, is a guy with the SFX "Self-contained dimensional pocket." This made me cringe at first, but we managed to stat it out in the end.

Re: Statting up NPCs on the fly. I just take an NPC I've already made, and change its SFX. Then later on, I make an actual character sheet. Next time it comes up, and their different, I use the excuse "He was holding back, last time." Eheh. But, of course, I'm lazy.

Re: Autofire as Accuracy Booster If you wanna be really weird, you could buy extra damage classes for the attack, with the limitation "Only when Spreading the Attack" (-1/2). That way you'd get the OCV bonus from spreading, and the extra damage classes would offset the loss from spreading. Weird, yes?

Re: Holding actions and so forth....

I have an NPC who sort of has this power. Her power is a double-jump, she jumps, then jumps again in mid-air. I built it like this: Double Jump: Leaping 30". PLUS Flight 30". Linked (-1/4). Requires Acrobatics skill roll (-1/2). 90 Active/64 Real. The flight was linked to Leaping, with the GM explanation of "only the phase after you leapt". She had a speed of like 5. She usually does it by holding an action until right before her next phase, so she doesn't fall too far before doing the second jump.

I'm gonna suggest the following to my group: They're all used to ye olde D&D 2nd Edition, so I've devised a way to make the HERO to-hit roll more like the THAC0 roll. It's just a simple mathematical rearrangement, really. They announce their "attack total," or 11 + modified OCV, and roll the dice. If the roll + the target's DCV (I withhold that info) is less than/equal to the "attack total", then they hit. I do all the checking of numbers myself, as at this juncture I'm much faster at it then they are.

Turning OCV and DCV into their own skills would just turn the system into Fuzion.

How about an RKA with range based on STR, and retrievable charges?

That sounds more like Mind control, Area Effect.

Okay- a couple possible suggestions- 1) Give it a one day continuous charge, with "behaves like an instant power" (-1/2). 2) This one's kinda weird: Make a construct kinda like this one- "Summon Magic Sword for Up to One Day": PRE +1 **or some other random little weird arbitrary power**. Fuel Charge 1 day (+1/2). 1 Active Point. RSR Magic (-1/2). Side Effects on failed roll (-1/2). Costs END only to activate (-1/4). 1 Real Point. PLUS HKA 1d6+1 / 4 DC. 0 END +1/2. 30 Active. Linked to the above summoning (-1/4). Restrainable (can be disarmed and whatnot, but can't be used by others; -1/2). 17 Real Points. 18 Total points in construct. Just a thought. EDIT: Oh, and I guess the summoning would have gestures and incantations, too, just to keep it standard. I dunno. There's prolly a better way to arrange that, but it's a template at any rate.

I don't see any real reason to make the attacks Stun only. Just make them all normal damage- that way they can still damage the environment and create the risk of permanent damage to victims; In Pokemon episode one (kill me now...), Pikachu is brought almost to the brink of death when it is attacked by a flock of Spearow. Also, bits of the environment (landscape, parts of buildings, etc) are often destroyed in the process of battles. For this reason, I think it makes more sense to simply make all attacks normal damage unless it's something that should be Stun only, such as certain poison attacks. Anyway, even in the games there are attacks which damage the environment- "Cut," anyone?

Well, if the sword vanishes when your character is KO'd, how about: HKA 0 END. Usable by Others. Minimum STR. This way, when you are KO'd, the power stops working. You can let other people use it, but it can't just be taken. Though maybe another -1/4 to make it so that it can be taken, but still vanishes when you're KO'd. Minimum STR "whatever" just makes it a bit cheaper while still being kinda like a sword. EDIT: Oh, used by nobody else. Well, it's just a regular HKA, then, with the special effect "Looks and behaves like a sword that materializes out of nowhere."

I'd do it like so: The standard "in love with X" psych limit and a physical limitation: "Absolutely refuses to admit to himself that he's in love with X," and then eventually buy it off with experience points to make him go "Oh, wow. I'm in love. WUUUV!!1"

Personally, I always considered "Teen" (or at least "late Teen") to be the start of the normal characteristic range. Generally, I rule that from age 16 to around 30-ish, the character is a "normal" i.e. unadjusted character, and does not apply for the age limitation. That's just my opinion, though. I tend to run games with teen-aged characters, anyway.

Re: Accusations of MinMaxing and Munchkinery Honestly, if it was me? I'd rule in that case that the character should make a Tactics skill check, or an INT check with a -3 penalty. If the roll was successful, the maneuver would go off without a hitch. If it failed, then the guy would nerf up. Not critical fumble nerf up, but "no particular bonus" nerf up, anyway. Unless of course the roll was an 18

Personally, I'd go with Transform water to ice with an area effect variable shape. Change environment is a bit too vague for me in this case, because it would make everything cold. In the case of just freezing water, you only want to make the water cold.

Right, but depending on the nature of the campaign, would most GM's out there allow a combination like that? I doubt I would unless there was an ongoing ubervillain who could counteract stuff like that. And while I may not allow PCs to do that, I certainly might make an ongoing ubervillain who does.

Taking a look at the whole thing... I think it should just be limited by SFX, based on what the attack is doing and how potentially taxing it is on the user. For example, NND poison darts I would allow to be rapid fired, but not NND "accelerating time to cause rapid aging." Likewise, I don't tink a rapid fire Ego Attack makes much sense if it's raw psionics, because that implies some concentration. Though I might allow it if the character had mind scanned all the targets beforehand. However, if it's magical or technological, like a "sleep wave" gun or spell, I might allow it to be rapid-fired raw, because it would have a focus (probably) or some kind of potential jamming frequency, or interruptable gestures. Of course, I'm the guy who made an evil robot with just that, only it was Area Effect, No Range, affects human and animal minds, visual effect (loud humming noise, glowy yellow waves coming out of his eyes, visible on mental spectrum as static interference). He was called the Sandman. So I might be kind of prejudiced.

I see no problem whatsoever with rapid fire. It screws your DCV all the heck up. Sure, you can pay for Penalty Skill Levels to compensate, but then you have points invested in them. Lo and behold, you've paid extra points to create your powerful ability. Anyway, you lose 2 OCV per extra shot, and the first miss means they all miss. As long as the fighting characters are properly balanced against each other for that campaign (made/adjusted by the GM.. the secret ingredient is love... the explosive kind, anyway...), then that's a pretty steep penalty. And if the guy does have an astoundingly low DCV, he's probably a brick anyway. And while an NND will bypass all of his defenses, he probably has a bloody huge number of STUN and BODY points to boot. Also, NND's (especially ones that do BODY) are really, really expensive. If a character's trump card is his giant, well-balanced rapid fire NND, then his other powers (defenses, movements, whatever) will likely suffer, or at least his characteristics and/or skills will be in the hole. On a standard 200-point super with reasonable disads, I think the problem would solve itself via mathematical balancing in an attempt to salvage as many characteristics/skills/powers as can be recovered in order to make sense for the character. On the other hand, I pretty much make the PCs to specification from my players (because I have more experience with the rules.. maybe next time they can have more of a hand in creation), so I'm careful to keep the whole thing pretty well balanced. So if a character did have an NND optimized for rapid fire, then it would be there to compensate for crappy... other stuff. Plus, the villains in my campaign aren't that stupid. They'd figure out the reasonably common defense(s) for the NND after a session or two of fleeing like sissies.

Not really regarding HERO, but at one point when I was DMing for DnD 2nd Edition, we had an archer PC who rolled almost exclusively 1's and 20's, with occasional 14's (or theresabouts), but mostly just critical hits and fumbles. In the end, we decided that it happened so often that we would apply constant results... Thus, every critical hit resulted in the target's limb being torn off by an arrow (if they were man-sized or smaller, anyway...)... And every critical miss resulted in his character accidentally grazing the side of his arm with the bowstring, forcing him to spend his next round going "Ow, ow, ow!" and waving his wrist up and down like a sissy. It was really quite funny. He spent half a combat (storming a bandit-occupied mansion from the surrounding estate) openly weeping from the friction burns all over his arm.

Chrono Cross, for the Sony Playstation. It's a really cool game, once you get past the confusey storyline. That's where the Sea of Eden came from. Your idea just really reminded me of that place, wherein dwell the ghosts of things which might have been but now will not.