Netzilla

Recommended reading: Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder is a historian of 20th century central and eastern Europe... which means, chiefly, Nazism, Communism and miscellaneous fascisms. In brief, his argument is that brutal despotisms follow a fairly consistent playbook in seizing power. Knowing the playbook might help one avoid fresh tyrannies, and resist them when they happen anyway. And yes, he is thinking of Donald Trump.
 
It's a short book, but pointed. For an example, one lesson is, "Defend institutions." Would-be tyrants rarely start out with the power to commit atrocities; they achieve it gradually by breaking and subverting the civil service and private groups to their will. And here's Trump, trying to break the FBI.
 
"Be a patriot" discusses the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Snyder also provides a brief (page and a half) list of Trump's unpatriotic acts, from mocking and insulting war heroes and their families, to placing Russia-beholden people in his campaign and administration. (More than half a page of one-sentence examples right there. As Snyder puts it, the point is not that Russia and the U.S. must be enemies. They don't. The point is that "As a patriot, you serve your own country.")
 
A few of the lessons actually relate to our favorite hobby and these forums: "Maintain a private life" and "Learn from people in other countries." Tyrannies try to make everything about them, to butt in on every activity. It's important not to let them, keeping parts of your life and associations they don't touch. And contact with people in other countries helps one resist the closed fantasy-world that tyrants use to keep people docile, scared and confused. If worst comes to worst... it's good to have friends abroad to whom one can flee. I certainly hope the American people do not let the Trump regime get that awful, but I would like to thank the non-US posters for the outside perspective they provide.
 
Dean Shomshak

APG1 has a new Stunning option for Change Environment you should check out.  I've posted more details on older threads of similar topic.
 
[Notes: From APG1 page 83 - The Stunned effect lasts as long as the Change Environment is maintained (1 Turn*). However, when affected the victim gets to make a CON Roll immediately (at -6*), and if the roll succeeds the attack has no effect on him. If the roll fails, he gets to make an additional CON Roll every Phase he's affected at a cumulative +1 (so +1 on his second roll, +2 on his third, and so on). As soon as any roll succeeds, the power immediately stops affecting him and he has his full Phase in which to act.]

Megascale anything would imply you are non-combat.  Good luck with that...
 
Also, doesn't a Dullahan carry its head under its arm?  I'm not sure that the head it typically out of contact with the body, just not where you'd expect it to be, and as such it is probably just SFX for increased PRE attacks.
 
If you want the head and body to operate independently then buy Duplication, but it seems to me that it is probably just SFX for other powers: Clairsentience, Life Support and the like, with some sort of physical manifestation or focus and damage feedback.

That sounds horrible. I'm glad he was exonerated.
 
But he wasn't fired so the "What does the fired guy do" questions doesn't fit here, he got due process. His accusers made their case, he was able to respond. That's the system working, that's not an attack on dudes being nice. 
 
I just don't think industry reforms should be abandoned because "some bad women did stuff once." to borrow a phrase. 
 
 
 
 

I honestly do not understand those guys:
How have they avoided a sexual harrassment suit this far?
How did they ever manage to have consentual sex?
 
If you think new legislation will affect you: Congrats. You are propably the person this is aimed at.
If you do not think new legilsation will affect you: Congrats. Your are not a complete failure in cross gender social interaction.

The allies were the Victors of WW2. But only a complete moron would doubt the Holocaust. Mostly because we germans love to have documentation of everything, even industrialised mass murder.
 
"Maybe our claims about the Jewish world conspiracy are not true, but they feel like they could be true and that is the real problem..." any Nazi between WW1 and WW2.
 
Those who do not learn from teh past, are doomed to repeat it.

You did fire a shot. One extremely big shot.

Neil, for me superheroes don't become interstellar tyrants and gods for the same reason they don't on Earth -- they're super heroes. They're the best of us, they stand for ideals, they use their might for right. The would-be tyrants and gods are the super villains, who are kept in check by the heroes, exactly as they are on Earth. If you need an overarching rationale for that, you can say it's a manifestation of cosmic balance, the Light and the Dark of the Force, as it were.
 
I haven't seen a greater desire to explain the science of supers in a sci-fi setting, than in the universes of Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Babylon 5, which have their own superhuman beings. As long as there's some general reasonable rationale, internal consistency and logic are far more important than the precise physics.

Your experience, then, is quite different from mine. But I do not claim to know what "most players" are like: only what the people I play with are like.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, it used to be Jon Stewart, but since his retirement, I'd say it's John Oliver. 

From what I've heard, read, and such.
Sexual Harassment leading to firing is a relatively new experience in employment circles. It takes high profile public outcry, Harvey Weinturd had sexual harrassment suit payouts written into his contract - how much he'd be responsible for and how mcuh his company would pay.
 
Most Workplace Harassment (Sexual or otherwise) (in the United States)  is dealt with via "Forced Arbitration," in which a retired judge hired by the company in question hears the case and if it is proven to their standards a payout and non-disclosure agreement is set up. Accuser is payed and then can't discuss the issue or be sued. 
 
Traditionally, this also leads to the accuser losing their job and the harasser remaining (see Roger Ayles, Harve Weinstein, Bill O'Riely, Senator Soul-Mate, More service industry grabby guys than you can count because they don't harass or aren't visible media figures)
 
All this "I'm afraid I can't even talk to women at work anymore," hand wringing seems to be coming from people who don't know the difference between professional discourse and flirting at a bar.
 
From Personal Experience:
My dad's school district brought in a guy from another state who in his second year there allegedly threw a kid down a flight of stairs. He'd had a complaint file a mile long (that only materialized long after dad's school district had hired him) and apparently just moved to avoid losing his teaching license. 
 
The kicker here is, he never got arrested for any of these complaints because it was generally no witnesses to corroborate the kid's story so it was adult v kid but eventually you get enough parents angry and you send the teacher away. This was in the late 80's.
 
A teacher at my high school had a habit of marrying former students (like shortly after graduation) (At least twice) He was later made dean of students. And retired when he felt like it.
 
The institutions in my anecdotal and researched experiences act to protect themselves, they set rules to protect the institution and those in power. An individual fired for harassment generally has committed the sin of being:
1) A Financial Liability (Too much bad press, too much spent paying off their accusers) or
2) Not in a position of power (You're a lot less likely to fire Upper Management over this but a guy in the warehouse is gone)
 
And finally in conclusion a long-winded and rambling answer: I couldn't care less what happens to them. I assume, given the lengths most have to go to to get fired for harassment (again sexual or otherwise) they're not interested in changing their outlooks and behaviors and thus the punishment of social pariah is a pretty good one until they do something that clearly breaks the law and are proven not wealthy enough to get preferential treatment.

A lot of mileage could be had with a team composed of CU Empyreans from Earth wandering the galaxy looking for trouble. Maybe some of the other races in the galaxy have their own versions of Empyreans.

Speaking of Marvel's Cosmic stories, I did come across this:
 

Eh, obsessive and addictive behaviors of any sort can be difficult to overcome. Gambling provides zero thrill for me and it's no effort at all to take a pass on it (I put a grand total of 50¢ in slot machines during my entire vacation stay in Vegas), but that doesn't mean that people who are addicted to gambling don't need help with a legitimate problem.
 
When your problematic behavior ends up negatively impacting other people in the workplace, it's time for neutral third parties to get involved and set up some ground rules and consequences for breaking them.

https://bamfsies.blogspot.com/2018/02/2017-bamfsies-awards-announced.html

Well done folks, thanks for the votes, our boy gone and won it...
 
http://bamfsies.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/2017-bamfsies-awards-announced.html

Well. If you duplicate, the basic premise is that each duplicate can do everything the other can.  No need to worry about eating breathing etc.
 
The big question is how far you want to go with the whole "the head can still feel the body" thing.  Would it take damage if the body took damage (do they share the same pool of STUN and END)?
 
If the answer to those things is no, then the duplicates can be mind linked.  That provides a decent connection.  Everything else then comes down to how you want to limit each of the duplicates because it is either headless or bodyless.  :-)
 
 

The problem with that is that these three species are dependent upon another species -- Man -- for their survival. Domestic chickens and pigs would become literally extinct in a few decades if we as a species would decide to totally stop eating them or using their related products like eggs and leather.

Focus works fine.  A power doesn't have to come from the focus for you to get the limitation for it.
 
Dumbo's feather is a great example of a focus that doesn't actually contain the power.  He needs it to fly, so it's a focus.  It doesn't matter that it's all in his head -- that's just the justification for when he wants to buy off the limitation after getting some more XP.

Around here, they take the train:
 

Golden Age Champions
 
Zoltan the Magnificent: I didn't know there were rules to car bowling.

Every day you spend in this "paid leave" is a day you retire later.
That is not paid family leave. That is forcing people to hurt themself to spend time with their kid. So it is right up the Republican way of thinking!

To me, the game starts during character construction. After the group has decided on what kind of game we want to play (street level local, city's best and brightest, national hero team, global protectors, etc.) and players have the basic power builds in place, we have a group session where we build out Disads (or whatever they are called these days), and establish a "history" of the PCs. It is a free-form shared story telling session, where I push with questions like, "What was the first case Captain Cosmo and Ice Princess worked on together?" and let the two players throw out ideas. Then "How did Ice Princess save Big Mojo's life?" and the two players come up with a story. "What secret did Big Mojo uncover that required the Lioness to help him?"  etc. 
 
I write it all down as we talk it out. We build the disads based on the story... "Ok, so that means Captain Cosmo has now seriously pissed off the Hunger Man, so that is a hunted right there," and players will ask, "So, I was thinking that is when we ran into VIPER... or is VIPER not a thing? Another kind of group?" and I can provide some key world building details like, "Let's go with the VIPER having been pretty much demolished over the years of fighting off heroes and law enforcement, but let's say you've run into some kind of organized crime ring using high tech, but one that has no name, yet."  etc. etc.
 
After we have this session, the more traditional game play starts, but the great part is, you have players already invested in the world, because they helped shape it, and PCs already invested in the "team"... and I do my best to weave in the pieces of the story that the players came up with, which gives me fodder to work with and let's me know what the players think would be fun. So when "the Hunger Man" shows up, the players already have the "oooh, Captain Cosmo has a problem!" right from the beginning. Whatever the first couple adventures are, they are shaped by things the players introduced, mixed with my own plot ideas... and so, hopefully, have a unique, immediate hook for the players to be invested.

If I'm understanding the effect being described (something like a pair of conjured lashes), then I'd probably build it as an HKA with Autofire (2) attack rather than as compound power consisting of two HKAs.  To fit into the 8 DC cap, that would make it a 2d6 HKA rather than 2d6+1.  Still, the compound power can work, I'd just rule that it requires the use of the Multiple Attack rules to attack with both at the same time.

Those tax cuts are not fundable without drastic cuts to defense or confiscating the money we've all paid into Social Security.  In fact, the deficit is now so massive that the debt ceiling will have to be raised again in March, months ahead of schedule.  Expect a lot of discussion about Social Security and Medicare around then.
 
Remember, this has been the plan all along: Massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations, use the resulting fiscal crisis to justify cuts to SS and Medicare, and defund the government so that it can no longer interfere with the rich and corporations.  We are on step two.