BoneDaddy

Re: Tunneling Question. Pardon my thread necromancy, but... I've been toying with this idea myself, and I have a few thoughts. The brick trick, super strength smash through, sets precedent for using Tunneling to break things man made things like walls and doors. Heck, it's components certainly imply damage, since you have to determine the DEF through which your hero can tunnel. Smashing through a door in a house doesn't seem too different from smashing through a door on a car. Smashing through the door on an airplane in flight or a submarine at depth has pretty serious consequences. Smashing through an airlock door is ill-advised at best. All of these are possible, according to the super strength smash through. So, either tunneling causes damage, or the machina has to wheel the deus on down pretty quickly anytime one of the above incidents occurs. I think gameplay would be hindered, to say the least, if the GM says "Sorry, hulk-thrax may be strong enough to smash through a reinforced steel door in a building, but the door on this airplane is simply too tough for him." Logically, I believe that I (and others) have established with certainty that Tunneling causes a change to the environment which may have logical consequences (call it damage if you want, but it isn't an attack, and no BODY or STUN damage is done directly.) Why not cause that environmental change at a distance? Because the character doesn't move anywhere? Easy enough: Only to put holes in things (-1/4) or Character need not move (+1/2). You know, we could always model it with Transform, but that goes for everything. I can't see a pragmatic argument why Tunneling can't be ranged. Blame the design of the power and the game mechanics, but the consequences are logical enough, IMHO. It could be unbalancing in certain circumstances, and I think a GM would have to be careful about whether and how it was used in a campaign.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings My baby's been locked. My longest one yet. Oh well.

Re: Drain STR on Objects? How about drain Knockback Resistance? Usually can't be used to create negative values... Double Knockback on STR, contingent on a power skill roll, limted to inanimate objects? Expensive, I admit, and naked advantages typically aren't allowed in a framework, but this is more of a special power than a naked advantage.

Re: Drain STR on Objects? Superleap is cheaper, and I think more accurately describes the intended power.

Re: Help with a character: She knows she's in a comic book Cosmic VPP - What If? Summon Superhero - 1 shot crossover Duplication - Multiple Titles (See Spiderman, Batman. If Ultimate Spiderman, Amazing Spiderman, Web of Spiderman, Incredible Spiderman, and Avengers Spiderman all got together, that's a hell of a lot of webs.

Re: Help with a character: She knows she's in a comic book Multipower - Guest Artist. All powers have side effects. Leifeld - STR+ 30, side effect (Distinctive features, Phys. Lim. - Gigantic breasts, grotesque musculature) McFarlaine - Ross - PRE + 30 etc.

Re: Help with a character: She knows she's in a comic book Hunted: Inker, More Powerful, NCI, 14- Duck Amok!

Re: WWYCD: Whoa! Ninjas! Seraph - read deep into a ninja's mind and find out everything he knows. Marshall Hood - A few shots of the "Crowd Pleaser" (52" sticky cone, 3d6+3 def) round would entangle whole armies of Ninja. These leave time to do some investigating. He makes some pretty serious deduction rolls, and proceeds accordingly. Zulfiqar - If it should become apparent that the ninja are not authentically human (robot ninjas!) then he shall use telepathy to find out everything they know. If they are merely humans engaged in mayhem, he'll use as much non-lethal force as possible while calling for back-up.

Re: Musings on Random Musings It's his world, evidently, and I'm just living in it. In the credits I'm "Man on Boardwalk."

Re: A Thread for Random Musings So last night my wife and I were strolling along the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD, gawking at the ugly people, leering at the pretty people, and generally enjoying each other's company as well (You don't have to tell me I'm shallow. I know. I don't care, you see, because I'm shallow.) I saw two tall, reasonably attractive women walking down the boards, hand in hand - more common in Rehoboth than OC, but still no big deal. Here's the big deal. One was blonde, the other a red head. The blonde was wearing a superman T-shirt. The redhead was wearing a batman T-shirt. No, really, I swear. I should have used my darn camera phone.

Re: Rethinking mental powers My major problem with mental illusions is the breakout roll. I can spend 140 points on Telepathy, and you can spend 10 points on Ego Defense, and you are a coin flip away from shrugging off whatever I throw your way. For my points I want results.

Re: on another note... WW2 aircraft still flying The soviets built millions of 'em, literally. There's probably quite a few still alive and kicking in Siberia. A squadron of them defended the Aleutian chain from the Japanese during WWII. Riveting story.

Re: Help me finish a character? As on Obvious, Inaccessable Focus, it is worth a -1/2 limitation. Ablative is worth -1. This makes your 30 Character points worth 75 Active points. the "Ablative" limitation is discussed on the section describing Defensive powers (I can't cite pages because I am one of the few poor fools who bought the fifth edition before it was revised).

Re: Help me finish a character?

Re: Help me finish a character? +40 is a metric butt-ton of STR for a 75 pt game. If it's damage you're after, go for csl's and damage levels w/ martial arts or maybe a hand to hand attack power (3 pts/ d6 net instead of 5). If it's raw strength you want, ask your GM what he or she has in mind for campaign maxima. You say "a bunch of limbs." Flesh this out. How many? What kind? Arms? A tail? Legs? Tentacles? A trunk? Amoeboid pseaudopods that can be extended and retracted at will? Can these limbs buy you an inch or two of stretching? Always handy (so to speak). Can they justify an extra inch or two of running? How about a super leap? Extra limbs = extra blocking. Additional CSLs with martial block could be a lifesaver, and a cheap one. The lesser forms of missile deflection can also be justified by extra limbs. Consider a multipower or elemental control based around the extra limbs, like this: Extra Limbs Elemental Control: 7 Control Cost (All powers restrainable -1/2) 7 Superleap 20" 7 STR + 20 7 Stretching 4" 7 Clinging Damage Shield, +9 STR 5 Missile Deflection, bullets and shrapnel, +3 to roll (Costs END - 1/2) Total cost - 40 points. You have 110 left to round out the character. One entangle and you're toast, but such is life. Achilles had his heel, too. You could do it as a Multipower for less - About 25 or 26 points, I think, but it diminishes utility significantly. Buy some armor instead of Damage Reduction. Make it Ablative if you're feeling frisky - it cuts down on cost but doesn't last as long as you might like. It will make you fight smarter, and damage reduction will get a 75 point character hosed in the first turn. (The character you sketched above had a PD of 2, and a STUN of 20. A 22 point attack would CON stun him, and that's an average 6d6 attack - a typical brick or martial artist punch at 75 point level. Two shots and he's history. Meanwhile, 30 points of armored jacket gets you a PD of 25, and an ED of 25, and the 22 point hit does nada. In truth, you don't have 30 points to blow on defenses. I'd suggest about 20 tops, and probably closer to 15 if you can squeak it. I think the clinging damage sheild is a nifty idea, but it will get you in trouble when you fight Captain Hedgehog. And save a few points for a background skill or two. It makes it look like a character, and the ability to do something besides push-ups out of combat can be handy. FWIW, the only on extra limbs limitation on the STR would be worth very little if I was GM. -1/4 maybe.

Re: How to question: Gun Kata What about TK with fine manipulation and OAFs, etc? Take the MA skills, and blaze away.

Re: Help with a "Possessing Hero" I've been considering a nifty use of Transform - one great big charge. Use of the power kills the user utterly, but the transform makes the victim into the next iteration of the entity, who also has the power. This is obviously villainous. Reduced rate of return is also an essential.

Re: Changing to Heroic identity

Re: Total lack of ideas, clock is ticking down Make a summoner. All powers based on summon. Flight? Summoned giant eagle to carry you. Energy Blast? Summoned really mean attack pigeon. Clairsentience? Summoned rat to spy for you. etc. I once made a psionic intelligent rat. It could be done much better on 350 points. "Psych Lim: Wants to take over the world" might be a bit much, but Plato was no Brain. I once made a living bronze statue of Ho-Tai, who believed he was a living incarnation of that diety, when in reality he was just a statue from in front of a Chinese restaurant, enchanted by mistake. A brick with Tai Chi Chuan, and a passion to restore an Earthly Paradise for his people. Kid Gillette - low powered Autofire penetrating EB is his what he does best, and nickel and diming you to death isn't pretty. A variety of trick shots can be used to effect a ranged martial art and a few other powers. Go for a technoshaman - Mental powers for machines. Plays hell with everything, and quickly.

Re: "Perk inflation" in Hero Perk, or Social Limitation?

Re: ideas for dead alternate worlds What makes these worlds dead? I'm confused (sometimes quite easily). Maybe a better question is: what do you mean when you say "dead" with reference to these worlds. "Go ahead - there are other worlds than these."

Re: You cannot defeat me! 4th edition Champs, back in '92 or 3. The enemy was a measely 250 pointer named Wraith, who had darkness (no range), desolidification, and a drain Body that effected solid. Major pain in the ass. I defeated him by accident. I was running a horribly designed, overbroad character with plenty of fire special effects. Among those overbroad powers was Mental Illusions, only to cause appearance of surroundings ungulfed in flames, AOE (why? I don't know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time). It was the ONLY thing I could hit him with, so I did. And it matched his Psych Lim (total fear of light and fire) and he went away, thank god.

Re: How to steal a comm link Thanks! I think I may buy up some three point skill levels for Cryptography, Systems Operation, and Compture Programming. It's consistant with the character and does what I want it to. If a character has Mind Control over the machine class of minds, do you think that extends to even the most remotely intelligent machine? Clock radios? Cheap toasters have reostats and thermostats instead of transistors, but what about toasters? The important question, of course, is "What about foci?" And if you can mind control a super suit, isn't Iron Man is deep kemchi? Mind Controlling a focus sounds like a dangerous proposition - a jetpack could be highjacked rather than dispelled, and fairly easily, since the jetpack itself has a rather low INT, and there isn't much it would be violently opposed to doing, aside from intentionally overheating or flying below stall velocity. This isn't too much of a topic shift, since it would work just as well with a comm link.

Re: How to steal a comm link OK, the Powers version, one last time: Mind Link, any 64 minds (45AP) + Shapeshift (Hearing, radio, mental, Imitation, Cellular, only to imitate electronic Mind Links, 46AP) Requires a Mimicry Roll (-½), Requires a successful Dispel Electronics on Mind Link imitated (-½). Mental Awareness, targeting, analyze, discriminatory. 20 AP So this pwoer requires about 111 AP, and provides VERY limited utility. For that cost it should do all that and make me dinner. I can build a spoon for cheaper than that. OddHat's skills suggestion makes darn good sense, but I need to figure a way past the encryption.

Re: "Point inflation" in Hero There are French cheerleaders too?