BoneDaddy

I think its an itty bitty VPP.

Kidnap the mage, and turn him to gold. He'll have no trouble finding the cermony, and he'll never find another one. Additionally, since he'll just disappear (into bullion), no worries about seeing your picture down at the post office. As they say, solvy-solvy. The challenge is isolating him so you can kidnap him without letting on that you're isolating him so you can kidnap him. Ambush can be so hard.

I've wondered that at every turn. Will this be his Carthage? What about now? How about now? Now? I wish this obvious knowledge were somehow not obvious. I could go to hatrack.org and complain, I guess.

The Ultimate Vehicle, if it must have a nickname, should be Mach 5. http://www.speedracer.la

The Forvever War featured a future where most everyone was gay, except the protagonist, who was a relic from a bygone era (he spent a LOT of time at near-light speed in a galactic war, thus the name of the series). People got together to reproduce, but they found the straight relationships just too complicated to be worth while. This is a FANTASTIC comic series, well-worth exploring. Edit: Originally a Nebula award winning book. Who knew? As to all male worlds, once you have only one gender, don't you effectively lose the concept? It seems defined by its duality. So, I propose that any race that reproduces without gender (budding, perhaps, or maybe all members of the species can inseminate AND carry offsrping to term, like slugs) would count, either as all male or all female, probably at the whim of the writer.

You can use change environment to slow people down - it won't stop them from acting, but it will stop them from running around. You can just up their friction coefficients (statis and kinetic) and stick 'em where they are. Better still, it's area effect and cheap.

Shadowrun, the game to end all games, god rest its soul, had a stealth skill that covered the following: sneaking, hiding, tailing, finding someone who was hiding, shaking a tail, and noticing someone sneaking. So, as they say, YMMV.

Q: What's Rush Limbaugh look like naked? A: Argle Bargle, Broogle Moof!

Lets say I'm playing Bullet - the high density shrinking speedster who flies (no munchkin here, no siree) with a Speed of 9. I draw nine cards. I get two wild cards - a joker and a queen. On my first turn, I lay my whole hand down, say "gin" and attack the bad guy 6 times. Once for the turn card, once for each wild card, and I trade in the other 6 for three early turns, for "cinematic effect". Round one, phase one, Bullet whips the crap out of anyone he wants to. After Grond is reduced to a greenish paste, Bullett makes the obligatory presence attack, and the mooks need clean pants. The big cool fight scene is O-ver. I think too many wild cards could be a real problem. I don't worry about benefiting speedsters too much - that speed stuff is expensive. I worry about creating the possibility for some seriously unbalanced attack sequences. Nothing would stop Mechanon from doing the same thing with his draw. (Edited for math, sad to say. And then spelling. I need an editor and a fact checker)

Q: What saved Meshach Shadrach and Abednigo? A: La Vache Qui Rie

I think this has some merit to it - the art, to be acceptible to the reich, would need to be white washed, to distance the maneuvers from the impure minds that crafted them. Politics would play into the official name, but Blitzfaust or some such nickname might be acceptible for imformal circumstances. Of course, those could be names of maneuvers.

Re: Update Well, it depends - how important is this small event? Or, how important is it that other character's know about the small event, or how important is it that the other character's know that the other character was a silent witness? There's always other ways to let the cat out of the bag, if its needed for the story arc. Just wheel out the machina and lower down the deus. But until they validly know about it, I'd say no way, man. Maybe Lichtenstein's only resident super is an extra-cognitive Roma, who would cheerfully rat out a rat, especially if would sow dissent in a rival's ranks.

Recommended reading: The Broken God, by David Zindell. It deals extensively with religion in a pan galactic setting.

You can delegate authority, not responsibility. If the mission goes south, no one should blame the sergeant if he has followed the orders of the OIC - even if the SGT wrote the orders..

That's a Presece Attack. Its covered under Presence Attacks. If you want more of an effect, you could trigger a Change Environment or an Area Effect Aid that provides whatever bennies you have in mind to go off with a successful Presence Attack.

I think its a distincitve feature (in Galactus's case, not concealable, and causes an extreme reation). The people of Earth thought an entity of destruction (EOD)would look like a giant with a purple tuning fork on his head? Not everyone in the universe agrees what an entity of destruction looks like, but EODs are kind of like pornography - you know one when you see it, and evidently there are planet-wide community standards for what an entity of destruction looks like. But if your character isn't an EOD, I think this is more of an advantage (and therefore a power) than a disadvantage. What specfically do you have in mind? Something like a mimic who appears as a mirror image of whoever is looking at him could be a disadvantage. If it's the Amazing Everystranger, the Man Who Defies Description, it's a little harder. Maybe invisibility with a time delay?

I would summon one zombie hamster with a boatload of duplicate zombie hamsters.

Oh. Sorry. Nevermind. I thought you were trying to find real world info to which you could apply game world rules.

You could build them as automatons - how many points are you looking to spend?

perception and understanding take different amounts of time. To react to a familiar stimulus with a conditioned response (flinch, duck, catch, martial strike, break, stear, accellerate, etc.) takes a few hundredths of a second. To understand what you are looking at (a genuine surprise, like an alien, or a grenade coming through the window, or reading a clock when you have no idea what time it is) takes anywhere from 3 to 8 seconds. It takes more time to understand that you are looking at a live grenade than you have to react to one. Is that what you mean?

I'm studying Jun Fan Jeet Kun Do now, and that's just about exactly how the basic maneuvers work. Develop a defensive strike with a quick draw, and be faster than the other guy. That's just Single Direct Attack. Attacking by drawing would be a little harder. A martial strike linked to a martial block? Its a bit of a kludge, and more than sort of abusive. I guess the caveat for that maneuver is - if you miss, you're open (not really - JKD and Wing Chun are exceptional defensive arts)call it a DCV suppress for a side effect for failure. This isn't the best use of game mechanics, but it is a great use of martial arts.

We can build a few special effects around "smarter than you." A superhuman dodge/missile deflection based on his keen ability to understand where you were most likely to shoot at him. Perhaps his nearly inuitive ability to be in the right place at the right time could be bought as luck. He could have a VPP gadget pool that should cover just about any situation with the ten perfect tools. Defense maneuver, combat sense, danger sense, combat luck, clairsentience, and find weakness. Has potential.

I've been wondering how the hell you get the quotes from here to there?!

Only if I get to sharpen my knives and come after both of you. She went away so quickly! I was disappointed.

Arooo, you are so missing the point on that one. I did it years ago, and it worked just fine. Her star is not quite visible and just SouthEast of Lyra, and I am a romantic god.