Chromatic

Seems to me that the other issue (aside from having to scratch build all those nift sets) is: you decide that 1 hex is now 3 meters, instead of 2 meters. Scrambler has his AOE entangle attack omlette. The power is bought as 5d6 entangle, AOE cone How do you decide which hexes are now covered in rapidly hardening egg mixture?

Actually, since he wants to leak BODY through, it should be a HKA, not HA, and you would then convert the DC's in Martial Arts (including maneuvers and accounting for the +1/2 advantage penetrating) into Killing DC. Thus: 20str guy with 8d6 punch maneuver and 1 point escrima sticks weapon style uses his: 2d6 HKA penetrating +1/2 OAF escrima sticks [total 18DC possible] and he can now do 17DC of killing damage which converts to 3 1/2D penetrating killing attack. when he rolls out damage, he will always get at least 1 pip of body through for each 6 rolled on the body dice (including the half die) and the accompanying stun pip to boot.

i'd just make it a one point quirk. trouble sleeping when temps change

does he have an austrailian accent when he barks? or does he just get beaten up by the neighborhood cats? (working towards the promotion of the european capitalization convention)

Do the robots from MST3k count? I bet they are cheap to build in any case.

Did that show get cancelled? I recall watching it last year but don't think it was on Sci-fi at the time. Is Sci-Fi doing new episodes (ala SG1)--a quick search of their site shows nothing. John Doe is much cooler than that dopey Pretender guy, but it's clear he is only built on 20 points-- he loses his nifty powers when he buys off his total amnesia disad in one episode.

Hmm wonder what they would attempt to do to a group that: a) converts the husk of robotic villan into cigarette vending machine brainwashes and wipes the mind to turn into household mindless drone servant of anti-mutant vigilante c) swaps brains of convicted felon (well npc follower) with a dog to avoid incarceration d) routinely takes back foci to the lab to be converted and have technology utilized in the future That's just off the top of my head. And by the way, never has an item that was picked up and used during a session put into use in a later session unless it was rolled into the points in a VPP or gadget pool.

My kids and their friends are playing yesterday in my kiddie-campaign. Somehow, I don't think this was just because it was my boys playing. I'm sure this type of situation has happened before...... Wandren (mentalist) is explaining their plan to stop a suspected robbery, they want to hide in the crowd nearby (taking place in Pioneer Square downtown Portland) and jump out and attack when they spot the bad guys show up. Wandren: so we all crouch down low in the crowd and no one sees us. Bulk (brick w/ growth): the guys next to you will. Wandren: but they aren't the badguys! Bulk: but maybe I am. Wandren: You can't hit me, I'm mental! Bulk: (to me the GM) I roll dice and hit him. Chaos ensued.

That's what I thought too. Maybe Steve Perrin will chime in, he sometimes posts.

That's why its called a Maurerism. Steve suffered from a lack of point cost understanding. Among other things.

Just remembered another one: Mantis (wierd power armor guy played by Carl Lumbly circa 1994)

Man, you're just scary. I thought I was the only one who remembered that show. I even used the huge pills idea for healing pills in one game (takes full phase, side effects on 11- gagging).

Re: Re: Re: Re: "We´ve seen their faces, but who are they?!" Spectrum didn't, but he was pretty easily manipulated anyway. Of course Laughton's opinion of just about everyone is that they have mushy brains, but in LK's case it might be apropriate. I've managed to dig out the character sheet for Chromatic Dragon. He was my character in Sam Bell's Protector's campaign which we played more frequently than twice a week for over a decade. The campaign started at high power levels (15-18d at the beginning) and went up from there as we gained experience. The last game session we ran, (which was about 13 years ago now) the big bad was MagicVax, who had as just one of a laundry list of powers was a VPP with around 500 points in the pool. Some interesting stats on CD: experience earned: 853, career body taken: 413 number of different skill levels: 33 (12 are Overall levels) number of science skills: 28 number of professional skills: 8 Bear in mind Chromatic was Champs III, and only played three or four games in 4th edition.

So MarkRand do you like not read any replys to this thread and just keep posting the original message reworded from time to time to keep the discussion going? Yes I understood where you got the idea from originally. That doesn't discount what has happened with Batman over the last 22 years in the comics. (not to mention the three animated series, four movies, etc, etc, etc). But hey, it's your game, do what you want.

going back to the original question in this thread: Should characters be allowed no restrictions if its a good conception? For a long while now, I've been of the opinion that balancing POWER level between characters in the campaign is much more important than making sure your flying energy blaster and Joe's martial artist are both 345 points with 125 points in disads and 70 points of experience. Lemming's game is a good testament to this. The characters were designed to be "complete" You have all your powers that your concept needs. You have only the disads that will come into play. Do not worry if your character is balanced point wise. My character, Coriolis, started at 504 points. He wasn't extremely efficient, but he wasn't a slouch either. I was careful to not give him scads and scads of skills that didn't fit his original concept (and other players in the game did similar with theirs). Today after a couple of years, he is 512 points, with an unknown number of experience points, and curently leading the "death trap points" as best I can recall. Granted most of the players in Lemming's game have been playing Hero for twenty years or so, and have good clear ideas about what is a balanced power level. I've been playing with a toned down version of this in the kid's game I've run and it seems to work there too, once the players get over the ego trip about character costs. (in the kids game one character is 223 points at the low end and the high end has 290) The comic's heros aren't point balanced (excepting for Heroic Publications perhaps), and infact their powers and level of powers vary from writer to writer. I think that it would be interesting to see what Stan Lee uses to keep track of the characters in his books. How does the editor know that the Hulk grabbing a tank and tossing it to Las Vegas is ok, but Ben Grimm crumpling the bank vault into a tinfoil-like ball in one hand is not?

You're correct of course. However I plead the "it was 3 am" defense combined with the meta-rule of "how much of a limitation is the limitation compared to how much use do you get out of the power?" If you put a limit on say life support: no need breath (must hold breath only for 5 min) in a space opera game where the characters are going to be near vacuum every game, it would be worth more than in a down and dirty street game. Thus since speed is used every phase, no matter what (by design) limiting it has a larger experienced effect than limiting say lack of weakness. I agree this is a cheezy arguement. I will also stand by my original statement that I would never think of using a floating speed pip for a character with less than a six speed.

It was more than one point, but Explozo the Clown's nose was pretty nasty; it was a character defining power that was always threatened to be used by the player. Basically it was a single charge of a huge explosion that cost 10x end, and had no range, gestures and incantations. Explozo would burn so much end that he would put himself deep into the realm of GM's discresion even before taking the 25 or 30 dice of damage (that would likely take out all the other characters too). I think it was in a multipower ultra slot that cost 2 points.

Reminds me of a conversation with George McDonald back before 4th edition. He had always thought of speed as the representation of how many appearances the character is doing something in the panels on a page in the comic book. P.S. since he was toned down, Superman has a 3 or 4 speed these days it seems. No more handstands bringing the sun closer. Curses on all you roleplayers complaining to the GM about the powergamer.

I think if you only had 100 they would still be immensely powerful. I just watched X2 this afternoon--there is a scene where Xavier is in Cerebro and shows Wolverine all the mutants in the world; looks like about 1 in 10 or 12 in the world population is a mutant. Of course lots of them are latent and have the power level of Ron Parr (LSH's Flat lad) So what's the total number of points allowed in a Universe anyway?

Cool dice. Too bad the crystal ones only come in the polyhedral set.

last time I did it I got Mr. Fantastic. This time Dr. Strange. SO I tried to redo it and see what I changed, and ended up with Cyclops. The quiz is broken. I did the heroine version and came up with She-hulk. Or maybe its my random number generator.

Foxbat and Grav might make a good sitcom, but really would their offspring be worthy villans? That's the more difficult question to answer, flipping through the book indeed. hmmm, actually, I think Doctor Octopus might be the offspring of Grond and Lady Blue.

Frankly, Batman would never have his new fledgeling team meet up in the Batcave at 9 am. First it's the freaking batcave! only he and Alfred are supposed to be there. He would have a duplicate cave somewhere else that was similar in everyway to the real thing, but only he would know its not the real one (and Alfred of course). Second, 9 am? what is this, Breakfast at Tiffany's? The team assembles at 1:43 AM buster! Be on time or you're off the team with a suit for breach of contract pending from some unnamed conglomerate. 9 am is for pansies. Third, I fail to see the possibility that the paranoid planner of puerile pawn pounding would be able to convince himself of either the probabilities that a) he might not be around to protect Gotham, some snot nosed kids are going to be able to do anything beyond getting Skittles jammed into the Batcomputer. Remember, Bats has 20 points of paranoid, and 400 points of serious and grim as his only disads.

Hey, that's been my plan in your game since the beginning. Lemming: keep quiet you!

Why is Captain America always so over estimated? He must be the GM's pet player. First frame, full page: Spectre grows to 5 miles tall, and squashes both teams into mush. End of story. The rest is a reprint of the Ambush Bug secret origin and ads for selling Grit.