Chromatic

Just make it special effects, unless it really does have some game world mechanics effecting significance.

Gah! and here I thought I had wiped that memory from my brian! Now where's the cerebral paste and cranium brush?

Eclipse: .....but the payment for it is only balanced for a very few Speed numbers 3 speed characters don't usually have a high dex (the subject of this thread, but they would get more of a limitation (-3) For higher speeds, the limitation isn't worth -1.75 here's my take on what the lim "once per turn" is worth: adding this much speed......................lim value 8......................................................-2.5 7......................................................-2.25 6......................................................-2 5......................................................-1.75 4......................................................-1.5 3......................................................-1 2......................................................-.5 1......................................................duh I guess I should have included this "chart" in the first post....

The smaller the brain, the closer the neurons are and the less distance needed to travel for a thought. Just like the shrinking die size in current CPU technology. Having a brain with 1/256 the volume but the same number of cells means that you can think 256 times faster and have 256 times the ego. Hmmm, 45 Int, 45 Ego. This was a villan right?

Lemming didn't modify your avatar, he copied the image, edited it and posted a link to it for you to download should you choose. Just about any decent image editing program can make animated Gif's these days, and the heavy weights can edit them. Look at GIMP, PaintShop Pro, or Photoshop any of those three can do the trick. Oh, and yeah that was me hiding in the dishwasher box your neighbors were tossing out who was spying on you. P.S. better rake your lawn, I heard the dogs discussing plans about leaving you piles under the leaves.

Is this a campaign epic event that will run for many sessions, or a one shot deal (that might take 2 or 3 sessions at most)? If the game is going to be hevaily effected by the invaders, ala V or Taken, then you have a lot of other sub plots you can work with. If it's just an "Oh my God, aliens are landing and we have to stop them" type of situation, then its simply a twist on the typical figure out the nefarious plot, stop it, and defeat the bad guy. Kinda ho hum actually, since all the bad guys will be basically the same. I'll presume you are starting up an epic event that will change the scope of the campaign. Step one: are the aliens defeatable? Do they have some major weakness that can be discovered and exploited? Are the unstoppable psionic creeps with vast arrays of technological gadgets that will decimate the heros completely? Hopefully, they do have some sort of weakness that can be discovered with some skills use by the PC's. I wouldn't have it as common and drastic as having the aliens melt into goo when they are doused by salt water, but that's your choice of course. Step two: why are they here? Are they friendly explorers (unlikely) or war mongering conquerers? Or maybe they are looking for something they are missing? It could be anything from a new food source (humans breed too slowly to make a good one) or perhaps they have a process that can turn the Earth's oceans into heavy water and then use it to fuel their ships. Step three: how are the PC's supposed to react? You shouldn't put too much emphasis on this one, since what ever you plan, will be completely warped, twisted around, and basically screwed up by the players. Remember, Players never do what's in the GM's script for them unless they are forced, kicking and screaming all the way. You might be one of those GM's that likes the railroad plotline, if so, sorry (to your players). Step four: set up the clues for success. The hidden gems of information or happenstance that will need to be discovered by the players in order to defeat the aliens. Don't make it too difficult--PC's are surprisingly stupid when it comes to mysteries. All the 23- rolls in the book are not going to help the player jump to the conclusion needed if they aren't looking at all the facts in a single piece of paper. Chances are having all the facts in one piece of paper will never happen. Plan on this. Sprinkle the clues throughout the planned timeline of game sessions--doesn't matter if its a single session or if its every fourth adventure. Step five: build mini events around the clues for PC success. This can be foiling a hijack of a secret government ship from Area 51, or finding a journal from a abductee with very lucid memory of their captures in a used book store, or even a knock down drag out battle on one of the invading ships and gaining access to their computer systems. Step six: for the final event, double it and add 30%. Take a guess for the power level you want the "boss" alien situation to have, then double the power and add 30% in agent fodder. You have one brain to controll the entire invading force. Your players are cooperating with eachother, and focusing on a single character each. They will be able to out think you. It's a given, so plan on it by beefing up the competition in raw power. DO THE MATH when you are working out the power level. Calculate the average that will get through on your aliens based on what a typical attack your PC's will have. Make sure that the big bad can stand toe to toe for at least a turn. I've toyed around with running a campaign based on alien invasion, and even did a bunch of background work set for a PBEM. Time has always been an agent against this happening.

Augh, it's contagious. Stupid hats. Actually, Coriolis has a rivalry with _all_ the other PC's in the game. No disad points for it though. By far the biggest rivalry I've played with is the one in your game, Zornwil. The two big brains trying to out think eachother sometimes makes even me think its getting out of hand. Of course who's really capable of arguing with someone with triple digit intelligence? In the past I did run a campaign where three players all had a rivalry with eachother and took the disads. From time to time it was forgotten until I reminded one of them about it, then the session was a bickerfest. Years ago, in Dennis Mallonee's (infamous of Hero comics) campaign several players discussed having a rivalry or even a hunted with some of the NPC heros (all played by the GM naturally). This might have been more of a saving our sanity measure though. merry xmas.

Having played a Green Lantern like character in the past, and pondering over how to do the whole ring/lantern thing, let me add my pesos to the camp of, "its just special effects". Give the character a physical disad: Must touch amulet to holy thing-a-ma-jig every 24 hours, or powers are lost. You could even have an accidental change if the touch/24 fails to happen. Presumably, all your powers and capabilities are going to get the +1/2 OIF, and maybe even arguable +1/4 OHID as well, that's probably enough saved points to be on equal footing with all the more efficient character concepts. As for the powers, I'd break them up into a couple frameworks. Those that are available all the time with the amulet (small ones, like TK UBO or teleport to floating location, mind link to wearer/owner, etc) and the main powers that need the recharge to work all at either 0 end or charges depending on power level, and whether the wearer can push the powers (like the current GL can) with their own end or not. Corny catch phrase is of course optional.

Ironic that I find this thread a few days after signing back on. This has been a long time quirk of Hero. Anyone that plays a fragile high speed character is going to run into the situation. Bothersome enough that I poke fun of it in my location..... As a player of a relatively high speed martial artist for a long time, I came up with some ideas that helped this situation, and our gaming group had some house rules as well. One thing to remember, if your MA has a 30 dex and you delay to act at dex 18, you can still get the jump on that dex 18 monstrosity that wants to paste you into oblivion. House rule: If you have a waiting action, you can just "walk" for cover. Roll the dice, make your dex move, and you can move as fast and as far as your halfmove. No need to declair a distance in advance. This works suprisingly well. As long as the fra-geeelay hold an action. Of course if you have too much speed and don't want to lose an action, well you know the phrase: Speed kills. The game mechanic that I came up with helps to simulate the really fast guys in gang type combats. Spiderman always seems to have a half-move to jump out of the stray bullets, Captian America is uncanny in his ability to bring his shield up just in the nick of time. The answer? Floating Speed pip. (dear God, he's opened the Pandora's box and the world is no longer safe!) Floating speed pip is essentially +Speed to bring you to a full 12 speed, only usuable 1 time a turn. Spiderman has a 38 dex, 7 speed. He buys a Floating Speed Pip: +5 speed, usuable once a turn - 1.75, total cost 18. Sure he could almost have a 9 speed for the points spent, but this gives him the ability to go on segment 1 if he needs; or he can save it to do four actions in a row on segments 9, 10, 11, and 12; or he can burn it up in an abort on any segment he hasn't already attacked. (even on 6, he aborts his given 7, then uses the float on seg 7 and continues with his normal phases on 9, 11, and 12). The Floating Speed Pip has been used for at least 15 years in various characters I've played, and been on others in a multitude of campaigns. I'm convinced that it is balanced for the points, and not unreasonable.

Clearly this is a thinly disguised plot by the government to curtain the capitalist spending practices at the year end festivities. Investigation must commence immediately to uncover who is really behind this so called Santa Clause and his misshappen little helpers.

But if your girlfriend knows you are Superman, how are you going to play out all that teenage angst? Oh sorry. I thought this was the Smallville rant board for a moment.

I'm a meddler not a leader dammit Lemming's comment about us all being alpha's in your game was certianly tongue in cheek, but it got me to thinking: When I originally designed the character in your campaign, I specifically looked for a way that I would be forced to not be the one in charge. I planned on being the one behind the scenes that would set up a situation that the team could use to gain an advantage. Mostly I wanted to have an interesting twist with a character that had the dicotomy of not being able to do anything physicially, but in turn nothing could effect him. Originally, in statue form he wouldn't even have the ability to communicate with the team mates. This was a planned limitation from the start. Other characters in the campaign created the ability to have team based private communication (Mind link) and presto! all my carefully laid out plans were destroyed. My character now was in the position of coach and organizer. This gave me a lot more to do, and more chances to interact as a player, as well as turning a character that was by design a Beta into an Alpha. Combine this with the other abilities of the character - passably high intelligence, some light detective skills :^), and he makes a pretty effective Alpha. Being a paranoid scheemer doesn't hurt either. In the past this has never happened for me-- a planned design of the character's Alphaness or Betaness being completely switched around through game play. I usually start a character concept with a personality and power idea and build on top of that. In the Sam Bell Protector's game, Chromatic Dragon was designed from the start to be the "great thinker" leader type. Even at the start, with few skills to benefit, he had the overall levels and skill modifiers structure to fill out with what he eventually became (a 1100 point skills twid combat monster that could take out most of the rest of the team and fight the brick to a stand still. But I digress...). In a Deadlands game we played a couple years ago, the character was designed to be a follower. He was rather deceiving in his physical description: big fat smelly guy with two huge guns. The idea was someone else would tell me what to shoot, and El Puerco would shoot it dead. With many bullets. All of them hitting precisely where he wanted them. There was no effort to offer up even the minutest of suggestions for direction or leadership. Both those characters are an extreme example of this initial design process for Alphaness or Betaness, but this is still a typical trait I seem to have: at the onset of my character design I try and determine if the character is going to be a leader or a follower. In Lemming's game, hmmm we are all such nut cases its hard to figure out what's going on at times. Being the big blow hard, loud mouth type, my character will claim to be the leader, but since he is the loud mouthed opinionated one, he tends to grate on everybody's nerves and his leadership potential is discounted. (also a planned trait at the start- he has wind powers it seemed logical). ;

900 numbers (yeah I broke down and reactivated here.) [lemming: In zornwil's game, one of the team members hands out buisness cards with 1-900 numbers...] Hey only some of the business cards have 900 numbers, occaisionally he does hand out cards with a 877 single fee connection. Of course lately people just show up unannounced and uninvited in the conference room, no cards for them..... Early in the campaign the characters made a point of extensive use of Duct tape to bind the baddies. To the point that the team was referred to as the Duct Tape Squad by smarmy journalists. In a recent session we used Duct tape again to hold someone for interrogation, first time in a long while. Duct tape: 13 4d6 entangle; No def -1.5; backlash +.5; both take damage +.25; OAF -1; no range -.5; extra time: 1 turn -1; fragile focus -.25; (backlash is the pain of removing the tape. This is actually quite effective out of combat. Just keep loading up on the wrapping, piling on the body of the entangle. Works great for unconscious foes)