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well, opening up the creaky part of my brain that contains my physics knowledge, and dusting off the book marked "relativity equations": M®= M(0)/SQRT((1-(v^2/c^2)) so, m(0) divided by the square root of .75(about .85)--oops, my bad, actually about a 15-20% increase in relative mass(and the amount of propellant). There's also a slight time dilation, as well.

I always liked "Legion of Whoop Ass" (LWA) myself:D

umm, has anyone factored in the relativistic effects? I know the reason you can't exceed 'c' is because of the requirement to generate an infinite amount of energy. going up toward .5, there's going to be a slight increase in the amount of energy requred to maintain a constant acceleration(about 40 percent). I suppose some sort of carbon nanofiber coating would be useful for protecting the ship against collisions with micro-meteor-whatevers. The solar sail idea is cool because you don't have to have 70 percent of the ship's mass be reaction fuel. Perhaps a hybrid system(giant laser stations positioned in-system to accelerate unfurled solar sails, the fusion/ion/antimatter or whatever rockets engage once out of laser range, then the destination system uses lasers to help slow down the ship) might work.

Doom 2099 was the ONLY decent 2099 title.

I always thought of Dr.Destroyer as a cross between Dr. Doom and the Red Skull. That is, the arrogant genius of Doom, and the ruthless scheming of Johann Schmidt. Doom might be smarter than Zerstoiten, and of course his abilities may be a bit broader. Zerstoiten is likely to have more raw power. In a sudden encounter, I'd favor Destroyer, but in a situation where preparation is involved, Doom would prevail.

Deathstreak is a supervillain with speed powers based partially on manipulating friction. Like Speedrazor, he has pop out blades he can deploy to lethal effect, but his major shtick is igniting the air behind him as he runs(basically an area effect hexes equal to x inches of running). So he can literally "burn" PCs who follow too closely:D

change the base lift for STR 10, and reset the maxima to 30; that gives a wider range for stats, and in a 150 point game, most players will have to specialize.

The "I delay" thing annoys the heck out of me as a GM--it's basically the whole "wait for bad guy to move, do most tactically advantageous thing even when the PCs are not supposed to be master tacticians, usually dropping the NPC to half DCV or coordinating on the weakest/strongest villain first or deliberately going for the mismatch even when your nemeses are the most logical foes psychologically etc". I want to roll up the battlemat and smack the players with it. It's boring, unfair, unrealistic, and usually out of concept. I would argue that delay is inappropriate(usually) under the following circumstances: 1. time critical situation(a bomb,e.g.) 2. overconfident PCs should almost never delay without making an appropriate Ego roll 3. ditto for facing Hunteds--depending on the "history" with the hunted, an Ego roll to avoid attacking immediately seems appropriate And letting the villains delay is appropriate as well--or they can do things to force the PCs into action(in a supers game, the brick villain throws a car into a crowd, the flame wielding villain sets a building on fire(note: it's definitely metagmae thinking to ignore the fire on the rationale that the fight will only last a few seconds, and there'll be plenty of time to put out the fire), the mentalist turns one hero against the others, etc.

Well, if the constructs are even momentarily sentient, I think most(probably all) of my PCs would have huge moral problems with that. Vigiilance would probably gather sufficient evidence to get prosecutors to bring a child porn charge against him. Other heroes would probably do something similar. The ones with children might go beyond the law to "discourage" such activity. Moral gray areas can be interesting--have a PC who's part Olympian, with all that implies. Has two standards of sexual morality--one for mortals, and one for "his people"(inasmuch as they are a different species, even if compatible or similar in many ways). But other PCs aren't always that understanding of the difference;)

He can run at or close to lightspeed, and move, think and react at those speeds(at his peak level). At any rate, I would have a hard time putting anyone at a higher SPD than Barry:D

My suggestion is either to disallow it, or count Rapid Fire toward Active point caps, as if you were trying to buy a +1/4 AF 3 advantage for a power. So with a 60 AP cap, the PC with rapid fire would be limited to ca.50 AP attacks with RF. With an 80 AP cap, it would be limited to about 60-65 AP. Compare three shots at 10DC with one haymakered shot at 16 or 18(with pushing). Even for NNDs, that's still pretty close. I think Rapid Fire works best for heroic level games, and some superhero sub-genres(like DBZ).

Well, considering that PCs may now also employ Haymaker with EBs, Mental Powers, NNDs, etc., I don't see the balance problem per se--to hit 3 times with Rapid Fire, you have to take a -4 on CV, and any sort of play balance would set max cv in proportion to attacks, so PSLs vs. rapidfire penalties would probably be overlimit. Plus, even with the maneuver, you're still at half DCV, until your next phase . And, of course, if the maneuver is too ubiquitous, the master villains can start doing it. Plus, of course, there's multiple-power attacks, which in theory are much worse(hitting someone with an EB, NND, Entangle, STUN Drain and Flash simultaneously(since they're all in an EC), for example).

I think Speed is basically a measure of how quickly you can act in a stressful or fast-paced situation, like a combat or athletic event. It's closely related to Dexterity, so reaction time and reflexes are the single biggest factors. But fast thinking, fast movement and training and experience could all be good SFX explanations for a high SPD. Classic real world example--Bruce Lee, one of the fastest martial artists who ever lived. Classic comic book examples--Captain America, who has the optimal human physique, reflexes and combat training and experience. Spider-Man, superhuman reflexes and reactions, plus extensive experience in the use of his ability, and quick thinking Silver Surfer--swoops around at superluminal speeds, dodges autofire laser beams with effortless grace, has cosmic level perceptual speed The Barry Allen Flash. If he's not a SPD 12, who the #@$% is?

Do you want a realistic answer or a comic-bookish one? Realistically, since VIPER agents don't have a specific "profile", it's pretty easy for them to operate covertly. They'd probably have a preference for dummy corporations, armored mansions and the like. The military would probably operate using small covert action teams, with the heavy hardware being saved for extreme circumstances.(i.e., stealth bombers with bunker-buster bombs are extremely unlikely to be deployed in the US, and airstrikes of any kind in a populated area would be ruled out PDQ). Figure VIPER to be the worst nightmare terrorist group--unbelievably well-financed and well-connected, stealthy, equipped with bleeding edge technology and the world's most destructive weaponry, and numbering in the thousands. Only a team of very SPECIAL operatives has a chance to find their Achilles heel to take them down...

Galaxy Ninja , basically a sourcebook for running a Dragonball ripoff campaign(Galactic Champions meets Ninja Hero). World War II vehicle sourcebook. Weapons of Mass Destruction sourcebook, with an errata explaining why the page for Iraq is blank:D

For agents--disposable power armor/ one shot hero swatters for villains--"foolproof" escape devices, dehydrated agent pills(just add water!) for heroes--the definitive superteam communicator/scanner; the basic superhero utility kit(restraints, flares, 50 feet of rope, 2 weeks iron rations--y'know the usual;) )

well, yeah, 6d6 RKA has 500 times the energy of 3d6 RKA, but is only twice as lethal. In other words, a 100+ mm round is only twice as likely to kill you as a .50 caliber round:rolleyes: This seems like it was a kind of compromise to keep dice levels relatively low. There are some aspects of superbeings which military hardware can't match--speed, accuracy, versatility, relative toughness(a 350 point brick can have higher resistant defenses than a main battle tank, and can survive a couple hits by a big conventional weapon--they'll be deeply unconscious, but very much alive), and lots of loophole abilities(teleportation, invisibility, mental powers). I seriously doubt that a military force could prevail against a sizable group of moderately capable supers(say, 20 or more supers built on 250-500 points), just because the supers wouldn't fight "fair"(sowing confusion behind enemy lines, capturing the leadership, disrupting supply lines, ambushing heavy units, etc). I really don't know what "realistic" means when we're talking about flying bulletproof guys who can lift trucks and fire laser beams out of their eyes;) Back on topic--I'd like the supplement to spend some time talking about running very high level and cosmic games, and the problems and rewards of doing so.

Not to belabor this point too much, just want to try to split the difference. Think of a character's STR as the amount of weight they can lift to their assumed height of about 2 meters. That means the potential energy of that STR is "mgh", where h= 2 meters, g= roughly 10m/sec/sec, and m is the lift amount in kg. The result will be an amount in joules. The amount of energy the character can put into a punch will be a percentage of this. Let's assume between 10 and 80 percent(for a skilled martial artist). For a tank round, the kinetic energy of the round is given by the equation "E(k)= 1/2 mv^2", where m is the mass in kg of the projectile and v is its velocity in m/sec. For a 120mm tank round, assume a mass of about 30 kg, and a velocity of about 1000m/sec(about 2160 MPH). That gives you a result in joules. About 15 million joules of energy. For a superhero to punch with as much energy as a tank round, they have to have at least 20 million joules in STR potential energy, and possibly as much as 150 million. Dividing through by 20(for g times h), we get a lifting mass requirement between 1 million and 15 million kg, or between 1000 and 15000 tons. So, roughly speaking, a character with a STR of 80 should be capable of denting or even penetrating tank armor with their blows, and one with 100 STR or more should be able to tear through them pretty quickly. At 150 STR(potential energy of 500 billion joules), apply the confetti rule if Mon-El decides to haymaker the Abrams:D

Well, I think the baseline PCs are assumed to be 600 points, or just shy of the cosmic level. So that would put them at around 16-24 dice(120 AP cap). I think that's fairly restrained. Now, there's a few DBZ characters that can vaporize planets--that's a few thousand active points!

the conversion I always used was mgh=1/2 mv^2 That is, the information on STR is essentially the ability to press weight up to the height of the character. That lifting conveys the potential energy of the maximum lift. If we posit that somehow the character can transfer that energy to a thrown object we can calculate the STR reqired to throw a given object a given velocity. g is constant, in this case v is constant(11000 m/sec), so, (STR in kg lift) x 10m/sec/sec x 2m= 1/2(mass to be thrown in kg) (11000m/sec)^2 20 x (STR in kg lift) = 60 million (mass to be thrown in kg) STR in kg lift = 3 million x (mass to be thrown in kg) So, you need about 110 STR in excess of the mass to be thrown to hurl it out of orbit. So, for the mass in question, which requires about an 80 STR to lift, you'd need about 190 STR to chuck it into space. By the way, add 260 STR to throw objects at near-light velocities:D

Actually, hmm....one sun sized star...about 500 STR about a billion solar masses for a decent sized galaxy...650 STR maybe a trillion times that for the universe?...850 STR I can't imagine needing more than 1000 STR to do ANYTHING in hero system...besides, Hero Designer won't let you go above 995 or so;)

Do you mean that whole "Grond can juggle tanks, but can barely dent their armor" paradox? That always annoyed the heck out of me... And the anti-tank missiles that would wipe the floor with the campaign's toughest villain.

At least one NPC hero writeup in excess of 1000 points. I know that the baseline standard is going to be 600, but it's a must to include some guidelines for higher powered heroes, as many game groups will pursue that option(and a long running GC game will get there quickly anyway). Also, suggestions in each "standard NPC hero" writeup for upgunning them to cosmic level. A cosmic megamenace. A galactic conqueror ala Darkseid or the like. A revamped version of the Infinite One from Alien Enemies. guidelines for how the heck supers are going to whomp space battleships;)

In layman's terms, about 6000 billion billion metric tons. You'd need about a 385 STR or so to 'lift' it. With about a 1000 STR, you can juggle neutron stars with casual STR:D

We could build a battleship out of the same stuff we use for M1 tanks...but it would probably cost a hundred billion dollars...on the plus side, only a nuke would be able to sink it;) The antimatter missile does 25 d6 kill, enough to start ablating those defenses. Some weapons systems are armor-pierceing, and could reduce the defenses further. I'm curious how Darren Watts will deal with issues like this in Galactic Champions, since that's supposed to be set in the latter days of the Terran Federation(ATRI 12+). I also wanna see stats for one of those Malvan Ultra Dreadnoughts someday