Mike W

Re: Ultimate Scrapper? The "scrapper" is kind of a vague concept in some ways. How much STR before you move into brick range? Spidey fights like a martial artist but has no martial moves at all(maybe dodge), so does he count? Mostly, I think what we think of are good hand to hand fighters who aren't strong enough to be bricks, but don't fight like martial artists, even if they have the training(and Wolvie definitely has the training). Some characters I see that generally fit this type: Wolverine Tigra Sabretooth Luke Cage Wildcat(yeah, I know, he's a great boxer, but he doesn't fight that way) Lobo Ghost Rider Spiderman Hobgoblin(Macendale) Lizard Notice that we have a lot of the animal themed characters. I don't think that's an accident.

Re: dietary quirks / religious rules for a character Not really. Game has to have something to eat. Oak leaves may not be tasty, but they would be edible. And in a champs game, it can be really hard to strand the characters in the wilderness for any length of time. Between speedsters, super vehicles, and teleporters, you can't strand people very easily. I could kind of see the religious restrictions thing, but in a champs game I think it works better to do it differently because more often than not, those restrictions aren't restrictive enough to reduce the costs that easily. Maybe -1/4, but I don't think I'd go any more than that for the "whole package".

Re: dietary quirks / religious rules for a character I can see where Captain Obvious is coming from. Generally, if you can't do something it's a Physical Limit. On the other hand, I'd be more inclined to make it a Psych Lim in this case akin to a Code of Honor. After all, in this case, it isn't so much that he CAN'T do it as that he WON'T do it. Buy a separate disad(Susceptibility maybe) to represent the effects of not following the Code. I would be against putting a limit on the powers, because the character has total control over the situation. Unlike a "Does not work in X environment(darkness, underwater, etc)" type of limit, where the GM can control when the power does or does not work, the player/character has complete control over the Limit. In short, to my way of thinking, if the GM can't exploit it, it's not a limit. And short of kidnapping the character and force feeding him food he isn't supposed to have, I don't see much way for the GM to exploit it as a limit.

Re: Balancing Threats It's hard to be sure because I've seen 600 point characters published that could kick butt and I've seen 480 point characters that can't take on agents reliably. Generally though, the supermenace types start around 600-700 points. If you have a guy whose main attacks and DEF are 3 levels higher(1 level being 1 DC of attack and 3 points of DEF) than the best the characters can do, you should be able go a long time, especially if your SPD, DEX, and CVs are even a little above average. For standard 150 point agents with 8D6 EB guns and 10 points of DEF: figure 1 agent per hero is push over. 2 will slow them up, and 3 can challenge them. And remember that agents often need to coordinate to get those to hit bonuses. If you're building them reasonably efficiently, 1 decent villain per hero should be a reasonable challenge. But keep in mind that since villains often have fewer skills, they tend to be slightly more powerful on average when built on the same points as the heros.

Re: Character out of balance The Power transform isn't built the way he wants it because as others have pointed out - the NCC limit means that he has no control over whether it works, not that it always works whether he wants it or not(that would be Always On). And make sure the power conforms to all campaign limits. You can't Transform a broomstick into an 80 Active Point weapon if the campaign limit is 60 active points. Make him tone it down(I'd say drop the autofire). As for the first issue: 1. Plot Hook is not a limit. You don't get free character points just because it gives the GM something to work with. 2. I can kind of see where he is going with the "only God's permission" idea, but in a Champs game this is better served by putting a Disadvantage: Bound to Gods(Gods will remove powers) than a true limit on the individual powers. The "only if gods will" thing just doesn't come up enough. These changes will make the character much more expensive but you may have to remind him that not every character can be ideally built on 350. Superman sure can't. You have to start off lower and grow into it.

Re: Find Weakness in a multipower

Re: Ambidexterty- too expensive?

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal Agreed. But when a guy I was playing with came in with a weird, green shapeshifter(think Beast Boy) which he named Vegan, we were obliged to show no mercy in our taunts. I mean, if you're going to make it THAT easy...

Re: What pre-5th Edition Hero books do you still use? Most of my villain books. I tended to rebuild a lot of the published characters to be more well rounded and efficient anyway, so 5th edition didn't make that much difference to me since they generally kept things close to the previous edition. Most of the characters I had built already didn't have to be changed significantly(except, of course, for my favorite PC character).

Re: Low-Point Heroic PC's My process doesn't vary a great deal. Much like you Thrak, I tend to build an ideal version first and then pare it down. But I tend to center it around just one or two ideas instead of several and give more thought to prioritizing all the little stuff. I think that is the key to the low power builds - knowing what ONE thing is going to be the focus of the character's abilities. With 350+ point characters, you can have all sorts of subability sets. "Well, he's mainly a martial artist but he also speaks six languages and has some useful detective skills". At 150 you have to decide in advance if you're building a detective who is decent in a fight or a martial artist that happens to have one or two detective skills. Your sideline doesn't get all the deep skills that you normally only roll once in a great while and have to rely on the "big ones"(like a PS) to cover a bit more ground than normal, at least to start. For example, the 350 point guy above probably has both PS: Detective and KS: Forensics. The 150 point guy probably only has PS: Detective and has to roll at a penalty to do the Forensic stuff. Of course, if the GM recognizes the limits of he genre/point builds, those primary skills like PS go farther and don't take quite the penalties you might impose in a 350 point supers game where everyone has lots of points to buy stuff.

Re: Find Weakness in a multipower Aside from the fact that you would probably have to talk INSANELY fast to get me to approve something like this, I'd probably rule that you lose the benefits of any rolls you made when you transfer the ability out of the pool in much the same way a force field would turn off when you switched it out.

Re: Multiform & bases In my game, the base form pays for it, regardless of who uses it. And the points for the base do NOT count toward the base form's cost for determining what the other forms cost.

Re: Question: Limitation Costs My take: 1. If the character does not have to revert to base form to change to another alternative form, I wouldn't change it at all since each charge can still move you from one form to another. If the character does have to change back to their main form first, treat it as if the character had only half the number of charges they actually have since they would essentially have to spend 2 charges to get the same effect as another character could get with one. 2. I'd be tempted to apply a Lockout type limitation to the power.

Re: Shoot First, Ask later Generally, I don't allow shots that precede the first segement of combat unless one side/character clearly "has the drop" on the other. So in the example above, the blasted doesn't get a free shot at the villain unless the villain doesn't know he's there.

Re: Getting rid of Endurance I like this idea. It's reminiscent of the "gemstone counters" used for blood in Vampire and everyone has a set of poker chips laying around(even if they're just cheap plastic ones).

Re: Getting rid of Endurance Personally, I don't like it. I always get nervous when people want to substantially rewrite the system like this because it tends to create balance problems, as you have found out in the past. Just have them keep END on a scrap sheet rather than change the character sheet all the time. It's not that hard, no worse than keeping track of blood pool in VAmpire(or not much) or hit points or spell points in D&D. I mean, really, once you get to a decent level in D&D, spellcasters hardly ever take an action that isn't a spell if they can possibly avoid it. If you remove END and SPD it's going to really complicate speedster and martial arts characters, making them VERY expensive to play and give the normally slow "brick" types a big edge since now they not only hit harder and have better DEF, but they have about the same number of actions as everyone else. That extra SPD is what gives the little guys a snowball's shot of slowing down the big bruisers. Without it, I expect you'll see an "arms race" as players try to come up with the biggest attacks and the most impregnable defenses since those will be far more valuable in a world where everyone is equally fast.

Re: 2 GMs One Game Actually, when I was in college we did this. In fact, most of us "apprenticed" for a semester or two and then took over the game the next go round. It worked out well as it gave the game some continuity and let the new GM get their feet wet before taking on a full campaign.

Re: Playing cards as offensive weapons... Yeah, human beings are too tough. Now produce is another matter. Poker star Chris "Jesus" Ferguson has been known to cut various fruits and vegetables in half at a range of around 10-15 feet with playing cards.

Re: Teleportation: Fiction or Fact? Oh, I don't see it coming all that soon, but I remember reading an article a few years ago where they had gotten particles or microchips or something to apparently "talk" to each other without using an electrical signal in between. It was very, very basic but it was a start.

Re: Teleportation: Fiction or Fact? They're making progress. They were teleporting individual particles a few years ago. They're also closing in on the "quantam computer" a computer whose microchips can talk to each other without having to bridge the gaps with electrical impulses. But that is also in its infant stages. We might see it in my lifetime though(I'm 32 for the record).

Re: Holding 'em Back So any movement penalties are just a side effect of being "too weak to move". Like if they effectively had negative STR.

Re: Holding 'em Back Dust Raven, In message #7 in this thread you said that the target's movement isn't hindered in any way. Now you say it is. Maybe if we start over and you clarify exactly what the effect does/does not do and affect we can help better.

Re: Holding 'em Back And therein lies the crux of the problem. Anything along those lines that is effective enough to significantly reduce a brick's punching damage would almost completely eliminate the STR of a "regular" character. And I get the feeling that the power shouldn't do that. Somehow, the power seems to attune itself to its target. At least, that's how I'm reading Dust Raven's description.

Re: Holding 'em Back I don't know if increasing the mass is exactly right. But this might be one of those, "when in doubt, fall back on Transform" situtations. Before we go that far though, let's exhaust all other options. OK, let's see if we've got this right. The shadow creatures latch on. You can move normally, even sprint, BUT whenever you try to exert your STR to lift something, punch something, etc, you can't do it as well because the critters are pulling against you. It's not Drain because the STR is still there, you're even using it. Also, since the STR is still there and being used, it isn't Suppress(though we might build a specialized version to suit). So how about this? Telekinesis. Only to oppose target's STR(-1/2). About 15 points of STR pushing the other way would reduce your lifting by about one level on the chart and take one die of STR off your punches. Because of the way STR works, it's really hard to do more than that. If you don't like that, this is going to get complicated. Something like this maybe: Suppress STR(. Can never suppress more than half of STR(-1/4, it's a low total after all) AND Major Transform, Target's STR gets limit x2 END. Linked to Suppress. This effectively does what we want. The character cannot make use of their full STR, but they are paying END as if they were. It's a bit clunky and doesn't quite fit the special effect, but mechanically it gets the job done. You'll probably want to put some sort of limit on it that it gets easily dispelled by light powers or some such thing. And the END cost is not insignificant, but then, neither is what you're trying to do.

Re: Holding 'em Back See, I don't see this as a Drain because you aren't actually taking away any of the target's abilities. You are hindering the targets ability to move/fight by holding them back. That's what an Entangle does. Entangle, Cannot Form Barriers, Vulnerable to Light Powers. You probably want Set Effect(Feet/legs only) as well. That way , the character is still free to take a full STR swing at anything that comes close, but must break free of the entangle to actually move. You might also consider adding on 1 hex AOE to represent the diffficulty of dodging it. Also, you probably want Entangle and Character Both Take Damage, since the shadow creatures probably aren't substantial enough individually to provide much protection/resistance from any attacks designed to blast them off, but that's up to you and the player.