JayH

Re: Self Defeating Powers 1 Shovel: Tunneling 1" through 2 DEF material (8 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x10 END; -4), Extra Time (1 Hour, Character May Take No Other Actions, -3 1/4), Gestures, Requires Gestures throughout (Requires both hands; -1), OAF (-1) Or lose the focus, drop the DEF back to 1, bump up the Extra Time and call it Digging.

I have a couple accounting questions that were keeping me up. 1) When Suppress is bought with Continuous (not just maintaining the effect but increasing it each phase) does the END cost to maintain the effect steadily climb each phase as well? 2) If so, then regardless of the targets remaining points, there's no way to stop this progression, is there? 3) If bought with charges, do Suppresses automatically drop into the 0 END category for maintenance (i.e. specify a reasonably common method of regaining suppressed power) or would such a Suppress require it be fed charges to maintain the effect? Thanks.

Re: Sticky Goo from The Incredibles I know it's been about six months, but how about: Major Transform 1d6 (Target into Target encased in goo; reversed by Syndrome's patented Goo-B-Gone solution), 16 Charges (+0), Penetrating (+1/2), Partial Transform (+1/2) (30 Active Points); IAF Immobile (-1 1/2) (Real Cost: 12) plus 63 more Goo Guns (64 total; 30 Active Points) (Real Cost: 30) [Total Active Points 60, Total Real Cost 42] Just a few comments as to why I like this construction: Partial Transform lets the GM assign CV penalties or other game effects for parially goo-ed targets. Completely goo-ed characters are just plain stuck, like being frozen in carbonite. We don't know how Syndrome got Mr. Incredible out of the goo and into the cell block, Goo-B-Gone was just my choice for a release mechanism. Penetratring isn't necessary, but if I were Syndrome, that's how I would do it. If the GM allows it, you can have this beauty installed in your own base for the low, low price of 42 pts. Oh, pausing the DVD, there's one frame where I could count 52 guns but even then they weren't all on screen. So I went with 64, and at that there's a pretty good chance you'll bring down an intruder (unless they have hardened Power Defense, or are really, really fast, or are desolid). You probably don't need 16 charges per gun, but I didn't see much gain in shaving another point or two off base equipment.

Re: The Incredibles I saw the movie this morning. I've found early Sunday matinees to be a great time to see kid targeted movies. My wife and I had the theater nearly to ourselves, and the only others there were also adults. Mark down two more 33-year-olds who loved this movie!

Re: How to create water Crunching some numbers on the conversion of all the Earth's atmospheric oxygen into water and I found a problem. Not enough atmospheric hydrogen. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen (or 200,000 ppm) but hydrogen is only 0.55 ppm. If however all of the 1.5 x 10^18 kg of oxygen in the atmosphere were converted it would produce about 400,000 cubic miles of water (which would cover the Earth about 11 feet deep (which would raise the oceans just over 15 feet). There is a huge supply of hydrogen trapped in the Earth's crust though, so maybe if we had access to that... BTW, along my travels to get these numbers I found that there's already about 3100 cubic miles of water in the atmosphere (which would cover the Earth about an inch).

Re: How to create water Here's an example of a spell using the rules under Transform (5E 152-4). It specifically covers creating water "out of thin air" (ie. it is a Major Transform, and "Air" or "Nothingness" doesn't count as a limited target for the purposes of creating objects). Though, of course, your GM has the final say, this is just how I would do it. Divining Spell: Major Transform 1 point (standard effect: 1 point) (Create Water) (5 Active Points); Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Requires A Magic Skill Roll (-1/2), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Concentration (1/2 DCV; -1/4). Total cost: 2 points. At this level the character could create 1 body worth of water per phase provided they make their magic roll. Your GM will have to determine how much water that is (the book suggests 1 gallon, but I like Mr. Neilson's qt suggestion). Scaled up the cost is about 1.8 character points per 1 BODY of effect you want. With this spell you could supply the water needed to refresh yourself and your party, or to clean your cookware or wounds. Anything else this water could be used for has to be approved by your GM.

Re: A Bathroom

Re: A Bathroom After searching around a little this seemed like an appropriate thread for this Base building question. What's your general feeling on Skill Levels bought for Bases to improve their labs instead of buying-up all of their labs individually? An example I'm thinking of is a team's Base with maybe a half dozen labs (mostly science and tech related) and the team builds a couple laptops that can be brought from lab to lab to improve that lab's ability when present. I'm thinking this would be a reasonable SFX for 8 pt Skill Levels (maybe on an OAF, but not necessary). Too efficient?

Would it be reasonable to allow Skill Levels for a Base to improve all or some of its labs (ie. 3 or 5 point Skill Levels for groups of related labs, or 8 point Skill Levels for all its labs)? This would be to similate a Base with generally superior labs (I'm sure there are reasonable SXF for this). Or is it just too cost efficient and each lab's roll should be bought-up on its own? Thanks.

Re: The horror, the horror. European Enemies "debugged." Regarding her Shadowform, I also thought a comment on the usefulness of combining darkness with invisibility might be in order. How will anyone know she's invisible? Or... if you can see through the darkness you can see her too. Either the invisibility is a waste of points or the darkness gives her away. Since you usually mention the most colossal wastes of points in your critiques, I thought this might have popped up. Love what you've done here. Super kudos on the obvious hard work!

In general, should Powered Armor Suits bought as Vehicles have Extra Limbs? The reason I ask is that the example in TUV (p83) doesn't, and it throws me. It just seems that that would raise issues reguarding either a) grabbing, throwing, and the like, or the character's coverage by the Vehicle's DEF if it's the characters arms only doing the grabbing, throwing and the like. Love the products! Thanks for your time.

Re: Really, Really Implausium! cold fusion (sorry Drs Fleishmann and Pons)

Re: How to: Shapeshift I thought Hugh did a nifty job with the cost examples of this way vs just buying Multiform with lots of x2 forms. For the same price (depending on power level) you would have do decide if you would be satisfied with just dozens or hundreds or thousands of forms? I probably would be. But I can imagine cases where a player might want his character to not be limited by "pre-defined" forms. "I don't want to have a gorilla's stats, I want to have that gorilla's stats!" There's probably others. The just Multiform way might better represent a character who has to learn more forms as he adventures. I think I'd enjoy that story line. If it wasn't clear before... I'm definitely in the Multiform boat. After all... "a wizard's ability to assume the form of any animal" (5E 137) is a specifically named use of this power. And I wish they'd kept Captain Zoology as the example under the Multiform rules. Captain Zoology rocked the house.

Re: Your Favorite Useless Power

Re: TV Teen Titans Writeups I liked today's episode too, but has this Cardiac villain been on before? I just didn't get it. That doesn't make it bad, but is the giant flying heart with suction hoses and some sort of "glamour" power for attracting children supposed to represent something? Argh! Cool power-ups for Raven, but I guess since her color returned to normal at the end she won't be keeping the heavy powers. I think I say her vanish in that raven shadow in midair in this episode, but I forget if that was before or after the boost to her abilities.

Re: TV Teen Titans Writeups I so love this thread! Awesome links Luxoflux. After looking through them I realized I had forgotten about Robin's cape as a shield. And I think I heard somewhere else that his boots somehow aid his leaping. But I'm not as sure on that. The write-ups are awesome all-around. Anyone else think that BB (Changling) from the comic book looks like Fez from That 70's Show?

Re: Happy Halloween Herophiles! Awesome super scary guy! Thanks for the post.

Re: TV Teen Titans Writeups

Re: TV Teen Titans Writeups Funny, but I can't remember an example of TV Raven teleporting... help me out? And I could swear that she entangles (or grabs) Slade's feet directly with her power in the final battle of "Apprentice, pt 2". Though I suppose I could've missed something in all the action.

Re: Need a hand with a power Ghost-angel said the same thing I was going to (except I spent too long scanning the FAQs, there's a lot in there under UOO!). So here's a backup idea... MegaScale Teleport might be fun. The SFX is that you blip the opponent out of our conventional space-time, let the earth rotate a little, and blip them back in again. Five hundred kilometers ought to slow them down. Cheaper too. Still evil though... ... what's wrong with 2 "stop sign" powers? Teleportation 5", MegaScale (1" = 100 km; +3/4), Usable As Attack (+1) (27 Active Points); Limited Power (character travels due East; -1), Limited Power (Only works at max power; -1/4). Total cost: 12 pts.

Re: How would you build Temporal Immutability? Sixty-nine, Dude!

Re: Oi, history majors - need 1920's AE resources Not a history major, but might I recommend The World Almanac And Book Of Facts. I think it has the type of information you might be after. Recent issues won't have GNPs and other specific dollar values from the 20's, but it has percentages that can be extrapolated. It's also been published annually since the late 1800's so there may be some period editions available somewhere.

Re: How would you build Temporal Immutability? I think Freakboy really put his finger on the question. And since Katherine had asked for what he described in the second senario (ie. the character would remain unaffected and remember the original timeline), I agree that the Life Support answer would do that quite nicely. The hero might be standing on the street corner when caught up in a whirl of blinding light and a deafening cacophany. The world around him/her quickly fades away to reveal a changed cityscape, perhaps with funny looking cars and clothing styles. Now our hero has to figure out what's changed and perhaps how to change it back. I worked up a Clairsentience Power though just to see the cost. This would be for the hero who has a vague notion that somethings wrong with the time line, but only has flashes of how things are "supposed" to be. It gives the GM more control, too. Precognitive Clairsentience (Sight, Hearing And Smell/Taste Groups), Single Other Dimension (Base Timeline) (70 Active Points); Retrocognition Only (-1), Only Through The Senses Of Self From Base Timeline (-1), No Conscious Control (-2). Total cost: 14 points. Take away the No Conscious Control to make it cost 23 pts, and then give the character "No Memory Of Current Timeline (All The Time, Greatly): 20 Character Points," and you're back to the other senario and back to 3 net pts (same as Watcher and jackalope suggested). 20 pts might be a stretch though on the Disad... And this route still doesn't protect the character if a cyborg from the future goes back and kills an ancestor.

Re: Astreoid Maps Well, this isn't a map but it's the start of an idea for a base. This one's the Ayasofya Hotel (which is really in Instanbul) if it were on the moon. I hope it's close enough to fit the thread.

As written up in the sidebar on 5E 210, would a character with this Mimic Pool have to drop out of combat, or buy a Power Skill, to change his powers after touching the target? Or do these particular limitations by way of their special effects relieve the need for advantages to change during combat? My thinking was that "requires touch" (limited circumstances for change) acts kind of like a trigger, and the "mimics target's powers" (no control regarding how powers change) makes a skill roll unnecessary. Is that right, or am I all messed up? Thanks.