JDRook

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying There's always taking it to the next level as well. I have a female PC who is a relatively normal person with Light Manipulation powers. (She's actually a successful light designer for theatre and film and such.) She wants to become more involved in "crime-fighting" but is so used to being in the background that she's created an illusionary alter-ego that looks like Errol Flynn, down to being black & white and speaking in projected subtitles, all while she hides in Fringless Invisibility using Indirect, Source Invisible powers. So essentially I'm a male player playing a shy female PC playing a raucous male hero. Any other examples of character cross-gender in that regard?

I'm sure this has come up before, but how would you guys handle density decrease? I looked at all the effects of weight change, ignored the STR and DEF effects and figured the most straightforward way would be to use Leaping with a proportional Knockback Resistance Drain Side-Effect, with lowered weight being the special effect. Leaping 10" (10) Minor Side Effect: +1" KB per point of Leap (-1/2) Real Cost: 7 - Character can drop weight to 1/1,000th of original (about 200grams) If I wanted to use it on others, I'd probably change the power around. Drain KB Resistance 2D6 (20) + Linked (-1/2) with Aid Leap 1D6 (10) proportional to Drain (-0) = 27 Real Points. What other ideas are out there?

Re: Mental Entangles and the Weak-Willed

Re: Anyone using Sidekick? It certainly covers all the basics. I still have the 4th ed BBB, bought Sidekick, downloaded some docs, and am trying out the Hero Designer v2 Demo. Between those, I don't think I'm missing too much. Now to find some players to cajole into playing it with me.

Here's one for you guys. I've got a character whose power is based on her ability to alter the refractive index of any area, allowing her to manipulate but not generate light. (My tendency with character creation is to make a near-normal character with a twist and see what happens.) One of her more passive powers is the ability to bend light so that she can see around corners. She can combine this with power-based "lenses" so that she can see easily over great distances. I thought the best way to define this would be with Clairsentience with a LOS advantage, so she could place an ob point at a corner within view, say, and look around it. I'd like her to be able to do that continuously, though, so that from that ob point she could spot a new point and then observe from there. Theoretically, she could visually bend her way through a maze, but it would take time, since each "corner" would take one Phase. Would LOS be sufficient for this, though? Effectively the power is creating a bendable line-of-sight. Should I throw in a -1 PER per corner, similar to a bounce attack? Is there another advantage that would be appropriate?

Tango & Cash? No, Entangle & Flash. I figured I'd start a fresh thread on this idea. The first one "Mobility as Adder" largely covered the concept of altering the basic nature of Entangle so that immobilization was optional instead of inherent. This allowed for the creation of an Entangle that wouldn't restrict mobility but would be used to solely block senses without having to come up with a limitation to remove the immobilization factor. The suggested power might look something like: Sensory Deprivation Entangle: creates DEF/Body barrier to Senses as per standard Entangle (1D6/Level). 10 per level of Targeting Sense, 5 per Non. There were plenty of suggestions and preferences expressed for using existing limitations, many quite well thought out, but now I'm wondering about using this "module" of Mobility with something like Flash to create a straightforward short-term paralyzing power, or Flash-Freeze. This power would restrict mobility similarly to Entangle, but would be for a limited time instead of "until barrier is destroyed." Since blinding knock OCV and DCV generally in half and Entangling basically takes CV to zero, balancewise I think Mobility-Flashing would cost 10 per level where Targeting Sense costs 5. Suggested power: Flash-Freeze: restricts all physical mobility for 1 Segment per BODY die roll per level. 10 per level. Possible SFX would be Time Manipulation, Cold/Freezing Attacks, a brief trance state or even a Presence Attack. Personally, I think this is a little more elegant way to set up a short term paralyzing attack (one thing I'd often felt Hero was lacking) instead of using complex Entangle variants. Admittedly, Mobility as a separate game mechanic could get weird if taken too far. (Darkness: Mobility to create a temporal "Stillness Field" that a Personally Immune Time Traveller walks through; True Motion Sensing and Invisibility to same) However, within the realm of the two variant powers I've described above, I think it could be workable without being too complex or unbalancing.

Re: question about END. Drains I'm glad I found this. I was designing a character based around END Drain (actually a "life-force" END Transfer) and thought that Draining to negative END might mean the target would have to take recoveries before attempting any END-using actions or the negative END would "collapse" to zero and do Stun damage. This makes much more sense.

Re: Statistics Challenge That's pretty impressive. If I'm doing the numbers right, that means all 5 goons would hit on 6- and at least 1 would hit on 17-. This would certainly make fighting legions of goons quicker and possibly more effective. If you make a spreadsheet for this, see if herogames.com would host it.

Re: "Mobility" as an Adder This is kind of my point. I'm actually redefining Entangle to a degree. I think most people were too intrigue with my "X-ample" to see that. Instead of defining the base Entangle as "an attack that creates a DEF+Body barrier to mobility" by default, I'm saying that Entangle can be defined as "an attack that creates a DEF+Body barrier to one particular game mechanic [in this case either Mobility or Perception]." This creates the idea of Mobility as a separate game mechanic, not as a Sense but possibly similar in point cost. Other uses of Mobility as an adder intrigue me, particularly the straightforward Flash-Paralysis I outlined in my original post. I'm sure other applications could be theorized by my fellow forumeers.

Re: THE ULTIMATE BRICK -- What Do *You* Want To See? I'm thinking Giants - the Big & Strong combo. More often than not, bricks are oversized, and larger characters are usually bricks, so Growth could be explored more. Megascaling, Giant Hand Attacks as Area Affects, Vehicle and Base considerations for the Collossal Gentlemen - you get the idea.

Re: "Mobility" as an Adder <---- This is sparking a lot of discussion, as I'd hoped, but it hasn't really addressed what I was most curious about, that being the concept of Mobility as an inbuilt Adder for Entangle which could therefore be swapped out with a Sense Group, and the other possibilities inherent in the existence of a Mobility Adder. Did anyone read to the end of the original post? Or at least wonder what the title was referring to? Am I thinking too far outside the box here?

This was originally inspired by a "popular mutant superhero film." (Everyone seems to be careful about stepping on trademarks.) Specifically, the scene where an "amphibious" villain-type slimes the telekinetic woman in the eyes, effectively blinding her until her energy-projecting boyfriend blasts off the hardened slime. That to me would look like an Entangle of, let's say, 5D6 (50) with the adder Stops Sight Group (+10). Easy enough, except that save for the blinding, TK woman is completely unrestricted in her movement. Considering it's a -1 Limitation for Allows Accessible Focus use OR Hands/Feet Only, I figure that for Does Not Restrict Movement At All could arguably be a -2 Limitation. (Of course, the attack itself could be a Slime Power Trick if you like, but keep following me here . . .) So we have a highly effective blinding that could last anywhere from 1 phase (for characters with 10DC+ attacks available) to indefinitely (for characters too weak to break the Entangle), at a Real Cost of 20 points, which would buy you 4 segments of Flashed Sight Group. This didn't seem balanced to me, so then I thought, what if you treat Mobility like a built-in Adder for Entangle? Say, "Sense of Mobility (10)" (the ability to move freely, not to be confused with Motion Sensing). The base Entangle is designed to block that "sense" with a 1 DEF/1 BODY barrier for every 10 points. Looked at like that, one could easily swap out Mobility for a Sense Group (in this case, Sight) and make an Entangle based purely around Sensory Deprivation. So the Entangle used in the above example would more likely be a 5D6 Entangle (50) with a real cost of 50, and a 20 point level of the same power could be broken out of by agent level characters (but not too easily). That seems more balanced. Of course, now I've opened up a new can of worms with Mobility Adder. The first thing that came to mind was a Mobility Flash, or Flash-Freeze. Basically, it would be like a quick paralysis that would last for segments and be unaffected by the target's strength or firepower. Some SFX could be slowing time, freezing as an Ice Power, or even as a Presence Attack that completely overwhelms the target. Of course, Mobility Flash Defense could be tricky, but I think the basics are sound. So what do you guys think? Should I run it past Steve? JDRook Minor Deity of Understanding

I did some scanning and searching and still can't find the rules for CATCHING something or someone that has been thrown or dropped. The rules for throwing are all there and complete, but I can't seem to find any situations where your character can: a) catch an object/person thrown at them as an attack (Missile Deflection? Can a thrown person make it easier to be caught if conscious?) catch or intercept something thrown at a target that is not them (Dive for Cover addresses maybe half of this) c) catch something thrown to them by another character that they want you to catch. There's even a genre example in the BBB that mentions tossing a set of car keys over a canyon, but nothing saying how they could be caught.