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Re: Limited by "club" weapon rules? Good point. I guess I should have put the brakes on that right away, pointing out he wasn't strong enough to lift it. It is a "junk pool", so what he might have done is fiddle with some bits until he had an I-beam launcher. Same effect, except - it'd require a skill roll to build - it'd take him a phase to set up - it'd be a ranged attack - there would be limited "consumables" Yes, but if my players saw me arguing with myself, they'd start backing away slowly. It's a junior player, so he comes up with the plan, I build it.

I must be doing this wrong. I have an 80pt VPP: water powers. I fill the battlefield with water to reduce ground movement and force DEX rolls. So: for a -2 to DEX roll AND -2" to running and to leap, that's 5 + 2*3 + 2*3 + 2*3 = 23 points for a 1" radius. OK so far? Now I've got 55 points left to increase its size, meaning I can affect an area that's ... 2048 hexes in radius. Or I could make it -5 to DEX rolls and -5" to running & leaping but only 64" in radius. What am I doing wrong??

Re: Limited by "club" weapon rules? It's not a gadget; it's a piece of junk. Gadget pool is the mechanic, i.e. how the power is built. The powers allowed in the pool are determined by the SFX, which is "collected junk".

I never quite know how to handle club attacks. I've got a character with a 20 STR and an 80pt. Gadget pool SFX "junk of opportunity". He picks up an I-beam to use as a club. Is he limited to 8D6 (4D6 STR +4D6 for use of a club)? Or can he use his full gadget pool and wield a 16D6 club (assuming the I-beam can take it)?

Re: target locations on very large opponents Yes, I ruled it, despite one of my player's objections. Yes, the PC hit at its base DCV. However, the AoE ruled that out (they were telekinetically tossing a hexical ball of unset concrete). I ruled that targeting a (weak) location allowed them to bypass half the machine's DEF. Precisely right. But I may have overdone it. The machines only had DEXs of 14-17 but they had various forms of AoE attacks, many of them KAs. One poor soul got lopped in half and buried underground by an excavator's pincer. (4D6K with a 1D6+3 stun multiplier - rolled 20 body and 180 stun) Luckily, he was a machine that had the ability to detach and shuffle his parts around. He took no BODY damage, but he spent the rest of the game "rebooting".

Last night, my PCs fought giant construction equipment. One PC wanted to target a servo on the arm of an excavator. The servo was easily man-sized. The excavator has a -7 to its DCV for size. Part I Would you calculate the size and targeting modiifers to the attack? I ruled that - if in the end, the part being targeted is man-sized - then the size-mods and targeting mods should cancel out automatically. The PC is attacking against the opponent's flat DCV. Would you handle it differently? Part II The PC used a one-hex attack, eliminating DCV mods. The PC was able to hit the servo against only a 3DCV. This this seem reasonable?

Re: attack of the construction equipment Right. Like any explosion or AoE with zero range.

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds) "Having nothing to do with combat" does NOT mean it has no effect on a combat (eating, sleeping and stealthy movement have nothing to do with combat but they all have a potential effect on a combat to come...) Specifically, one normally means one "cannot use the ability in combat". This is true of this time-stop ability (well, unless the combat occurs in the hex adjacent to his lair-room ).

Re: attack of the construction equipment Cool. I'm curious though. Why the 'Personal Immunity' advantage on the HTH attack?

Re: attack of the construction equipment

I'm putting my PCs up against possessed construction equipment. These things aren't very fast (couldn't rationalize more than 15DEX/4SPD) but they have massive implements and a long* reach. *Seriously long. Like, 20" of stretching or more. http://www.thelightisgreen.com/Sany%20concrete%20pump.jpg I want to simulate these giant weapons making sweeping arcs across the battlefield. An area effect would be a little too powerful, since it could cover half the battlemap. What if the attack were, say an AF-cone but it attacked over multiple segments to simulate its slow movement. Maybe a 30 (or 60) degree arc in one segment, followed by a second 30 (or 60) degree arc next to it in the next segment? Or am I overthinking it? Ideas?

Re: stats for common Construction Equipment Very much thank you! And much like what I was thinking too. 40-50pts in normal and KA attacks. I'm trying to figure out DEX and SPD too. Realistically, construction equipment won't have much of either (maybe 15 and 3 or 4). I figure they'll make up for it with area attacks. The concrete pump I figured was more effective as an EB:Ph double Knockback. How might one handle a sweeping spray? Might I spread the damage over several segments and multiple hexes? Maybe I'll make creative use of the 'gradual' limitation...

Can anyone direct me to stats for front-end loaders, steamrollers, excavators, graders, concrete pumps (those giant cranes with a concrete "gun"), etc.

Re: Nanobot Cloud Yes, but the key difference here, is that they have to FIGHT it and defeat it. If it's just a plot device then the players have no recourse; their win is purely at the GM's whim. (eg.: "Hey! how did it travel from here to there in one phase! It must have a movement rate of X!") I decided that the attack was AVLD:Hardened defenses. If the nanites are able to pull individual atoms off materials then a 'hardened' material probably has some extra property to make it more than merely atoms. The atomic bonds are surely strengthened. My Achilles Heel was going to be 'wide-spread sustained heat bath'. Nanites may be able to withstand a lot, but, just like all tiny creatures with a high surface-to-volume ratio, if they can't dump their heat, they'll soon shut down. No high-tech defense for fundamental laws of thermodynamics. But an anti-matter bug zapper was brilliant.

Re: Nanobot Cloud So, I basically ran it as a collection of effects - sort of natural disaster-style. I left it up to them to figure out a way to defeat it even while their ship and their crewmembers were being disassembled atom by atom. In wrapping up the plot threads from last episode, the Gadgeteer (who has a "Scavenged Junk" pool) decided to scavenge a couple of anti-matter grenades from the vanquished enemy. Harmless, I thought. In fact, it was great fun when the nanites got into the grenade fuses. I'd roll every few phases to see if one would arm itself and the Gadgeteer would have to toss it out the airlock or risk blowing the bridge to smithereens. Just a fun sub-plot. That is, until the Gadgeteer (played by a ten-year-old player, btw), decided to extract the antimatter from the grenades and Gadgeteer a body suit with an antimatter force-field ... His teammates dangled him from the ship's grappling hook in the cloud of nanites. I'd already established that the nanites were attracted to the exotic metals he had, so they were single-minded in swarming over him. His suit lit up like a giant anti-matter bug zapper! Wiped em out in minutes! It was brilliant! and there was nothing I could do to thwart them!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I'll bet with a name like that he got beaten up a lot on the playground at Assassin's School...

Re: Nanobot Cloud Yes, thank you. But this has nothing to do with my question. My question is: conceptually, what kind of NPC is this? A character? An automaton? A vehicle? Or do I just treat it as a natural disaster? It doesn't really have STR, not sure it even has a DEX, or CON, etc. I could even treat it like a natural disaster in the sense that I merely define where it is and what FX it has. But it does move, and willfully. And there might be clumps of them, shifting, coalescing and splitting. Do I just do this as GM fiat (i.e. "this happens") or should I build it like a character, and have it follow character DEX/SPD rules, etc.?

Re: Nanobot Cloud It's a weapon. The enemy alien race had only a very narrow window to get through (literally, tiny ship, sneaking through the warp tunnel). Using nanobots means the weapon can come through weak and tiny, and build themselves into an immense power, given enough time. The ship contains 3 pods that MIRV, each headed in a different direction. They may find and defeat one of them, but the others will have a chance to grow. (Nicely giving me three escalating episodes.) The weapon is designed to defeat good guy forces as part of a longer-term campaign to wrestle control of Earth away from good guy forces. (Good guys and bad guys are waging war in the Solar System, but both want Earth to be ignorant of their presence.)

I'm putting my players up against a cloud of nanomachines. (Anybody read Michael Crichton's* Prey?) The nanomachines are von Neumann devices (they build copies of themselves. If left long enough, they will strip a planet's landscape or even an asteroid of all its metals to build more of themselves, and eventually, some as-yet un-specified destruction machine.) They are atomic scale and invisible, except as a cloud. If the players come in contact with a cloud, the device will begin invisibly disassembling the players' suit/skin, etc. (they might not notice, right up until their suits disappear in a puff of powder). I can think of all sorts of powers: RKA, no range, gradual, reduced penetration, AP, invisble effects, etc. maybe Desolid. They can detect metals and zero in on them. It might have an outer tenuous boundary where its corrosive effects are weaker. What I'm not sure about is what I'm building. This is a cloud that could be spread across a landscape like a pond. They might encounter it as a floating cloud. One cloud, or maybe several, or a cloud large enough to engulf the ship, or half the asteroid. It's not really a single thing, or even a bunch of things. They likely won't be able to defeat it in battle (how do you battle a cloud?), they'll have to figure out its weakness. Do I build it as a character at all? Maybe with multiple levels of Growth? Megascale growth? Or do I build it as a plot vehicle? I mean, do I have to worry about how fast it can move and its Dex? Or do I just plot hexes that it fills and treat it much like a natural disaster? I suppose automaton might be a possibility... I tried building it in HD, but, well, it's just a group of naked powers. The question here is not so much about powers-to-fit-effects but more about what "framework" do I build it on? *Rest his soul.

I'm developing a character who is a master of assembling things out of junk he collects during an adventure. I don't want to concentrate on what he collects so much as how much he collects. eg. if he's been in the adventure in a suitable environment (say, an electronics lab), he might have been able to scrounge 20 pounds of stuff, which might be enough to power his 100pt gadget pool. But if he's spent time in a less suitable environment (a desert), he might only have a few pounds if any, limiting his ability to make stuff in his gadget pool. Note that he doesn't need to have stuff around him (conditional power would work for this), he collects stuff and keeps it for an indeterminate length of time - he can store it. Obviously, a gadget pool - but I've been thinking of powering the GP from an endurance battery with the SFX "collected junk". That way, it will "recover" when he passes through a lab, doing a little pilfering on the side, but the battery is susceptible to being drained (if he has to drop all his stuff) or to not being able to recover (if he's in a desert). Problem is, the End battery automatically drains when powers are used. i.e. say he's collected 10lbs (10End) of stuff. Any power he creates will suck up that End as if - rather than making devices - he is using them/throwing them/burning them (unless he buys his powers with 0 End). Can anyone think of an other way of building this contruct? A Gadgetry skill roll is aniother way of doing it, but then I'd have to make the call as to what the minus or plusses are - and it would be dependent on events past remembered. It'd be cooler if the player tracked his own reservoir.

Re: concept: alien human-pilot (think MIB) That'd be kind of cheating though, since he'd effectively be getting all his superpowers at 1/5 cost. The concept involves him spending most of his time in the suit (like an environment suit).

How would you build this: A psuedo-humanoid alien has a "suit" that serves as: - human costume (i.e allows the alien to pass as a human) - powersuit - spaceship - etc. So, the idea here is that the character is really the alien-in-suit, not simply the alien in a vehicle. He'd spend his on-duty time in the suit, but could exit the suit when safely off-duty. (They did this in Men In Black, there was a tiny alien inside a human shell. but I'm thinkin' an alien almost human-size with advanced miniatuization technology.) There were two ways I was thinking of this: OHID - buy the alien base-level, buy all suit powers with OHID Multiform - buy the alien-in-suit as the expensive form, buy the naked alien as the alternate form (I hate multiform for this reason! In a 350CP game, I would be throwing away 70CPs for nothing more than the privilege of having this other, less powerful form) The suit takes on different tasks as needed; it can sprout blasters or sprout rockets for space travel, or perhaps grow to form a small base with living quarters. Yeah, I guess OHID is the way to go...

I'm starting up a Pulp Hero campaign and wish to buy Pulp Hero supplements. At the top of my list is Lands of Mystery, followed by Pulp Hero. Some of these (but not all) are available in the store, but I thought I'd see what's out there. Justice Inc. is another obvious one, but I'm more interested in Lost Worlds and stuff than running street battles. I'm looking for advice on which ones to buy as well as any good deals (anybody selling?)

Re: vehicle: Learjet TUB - The Ultimate Brick. TUMA - The Ultimate Martial Artist TUM - The Ultimat Mentalist TUV - The Ultimate Vehicle etc. All HG books.

No, I was asking if the new rules had been any more clear on the subject. In fact, the new rules seem to completely silent if how long it might take to for example change clothes etc. "...activating powers (which may involve a change of appearance or form)..." Yes, I know activating a power is a 0 phase action. Since my powers are all persistent, they are activated all the time (STR, DEF), the change of appearance is really superficial (his skin turns metallic, hiding his features). Additonally, he takes his shirt off (or tears it off) to further change his appearance. I'm trying to figure out if, by the rules, I can do all that without losing time. Or do I have to buy IC. I guess though, in further clarifiying it, I've answered my own question. My GM has declared I can rip my shirt off as a 0 phase action, and my metallic skin likewise is 0 phase. So I've saved myself 7 or 10 points (depending on which Instant Change you look at - Transform or Shapeshift). Thanks.