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Rebar

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Everything posted by Rebar

  1. The "reality" behind a vast majority of supertypes (both comics and gaming) is that, whatever the source of their incredible powers, they almost always enhance the victim's physiology in a host of ways that makes them more than human. It is rare in canon that a supertype will have great powers, yet be physiologically a normal human being. What happens there, is you end up with supertypes that have easily-exploited holes in their combat-readiness - the most obvious being if their reflexes are no faster than a human. You could be The Human Bazooka, able to deal whopping great loads of damage, but if you're lying unconscious on the floor because Dr. Doom took you out before you blinked, well, you're relegated to security duty at the bank. It is only the well-rounded super that achieves defender-of-the-city notoriety. So, you buy up your characteristics with the special effect of 'space-time-enhanced speed/awareness/reflexes/strength/healing etc' You maybe taking "characteristics" too literally. If his space-time-adeptness allows him to recharge his endurance faster than a normal person can, you do not need to buy that as a power - just buy it as an increased End characteristic. Same with his DEX and SPD or any other ability. It is all right if you bought all your powers as unified. You can still buy your characteristics up as part of that power special effect. Think of it this way: Characteristics are just Powers, like every other power in the book - they just happen to be powers that everyone has (to a greater or lesser extent), so they're given a special place on the character sheet, but they're still just powers, and can be bought as such.
  2. You would buy a multipower if the use of the powers is interdependent. i.e. you cannot use them all at the same time. But yes, a MP would effectively model these powers. How detailed do you want to get? There are ways of modeling these powers so that you can only use two at a time (two arms). eg. You could hold your gun, and you could throw a smoke bomb simultaneously, but you couldn't ALSO fire your grappling hand.
  3. Oh, you mean he doesn't have extra arms. He just has a usual number, but these ones are clockwork. Got it. The arms themselves do not cost, but consider how they might be different from flesh & blood arms ion ways that might affect the game. Do they provide a sense of touch? If no, then they may warrant some minor disads. Decide whether any of the guns/grapplers/etc. could be removed, either in combat, or with a turn out of combat. Look up the focus rules. Look at other little things, like plusses to block maneuvers, and armour with activation rolls.
  4. Can the arms be used like normal arms? To pick things up? To attack or defend in combat? If I grabbed the character by two limbs, would his clockwork arms be able to take action? If so, buy extra limbs as well. If not, just buy the powers you want in a Multipower, or in raw skills. You could always add the 'restrainable' limitation.
  5. Naw I wanted the players to know a little about who they were playing and get the flavor of the campaign. I'm trying to encourage them to think more about roleplaying. It has always been far too easy for them to slip into combat mode. Need a little foreplay... I had BearTrap put a yoke over his shoulders while our Magician/MC took volunteers out of the audience ("And now, ladies and gentlemen, we require your ABSOLUTE silence! This is a very dangerous stunt!") The volunteers grabbed straps on the yoke, and BearTrap benchpressed the lot of them. I had him do a STR roll at +4, minus -1 for every 100lbs of audience he was lifting. (I rolled to determine their weights). He topped out with 4 children, 2 grown men, 2 young, giggling ladies, and a Hue G. McGiant, on a chair across his shoulders, for a total of 1050lbs. Much fun was had by all. Until the ship's mate got suckered with a blackjack to the skull. Then all hell broke loose.
  6. Does he need the regen? Then again, why does he only have 10 BODY?
  7. I'm running the first adventure tomorrow. Not everyone will be there, so I'm just running a throw-away to get the PCs familiar with their world and their group and their characters. They are circus performers-adventurers - so far, a strongman, a magician and a curio-collector/knife-thrower, as well as a half dozen NPCs. Their homebase is a steamer ship, currently docked at Battery Park, where they've attracted a host of vendors, confectioners and other fairlike purveyors. I'll have the strongman (he has a steel jaw) bite through some nails, and pull a truck with his teeth. I'll have the magician ... um, I guess do a magic show, and disappear in his signature smoke bomb. I'll have the knife-thrower throw some knives. Maybe she'll throw them at the magician, who is mysteriously not there when they arrive... The players don't really know their characters yet, so I may have to hand-hold them through their own circus-acts. I'm trying to think of ways to make this more interesting, both in terms of what acts they do and in terms of how I mechanic it. Do I just take them one-by-one, tell em what they're doing with some colourful description, see if I can get them to do some roleplaying, and then have them make a skill roll or two? Is there any way of fleshing these out into a little vignette without putting a strain on my new players too much? (If I emphasize the skill rolls too much, what if they blow their roll? "Heh. Only a flesh wound. He's got a spare. All part of the show ladies & gents.") The second half do the evening will be easier. It will be an ambush that triggers the storyline - a bunch of straight10's normals try to beat them up to steal The Maltese MacGuffin.
  8. It was -2. And yeah, I strongly recommend against it, as it can VERY easily unbalance a game.
  9. (ouch!) Well, I could take a shot, see if you like it. Want to send me a description?
  10. Like this? http://www.davesbrain.ca/entertainment/csf/index.html
  11. Yup. It's one of the biggest deviations of character creation from other systems. 'Fire-based powers' means nothing in HG until you define each and every power for your particular character. You get nothing for free with that label. And no two characters with the same SFX will be the same either. This goes all the way down to knives and guns. How I buy a knife might be completely different from how you buy the "very same" knife. So the mechanic is the law for how it operates; my knives are throwable and never get taken away from me; yours are usable as clubs and help you with lockpicking.
  12. Yep! There's no evidence that Atlantis doesn't exist, so having it exist does not alter established knowledge of the world. Yeah, I was thinking of a power dam. Very 30's-era. I've managed to insert an adventure ahead of this one, so I've got a little more time to play around. (:rollseyes: Originally, I wanted the campaign's Adventure Number One to just jump with both feet into a brawl. Then I got so caught up in adding clues and plot threads that it's grown to three episodes long, and needs a little setup for the payoff. So now I've gone back and created an Adventure Number Zero, just so they can have a good brawl before plot. Now I'm struggling to stop myself from adding clues and plot thread to Adventure Zero. I'll have to invent Adventure Minus One! )
  13. I wonder if this is the right mechanic. I'd like to hear more about the SFX to understand how it maneuvers around good guys but hits bad guys. It is avoiding them by some inherent effect of the power, or is it more about how fine-tuned the character can control the power? Consider looking at Area of Effect Line. I may be mistaken, but I think you can alter how the line is laid down , like with bends and things, to pick the hexes it hits. If this were a "tornado tendril" sort of thing, that the character weaves in and out among combatants, maybe this would make more sense.
  14. Yes. This is my point. If he wants a Resurrection that's more ... plausible than "POOF you're re-spawned!" then he could buy it as Summon and work with the GM to define the resurrection's particulars re: time, place, willingness, etc.
  15. If you can get him to agree to add new objects at a moderate rate, then you could start off with a Multipower instead. With a multipower, you add slots, and each slot costs, but it's cheaper than a VPP at first. No they will not. The focus limitation is there to represent powers that can be taken away or disabled. Your player's powers - including the (green glowing) Tommy Gun and (green glowing) two-handed sword - appear when he needs them and disappear as soon as he's done with them. no one can take them away from him, no one can use them except him, and even if they managed to knock it out of his hand, he could just create another one. This is how the character has defined he wants his powers to work. The focus limitation does not apply here. And this highlights one of the unique things about the Hero Game system. It is less important what a thing IS (a tommy gun), than what it DOES (RKA). Your player has an RKA power, whose Special Effect is that it manifests as a gun. The term Special Effect means "for cinematic effect", not for mechanics. See, it's not a REAL tommy gun. For example, he doesn't really load it with bullets, and he certainly doesn't run out. To fire it, the character will be expending his OWN endurance (a 3D6 RKA is will burn what? 4End every phase, and a LOT more if it's on autofire). If you want the RKA to have bullets like a real Tommy Gun, your player must buy it with the charges limitation/advantage, which means it costs more from his pool. Another example: in the original comic strips, IronMan's power suit never got taken away. At worst, he might take some time to change into it while a robbery was in progress - but he was never without it. Were a player in your game to want to buy a power armour suit, and did not want to be troubled with it getting stolen, he would NOT buy it with the focus limitation. He would buy it with the Only in Hero ID limitation, to represent that it takes time to get into it. These would have to be with GM's permission though. If you want him to be suitless occasionally, you could force the focus lim on him. Back to green glowing guy for a second - if you do want the RKA or HKA to be able to be taken away and used, well, that would be bad. Your player can be turned into an object vending machine - creating and handing out bazookas to his teammates. This can be done - read up on the Power limitation Independent. This is the power that lets you create Real, physical, permanent and distributable objects.But there's a catch - a big one: they're not free. Your player pays the points out of XP, and those points stay with the object. You player will literally be handing out his own XP to other people. Yup. Welcome to Hero Games in general, and VPPs in particular.
  16. You are right to be concerned. This character is about as advanced a concept as one can make in the HG system because it is so infinitely flexible. It has the potential to dramatically slow down game play, which could make it a lot less fun for him, for you and for the other players. Both you and the player will have to learn a new power mechanic every item he creates something. All that is a strong reco that you try to convince him to play something simpler - or all your sakes. But it is doable. That being said, the actual building of the character is simple. Power Framework: Variable Power Pool (Cosmic) - take the 'needs no skill' roll and the 'takes no time' advantages. This allows him to wield virtually any power in the book by creating an appropriate object. Needs a sword? He creates a 3D6HKA - special effect sword Needs a hammer? He creates a 10D6 HA - special effect hammer etc. The key steps here are: - he decides at the moment what object he wants to create - you ask him what effect it will have "It will bash my opponent, it will stab my opponent, it will allow me to breathe in space" - you determine what power in the book most appropriately applies (HA, HKA, life support) - you write up the power (quickly) - you give him the power and simply declare that he special effect of the power is whatever he asked for (hammer, sword, O2 tank) - the object disappears once he changes his power pool - he cannot lend that object to someone else. For best results, have him come up with a dozen of his character's most favorite things, and write them up ahead of time. Ideally, this will be applicable 80% of the time ,saving you a LOT of trouble in combat.
  17. Taylorar: Delegate this to your players: "Shockhead: you want read hair, Fine, you got it. What makes you think it's worth points? Can you justify where will it complicate your life?" "Michael Jordan: OK, you are really tall. Why is it worth points?" And don't let them weasel out of it. A 5pt complication will result in 5pts of messing-with-the-players. Yes, you really get to make this request. If your players think this is harsh, you're going to a have a lot of problems with them walking all over you. It will get much worse when you actually get into combat. Set the expectation early. You players will respect you.
  18. IMO, the issue is not 'how can I make red hair plausibly distinctive?' - that's easy. The issue is 'how can distinctive be a complication for characters who don't care?' Per the OP: "Who cares if they're easily recognizable, they're not trying to hide from the law, they are the law." i.e. it is a premise of the campaign. I would say this categorically disqualifies DF as a complication.
  19. Really? Huh. Thanks. But it looks like it doesn't extend anywhere near the coast. While altering reality is not going to be a problem in this campaign, that seems a little contrived.
  20. If the GM as well is new to Champions, a 400pt power level is very ambitious. Hero Games mechanics is intensive enough when one's options are modest. When the options are almost limitless, you guy may find the game play to be frustratingly slow. Another factor is that, at that level, most familar things are essentially out of play (such as normal people, normal walls, and normal weapons). You can still have such things in the game, but the GM will have to invent them all. (Your heroes will only content with Normals as delicate-meat-objects, walls that can impede them will have to be made of vault steel, and any weapons used will have to be written up - nobody's going to be firing pistols) That's a lot of work for a GM/ Unfortunately, it's likely far too late for the GM to reconsider a more modest power level where much of the work is already done.
  21. So, he's a power-armor-clad, recipient-of-godlike-powered, magic-adept mutant. You missed trained-by-Tibetan-monk and crashlanded-alien but - yup, otherwise I'd say you pretty much ran the gamut of origins.
  22. CamelemaC: Are we looking at the same character sheet??? I don't see anything about Think Fast or Concentrate.
  23. Perhaps the word 'plausibility' is more to your liking. The book suggests there are some logistical complications in summoning. It doesn't necessarily just magically appear. For example, it may take time to arrive.
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