Rebar

Something else worth noting.

A VPP with Active and Real Points at or above the campaign maximum and NO limitation on scope of use is effectively the ability to Alter Reality.

Tru dat. A VPP is tantamount to having ALL powers in the book. And with one this size, you essentially have those powers at "Cosmic" levels.

It is enough Transform to turn a normal into a toad. And then a phase or so later enough PD to withstand an impact from orbital velocities. Then a phase or so later, the STR of The Hulk.

the vpp power pool is 120 power points and 120 control points for a total of 180 points to buy.

 

You meant 60 control points.  But the math worked out anyway.

Don't forget that the max points allowed at any time is Active points, no matter the limitations.

i.e.:

No power in your pool (including all advantages) can ever exceed 120 points, even if you apply a zillion limitations on the power to bring its cost down to 10 points.

However, if it only used up 10 points of your pool, you still have 110 points to buy other powers.

eg.

You could buy a 12D6 Energy Blast Area Effect (+1), 1 Charge (-2) - which is 120 Active points, but only uses 40 Real points of your Pool.

Depends on the consequences.

If there are no foreseeable consequences to the transition, then yeah, SFX.

If there's a possibility of some ... hijinx ... around the transition, then I like the Summon solution. The Summon power comes with some logistical provisos that could be bent to add some realism to the transition (eg. how long it takes, and under what circumstances it arrives).

My method for building, and one I recommend to others, is thus:

- get a general idea of what archetype you want to play

- before building anything, go back and do the origin and background: Disads/Complications and skills first

- only once you have a well fleshed out person, should you start attaching powers

You get a much more cohesive character if they start as a person and their powers grow from that, than if you start with a polished set of powers and try to retrofit disads complications onto it.

...factored in to cover worst case scenarios (such as lugging someone through Burmese bush...).

If you're scared of spiders she can summon spiders. Or she can create illusions of spiders. It's all based on creating things/illusions that frighten the target. She can also discover the targets greatest fears and even induce a nameless, even primordial panic.

 

It seems a pretty tight concept to me.

I get the mechanic, but what does summoning animals have to do with projecting illusions? It seems like the powers were assembled from a book   , rather than from an origin of a character.

Obvious closely-related powers

What?

CHOSEN OF LATHANDER

"Chosen of Lathander" is a template that can be added to any humanoid creature (referred to hereafter as the "character"). A Chosen of Lathander uses the character's statistics and special abilities except as noted here. A Chosen of Lathander has its power at the will of Lathander, should the Morninglord decide to remove Chosen status from the character, it reverts back to its original abilities.

 

 

<snip>

 

 

http://community.wizards.com/forum/forgotten-realms/threads/895786

Are you insinuating that this entire block of formatted text happened to be sitting in your clipboard when you came across this thread, and all you did was hit Ctrl-V?

Curious about the concept here. What is the source of her powers?

Is she a mentalist who specializes in Fear?

Because, in my opinion, these don't all fit in a single source/origin concept. Summon animals and light illusions seem to have no common element with the rest of them (i.e. why would a mentalist who specializes in projecting fear be able to summon animals).

On the other hand, if it's Magic-based, then there's nothing wrong with her deciding to mix and match spells to suit her own idea of a villain concept.

Alternately - a flying burst of light?

How about Comet? Or meteor? Or StarHammer?

A character with such a powerful visual image might not be helped by a name that tries to riff on that power and appears instead to be self-aggrandizing. Sometimes contrast and counterpoint is a better path to highlight an image. (Especially if the image is one of humility).

One of my favorite characters took on a life of his own after I'd invented him. I'd wanted to call him Changeling, but the character's motivations became so strongly about helping other people (other mutants) that he just didn't care about his "image". He just called himself ... Martin.

eg.

"Who ... ARE you? Are you some kind of God? Some angel sent here to save us?"

"I'm just a guy, like you, trying to make the world better place. Call me Joe Everyman."

Just my 2c, but i

I'm familiar enough with physics to understand there is no gravity within a hollow sphere. Gods or very highly advanced beings built this place and populated it with samples from other worlds.

Away from each island, there is about 0.1 G pulling outwards towards the crystal sphere. On islands and a ship with its keel under power, gravity is about 1 G. If a ship gets too close above an island, it will start falling, so it is safest to approach from the sides.
 

Just my 2c but it sounds like you've proposed a fantastical new setting, where really interesting things could happen, but are now rolling all the interesting things back to mundanity. Gravity is everywhere, always points on one direction, islands are fixed, sun is always overhead, etc. Especially if you have to resort to HABs (highly advanced beings) to fine-tune it to operate like on Earth (1G on islands, but floating when "at sea")

What's the point in making fantastical flying ships with gravitic drives navigating floating islands if it all ends up being only an aesthetic difference from Earth-bound pirate genre? Why not propose the fantastical world, set its parameters, and then let the physics fall where it may?

A bit of a presumptuous critique on my part, granted ...

Most of the above seem to be - in my opinion - confusing DF with Physical Limitation. If the PC's distinction inhibits him physically - like he's bulky - then it's a PhysLim.

DF is about standing out in a crowd an being remembered. This comes into play mostly when trying to be covert or shadow someone, and other such scenarios. If there is no disadvantage to your characters standing out, then it's not worth any points.

You're not being a jerk. Let your characters look however they want. But if they try to take shock of red hair as a DF, then that's a matter of them looking for free points. No GM has no stand by while his players try to game the system.

What we do in my game is allow Quirks: they are 1 pt disads/complications. I would allow shock of red hair as a 1pt Quirk.

Philip Jose Farmer did a great book on Doc Savage linking his genealogy to every other pulp hero like Tarzan and the Shadow.

 

 

And I've still got it in my collection! It's called Doc Savage:His Apocalyptic Life

I always thought this "surgery" was a rather creepy part of the stories. Carving the evil out a man's brain may have seemed like a noble thing in Robeson's time, but to the modern mind, it's still butchery.

Re: Ctrl+V Is it some kind of Internet Explorer thing?

 Ctrl -C -V and -X are almost as old as computers!!!

Where have you been???

(On a Mac?)

Rebar, He is definitely seriously disabled.. He cant see through glass, cant read normal print, cant see color, can't drive any vehicle with a windshield, can't use a computer, cant watch TV or movies, Desolidifed villains are invisible to him, etc etc... His ranged sense of touch is overwhelmed by the same things that touch would be so most damage shield characters get a DCV bonus vs him... A GM may quibble about how disadvantaging it is, but it's pretty major. Alot more major than most complications.

I was thinking of the can't see through glass thing, but you bought his stretching with Indirect, can operate through barriers. I kind of assumed his touch was a direct extension of his stretching, so he should be able to "see" through barriers.

As one who frequents online fora, and has to deal with their finicky text editors, I have learned to frequently, unconsciously hit Ctrl-C while composing my long texts, in case the server crashes while posting, or whatever. Happened to me a million times (and I never, ever hyperbolize).

So Ctrl-V:

As one who frequents online fora, and has to deal with their finicky text editors, I have learned to frequently, unconsciously hit Ctrl-C while composing my long texts, in case the server crashes while posting, or whatever. Happened to me a million times (and I never, ever hyperbolize).

So Ctrl-V:

A TK character with no TK power? (All powers are STR, Sretching, PD etc, rather than TK)

I like it.

(Or is this a 6th edition thing? Not familiar with 6th Ed. Does it have TK as a power?)

I have one small criticism - Hero Games Rule #1: A disadvantage that does not disadvantage is not a disadvantage and is therefore worth no points.

In this case, it would be a more moderate A disadvantage that is only moderately disadvantageous is less of a disadvantage and is therefore worth fewer points.

Your character has bought 'blind' as a 30pt disad, yet he can get by quite nicely with his ranged touch. I'd say it should be no more than Frequently, Greatly.

There are 13 zodiacal signs. Didn't know that? Neither will your players!

http://the-red-thread.net/ophiuchus2.html

Tired of being put in the corner like Baby, Ophiuchus raises an army of supervillians, all of whom will fall before the heroes - until they face their ultimate defeat at the hands of the mightiest of all - the mighty Ophiuchus!

Rebar I would link the flash to the killing attack. Without the dynamite going off, there is no flash and boom. You can build the flash to affect both sighht and hearing in one power.

I don't think dynamite is a KA, I think it's a normal attack - just a big one for Normals.

And, as I said, the reason I bought the two flashes separately, is because they'll have different radii. The deafening sound will carry much further than the blinding flash.

As for linking the Flash to the blast, well, that's what happens in a Compound power. They go off together.

It's just an HKA through a focus, really. Amount depends on how deadly you want it to be.

I suppose the most obvious advantage is Continuous.

Maybe you could apply 'bulky' or 'STR min' to it. And I suppose 'real weapon' (they stop functioning pretty easily).

Larry Niven's The Smoke Ring and Integral Trees are stories set in a natural habitable band of air in the shape of a torus around a sun. There is no planet to speak of, just very, very large orbiting trees (with tufts at both ends). Everything  operates in a dance of orbital mechanics around the star.

The trees can grow to tens or hundreds of miles long - long enough to experience significant tidal forces. Like all elongated objects in orbit (even satellites around Earth), they tend to be stable when their long axis is pointed toward the star.

There are some cool quirks about movement in a gaseous torus. Remember, every single object is in an independent orbit. If you jump in one direction, you don't go in that direction. For example, jumping forward actually increases your orbital speed, which carries you out toward the rim. Jumping toward the rim puts you in a elliptical orbit, which has you fall back in the orbit. (Apollo astronauts found this out the hard way when they first attempted docking in Earth orbit.)

The mantra, as every child learns before he learns to jump, is: Forward takes you out; out takes you back; back takes you inward; inward takes you forward.

If you forget, you will have a long time to spend thinking about it while you starve to death adrift between home-trees.

 

If you prefer a more bipartisan approach to evilness, you could track it as a stance meter. The HERO System doesn't natively have a slider-like mechanic for anything, but you can easily add one to suit your purposes. Define the extreme ends of the slide, and some number of intermediate steps with equilibrium in the middle. If you keep the levels relatively few, like say Morality: [irredeemable: -3, Blackhearted: -2, Untrustworty: -1, Unbiased: 0, Trustworty: +1, Virtuous: +2, Reighteous: +3]  (labels to taste), you can also use the scale value as a modifier to 3d6 resolution rolls while remaining harmonious with the bell curve...just flipping the polarity if the action being modified is deemed "good" or "bad".

 

This is a pretty good idea. The closer you stick to existing game mechanics, the less work you'll have to do to flesh it out, and the less your players will have to climb the learning curve.

Treat it like a 9th primary characteristic, say Virtue, with a starting value of 10, and you have a CHA roll system already in place. Just add modifiers to taste. The games mechanics for modifiers will provide guidance.

Alternately, treat it like a naked modifier, +0, that gets applied to rolls and things. (Don't forget 18- fumbles, and 3- critical hits!) 

Make it 5DC Killing instead since 5d6N is for superhero feel where no one gets hurt. 

 

2d6 flash will only last 2 segments on average (flash works on the body of each 1d6 not the full roll) so either reduce the recovery time to per Phase instead of per Segment or add more flash. 2 segments will not even last long enough to reach most SPD 2-4 people's next Phase (since they have from 3-6 segments between phases).

OK, good ideas. What do you think about some of the construct comments I made?

As part of an ongoing attempt to help one of the team, a genetically engineered super soldier (TAO or Tactically Augmented Organism) learn there's more to life than combat missions, the female members of the team have an extended "Ladies' night" After hearing one of them refer to it as a slumber party, TAO does some online research that results in this statement:

 

"In preparation for the slumber party operation I have downloaded a list of appropriate activities: making humorously deceptive phone calls to former sexual partners, the consumption of frozen diary products and uncooked cookie mixture, the exchange of trivial unsupported facts about the social lives of others and, according to several of the training videos: mock combat with sleeping cushions while wearing diaphanous garments that leads to noncommittal lesbian sex play is a standard procedure."

Visual Aid.