esampson

Does Not Work against Siblings (-0) 

That would only be the case if the drawbacks were equal to the advantage. In this case it seems to me like there are clearly more advantages than drawbacks. Not overwhelming advantages but enough to justify a +1/4.

Overall I would say that you should buy it as personal immunity. The issue really is this; does the modifier work to the benefit or to the detriment of the player?

Yes, an argument can be made that it is preventing the power from working in certain circumstances (such as when they want to duke it out with one another) but all in all there is probably a great deal more benefit in the fact that they can sling around their powers when fighting badguys without the concern of hitting one another.

Now, this is somewhat situational. If one of the siblings was an NPC villain it would probably be a limitation, because whenever the PC has to fight the NPC they can't use their powers on them (and vice versa). However with two heroes the only time they would probably be using their powers against one another would be either in training room sessions or because of some squabble where no one is getting killed or arrested and as such neither of those incidents are 'important' (this isn't meant to denigrate the idea of a scene with siblings fighting. They can be an excellent component of a story. However there are no real ramifications from their inability to use their power on one another. The ramifications come from the fight in the first place and whether they were tossing around power beams or right hooks has very little effect on the final outcome).

I'll agree with you on everything that you said.  My point on it was, Hugh Neilson's argument as of late has been "if killing is so infrequent, then the psych lim against it isn't worth many points".  And I'm saying that the reason is infrequent is because people are playing the psych lim appropriately.  Just because players who want to be in a superhero game tend to follow the superhero "rules", doesn't 1) mean they don't have a choice, and 2) mean that the psychological limitation isn't in force.

 

If I, as a player, love playing overconfident characters (and I do), and I will normally always charge into a fight (and I will), I should still get those points.  That's how my character is going to behave.  I don't need the GM to force me into that situation.  If killing is highly infrequent because we don't act in a manner that will kill, then that's appropriate use of the CvK.

I pretty much agree with you. The only thing I would add is, I think, largely a semantic quibble. The last line pretty much sums things up, but I think needs to be changed to:

If killing is highly infrequent because we don't act in a manner that will kill, and this causes us to make sub-optimal decisions, then that's appropriate use of the CvK.

If players are appropriately limiting themselves due to their Complications I don't think that the GM needs to jump down on them and imply other penalties as well. I don't think a GM needs to declare 'No, you have CvK so you have to always pull your punches' if the players are already limiting themselves in various ways. Those limitations may not even be apparent in some fights. As an example if I have a 14d6 attack I can probably just haul off and fire it at Dr. Destroyer all I want, even pushing my attacks. He is known to be pretty much nigh-indestructible in his armor and while I might be able to eventually figure out some way to kill him despite his defenses the odds of that happening from 20d6 (pushed haymaker 14d6) is well known to be pretty much non-existent.

I think the areas we disagree are that I dislike being too 'meta' in deciding if my attacks might kill him. For me it is a simple matter that it is an ICly known fact that Dr. D has been hit with 20d6 (and heavier) attacks and survived. A character who can summon up that damage has some gauge of their strength and knows for a fact that Dr. D has been hit with things even worse, so they don't need to be concerned with killing him.

I don't like the idea of saying 'oh, my 12d6 attack will average 12 body. Since the only reason that anyone in spandex will have less than 10 body and probably 10 defense is because my GM is pulling a dirty trick on me I can cut loose'. That is just too 'metagame' for me. After I've seen Spandex man get thumped for 12d6 and not be seriously injured by it then yeah, I'm not going to be so worried about cutting loose on him, and if I've seen that it's not doing any body (and probably only moderate amounts of stun) then I'm not even going to worry about adding some extra dice from pushing, haymakers, and combat levels, but that's because I've already got good reason to believe this guy can take it.

I think the other thing we don't see completely eye to eye on is that I really do feel somewhat strongly that you have to be able to look at a Complication or Limitation and say 'yes, this is how it negatively impacts the character' for it to be worth points. Being in love with another character absolutely can fall into that category if it will make my character behave in a sub-optimal manner. If it means I am more likely to go after enemies that attack the other character, more likely to take actions to guard that character, etc. then it is absolutely a perfectly reasonable Complication. On the other hand if it is purely for 'flavor' then it isn't worth any points.

I suppose what my second point boils down to is this: While I do not think in a 'good game' the GM should be stepping in and saying 'no, you can't do that' or 'you have to do it this way' by taking any form of Complication I am accepting the possibility that the GM will do that. If I respond to a situation in a fashion that the GM feels is inappropriate to my Complication (I leave my love interest to fend for herself in a tough fight so I can help someone else beat up on the criminal mastermind) then yes, the GM has the right to step in and say 'no, you can't do that' (or at least 'make an ego roll'). This shouldn't happen a lot. In fact, it shouldn't really happen at all. Worst case scenario is that my GM should say 'are you forgeting about your psychological complication? It looks like Danger Girl is in a tough spot there' at which point either I go 'duh. I totally didn't think about that' or else I explain why my action really is in Danger Girl's best interest.

If the GM is forcing me to do something then there is something wrong. Either my GM is being too much of a control freak or I need to reevaluate my Complication (possibly buy it down to a lower level) because I don't seem to want to accept the Complication that I bought.

. . .

Oh, and overconfident doesn't necessarily mean fighting below your full capabilities.   If you've got superdefenses, perhaps.  Superman's version of overconfident means that he will stand there and take the hit.  Batman's version of overconfident means he doesn't tell the rest of the JLA what he's doing.  He takes it on by himself.  He jumps into a room full of thugs and attacks.  He still dodges, because he may be overconfident but he knows he's not bulletproof.

. . .

That is, in fact, a form of fighting below his abilities. He doesn't wait for backup, he doesn't just snipe them from darkness (in your example) until they are down to a level where he can easily handle them.

These are sub-obtimal choices as far as his health and well being go.

What it doesn't mean is that he becomes totally useless in fighting. It doesn't mean he tries to bounce bullets off his chest even though he lacks any rPD. It doesn't mean he has to tie a blindfold around his eyes before he goes into a fight (since Batman is not good enough to win under such circumstances). It just means that he will make decisions that do not maximize his abilities.

Interestingly enough you could also argue that 'Tactical Fighter' (or some variation) is a Psycological Complication for almost the exact opposite reason.

As an example, Batman stumbles across a crime being commited by half a dozen thugs. He is capable of defeating said thugs though it is not absolutely certain. Their numbers are large enough that if they fight together well and get some lucky rolls they might cause the caped crusader some injury, so rather than leaping in and stopping them he moves to a better position and waits until the bad guys cluster closer together so he can clobber several of them with his surprise attack, swinging the odds much more heavily in his favor.

In this case the choices he is making aren't sub-optimal as far as the fight is concerned but they may be sub-optimal toward being a hero. He's going to let the thugs continue to cause more damage or beat up their victim even worse before he acts.

Is it possible that without the limitation the player would make the same choice? Of course. He can leap right in and attack without Overconfidence because he thinks it is more important to shut down the bad guys than to get through without taking a scratch. Likewise he can sit and wait without Tactical Fighter because he thinks that if he attacks without waiting the odds of an injury really are too high.

The key is that when he has a Complication his choices are curtailed. If he's got Overconfident and he thinks he would be better off waiting he still has to jump in (making what he views as a sub-optimal choice). If he's got Tactical Fighter and thinks that the odds of an injury are so low that they don't warrant the waiting he still has to wait (again, making what he views as a sub-optimal choice).

A complication doesn't have to make a character completely ineffective, but if it never has any negative effect (and in the case of Psychological Complications the only negative effects are that the player may be forced to make a sub-optimal choice) then a complication isn't suppose to be worth any points.

Absolutely agree with you there. Just because a character doesn't take CvK doesn't mean they should be casually killing people (and IMO 'Casual Killer' and the like aren't really limitations, either, since they don't actually limit a character).

Of course part of that is an aspect of the campaign. If you're playing a campaign where everyone is a 'soldier' of some kind in the middle of a war (and yes, I'm still talking about a Champions campaign. Perhaps something along the lines of Strikeforce Morituri) then yes, people without a CvK would probably be much more willing to kill their opponents. On the other hand in your everyday 'generic' Champions campaign (for lack of a better term) even players without CvK should probably not be trying to actively murder people. They won't be as concerned about if the target can suck up a 12d6 attack (since they are bad guys, after all) but electing to murder downed opponents so they won't be coming back probably shouldn't be occurring.

At least in my opinion.

That's a fantastic point.

 

I've seen too many GMs eager to give players some sort of disadvantage in combat.  In fact, even in this thread, the prevailing tone appeared to be "if the player didn't want to get hurt in combat, he shouldn't have taken this disadvantage".  It doesn't take much to turn the relationship between player and GM into an adversarial one.

That is a very good point. The relationship between player and GM should never be an adversarial one. For one thing it is simply stupid to do so; the GM is holding all the cards and he can have Dr. Destroyer waiting in the player's apartment to take him on solo. Additionally what roleplaying games are is a for of cooperative storytelling.

That said, there's nothing wrong with challenging a player. If all you ever do is throw mooks at the heroes that they can easily defeat it will quickly become boring.

Additionally, this isn't the GM giving the player some form of disadvantage. This is the player taking some form of disadvantage and then wanting it not to have any effect. IMO a player complaining that it is unfair that they have some difficulties due to taking a CvK is pretty much in the same boat as a character who takes 2x stun from fire and then complains because the GM uses someone with fire powers.

Of course if the second player was constantly under attack by people with fire powers, despite the fact that they took them as a Common attack instead of a Very Common attack then they would probably have some right to feel aggravated and in a similar vein a player who is constantly being heavily penalized by their CvK would have the right to complain. That's not what we are talking about, here, however (or at least I'm not). I'm not saying that every single punch the character throws must always be pulled with huge penalties. What I'm saying is that when they first come across an unknown who does not show signs of heavy armor (such as someone in powered armor or someone made out of rock) that they may have some penalties with their first few attacks while they are figuring out the capabilities of their opponents.

. . .he knows that if he spends the first turn of combat "feeling out" his opponent, using less dice, that he's going to get beaten into the dirt because Morningstar is going to hit him with a 16D6 thwack.

 

Games aren't played in a vacuum. Players and GMs bring their history into the game.

This simply isn't true. I've played plenty of characters with CvKs and have played them as I have suggested above and can't ever recall an instance where I feel I got beat into the dirt solely because I was cautious with my first few attacks while I was determining what my opponent could take. I've gotten beat into the ground because of bad dice rolls, sure. I've gotten beat into the ground because my character was probably fighting the wrong opponent. But I can't recall ever sitting there going 'you know, if I had just opened up on him right from the start I probably would have won'.

In fact I've probably gotten beaten down into the ground on more occasions solely because I completely opened up on an opponent and I either failed to stun them or else I left myself so open I got blasted by someone else.

It should be a character-by-character decision. Robin has CvK, but I don't think he's ever felt the need to pull his punch. Robin does not believe that he is in any danger of killing someone when he punches them. Superman, on the other hand, not only has CvK, but probably also "protective of innocents", "really nice guy", and "galactically overconfident". Unless it's a known threat like Darkseid or a clear cosmic-level entity, Superman's psych lims all kick in together and he pulls his punch. That's because Superman, in his heart, believes that he could easily kill someone if he's not careful.

There definitely is a certain aspect of 'character-by-character' because of different abilities. If you've got an 8d6 attack you don't need to worry about pulling the attack nearly as much as someone with a 20d6 attack. I will, however, disagree about the Robin assessment. Plenty of times you will read where he is fighting a bunch of mooks and he is talking about how he needs to be careful so that he can put them down without crippling them. There will also be references made from time to time that indicate he has some KA martial arts maneuvers that he learned from Batman and you will never see him break those out on someone even though the odds of actually killing a mook with them are basically non-existent.

You can have a CvK and also be wildly enthusiastic and completely careless. There are plenty of teenagers who would never willingly harm someone who nonetheless drive 80 mph down residential streets because it's fun. There are plenty of drunk rednecks who shoot each other during hunting season because Billy Bob wasn't wearing orange and Jimbo thought he saw a deer.

I would definitely argue the point with you. Don't forget, normal human beings such as you listed above don't have 20 point limitations. The 20 point CvK is above and beyond what normal human beings feel. A limitation that applies to normal human beings won't give points to a PC which is why you can't take things like 'Dependence: Oxygen' or 'Physical Limitation: Can't fly'.

I mean, technically Arnold had a total CvK in Terminator 2. "I swear I will not kill anyone." He then shot a bunch of cops in the legs with a minigun. "They'll live."

Arnold had a Psycological Limitation 'Must follow orders' or something like that. He didn't have a CvK and if he did his player should be slapped silly because shooting someone in the leg has a pretty good chance of killing them, especially if they don't recieve immediate medical attention. You have all sorts of large arteries and veins in the legs which could kill someone by blood loss along with the shock value.

Of course I suppose it could be argued that he was a cyborg murder machine from the future with a massive database of human anatomy intended to help him kill people and so he was able to utilize that along with his pin-point computer precision to shoot the person in the leg while making sure to avoid any major arteries or veins.

Sounds to me kind of like Pulling a Punch.

It would only instantly kill them if you were using hit locations. 5.5 body would only be dangerous if you are using Bleeding rules. Most superhero campaigns do not use either of these, and only "Average Person" and worse (small child, senior citizen) have only 8 body. Even low level thugs (Noteworthy Normal) have 10 body, which would make them 'safe to shoot'. Of course your campaign could be one in which most gang members use the Average Person stats and only the leader of the gang counts as a Noteworth Normal (with Skilled Normal and Competent Normal being reserved for especially well trained people such as agents and black op soldiers) but that's not my general experience.

This isn't to say that my way is "correct". If I were to be playing in a game with Massey and friends and I started running around screaming at the other characters because they weren't pulling punches and because they were shooting people with large handguns I would be the person in the wrong. I would be refusing to accept what they all choose to view as a standard convention of their game (assuming Massey is an accurate representative of their game) and I would be demanding that they try to change to please me.

All I'm really saying is that the way Massey views the issue is not the way I view it (and I'll admit that I feel other people should not view it Massey's way, but then we always feel people should view things the way we view them), but it isn't like this is an international competition where we require absolute standardization so we can effectively compare ourselves to one another. As long as Massey and crew are having fun that's the most important thing.

Except tha

Well, first we don't play 6th edition, and so I'm not really all that up on how Complications are different than Disadvantages.  Our GM uses our disads as story hooks so that he can engage us with the rest of the campaign world.  I understand that it's not the common way that disads are used in Champions games, but I've played characters for dozens of sessions and never had certain things come up.  As I said, the only time I've ever seen a villain die was on that one night where I had complete fluke rolls and the other player just happened to hit a villain with a very specific vulnerability.  And truthfully I think the GM was feeling a little bit of bloodlust that night.

 

We normally use psychological limitations as a good way to define the character's ethics and personality.  They are roleplaying guides as much as anything else.  "In love with Jane" is as much a valid psych lim as "code against killing", and it will pretty much never come up in combat.  But CvK has a lot of applications to a character's behavior beyond making you throw fewer dice.  What do you do with the homicidal villain when you finally subdue him?  You have the chance to end his reign of terror now, no chance for him to escape later on and kill more people.  Do you kill him?  Another villain is getting away.  He's flying away in a helicopter.  It's faster than you.  If you shoot it, the chopper will crash into the canyon below.  Do you risk the villain dying?

Except that just as in your earlier examples a crashing helicopter really has pretty much 0 chance of actually killing a villain. Sure, it might do some damage to them but the odds of it causing actual death are incredible low .

The differnce between Complications in 6th and Disadvantages in 5th is largely semantic. The both fill the exact same slot (something that happens to the character as a whole as opposed to functioning on a specific power or ability) and they provide points as opposed to reducing costs (though the wording of the mechanism is different in 6th there is no mathematical difference between 'up to 75 points in Disadvantages' and '75 points in Complications but you may take less which will reduce the total number of points available to your character').

I think the main reason we don't see eye to eye is because we don't agree on the function of Disadvantages/Complications. To me the concept boils down to 'does it have a negative impact on the character?' If it does then the character is given more points to compensate for the negative impact (similar to the way that something that has a negative impact on a power makes it less expensive). If it doesn't have a negative impact on the character then it should not be worth any points (this is actually explicited stated in the 6e rules under Complications).

So where does 'in love with Jane' fall? Well, it depends. It definitely could be a complication. If Jane is a normal who often gets into the middle of trouble and the character is forced to divert extra time an energy to save her, that's a definite negative effect; most likely DNPC. If Jane is a super powered individual (other PC or NPC) who is capable of holding her own in a fight but my feelings for her will often influence my character actions, causing me to go off mission, leave myself open to attacks from bad guys, or otherwise not function  to the full of my abilities then yes, that to is a definite negative effect; most like a psychological limitation/complication. On the other hand if never (or practically never) negatively impacts me because Jane is my NPC wife who is never really placed in any danger because she remains off screen for any combat scenes or because Jane is a super powered individual and I don't give her any more backup than I would to any of the other PCs then no, to me she doesn't really have any negative impact and shouldn't be worth any points.

Does this mean my character can't be 'in love with Jane'? Not at all. He could be deeply and hoplessly in love with her. The GM could use this for all sorts of plot hooks. However, in my opinion, it shouldn't be worth any points in those cases. It is a matter of the character's personality and while Disadvantages/Complications provide some of the most defining aspects of a character's personality they are hardly the only things that define it.

Of course this is merely my take on Disadvantages/Complications. You and your GM are entitled to run them however you wish. That difference, though, is probably why we don't see eye to eye on how a character with CvK should react when facing an unknown opponent for the first time.

No, I feel free to shoot the villain because I don't play in a blood-soaked Iron Age game.  It isn't a part of the 4 color genre to have a villain go splut when he gets punched by the hero.  In our campaign world there hasn't ever been a villain who only had flight and eye lasers.  Why would you think someone would develop powers like that?  I wouldn't pull my punch on a 12D6 EB because even when you shoot a Viper agent they don't die.

 

Maybe I'll just take "Code Against Intentionally Killing" instead.

 

But I can turn the argument around.  How do you know that the villain doesn't have a fatal susceptibility to your powers?  Even if you pull your punch so it does 1/2 Body, how do you know he's not sickly with 2 PD and 5 Body, and that you won't roll really well?  That's metagaming.  I mean, in the real world people die from tasers, which are probably like a 4D6 EB.  That guy might have a heart attack if you use your illusion powers on him.  Even once you've shot the villain with low powered attacks and they've harmlessly bounced off of him, how do you know he doesn't have an activation roll on his defenses?

 

The answer?  You're counting on the GM to not screw over your character, and instead to run a game that you want to play.  I don't play games set in the real world, I play games set in a superhero universe.  One where villains don't explode when you hit them.

Well, I suppose that's fair. You want to use the logic that your hero is well enough versed that they are able to identify that pretty much anyone they are going to be attacking is able to survive a 12d6 attack (even low level thugs would only be reduced to 2 body on average, and in the case of a really bad roll they are merely reduced to negative body but you have turns and turns of time in which to stabilize them) and that even if they have to grab a .357 magnum and shoot someone there's no danger of actually killing them.

I can see your point that yes, your character is experienced, yes, they know these things, and yes, the only way you actually would wind up killing someone with such an attack would be to attack someone who is more or less a normal (agents will also fall into this category) and then have an incredibly unlikely series of events (high damage, high knockback into an obstacle and 2 failed armor rolls) or because your GM 'pulls a fast one' and sticks in someone with sub-par defenses (at which point it is the GM's fault for doing so and not your fault).

What I can't see, in this case, is how the Code vs. Killing is limiting your character. I suppose it means you can't outright murder someone who has been knocked unconcious so that they won't come back to haunt you in the future but I don't think that counts as a common situation. I'm pretty sure it doesn't count as a total commitment since you don't become "totally useless or completely irrational in the situation" (6e1 pg. 426's wording, not mine).

All I'm saying is that the character should normally have an idea of how powerful he is relative to other supers.  You know if your 12D6 EB is likely to kill someone or not.  An obviously normal mook?  Yes, it could be fatal.  The flying guy in spandex?  He'll be fine.  Killing attacks, on the other hand, are designed to kill.  Unless the person has obvious resistant defenses, you shouldn't unload with your 4D6 RKA.

I suppose my question is "why does he know that a flying guy in spandex will be fine?"

Sure, if the guy is Uberman, a known villain who bounces bullets off his chest that's one thing, but for all your character knows maybe the guy's whole power is flight. Even if he has other powers there's no immediate reason to believe that he's got defenses higher than a normal human being. There's nothing inherent in the ability to fly and project laser beams from your eyes that means that you can withstand what amounts to a very substantial car crash.

The answer is that you know because your GM isn't going to be throwing out a villain with 10 body and 4 points of applicable defense. If your GM did you would probably get angry with them because they somehow 'tricked you' into violating your CvK. You also know that the odds of you rolling 24 body on your attack are practically non-existent.

This is 'metagaming'. We all do it now and then, so don't think I'm pointing a finger and screaming 'unclean' at you. I'm just pointing it out so that maybe you might step back and go 'Hmm...good point. Unleashing a 12d6 attack on someone simply because I know he is a supervillain and will almost certainly survive it is in the same category as shooting them with a 1 1/2d6 RKA since I know that they can't be killed by it'.

I'm not taking a hardline stand and going to accuse you of 'doing it wrong'. It's a game. As long as you and your friends are having fun that's the thing that really matters. I'm just going to ask 'why did you get 20 points for a complication that seems to have very little effect?' Perhaps for your campaign the complication should be worth fewer points since it is only limiting on the occasions where you are fighting mooks and agents.

Again, this isn't saying 'you must play it my way or be declared apostate' or anything like that. All I'm trying to do is provide some food for thought. If it isn't to your liking, feel free to ignore it.

I think people are discussing different things.  I don't think Captain Overkill, with his 18D6 EB, should be unloading on Vinnie the Snitch when he tries to sneak out the back of the warehouse.  My reading of the initial question was that you encounter a villain in a costume who you've never seen before.  He's a guy in a green suit with red goggles, and his hands are glowing with yellow energy.  When he sees you, he laughs and points his hand towards you.  Do you, as a character with a code against killing, have to pull your punch when you hit him?

 

I say no.  When someone is displaying powers and/or is choosing to engage in super-level combat, it's a safe assumption that they can take a punch.  In the almost 20 years that I've been playing Champions, I've killed a villain exactly once.  I hit him, his armor failed its 14- activation roll, I rolled great on body and knockback, he slammed into a concrete barrier, his armor failed its activation again, and I rolled great damage again.  Took him to past negative Body in one shot.  Funny thing was, the other player in the game killed another villain, in the same fight, in the same phase, on the same dex.  Villain happened to have a very bad susceptibility and a vulnerability too, and he accidentally triggered them both at once.

I think that's a little too meta for me. It's sort of like saying that even though I have a code vs. killing it is ok for me to open up on him with my .357 magnum because even if he is unarmored the most body I will roll on 1 1/2d6 is 9 body so that's ok.

Of course that's just my opinion. You are completely entitled to play how you and your GM see fit. As for the GM forcing people to pull punches or roll fewer dice, I'm probably not really in favor of that, either. As a GM what I would probably do is talk to the player and tell them that if they continue to act with what appears to be a reckless disregard toward people's health they will be required to replace the complication with something else and then work out a reasonable replacement.

Esampson the power pack as an OAF is an example for christopher taylor who implied it should be OIF. And related to this, I brought up the sword ad an example of how things that seem to be an OAF could be bought differently-hence the magical sword being OIF.

 

Im sure James Bond was glad the villians parachute was bought OAF when he had to free fall after the villian to wrestle away the parachute in free fall so he wouldnt die. (Can picture the scene but not the name of the movie)

Doh! I misread that it was a power pack. For some reason I was reading that as a jet pack (and wondering why someone would have a device to help them fly so loosely attached to their body).

I think you're referring to Moonraker for the fight scene. I might be off on the movie. The issue, though, is that I'm not completely convinced that the parachute should be considered an OAF. The fight scene between Bond and the unnamed henchman is a little bit more involved than a simple 'got your parachute' grab manuever.

On the other hand the guy is also clearly concious the entire time, which I suppose leads to the fact that not everything that occurs in comic book/movies can be completely and accurately reconstructed in the Hero Games system*. There's going to be times when those lines get blurry. This is usually a bigger issue with Obvious and Inobvious in my experience (is a gun cane Obvious or Inobvious? Clearly it is the 'source' of the ability when it is in use but before that it is not clear at all) but it can certainly extend to other things like Accessible and Inaccesible foci.

*While this is an absolute truth because all you need is one thing that cannot be completely and accurately reconstructed the statement is slightly misleading. It possible to more accurately model certain events from movies and comic books by doing things like taking:

-1/2: OIF - Parachute, -1/4: Parachute can be taken away while character is still concious. Opponent must make a grab roll at which point both characters will begin to roll strength vs strength. When someone succeeds by more than 5 points they win the parachute. If people succeed by less than the amount of successes carry over to the next round of combat. Characters may elect to only hold on with one hand. This gives them a -2 penalty to their strength roll but allows them to attack instead of making the strength vs. strength roll on their action. A stunned character is at a -3 on the strength vs. strength roll.

However, that way lies inevitable madness.

I'm not quite sure I understand the problem.

A character takes CvK and gains 20 points. As a result they have some added dificulties*.

Isn't that how it is suppose to work?

*In this case it is in combat (penalties against mooks and not being able to unload on the mooks with full strength because there's a danger that they get the exact roll they need to hit and then a high body roll).

Something else to remember: You can buy skills as Special powers. You won't be able to put them into frameworks but you can certainly give them limitations such as OIF. One downside of that is that anything with a characteristic roll defaults to an 8-, but you can also do things such as skill levels in Intelligence rolls with the focus limitation.

I wouldn't do it as a compound power. Yes, they all come from the same focus and represent the AR nature of the focus but you wouldn't try and jam all of a powered suit of armor's powers (or at least the non-framework ones) into a single compound power, would you?

Then how do you explain power pack (END Battery) defined as OAF by Steve Long? Because OAF as you said in your first point referes to how it can be removed in combat not how it xan be used against you. Just like I've seen a magical sword bought as OIF cause it magical t-ports in the owners hand if its disarmed (upto 10").

I can't really comment on why Steve Long listed that as OAF. Perhaps for some reason he thought the jet pack could easily be torn off someone's back. Accessible actually doesn't have anything to do with whether the focus can be used against you. That is a completely different kettle of fish with whether the focus is personal or universal. Due to the advantages and limitations of the two sort of cancelling one another out (you can lend a universal focus to a friend, but run the danger of it being used against you) there's no cost difference between the two, however it is something that is suppose to be specified when you design a focus just like you have to specify if it is breakable and replacable or unbreakable.

I'm confused by the reference to the OIF sword. You're right that it can't be taken away and used against you, but that is because it is Inaccessible and so it is a smaller limitation than a comparable (Obvious or Inobvious) Accessible focus. Since the discussion is about what it means for a focus to be Accessible I can't figure out what mentioning an Inaccessible focus does (unless it is perhaps to illustrate that something that might look Accessible doesn't neccessarily have to be).

 The drawback is written up under the limitation "Focus," not the limitation "Unified Power." Nowhere in Unified Power does it say that a power can be broken, it only says that it can be drained. The problem comes in interpreting that all powers that come from a single device constitute "unified," no matter how loose the concept.

 

Champions is meant to be played with common sense, not "Justify Anything." That's probably the real point of this statement.

 

Plus, there's another problem. Frequency of the use of the Drain power. In campaigns where maybe one in every twenty characters has a drain power, Unified Power is an incredible cost break. In a campaign where everyone has drains, this limitation isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Yes, it is written up under Focus and not Unified power but you could just as easily place it under Unified Power and not Focus. It's the result of the two limitations acting together.

I agree though on Unified Power and the frequency of Drain. One thing that I am not overly fond of with the later editions of Champions is that I think many of the limitations that were added don't really need to be added. I think more than a few of them could quite easily have found themselves a place in the Limited Power limitation rather than getting a special category all their own. It is probably a bit Grognardy of me to think that, I realize, but sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't make it a little easier for some new players.

Anyway, there's always a certain element with limitations that should be based on the campaign. Defenses that don't shield against sorcery? Probably not worth as much in a campaign set along an interstellar adventurers setup than a campaign set with characters walking back and forth between the Here and Now and the Court of Faeries. In most cases limitations probably won't really vary in value from campaign to campaign but yeah, in the case of Unified Power there probably should have been some expansion in there regarding how common Drains are.

Again, that's 'removing armor quickly', not 'having armor grabbed away'.  Very strictly in accordance with the rules unless there's some kind of limitation or complication preventing him Tony Stark can change into and out of his armor in 1 phase and he doesn't require any extra help, but that doesn't make his armor 'accessible'. Accessible means anyone can take it away with a simple grab manuever (so again, Thor popping off the face plate doesn't really count as accessible since super strength was required).

If you were to really pin me down on how to do it in game terms I would probably look at some sort of partial multiform. Depending on where he is in the storyline of the four movies (Iron Man I-III and Avengers) he would have certain limitations on the multiform that regulated when he could change and how long it would take (in  the last movie he could just walk into and out of complete suits of armor with no additional equipment while in the first movie he almost certainly had some limitation such as extra time that made changing take more than 1 phase in addition to the fact that he could only change at certain locations).

You missed the point. Quick -on armor is the special effect of why the agent armor was OAF and hence could be removed in combat by super strong people.

If you needed to be superstrong to take it away like that it still wasn't Accessible. That's would just have been attacking the armor and overwhelming the defenses (something covered under the foci rules). To be accessible anyone needed to be able to take it off of the agents by making a successful grab action (remember, this was written before there was a Strength vs. Strength roll when grabbing foci).

In Super Agents, all of the agents armor is bought OAF. The reason is that agent armor is quick to put on in an emergency.

Which is really silly because OAF has nothing to do with how fast something can be put on. It has to do with how rapidly it can be taken away (and how obvious it is).

An 'Iron-Man'-like suite of powered armor built with the OIF Limitation arguably already has Unified-like drawbacks built in.

 

See this except from Hero System 6e1 page 379

 

 

Very arguably. That's really not a Unified-like drawback. That's breakable focus thing. If powers in a focus got drained together then you could argue that the OIF limitation is behaving in a Unified Power fashion (additionally I believe that for the purpose of a breakable foci all unified powers count as a single 'power' for the purpose of losing them when the focus takes body).

How does UP interact with the SFX of adjustment powers? Let's say you have a Human Torch style suite of fire powers, including Energy Blast, a Fire Sheath (Force Field and Damage Shield) and Flight. You face someone with a Suppress vs. Flight. Your EB and Fire Sheath are also Suppressed. If the SFX of the Suppress is strong winds from an air controller . . . OK, maybe they deprive your fire powers of enough oxygen to function properly. But what if the SFX is increasing gravity? Or a Green Lantern-eque power construct of a summoned giant ball and chain? How does 6E UP handle these kinds of interactions? Is there any kind of rule or at least a statement of GM fiat?

Well, there's always the GM fiat where the GM recognizes that an unusual combination has occured and so waves the UP, but ideally that should be fairly minimal. Strictly according to the rules the SFX don't matter. If Flight and Blast have a UP then anything draining flight should drain the Blast as well.

Personally looking at that problem what I would probably do is use it as an argument that Drain Flight is probably not the right power for the effect since it isn't actually draining a character's ability to fly. Instead it is providing a counter-force to flight so I might look at Telekinesis or something like that.

isn't this already handled by the fact that it's a limitation? If you apply it to two powers then it's only going to shave one-fifth off the points of two powers, but if you apply it to five powers then (assuming they're worth roughly the same) it's as if one of them was free.

Mmmm. Yes and no. If you've spent more points then yes, the limitation saves more points as well, but that's neccessarily a good indicator that the limitation is functioning properly. Instead, look at it this way:

If I spend 100 points on 2 powers and I take the UP limitation I save just as many points as if I spend 100 points on 5 powers. There's no difference in how many points I save (or nearly no difference. There might be a small difference that occurs because of rounding). However I would asset that the first example is much less limited than the second. In the first example if I am hit with a drain I lose 2x the amount of the drain. In the second example I lose 5x the amount of the drain.

There's also an issue with the fact that in the first example a drain is less likely to affect a specific power with UP.  Let's assume for a minute that in both examples there is a power that costs 50 points. In the first example that means the second power is also 50 points while in the second example the 50 points is divided up among 4 other powers. In either case the 50 point power saves the exact same amount, however, in the first example there is only 1 other power that can be targetted that will cause it to be drained while in the second example there are 4 separate powers that could be targeted that would cause it to be drained. That, to me, sounds as though the second example deserves more points back than the first power.

I am glad that 6e got rid of Elemental Controls. They were a box stuffer and a PITA for everyone.

 

Unified Power is a nice Limitation that allows for the stuff that EC's did, but also gives powers with it a real limitation(ie you drain one UP power, you drain them all)

 

Multipowers give a list of powers and a pool and say that you can only have that many points of powers active at once. IMHO that's a real limitation.

I'm actually happy with EC being gone as well.

As near as I can tell EC was originally intended to be a sort of 'your powers make sense in relation to one another' bonus. You were a gravity controller and could justify your telekinesis, flight, etc. as being reasonable aspects of your ability to control gravity and so you got a bonus.

The only thing is that it always seemed to me that you were simply getting a bonus for doing what you should have already been doing; having a good concept. If someone wanted to bring to me a character who had flight 'because he was an alien' I would usually just say 'no'. Now you want to tell me how your alien physiology gives you flight and it is reasonable (and reasonable in this case is comic-book-reasonable) then it's fine.

On the other hand if your abilities are really suppose to be tied together (the same organ that lets me channel energy so I can fly also lets me channel energy to attack) then yes, UP is a nice new way to do it. The only thing I would have probably done with UP is make it so it isn't as much of an 'all or nothing' thing. A UP that unites 2 powers shouldn't be worth as much as one that unites 5 and there wouldn't be nearly the concern of abuse if someone wants to have multiple UPs (my Flight, FTL, Swimming, and Leaping are all UP because they all use my rockets and anything screwing up one of them screws up the others. On the other hand my Blast, Killing Attack, and Flash attach all come from my photonic emitter and while messing up any of them messes up the other powers as well they are completely independent of my rockets).

Reminds me of a quote from one of our old, old games:

I apologize if you find me to be a bit overbearing, but I get 20 points for it.

 

There is a penalty for not having the recommended amount of Complications for the campaign you're in, but that's not the same as getting points by taking Complications.The penalty is just a psychological tool to get a certain kind of player to want to take complications at all. No matter how many Complications you take you will never have more points than the GM gave you to start with. A 400 point character with 150 points of complications still only has 400 points to play with. Complications never add to your point total. They don't give points.

. . .

Mathematically speaking there is no difference between "400 points with 75 points in Complications" and "325 points with up to 75 points in Disadvantages" (I use Disadvantages in the second sentence merely to make it clear that it is working in the older fashion). If you take 150 points in Disadvantages you would still only have 400 points to play with.

There is a minor psychological impact in the new wording of it but it really has no more effect than you get from changing Disadvantages on powers to Limitations.

I do like the fact that the limit is much lower. It use to be that characters felt the real need to scrape up twice as many points (100 point characters with 150 points in Disadvantages) and so you very often had Disadvantages that were pretty clearly added for points rather than being part of the character concept.

If I, as a GM, had to deal with this what I would probably assume is that those are the defenses for the machine proper (i.e. that's what you need to do to make the machine non-functional). I would have to guess that in a post-metahuman world the money would be locked up in something with the defenses of a safe which is most likely set into the ground and when the ATM is used money is fed from the 'safe' into the machine. If someone is strong enough to just grab the machine and rip it out of the wall and run off with it the money remains behind, safe and locked up. It won't stop everyone but it should provide a fair amount of extra security for a moderate price.

Of course this is a world where there is enough metahuman presence to warrant such a thing yet not enough metahuman presence to merit (or provide) stronger defenses. It is quite conceivable to have worlds where the metahuman presence is so low (something akin to Rising Stars, the Elementals, or the 4400 or Alphas with stronger special abilities than were exhibited in those shows) there wouldn't be any real change or worlds where the metahuman presence is so high (City of Heroes, PS238) that there might be radical changes (super alloys and force fields to protect the machines, metahuman guards, etc.).