psyber624

Like any other system you have to take your players into consideration. If they are powergamers, or just xp hungry it will be another way for them to break the system. If they aren't and they like the feel of it then it can work. I will say that limiting players to 1 Complication per category is something I would never do. You are restricting creativity of your players without actually doing anything to prevent them from choosing a bunch of weak complications. You can get nearly pointless complications in nearly every category to EASILY get to whatever Matching Complication goal you have. If you have a problem with your players buying nothing but weak psychological complications some better methods might be 1. Restrict the number of points available per category to force them to buy more than just Psychological Complications, 2. Change your system of xp so that the xp awarded is based on the severity of the complication (if you want cheap meaningless complications you wont be getting any xp, only the big ones are worth any) Of course you can always exercise GM Fiat and turn down any character if you feel they are not appropriate to your campaign. If you don't like seeing lots of cheap Psych Coms tell your players that those concepts wont fly and then turn down their characters if they insist on submitting them like that. Limiting people to one complication in a category, however, punishes players that have good, justifiable, and interesting character concepts while not really punishing the people that are trying to cheese the system. Of course that just my opinion.

There are other considerations to that method however. As movement is now turn based instead of phase based you can get into trouble quite easily. You cannot change your direction of travel or speed unless you have a phase to do so, therefore if someone throws up a barrier in front of your planned path during a segment in which you don't have a phase you will run into it and possibly take damage or suffer other consequences. This may be more "realistic" but is certainly not as "heroic". Of course this can be mediated if a GM allows by allowing you to abort to change your movement. Another consideration is that while again it is more "realistic" realize that you can no longer move anywhere NEAR as far in a Phase as you could with normal movement. In standard movement if I start 6m away from my target on my phase (with normal running) I can make a half move and attack with my second action this phase. With Turn based movement my half move is only .5m per phase so if my opponent is 6m away from me I will have to move at full move velocity for 6 segments or at half move for a full turn in order to reach him and connect. This is a VERY bad thing for melee oriented characters and unless your GM does something to fix this (such as REcoupling SPD and MOVE during gameplay so that you can at least move MOVE/SPD/2 per phase as a half phase action) melee gets punished while ranged has less issues to deal with. So your SPD should probably be cheaper, but in the alternate system, its not. In the RAW system it is cheaper because you are selling back part of the benefit that a higher SPD would grant you, which is appropriate.

Exactly. Expanded Effect doesn't increase the POWER of the Drain, it increases its scope. All advantages will increase the AP cost of a power but only a handful will also enable the increased cost power to deal with defenses better (AP, AVAD, NND, Penetrating off the top of my head). All the other advantages make the power better in some other fashion without increasing its effect against defenses. And that is how it should be otherwise you easily get into abuses with really cheap Base costs (like a 1d6 Drain) that then tack on huge advantages. If you want to handle defenses better buy more dice or one of the advantages listed above. And yes, a 12 PD can negate a 100 AP punch if you just keep adding advantages to the punch that don't affect defenses.

Not really, don't forget that the cost of the advantage basically is allowing you to use a Drain against ALL the powers of that sfx at once, so the cost needs to be similar to buying the powers individually. If you bought for instance Drain Energy Blast 2d6, Drain Force Field 2d6, Drain Entangle 2d6, etc. etc. etc. seperately each one of them would be affected by the targets PwD individually. The cost of the advantage is STILL cheaper than buying all the relevant Drains individually, so there is no cause for PwD to be limited vs that attack. The reason its expensive is because of the range of abilities, NOT because you have a more powerful drain, if you want your Drain to be more powerful then you buy more dice, you shouldn't get extra effect just because you are also getting to affect a bunch of abilities at once.

First off your math is wrong, 324kmph is 1080 m/TURN. there are 5 turns in a minute (a turn is 12 seconds long) so you divide 5400 m/min by 5, not by 60. Secondly, what he is saying is first you look at "Top Speed". That is your Non-combat speed. Then you determine how much of that you want to be Combat Speed and how much you want Non-combat. Non-combat speed is MUCH MUCH cheaper than Combat Speed but you are at 0 OCV and 1/2 DCV while moving Non-combat (so you aren't as good in a fight) and generally penalties will apply to driving/piloting rolls if you encounter trouble while moving NCM. For instance, for your goose you have a top speed of 1080m a turn. If you go with SPD 3 your top speed per phase is 360m (1080/3). Now, you could buy that normally as 180m Flight (with the default x2 NCM multiple) giving you your 360m per phase, but that is going to cost you 180 points. Ouch. Another option however is to pick a much smaller Combat Movement speed and buy your NCM multiple up (double your NCM for +5 points so you get x2 for free, x4 for 5 points, x8 for 10 points, x16 for 15 pts, etc). In this case x8 is a common multiplier for planes and that means you buy (360/8) 45m of flight (45pts) with x8 NCM (+10pts) and now your movement only cost you 55pts instead of 180. Of course if you go more than 45m in a phase your at 0 OCV and 1/2 DCV so its not recommended in a dogfight, but you still got your top speed in there. Of course you can choose any multiple you wish when designing your own vehicles. Its all about a balance between cost and versatility. Oh, and a quick bit of help for you, to convert kmph into meters per turn, divide by .3 (so 324/.3=1080 meters per turn). You can also use miles per hour if you prefer by dividing by .186 (200 miles per hour / .186 gives you 1075 meters per turn) the miles per hour is just an approximation but its really close and should be more than sufficient for most needs. Then you divide that result by your SPD to get meters per phase and there ya go Edit: Also note that combat movement affects how fast you accelerate and decelerate if you have a GM that deals with that. You can accelerate up to your combat movement per phase (same for deceleration) so if you have x8 NCM it will take you 8 phases (almost 3 TURNS or nearly 36 seconds) for your plane to reach top speed, and JUST as long to decelerate if you are traveling top speed. (Well, technically you can decelerate alot faster than that if you REALLY want to, but that is usually referred to as CRASHING!)

Vehicle movement basically works nearly identically to normal movement. IE you buy your combat move in meters and as part of that you get a "Non-combat move" that is x2 of what your combat move is. So if you buy 20m of running (for 8 pts since you start with 12 for free) you can move 40m in a phase if you go NCM, however when moving NCM you are automatically 0 OCV and 1/2 DCV (unless you use the optional Velocity based DCV rules). Note that this "zeroing" is generally the last step in the calculation so whenever you are moving NCM your OCV is 0 and you can't increase that without GM's Permission in some way. The really nice part about NCM tho is that you can DOUBLE your rate for a measly +5 points, so for 5 points you get 4x your combat movement, for 10 you get 8x, for 15 you get 16x, etc. etc. As you can see this REALLY starts to add up quickly and cheaply and is therefore frequently used for vehicular movement because you can get your "top speed" ALOT cheaper this way. For instance, if you want to simulate a vehicle that can go 200mph you need a whopping 1075m of movement a turn. Even with a SPD of 5 thats 215m of movement which, for combat move would cost you 203 points! If your SPD is lower it gets even worse! However if you think about it as "Combat Speed" and "Non-combat Speed" then its ALOT cheaper. You could buy 20m per phase (for 8 points), this is how fast you go if you are in a fighting situation (for SPD 5 thats just shy of 20mph) or traveling over rough ground. However if you want a "top speed" of 200 mph you can buy x16 NCM for only 15 points, making the total cost only 23 points for your movement, and now if you are going Full Out your able to reach well over 200mph with this vehicle (again assuming a SPD of 5). And at only 23 points compared to the 203 points it would cost you to move at 200mph for Combat movement Now, for the question about how SPD works into this it can be a little confusing if you are new to the system. When you buy your movement that is how far you can move in a PHASE. Your SPD determines how many PHASES you get in a TURN (12 seconds). Now granted, you aren't moving the full distance on your phase, sitting still waiting for the next phase to come around, and then jerking forward a full move again but for the sake of ease of play that is how its modeled by HERO (Note there are optional rules for Segmented Movement for vehicles that you can use if you prefer, but I am just going to go over the Basic RAW). Therefore a vehicle with Running 20m with SPD 3 moves 60m a Turn (3 phases of 20m movement each). A vehicle with 20m Runnning and a SPD of 5 however moves 100m a Turn, and is therefore faster. Its a bit counter intuitive at first but shouldn't be too hard to wrap your head around once you get some practice with it. And don't forget, SPD affects your Maneuverability as well (which is why it is important). You can only take an action such as change your direction of travel, accelerate, decelerate, or stop during one of your phases so a vehicle with a low SPD is less able to adapt to a changing environment than one with a high SPD (of course the Driver is the limiting factor here, if his SPD isn't as high as the vehicles SPD then he can't use all of its maneuverability). To try and make it easier to understand think of SPD as response time for the vehicle. A highly tuned, well oiled machine can turn on a dime, navigating the most treacherous course you can put it in, but a slow clunker can't make all the hairpin turns and quick jukes that the high performance vehicle can. And a Professional Driver (with high SPD) can take advantage of that but Joe Blow (with Normal SPD) can't, the car could do it but he just can't get all out of the car that it has to give him. Edit: While replying to your other thread I realized I forgot to add this tidbit in about movement so copying it here since its also relevant to this discussion: Also note that combat movement affects how fast you accelerate and decelerate if you have a GM that deals with that. You can accelerate up to your combat movement per phase (same for deceleration) so if you have x8 NCM it will take you 8 phases (almost 3 TURNS or nearly 36 seconds) for your plane to reach top speed, and JUST as long to decelerate if you are traveling top speed. (Well, technically you can decelerate alot faster than that if you REALLY want to, but that is usually referred to as CRASHING!)

There is some truth to this, but it obfuscates the fact that there are many more ways to be "effective" in combat than just delivering a lot of damage and/or Stunning or KO'ing the opponent. People focus too much on blasting and not enough on being useful. A lower-damage character can block to protect teammates or civilians, they can throw opponents to the ground to set them up for the heavy hitters, they can leak just enough STUN through to prevent the opponent from getting his Recovery, they can figure out how to steal or disable the Evil McGuffin, they can engage the mooks who are slowing down the team's heavy hitters. As a rule of thumb low damage characters compensate for doing less damage per Phase by having more Phases to act, unusual powers, and/or by being ignored by the Big Bad because "they're harmless." Anyone think Black Widow or Captain America were "ineffective" in The Avengers movie? Should players only want to run Iron Man, Thor, or Hulk wannabes? I've been playing the "low-damage" character in our campaign, Sil'f, for nearly 21 years, and I can guarantee nobody in our gaming group would even remotely categorize Sil'f as ineffective. On more than one occasion she's been the only team member still standing during a fight, including a notable one against Eurostar about 10 years ago which we discussed on this forum. As I noted above, our team's damage spread goes from 9d6 to 17d6 (with an average of about 13d6) and yet everyone seems to have plenty of fun. And that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it? Don't get me wrong, I am sure with a great group and an awesome GM it can work just fine. And there are many other things to do other than damage in a fight as you point out. I just don't feel that a 9d6 attack would be worth the points in a game with attacks running up to 17 dice all things being equal. They just wouldn't be useful enough to justify the cost is all I am saying. And then on the flip side without caps how do you reign in someone who just wants to dump all their points into one mega attack? If you limit them as a GM then you actually DO have some sort of a cap in mind, your just not spelling it out to your players as such. If not then hopefully you are lucky enough to have a group of players that don't get into the power game at all.

I would only observe that IME Ironclad is also a fairly puny brick defense-wise - almost what we'd call a "demi-brick. In the 30 years I've been playing Champions I've seen plenty of MAs with PD and ED in the 23 range. We didn't usually consider someone a "true" brick until both his PD/ED and CON were in the upper end of the 20s or low 30's and/or he slapped on some Damage Reduction. His STUN is good, as is his REC, but he definitely suffers from low defenses. On this I agree 100%. While in our campaign our brick comfortably rules the roost damage-wise with 17d6 (85 STR), her defenses against ED attacks is actually slightly lower (31/28r) than our primary Energy Projector, and the EB is our second most powerful on the attack. But the EB falls vastly short in the CON and STUN departments. Your observation of the result of damage caps mirrors our experience precisely. When we started our MidGuard campaign in 1992 we imposed caps (12 DC) and every single PC did 11 or 12 DC's. When we relaxed them with the release of 5E the damage range spread from 10 to 15 DC's. Currently it's from 9d6 (The 9d6 character can also apply AP or PEN advantages to the 9d6 by burning triple the usual END, so the effective low end is probably around 11DC.) to 17d6. Everybody seems happier with this spread. The problem I have with that is that even without caps the range from non-effective to effective to super effective is actually quite narrow in the HERO System and the difference of a few dice can really shift things. For instance in a "standard" campaign (what I have seen from here so far) with 12d6 being the standard cap 9d6 attacks (without mitigating advantages like NND or AP) are barely able to affect most people. On the other hand 15d6 is almost a guaranteed Stunned result on anything that has a chance of being stunned at 12d6. Every die of damage adds 3.5 pts of damage to the average roll and because of the way defenses and stunning work in this system each additional die is more effective than the last meaning without a system in place which increases the cost of additional dice of damage the "effective" range of attacks is actually quite narrow. In the comics this is quite common, but in a game system unless you are running almost diceless the effect is that some players are nearly useless in combat while others are overly effective. Rarely do gamers want to play the "Wasp" or the "Jubilee" type characters partnered with "Thor" or "Cyclops" types. Even if combat isn't the focus of a campaign combat takes FAR more time relative to other activities and can easily leave combat-ineffective characters bored or restless during the stretches of time in which it does happen. I am not saying it can't be done that way successfully, just that it is far more difficult to do.

Technically almost any Comic Book Superhero without stated government sanctions would be arrested on ANY number of violations during their superheroing careers. And WW's origin story is not the first or only one to add additional reasons why a hero might be illegal. It's just one of the things that comics generally ignore unless the authors feel like trotting it out for a plot or two.

Definitely true, but the other side of the coin is also true as well. Limitations (and to a lesser extent disadvantages) are there as a creative way for a player to describe powers and build in plot hooks into their characters as well as give their characters some internal conflicts to resolve (instead of purely external conflicts) NOT to enable a player to build overpowered abusive characters and then either complain when the GM tells them the character doesn't fly, or cry foul when their Limitations come up in play. For every Bad GM there is a Bad Player, that street runs both ways. Sorry just a sore point for me as I have had to deal with this on more than one occasion.

If we go by the general guidelines that I have seen in these forums quite frequently two bricks slugging it out would definitely be able to KO each other. Published materials may differ somewhat but it is hard to determine because they don't seem to subscribe to any specific "basis" or powerlevel but bounce around quite a bit (not a complaint, just a comment. A GM can always adjust a published character to be appropriate to his/her campaign). But for an example lets take a look at the Brick from the Champions: Ironclad. For reference here are his stats (from CC). STR 60, DEX 18, CON 30, OCV 7, DCV 6, SPD 5, PD 25/23r, ED 25/23r, REC 20, END 60, BODY 15, STUN 60, 4 CSL's w/HTH Attacks: Normal: 12d6 HTH(STR Punch) Sword: 4d6 HKA (after STR) Note that I only included the combat specific stats here. Against himself he does a respectable average of 17 stun with a normal punch, 24 if he puts all his CSL's into damage. He has 5 phases a turn and would likely land about half the blows he threw (depending of course on what his clone did) so he would average SOMEWHERE around 40-50 STUN Damage a turn. He recovers 20 of that, but only has 60 STUN so it would probably take around 2-3 turns for one of the combatants to get laid out. His HKA would be a complete waste of time however because his Resistant Defenses are so high, but he is still capable of being knocked out, although stunned is rather unlikely (a Haymaker is far to unlikely to land against himself in a 1 on 1 fight and so would be a VERY bad tactical choice). Of course one thing to note is that this is one of the VERY few published Heroes out there. There are TONS of villains, but in most cases villains are designed to go up against a TEAM of heroes and so likely need higher defenses to keep them in a fight longer. If the team can take out Grond or the like in one hit then there isn't much of a challenge there. As far as the general guidelines I have seen around here Bricks are usually not any more damaging than any other archetype (esp if there are power level caps) 14d6 EB's are about as common and 70 STR bricks. The difference is that Bricks rely on being able to take hits (and don't worry much about DCV therefore) while Energy Projectors rely on DCV + Range Mod and Speedsters/MA rely on DCV + Aborting to stay standing in a fight. The only MAJOR difference I have seen is that bricks tend to be very hard to do BODY damage to compared to the others, but again that is likely because they will be getting hit by KA's alot more often than other archetypes and so any BODY they did take could quickly become a problem.

From a power perspective all they would need would be LS: Immunity to whatever you want them to be immune to (and it would be up to you and a GM to determine how broad the immunity would be and what it would therefore cost.) Other than that a few Disadvantages such as "Distinguishing Features: Bleeds Ink" and Physical Limitation "Resistant to Normal Medical Practices (-3 to all appropriate skill checks)" would probably cover it. The rest is just background info that doesn't really translate in any way to a game mechanic.

Actually 6e1 has a limitation for Mind Control CALLED Set Effect that does just that. 6e1 257

There are many, many examples of Limitations like this that are "GM Centric". Pretty much any form of the Limited Power works this way ("Doesn't work in magnetic fields, Doesn't work at night, Only works in water", etc etc etc), Gestures, Incantations, Concentration (Partially), Restrainable, Unified Power, as well as MANY MANY others. All of these Limitations require the GM to actually MAKE them limitations. If the GM never causes them to be limiting then they never are and are essentially "free" points for the player and therefore not fair to the players that chose to use "Game Centric" Limitations instead (things like Charges, Linked, Increased END, etc that have no real GM input required for them to be limiting). Forbidding Focus as a limitation really doesn't change the GM's job as much unless you remove ALL GM Centric Limitations. You still have to make them actually be limiting. If FireGuy buys all his powers with "Doesn't work in extreme cold" then you aren't really being fair if he NEVER has to fight in the Frozen North or face off against an Ice Power guy. He is getting the points for free just like the OIF guy. A special mention does frequently need to be made here on the OAF limitation tho. I warn my players against this one. It is a VERY common (to the point of being overused) limitation with a huge value (-1). I make sure they realize that every opponent with a lick of combat sense (which I take to be anything from an above average INT to skills like tactics, teamwork, etc) will understand the tactical advantage to be gained by targeting such a character with Disarms, Entangles, etc. Many "competent" villain groups (VIPER for instance LOVES this tactic) will frequently start a battle by trying to disarm someone with OAF. If a player is basically useless without his OAF I make sure he understands that this is going to FREQUENTLY be a problem for him (and even if he isn't useless it does paint a really big target on his chest). I then of course explain the other options. Of course in this situation "Disarmed" is frequently a temporary state as all they have to do is recover their Focus, so even if it tends to come up frequently its not as limiting to them as say "loosing" their IIF Amulet or getting their OIF Armor ripped off which balances the frequency out a bit. (I also generally don't have focus be damaged by disarm attempts. Only attacks that actually TARGET a Focus, taking a huge "Called Shot" penalty to do so, actually have a chance to damage/destroy one, and these attacks rarely wind up disarming the focus if they fail to destroy it unless the power build is designed to do so in some way (or it makes good dramatic sense for it to happen that way). ) I have encountered a few players that don't really understand that Focus is a LIMITATION, not a SPECIAL EFFECT. Just because something is a physical item doesn't mean it HAS to be a Focus, or OIAID, or Physical Manifestation, or anything else. Nor does it mean that you have to have a "special" weapon/armor/whatever in order to skip these limitations. If you want a sword that you just never seem to loose, just buy it normally with no points. You don't HAVE to take a Focus limitation on it, you don't HAVE to rationalize it as "Magic Sword that always returns to my hand". Your sword just never gets disarmed. "Sword" just becomes the Special Effect of the power (RKA, HA, whatever) the same way a Blaster might pick "Fire" as his special effect and that's all that really matters. Its not calling something a Sword/Pistol/Wand/whatever that makes it disarmable/destroyable/removeable. Its the GAME EFFECT of the limitation.

Personally if I want to build a Superhero Martial Artist I really prefer to create my own martial art as well. It adds a far more unique flavor to the character than being "just another karate/kung fu guy" although there are plenty of other ways to make a character stand out as well (I also really like the HSMA rules for building Martial Arts and enjoy playing with them.) For STR I think 20 is best unless we are going with a Hybrid MA of some sort. One of the key features of the archetype is the Skill vs Raw STR aspect of it and if you start boosting a characters STR you start to loose that essential aspect of what makes a MA an MA and not just a Melee Fighter. You get your Damage from +DC's or +HA (depending on the style). Possibly even from weapons although you have to be careful of becoming a Weaponmaster instead. Dex needs to be high. Just shy of speedster levels. 25-30 at least. Martial Artists are all about SKILL and so having a good Dex roll is really characteristic of them. SPD needs to be at least 6, maybe more. ANY DCV based defense archetype needs to have high SPD to be competitive due to the necessity of Aborting to survive. Even if you are going with higher defenses most of the "genre" norms for high Def MA would still be really fast (I am thinking cyborg Ninja here for example).

Definitely true, and don't forget the most basic of Hero Mantras: Design for Effect, not SFX. I.E. What in game effect are you wanting your vehicle to have, then pick the power/ability that best represents that effect, modify it with Adv/Lim to make it feel more "vehicle-y" and go from there. I was going to touch on that a bit more when I got around to adding in gear but I just haven't had the time to do that yet.

Actually the DEF for the tires in that scenario is AP/5 so the faster the movement the better the armor on the tires. Of course you could go OAF Fragile and make them 1 DEF if you want to.

Based on the OP's post I really don't get why 0 End would not be used. That is effectively what you are doing. If he never has to worry about END then he never has any. Unless you are SPECIFICALLY looking for a cheaper route for the same effect (which seems cheesy to me). The only thing that makes sense to me would be a setup where there is a particular power (say running, or maybe an innate Blast) that normally requires END (so it affects the use of all of his other abilities) but if he doesn't have enough END to pay for this power he can still use it. For that I would use a Naked 0 END advantage, with a limitation that it only applies when the character doesn't have enough END to pay for the power (say -1 if it is a main power and he has other powers/abilities he would want to make use often.) As an example of this sort of thing take a Blaster who has a Force Field that is Persistent. Having the Force Field up while he has End drains him, reducing the amount of Fire Blasts he can shoot, but when he runs out of END while he cant shoot any more he can still keep the Force Field up as long as he wants to (I would rank this about -1 in this scenario, reverse it to make the Blast the 0 END and it would probably be only -1/2).

Okay here we go. Spy Car Vehicle Building Example!! (Note that I am not entirely familiar with the submarine lotus so I may not include everything in this build but it should give you a starting point). Step 1. Size. Well, we all know that any good Spycar has to be a sleek, sexy sportscar to start with so I check the Vehicle Size Table and come up with size 3. That costs me 15 pts and gives me the following: Length 4m, Width 2m, Height 2m. Vol 16m3. OCV +2, STR 25 KB -3 BODY 13. Decent Start. Current Cost: 15 pts Step 2: Stats: STR- This is a 2 seater so it needs to carry at least 200kg (2 people). I also plan to kit this baby out with extra armor plating and lots of weapons and while I don't necessarily have to account for all that (unless my GM is a stickler) I want to be fairly accurate so I want to ensure this baby can easily handle up to 500kg of weight. Checking the STR chart I note that this means I need at least 23 STR. Great, my size 3 gets 25 to start so i can easily handle that. No need to buy more. DEX- This is a sports car. It should handle like a dream. Any normal human driver should be able to handle this baby as well as they can and the car should never get in the way of this. Therefore i want DEX 20 for my Spy Car. If this was a Supers Campaign I would probably pay to make sure my spycar had the same DEX I did so that I could get the full benefit of my Combat Driving Skill, but this build is for a more "generic" Spy Car so DEX 20 should be fine. We start with 10 DEX for free and its 2 pts per DEX so DEX 20 will cost 20 pts. Current Cost: 35 pts. BODY- Size 3 gives me a 13 BODY. I plan to armor up my vehicle a bit so I don't have to sweat small arms fire, but bad guys love their rockets and since I don't want to wind up dying before I have a chance to know what I am up against I decide to boost my BODY by quite a bit. That way if they are packing something serious I can have time to abandon ship instead of worrying about crashing while moving 100mph. 25 BODY should be fine. That will cost me 12 pts. Current Cost: 47 pts DEF- Any good Spycar should be Bullet Proof. Normal Firearms generally do about RKA 2d6 so 7 DEF would make me highly resistant and only lucky shots would do anything to me. Of course this is a spy car and I expect to face some serious opposition so I bump it up to 10 DEF to be safe. However, energy weapons are far less common in this spy world so to save some points i go with 10 rPD/6 rED. We start with 2/2 and it costs 3 points for every two points so this costs me 18 pts. Current Cost: 65 pts OCV/DCV- I plan to have onboard weaponry (some forward machine guns and heat seeking missles/torpedoes) so I need to make sure my OCV is high enough to make them worth using. Again this build is assuming a skilled human will be driving/firing the weapons so I am not planning on having to match any superhuman abilities here. Skilled Human means OCV 5-6 should be plenty and I decide to go with 6. We start with OCV 3 so its 15 pts to bump that up to 6. Hawkeye (from marvel) might not like shooting our machine gun but it should be just fine against standard spyfare badguys. For DCV size 3 means we are already at +2 to our opponents OCV so if we want to be able to dodge attacks it is going to cost us. Of course every good spy movie features a chase scene with vehicles dodging missile fire, swerving to avoid collapsing buildings and such so I decide I want the same and go with DCV 6 as well. That's another 15 points. Of course if someone "less" skilled is driving/firing these points would be a waste but the character that is buying this should have at least OCV/DCV 6 himself (at least I am assuming this is so) so the points are worth it to me. Current Cost: 95 pts. SPD- A spy car should have good handling. Again however the pilot is going to be a skilled human so I go with SPD 4 to match the pinnacle of Normal Human. We start with 2 for free so this costs me another 20 pts. Current Cost: 115 pts. Movement- Now we are at the important part. How fast can this baby go? I want my sportscar going flat out to be about as fast as a car can go so i decide 200 mph should be plenty for my top speed. Doing some math tells me that is about 320 kmph. 320 kmph means i need about 1066m per turn (5 turns in a min x 60 mins in an hour). Im going to bump that to 1200m per turn (for easier math) and that means i need a whopping 300m per phase with a SPD of 4. Now that is going to get expensive so I decide I am going to go with a LOT of NCM Multiples to keep costs reasonable. If i go with a 40m Combat move, x8 NCM will give me 320m NCM so we will go with that. That means my final top Speed will be 384 kmph/238 mph. That is going to cost 38 pts. I decide to go with Armored Tires so I apply OAF (-1) (giving them 8 rPD/rED, this may sound odd as the vehicle has less ED but remember if they take even 1 BODY damage they will be destroyed). I also consider apply a Continuing Fuel Charge, however since I want to be able to drive more than an hour at a time this would be no limitation so I ignore it. That gives me a final cost of 19 points, but I want this to be a super spy car and so I double the number of Foci (for 5 points) and state that the SFX is self reinflating tires. The first time my tires get popped they will reinflate on their own and I can keep driving (although I will probably need a Combat Driving roll to retain control of the car during that time). Final cost 24 points. Of course this is also a submersible spy car, so I want to boost my swimming a bit and go for 20m of swimming costing me 8 pts. Im not fast underwater but i can still go there. Current Cost: 147 pts. thats the basics. I still need to add some LS's, an autopilot, missiles and machineguns and more, but I am out of time right now so I will be back later to do that!.

Okay I am going to try and post a bit of a vehicle building guide here for you tcabril. Hopefully it will be helpful. So lets do this step by step. Step 1. Size - How big do you want your vehicle to be? There is a size chart on 6e2 187 or CC 162 that will tell you what each "size" costs. Size determines the actual size of the vehicle (dimensions) as well as its starting STR and BODY. It also makes the vehicle "easier" to hit by providing attackers a bonus to their OCV (the OCV + Column). To determine what size your vehicle should be you should look at the Examples next on the chart and pick the one that is closest to what you are trying to build. Your size needs to be large enough to carry its passengers (each passenger is 2x1x1 so needs a total of 2 cubic meters space as a minimum) but there is also alot of extra volume needed (for engines, armor, controls, etc) but you don't really need to worry much about that. Also note that while the LxWxH are listed for each vehicle as a guideline its the Volume that the price is actually based on so you can vary the numbers for LxWxH if you want as long as you are paying for the total volume listed. Step 2. Stats - Your vehicles stats work similarly to a characters stats but you have fewer to deal with. STR- Your vehicles STR is most important for determining its carrying capacity, ie how much can it carry around (and therefore how many passengers/much cargo). Refer to 6e1 43 or CC 14 for the table to determine the STR you need for the number of passengers. Note that STR is NOT linear. Every Passenger weighs about 100 kg so a 1 passenger vehicle (such as a bike) needs a min of STR 10 but 4 passengers only increases that to STR 20 and 8 passengers would only need STR 25. Generally speaking if the size is large enough to carry the passengers the base STR from buying that Size is enough and you only need more STR if you plan to carry passengers that weigh more than normal (such as from Density Increase or various disadvantages) or you want to build something that can haul/tow a lot of weight. DEX- Represents the maneuverability of the vehicle. What's important to note is that the operator of a vehicle has to use the LOWER of his Dex or the vehicle's Dex for any Dex based rolls while operating the vehicle (Generally Combat Driving/Piloting rolls but others may apply). So buying a vehicle with a Dex higher than the operator is somewhat of a waste, but putting a high Dex driver in a low Dex vehicle can be frustrating to him (its just not responsive enough for him). BODY- works the same as it does for Characters. When a vehicle is reduced to 0 Body it is destroyed. DEF- Vehicles have DEF just like characters. It is automatically Resistant and unless you apply a limitation it will also add to the rPD/rED of any passengers inside the vehicle. You can also choose to buy it with various limitations to create a vehicle with different "armor" from different sides, for instance a tank might have 15 rPD/rED normally, but buy an additional 5 rPD/rED for its forward 60 degree arc to represent enhanced forward plating. OCV/DCV- Similar to DEX anyone firing any "onboard weapons" on a vehicle are limited to the LOWER of their OCV or the vehicles OCV. If they are firing their own weapons/abilities they can use their own OCV. Also, when the vehicle is shot at a MOVING vehicle is limited to the LOWER of the Drivers DCV or the Vehicles DCV (and generally the driver can't use CSL's to adjust his up). Many vehicles wind up selling back their DCV because its pretty easy to hit a large target (unless you are using the optional Velocity Based DCV rules, in which case do not forget that attackers still get their OCV+ as determined by the vehicles size). SPD- SPD is a bit different. Unless you buy your movement with an advantage ALL vehicle movement has a turn mode so a vehicles SPD is very important. Of course it also affects the actual movement speed of the vehicle just like it does for characters (SPD x NCM Movement x .3 = max speed in km/h) If the driver has a different SPD than the vehicle he has to hold his action to operate at the same SPD/Dex as the vehicle, otherwise on that phase the vehicle can only move in the same direction it ended its previous phase and at the same rate it was moving at the end of its previous phase. To turn, slow down, speed up, etc the driver MUST be able to take an action at that time to control the vehicle. If the driver has a higher SPD he can take other actions on phases that the vehicle doesn't have (possibly requiring a Combat Driving roll or the like to be successful depending on what he is trying to do). Because of this SPD directly reflects the handling of a vehicle, and how well it can turn/maneuver in combat. Movement- Vehicles start with the same movement as a character and can purchase any additional modes/amounts of movements they want, just like a character. Note that ALL forms of vehicle movement have a turn mode by default (and don't get a limitation for this) unless you buy them with the "No Turn Mode" advantage. Now any of the above stats can be bought with a variety of advantages/limitations although not all are normal. Movement especially is often bought with various advantages/disadvantages to better represent the type of movement (such as OAF for wheels as mentioned earlier, or Fuel charges to represent limited range). There are far too many possible combinations to go over here. At this point you have your basic vehicle built. This represents everything you need to build a standard version of a vehicle. Next up is the special stuff. Step 3: Equipment- First off in the equipment step you should look at anything your vehicle does to protect its passengers. Does it have an internal atmosphere (submarine, Space Shuttle, etc)? then you need LS: Self Contained Breathing. Does it allow them to safely enter dangerous Environments? LS: Safe Environment (as appropriate). These are bought as powers just like you would for a character and automatically apply to anyone inside the vehicle. Next you need to look at resources. Does the vehicle have a computer? An Autopilot? Does it have any lab spaces? anything that the vehicle can provide to its passengers should be purchased here as normal. If it is a skill anyone inside the vehicle can use the skill (just like in a base). Finally you have weapons. Any weapons you buy for the vehicle can either be fired by a passenger or buy an onboard computer/autopilot. Don't forget that any weapons bought AS PART of the vehicle will use the LOWER of the vehicles or the firer's OCV. Step 4: Disadvantages- This is where you can take some steps to reduce the "cost" of your vehicle. Unlike characters vehicles have no starting Disadvantage requirements and you don't have to purchase any if you don't want to, but any you do buy will reduce the vehicles cost. Step 5: Pay for it. Add up all the costs of the Size, Stats, and Equipment. Subtract Disadvantages. Divide by 5. This is how many Character points your Character(s) will have to pay to be able to use the vehicle they have designed. Some groups may have multiple players "chip in" points so that everyone is helping to pay for it which is fine but a player can also just buy a vehicle on their own if they want to pay the cost for it. There ya go, one vehicle ready to go! In the next post I will go through the stats on a couple of the vehicles you mentioned just to describe the process a bit more.

As a GM I would generally disallow this situation (if I didn't want to deal with the complexity) requiring whatever the "Body Armor" or the like was that was generating the impenetrable to ALSO pay for impenetrable for the normal defenses (via say a naked advantage). So Body Armor/FF that wanted to be Impenetrable would by XrPD, Impen (+1/2) AND Impen for up to X PD as a naked advantage (paying the appropriate amount). This makes the in game calculations MUCH easier but does raise the cost of making defenses Impenetrable, Hardened, etc. The other method I might use (with seasoned gamers that can easily handle the added complication) is to use the idea of "Layered Defenses". In this defense model EVERY attack is basically required to penetrate each defense on its own, sort of like how a Barrier/Force Wall works. You then apply any modifiers of an attack to each defense as it encounters that defense, and the attack is reduced by the amount the current layer can before moving on to the next layer. For purposes of advantages like Penetrating you remove dice starting with the highest dice rolled. Once ALL of the damage of that die is removed it is considered gone and any other effects of that die are negated as well. For instance: Player A is Attacking Player B with a 6d6 Penetrating, Armor Piercing Normal Damage PD attack. Player B has 3 Defenses: A 10 rPD FF with Impenetrable and Hardened, a 10 rPD OIF Body Armor with Hardened, and 10 PD innate defenses. Player A hits and rolls the dice getting 6 6 4 3 2 1 on the 6 dice for a total of 22 Stun 7 Body. The GM rules that the Defenses apply in the following order FF, Armor, Innate given their SFX. So we start with the Force Field. The Force Field is both Hardened and Impenetrable so it ignores both of those advantages. This means it blocks 10 of the 22 Stun and all of the body of the attack. For our purposes it removes one of the 6's and most of the second one. that leaves us with dice of 2(6) 4 3 2 1 for a total of 12 Stun and No Body. Note that if the FF did not have impenetrable the attack would have done at least 7 NDB, so the impenetrable on the FF actually didn't matter (as more damage got through than needed for Penetrating to kick in). The Body Armor is Hardened, so it ignores the Armor Piercing but it is NOT impenetrable so it doesn't ignore the Penetrating. We have a total of 5 "Normal Damage Body" remaining on the dice that got through (the second 6 die was reduced but not fully removed so it still counts as a 6 and therefore contributes 2 NDB). Therefore at least 5 Stun will make it past the Body Armor. The Body Armor would normally Reduce the 12 Damage down to 2, but because of Penetrating 5 Stun get through instead. that leaves us with 2(3) 2 1 getting through to normal defenses for 5 STUN. Normal Defenses are neither Hardened nor Impenetrable. Therefore the 10 PD is cut to 5 PD by Armor Piercing. This is still enough to ensure that No Stun get through normally, but we still have 2 NDB left on the dice that made it through the FF and the Body Armor, therefore the final result is 2 Stun 0 Body taken by Player B. Yes, this is MUCH more complex than either of the methods described above but it fairly and accurately applies the different defenses against the attack. Since this shouldn't come up all that often (unless all your characters take different advantages on different defenses and then get hit with attacks with the corresponding advantages) for more advanced players who are comfortable with it it shouldn't take long at all to resolve once you become accustomed to it and learn to calculate it efficiently.

I agree with bigbywolfe as far as known opponents go, but the idea is that if you are facing North vs a current opponent one you do not yet know about that is attacking from the South would likely get the Surprise bonus, but one attacking from the North is much less likely. HERO also has rules pertaining to being attacked from Behind so facing is important (otherwise Defense Maneuver 1 is completely worthless) but this does generally only apply to surprise situations. When I say you cannot change facing outside of your phase I am basically referring to surprise attacks vs facing, sorry if I failed to make that clear.

You can always adjust things to have more of the feel that you want. Look at average damages to get an idea. A 2d6 RKA averages 7 Damage, so your wooden door will take most of the damage but is unlikely to stop it (unless they roll low). a 1d6+1 firearm on the other hand will average 4.5 Damage, so one shot is unlikely to get through, but multiple bullets will. For simplicity sake anything that penetrates the door creates a "man size hole" but that is actually far more applicable to a Champions (Superhero) reality than a Dark Champions (Elite Normals) reality so it is easy enough to state that a bullet that goes through a door only leaves a bullet size hole. (You could allow a -8 called shot to shoot through that hole again, or state that after the door has taken enough Body damage (usually 2-3x Base BODY) that it is effectively destroyed. Fragile Materials on the other hand (such as an unreinforced glass window) might only need 1x Body to be destroyed,and really structurally sound materials (Iron, Steel, Armor Plate) might never be truly "destroyed" in this fashion if you wanted). Also look at DEF vs BODY. A low DEF high BODY object (usually used for thick objects) can eventually be destroyed by most attacks but as little as 5-6 DEF will make an object nearly "impervious" to your 1d6+1 firearm, and at 7 DEF that gun cannot even scratch it. You can use these guidelines to tailor your world to the level of destructibility you want. If you want a certain weapon to easily destroy something, it should have DEF < the average damage, if the weapon cannot destroy it DEF >= Max damage. So place the DEF where you want it in that scale. BODY on the other hand is a factor of time. The more BODY something has, the longer it will take to destroy it but it doesn't change how different weapons treat the material as much as DEF does.

If I wanted to create a more exact duplicate of the Cylon Sleepers I would look at powers like posession (from APG), Mind Control with the Invisible Modifier, etc. I would also probably have their two "personalities" as two seperate characters each with their own sheets (which looks similar to death tribble's multiform im sure). The "Cylon" form would have the posession or mind control or mental transform powers, the "Cover" form would be built more like a normal person.

What sort of facing rules do you need, anyways? almost every game I have played that dealt with facing in the rules allowed you to pick your facing at the end of a move/turn/phase/whatever. Other than saying you can't change your facing other than during your own phase (which can be implied from the Surprise and Defense Maneuver rules) what more is needed regarding facing?