psyber624

Re: Is VPP overpowered/How do you properly use it? Stacie, it isnt VPP's that are broken, its that GM. He wants to kill your guys? He's the GM, he can do it. The fact that VPP was his weapon of choice has nothing to do with the power level of VPP's. He could just as easily made an NPC with perfect foreknowledge of your characters that didnt need a VPP to kill you all if that was his goal. GM's who feel like they are competing against their player characters is one of the easiest definitions of a Bad GM. The GM is God. You can't beat God. So God shouldnt set out to beat you. (its meaningless.) I havent played in ages but I used to LOVE VPP's and all the stuff they let you do..... ahh my old X-Men Rogue clone build.......those were the days

Re: Delaying and Interrupting - How Do You Play It? I think the issue with delaying to dodge goes away if you remember that the higher speed character, whose next phase came up "sooner" and therefore "lost" his dodge bonuses, is still perfectly able to gain them back by aborting his held action to dodge. Since that always goes first he has the same "time frame" of dodge available as someone who is getting their dodge from segment 4 to segment 9, he just also has the option to NOT dodge after segment 6 and do something else instead. In the same vein, if you allow someone with a "held action" to just keep their OCV bonuses from their previous action, you are effectively letting them GAIN more from dodge than they should, because now they DONT have to abort their action to dodge, they can instead just hold their action till later (ie when their opponent attacks) and still have the dodge bonus. Instead, they should loose the dodge bonus (how the rules currently work, if my understanding is correct) and should then decide if they want to keep dodging, or use their higher speed to attack instead, NOT gain the benefits of both. And on the haymaker argument, holding your haymaker is more about timing it so that it will actually connect (target has already aborted, is stunned, entangled, the like) than about minimizing the phases you take the minuses to your DCV.

Re: Little help with effect modifier For the vocal power dont forget AVAD with defenses like "Covers Ears, Deaf, or Flash Hearing Group Defense" as an option.

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers Personally i like the End reserve concept alot better than charges, because unless you are buying really high amounts of charges (OP didnt state what level of charge was bought) buying a charge power with an easy to modify way to get charges back, (esp as stated where she could do it IN combat) is really an advantage, and not a limitation for game balance purposes. You could always of course just buy the power to 0 end and state that the special effect of the power is that its fueled by the blood your drinking during combat and not worry about all that. Honestly, now that I think about it, if I was going to do a vampire like that, i might just base it off of normal end, and then put a minor limitation on her REC such as "Can only take recoveries by feeding" or "Only after feeding this turn". You could still allow her to take her post segment 12 recoveries as normal, but the requirements of a in-turn recovery seem to fit fairly nicely, with only a few modifications, into needing to feed, and this way, as a vampire, everything she wanted to do (including her Vampire levels of strength or movement) would burn blood.

Re: Let's talk about movement The problem is that trying to decouple "Movement" Speed from "Character" Speed will wind up creating all kinds of complications for a character. You would basically have to say you move 1/12th of your "turn" speed per segement, and can only modify it on your actual Phases (similar to vehicles with speeds different than your own.) All other systems still fail to accurately model movement (as theoretically even speed 2 doesnt move "1/2" of their total possible movement in their 1 second phase, then sit still through all other phases till they can move the other 1/2 in their next phase). Allowing speed to increase movement to increase total velocity in a turn is honestly less of an issue, in my opinion, than forcing players who want to move fast to buy gobs of extra speed (and then get insanely powerful movethroughs on all their phases...) Remember, if you do a system like that, you are inherently allowing a high speed character to "use" his high speed more often, resulting in him getting even more "free" damage over a lower speed character. While that may be more realistic (and as a GM you could certainly play it that way in your own campaigns if you like) it just makes speed even more powerful than it already is. IMO

Re: Two handed punch. I think as with pretty much every HERO system power, it comes down to the question of what exactly do you want it to do? then you pick whichever one of the options listed here fits the bill the best, each has advantages and disadvantages over the others. (ie Haymakers take extra time, and have built in DCV penalties, etc.)

Hey guys, Im new to the forums and have only just recently gotten back into HERO gaming system (played back in 1990 while in college, but its been a while). I have fallen in love with a character concept I came up with, but I'm afraid it may turn out to be abusive to the system (he operates at spd 10 and i do remember how powerful speed is in the game.) Without going into too much detail (and boring you all) the concept is that he had the whole Bruce Banner experience while trying to destroy a device he had unknowingly created for VIPER (who was using the company he worked for, Astrodyn, as a front for their R&D division... and by the way, if i get any Champions lore wrong here plz forgive me, its been 20 years since ive played and I dont have all the sourcebooks again yet.) The device was working on a way to manipulate time, and as a result of the explosion he has aborbed a high amount of "Chronotons" or time particles. This has resulted in him actually LIVING at twice the speed of normal humans, ie to him everyone else seems to be moving at 1/2 speed, while to them he appears to move at double speed. ) Other than his high speed and dex he only has a couple of powers. One is a Chronoton Absorption which reflects the fact that he is still absorbing chronotons. He can use this to Drain the speed of target by 1 or 2 points, after that their "Chronoton" levels are too low for him to drain them further. He can also only drain so many Chronotons before he is "full" and must wait for his levels to dissipate normally. Note that this is NOT an aid to his speed (he already has so many chronotons that the paltry amount he is draining has no apparent effect on him). Effectively his End reserve (as a special effect) works in "reverse", draining chronotons fills the "reserve" which then "dissipate" at a reduced rate. Other than that he has a plasma pistol which (given the standard defenses for a Superheroic campaign) will always do a small amount of damage, but will rarely do major damage. At short ranges he can power up to the blast to actually start cutting away at body armor making it less effective, but this has a small chance to cause the pistol to overheat, shutting it down entirely for a while (at least for a combat/scene) The basic idea i wanted to go with here was sort of a "debuffer" character. On his own he doesnt really do that much damage (compared to other 400 pt characters). The end reserve limits him to 4 uses of his drain per combat, and the low damage (but penetrating) pistol allows him to do some damage every phase without making his spd 10 abusive (I hope.). Here is the build i have for him so far: Cost Power Level Notes 5.......Str 15 30.....Dex 25 Unified with Speed (-0 Limitation) 10.....Con 20 20.....Int 30 5.......Ego 15 5.......Pre 15 25.....OCV 8 25.....DCV 8 0......OMCV 3 0......DMCV 3 80.....Spd 10 Cannot Voluntarily Reduce (-0 Limitation) 8.......PD 10 8.......ED 10 2.......Rec 6 4.......End 40 5.......Body 15 5.......Stun 30 14......Run 26m 0........Swim 4m 0........Leap 4m 251 Total Characteristics Speed Skills: 3 Acrobatics.............................................. 3 Scientist Skill Enhancer 3 Breakfall 3 Fast Draw ...............................................Perks: Int Skills: .................................................. 2 Access: Astrodyn Inc. 3 C. Program ............................................. 1 Computer Link: Astrodyn Inc. 1 Fam: Cryptography .................................. 4 Contact: Dean of Physics at MIT 11- 3 Deduction(Sci only) .......................................Access to major Inst., Good Relationship 3 Electronics ............................................. 6 Contact: Geeknet Usegroup 8- 3 Inventor ..................................................... Useful Skills, Organization 3 KS: MIT (or Other) ...................................1 Favor: Gen. William Schuster, DOD 3 KS: Science Culture ..................................1 Membership: MIT Alumni 3 KS: "Nerd" Culture ....................................2 Security Clearance (from doing research for DOD) 2 KS: Astrodyn Inc. ................................... 2 Money: Well Off 2 Language: Chinese .................................. 2 Positive Reputation: Famous Scientist (Scientific 2 Language: Japanese Community, 14-) 1 Language: Indian 3 PS: Research Scientist .............................Talents: 2 SS: Temporal Physics ...............................18 Combat Luck (9 rPD/9 rED) (Ability to dodge attacks 2 SS: Nuclear Physics ..........................................Since they are percieved as "1/2 speed") 2 SS: Subatomic Physics ..............................2 Eidetic Memory(-1 Reading Material Only) 2 SS: Physics .............................................3 Lightning Calculator 1 Fam: Tactics .......................................... 4 Speed Reading 101 Total Skills/Perks Powers: 17 .............. Chronoton Absorbtion Drain Spd, 5d6, End comes from Reserve and Base End ........................(-1: One Use At A Time, -1/2: Double End - reserve and base end, -1/2 No Range) .........................50 AP 5 End 25 ............... Plasma Pistol ..................Blast, 4d6, vs ED, +1/2: Penetrating, +1/2: 0 End ................................................................-1: OAF ................................................................40 AP 0 End ........................................................Drain "Resistant Protection costing 0 End (ie Armor)", 1d6, +1/2: 0 End ................................................................-1: OAF, -1/2 Linked (No bonus range), -1/2 Required Roll 13-, Burnout (affects blast as well)/every use of Drain .................................................................15AP 0 End 6 Chronoton Reserve Endurance Reserve, 20 End, 5 Rec every 5 mins (-2) 48 Total Powers 251 Characteristics 101 Skills/Perks 48 Powers 400 Total Cost Complications: 10 Distictive Features: Doublespeed on all movements and speech, Concealable, Noticed 20 Hunted: VIPER (or other) More Pow, NCI, Frequently, Enslave/Kill 10 Hatred: VIPER, for using inventions as weapons, Uncommon, Strong (Will not run from fight with VIPER, even if loosing) 15 Personality Trait: Egotistical (Not willing to listen to good advice, thinks he "knows better", Very Common, Moderate) 20 Vulnerability to Poisons and other Damage over time or constant type effects (he literally "takes the damage twice as often", Common, x2 Damage 0 Physical Complication: Aging at an ever increasing rate (increasing exponentially, not aware of it yet) 75 Total Complications Sorry about the formatting issues, copying from excel never works well for forums (sigh). I get that any GM would have final say on a character like this, what im looking for is input from people who are actually playing this game (especially gm's) as to whether or not this character feels abusive to you, and if there is any recommendations on how to fix it if you do think its abusive.