griffinman01

Double Post

Your best bet would probably just do a custom martial art as outlined in the UMA sourcebook. They have things like a flying dodge which is a dodge that allows you to do a full move which is pretty close to this. I would do something like: Flying Block: +0 OCV (0 points), +0 DCV (0 points), Block (basis of maneuver), Abort (free with a block), FMove (3 points) = 3 points. You can adjust the OCV and DCV to your tastes but this will let you do a full move (ie teleport) and then block as an abort. This should capture the feel of what you want to do without any difficulties.

Wouldn't the Burnout roll from the Boosted Charges count for the side-effect? Also, you can have side-effects on powers that don't have skill rolls (going off of 5th ed here so it might have changed in 6th). The book states (pg 307 5th rev): "Characters usually take Side Effects for a power that has some chance of failure — one with the Power Limitations Requires A Skill Roll or Acti- vation Roll. Each time the character’s attempt to activate or use the power fails, he suffers the Side Effect." It says 'usually' not 'must'. You can have it fire off all the time at x2 the limitation. So I think you should add in the side-effect on the gun as normal and specify the burnout roll as the potential trigger. As for the second part, that's a bit trickier. Not sure what you could do and follow the RAW there.

But you would have to make sure you hit or you may go "oops" as you don't trade places and plumet yourself . And if you miss but still had a second option to roll to hit (as they move to the edge of the ledge to see why you threw yourself of the ledge and laugh at you ) you better have no relative velocity modifier on your part of the teleport to stop your downward movement as you appear in his spot but still dropping . You could buy the "No Relative Velocity" adder to save yourself from the latter situation. As for the former, just make sure you don't miss

Re: A power to swap places with someone.

Re: Dispel Questions

Re: "Must cross intervening space"

Re: Dispel Questions It depends on what the effect of the dispel is. Something like an EMP would short out a device until it can be rebooted (which would most likely shut it down for a turn or two) but if you went with some kind of rapid rusting effect on a sword, it could shut it down for the entire adventure until the target could get a new one. It's up to the GM to determine how long the effect lasts based on the nature of what you're trying to dispel.

Re: Dispel Questions I guess the effectiveness of dispel really depends on the genre. In a superhero campaign it's pretty weak since, as Killer Shrike mentioned, you'd have to slap a ton of advantages in order to make it affect a broader range of powers. Not only that, unless the abilities have a large activation time, it'll have very little effect. However, in some campaigns it can be much more useful. I've been designing EMP effects as a dispel in a sci-fi campaign and it looks like it'll be far more useful then since most everything is a focus (all your electronic gadgets, cybernetics, etc) and there are a number of vehicles. Aside from that, the only way I've seen dispel being useful is having your character dispel a defensive power (force field, armor, etc) before the rest of your team beats the crap out of the target.

Re: Multipower Variable Slots, ever use one? Fixed and variable both have their uses. I think variable works best on powers that scale (EB, Flight, Force Fields, etc) while fixed works best on powers that just turn off/on (Invisibility, Enhanced Senses, Desolidification) or ones that in concept couldn't scale (Guns, swords, etc). Variable makes it harder to keep up with things since they require some light math when you switch them, but it's no worse than what you'd have to do with a VPP. You spend more for flexibility so what works best depends on the character concept. I did a guy who had half a dozen different blades and each was fixed so that he could have two out per turn so fixed worked best, but the power armor idea is a load more fun if you go variable for things. I loved being able to go from blasting a guy to swapping everything into STR and flight so I could just move-through him to finish him off.

Re: "Must cross intervening space" Right, call that one up to being sick at the moment. All the same, the Limitation is in contact with a surface so as long as you have something tangible to put your feet on (ie surface tension) you can use it. Water is an example of it given in the book. I agree with what psyber said though about the added "must be able to reach it with normal running" as a quick and easy way to cover it.

Re: "Must cross intervening space" This. Must cross intervening space means that your body actually passes through the space between locations but you don't have to actually get there via your movement powers. I assume that, if you're able to run so fast that nobody can see you, you would be able to use your momentum to get to places you normally couldn't. Kind of like how you can run across a large gap since your momentum would allow you reach there even if your feet aren't touching the ground (think like the old Looney Tunes gag of running off the cliff and continuing for a few feet but 100x more effective). If there was a wall there, you'd smack into it, but you could do it. For the whole Flash/Quicksilver thing where you can run on water or up the side of a building, I always used Flight with the "Only when in contact with a surface" (-1/4) limitation. It basically means that you can run over any terrain and in any orientation as long as your feet are touching a solid object.

Re: Invisibility only usable in shadows or darkness Not only that but using the darkness means you couldn't technically turn invisible that turn. You'd have to use an attack action to put up the darkness field and then you'd lose your opportunity to turn on the invisibility until your next phase.

Re: Rules Question: TWF + Rapid attack, is it this simple? Well, welcome to the game. Feel free to ask anything else and we'll help you out.

Re: Low-point characters, intelligence doesn't benefit knowledges? To be honest, 50 points is pretty low for a campaign. Even games where you play normal humans, 100-150 points is generally the norm. As for the KS, at lower levels of intelligence, spending the point on basing it off of INT doesn't make much of a difference, however if you have 20 or so INT, you get +2 to the roll for 1 point. Plus, if you're buying a lot of KS, you could go with a skill enhancer like Scholar which costs 3 points but reduces the cost of each KS by 1 point (in other words, you save points if you buy 3 or more KS). As for house rules, the game is very open to using them. Everything in the book is pretty balanced but it's also very open to alterations and you'll find that most people have some kind of house rule to help smooth things over, to clarify something, or just save some time calculating. If your GM wants, he can alter the effect of the KS where you can add your INT bonus to the base roll for 1 point (11 +(INT/5)-). Normally that's a huge benefit, but if you're running a low-point game I think it'll be fine.

Re: Multipower Variable Slots, ever use one? I made a guy just like this. In order to keep the math part simple I basically calculated roughly how many points it would take to raise each of the powers by an increment. So I'd say that his explosive EB would take 6 points per d6 (not exact, but close enough for the math), AP EB 7.5 points per 1d6, flight 2 points per 1", etc. That way I could easily say that I want to get an 8D6 explosive EB and put the rest into his flight and then the next phase spend the 25 points for his cloaking device, get 15 inches of flight, and dump the rest into strength. Was pretty fun to use and didn't take much effort. Loved the flexibility.

Re: Rules Question: TWF + Rapid attack, is it this simple? I think what cptpatriot meant is that you couldn't use two INSTANCES of sweep in a turn. So you couldn't use a 1/2 phase sweep for two attacks (no OCV penalty due to TWF) and then use your other half phase to do a second sweep action for two attacks (at no OCV penalty from TWF again) to hit 4 guys at essentially no OCV penalty. You could do a 1/2 phase sweep on 4 targets, but you would suffer the -4 penalty to all targets as you stated. To eriktheguy - The problem with what you proposed is that, even though attacks only take a half-phase to use, you only get to use one attack action per phase. As soon as you attack your phase ends and you lose any half-phases you might have left over. Meaning if you attack without moving, even though you have a half phase left over, that half-phase is lost as soon as you attack. So, what rapid attack allows you to do is sweep as a half-phase in case you wanted to do a half move to get into a better position, draw a weapon before attacking, use find weakness, or pick yourself up off the ground if you were tripped/thrown/etc. So, rapid attack and two weapon fighting would let you move a few inches to get in the middle of a group of three guys, attack each one once (at a -2 OCV penalty rather than a -4 OCV), and, if you're using 5th ed rules, you only suffer a -2 DCV penalty rather than 1/2 DCV.

Re: Counterstrike (and the lack thereis) Not only that but, as per the rules for Blocking, you'll get the hit in before the attacker gets his next action. This works well for sweep counters since the OCV bonus is fairly high which lets you attack 2-3 times before you start having to worry about missing. If you're looking for something that immediately follows the attack, then you can use a damage shield HTH attack which is something that they show in the UMA (pg 131): Counterstrike: HA +6d6. Damage Shield (+1/2), Continuous (+1), Reduced Endurance (1/2 END +1/4) (82 active points); HTH attack (-1/2), Requires a Successful Attack roll (-1/2), Not When Grabbed (-1/4) Total Cost 36 points This example would fire off all the time as long as the user gets hit or contacts the target. If you want something to immediately follow a block, a HTH attack that has a trigger that fires on a successful block would work. Something like: Counterstrike - +4d6 HTH Attack (or higher if you need it), Trigger (when character blocks an attacker's HTH attack, activates as an action that takes no time, resets immediately +1) (40 active points); HTH attack (-1/2) Total cost 27 points This is something that will let you attack the instant you resolve a block since it takes no time and it will continue to stay in effect since it resets immediately. So the idea is that, as long as you're able to block attacks, you can automatically counter every time you successfully block.

Re: Short Term Time Travel I think a limited form of Luck could also work if you use the optional method of rerolling dice with it. So if you fail a skill check or miss an attack, you "rewind" a couple of seconds and reroll a second time. Since you're guaranteed a better result using this method, as per the rules on using Luck like this, it even fits thematically since you can assume your prior knowledge of previous events allow you to plan for them so you have a better shot the second time around.

Re: Tracking Bugs Actually, according to the RAW, " (Pg 189 5th ed rev) An image that's larger than one hex doesn't have to fill the entire space available. It can fill whichever of the hexes within its radius its creator wants it to." So,from that, couldn't it just be specified as a single hex within the whole area, ie the target's hex?

Re: Tracking Bugs So, anyone have an answer to the question I posed a few posts back? I'm curious if I'm building the power right or if I'm missing some key rule or issue that makes my build unusable.

Re: Tracking Bugs I had a question when I was building the power earlier today and I wanted to run it by everyone and see what people say about it. So, my question deals with the cost of building the power. If you look at how expensive it is to build as dictated by the book (76 active points and 30 real points) I began to wonder why don't you disregard the added perception for a larger range. My thoughts on the issue were that, images are easier to perceive the closer you are to them and harder to perceive the further away you are. So, with the book's build you have a radius of 32" (64 m) and +4 perception at that point. If you were to try and detect this at, say 128" (256 m) you would make the roll at -4 which would effectively negate the bonus you paid for. However, if you decided to not give a perception bonus to it and instead went with the following build: Radio group images, usable as attack (+1), 1 Recoverable continuing charge lasting 1 week (+1 1/4), x1024 radius (+2 1/2) (29 active points) Set Effect (dectectable signal) (-1), IAF (-1/2) = real cost 8 points. It seems to me that you would get a base range of 1024" for far less points which would not only allow you to detect it much further (the book build would have that be at a -4 PER roll rather than +0 as it is here) and even at 32" (64m) you would get a +8 to the roll (since you're going from 1024" to 32") to perceive it (also better than the book build). In addition to this, the real cost is a quarter of what you would have to pay for the book version. So, I'm wondering if there's something about my build of the power that I'm not getting that would account for why the book example is four times the cost for what appears to be a weaker version of the power. Any advice would help!

Re: EB vs EB If it were me I'd go with Missile deflection to block the oncoming attack and then have a triggered energy blast that would fire off on a successful missile deflect.

Re: Tracking Bugs Thanks, that works perfectly!

I'm about to start up a sci-fi campaign and one of my PCs was interesting in creating a remote tracking bug. The idea is the kind of thing you see in spy movies where you toss a small tracer onto a car or object and then are able to use an external device to determine the location of the bug. I was having trouble building it because many of the ideas I had wouldn't quite work. I ended up using Clairsentience to design the power but I was wondering if anyone had an easier, and possibly cheaper (having it work over a long distance cost a ton of points), way to build this kind of power.