griffinman01

Re: Pre Attacks

Re: Daredevil There are Skill levels that you can purchase that function like Combat Skill levels but for your skills rather than attacks. All agility skills are considered similar so +1 to agility skills would cost 5 points. So I'd buy 2 skill levels for agility (active point cost = 10) and then put on a limitation. I'm not sure how much the limitation would be worth though since many agility skills aren't very risky by nature (riding, sleight of hand, lockpicking, teamwork, etc) and I can't see how you could do something dumb/risky/daring with those, meaning a large limitation value since it would highly restrict those. Other skills like acrobatics, breakfall, climbing, combat driving/piloting, etc have a large inherent risk to them (ie. failing them usually results in injury) so with those the limitation wouldn't be a limitation. I'd probably give a -1/4 due to the fact that about half of the skills would be affected by it.

Re: I'm not really dead

Re: "Elevator Pitch" your campaign My current campaign is a sequel to our previous campaign. We rotate GMs every session though I do most of the GMing and the policing as well as providing the setting of the campaign. In order to best explain the current campaign I'll go over our previous one slightly. The setting was a city called Empire City, which was a new-york esque city on the eastern seaboard. The city was in chaos as the super villains were better organized and were openly killing heroes. Crime was rampant and the city needed help. As such our heroes met by circumstance and helped form a large coalition of semi (250 point) powerful heroes to protect the city. During the first campaign they dealt with supervillain teams, crime bosses, and a foreign megalomaniac who tried to invade. During this time the government was looking at cracking down and regulating people with powers similar to the Civil War story arc in Marvel comics. This ultimately failed but it gave our heroes an idea to help prevent people from going down the wrong path by opening a superhero school to help train and mentor kids with powers. This school is the setting of the current campaign. Our PCs are students (200 points) in the school which, like with X-Men, is kept secret from the rest of the world. They're freshmen (16 years old) and students are assigned to teams of 4 people by the instructors (many former PCs, NPCs, and some reformed villains from our previous campaign teach at the school) to best complement their abilities. The class has 7 such teams and the kids have day-to-day issues such as daily training and other school problems as well as the 'wrong place wrong time' scenarios. The player's interactions with their classmates have lasting effects and some scenarios drag classmates into the mix as well. We've just started so none of our GMs have done any 'big' scenarios yet but I've got some planned. Our current PCs are: Fluke - A girl who has extreme luck (or unluck). She's relatively normal in terms of abilities but she has a bunch of things that require luck rolls (added damage from HTH attacks, combat sense, combat luck, etc) so she can be average or godly depending on how her luck holds up. The Beef - A 98 pound weakling that can hulk out, increasing his size and strength. He's a wrestler so he has a number of wrestling moves as well as some other brick related abilities. Broadside - An average-looking trailer trash teen who can channel energy through his arms that he can project (either with one hand or both, though the force of both can sometimes fling him backwards) or punch guys for an added boost. Silver Mage - An aloof rich girl who has magical abilities that she hid via LARPing until she came to the academy. She has a myriad of spells (VPP) ranging from variable element blasts, force walls, ego attacks, healing, aid, and the ability to summon a retarded bird (we jokingly call it the inbred chocobo) While our first campaign was very actiony with little role-playing, this one has a better balance and we're focusing a lot more on character interactions. Past adventures have dealt with getting lost in the woods while on a training exercise, having an expelled upperclassmen seek revenge on the girl who slighted him, a bank robbery, and tracking down a group of thugs who beat up the PCs roommates.

Re: I'm not really dead That's what I was thinking. Making it a heal with resurrection and then put on a number of limitations like Self Only, only to recover from below 0 Body, and then set up an automatic trigger for when you fall below 0 Body. I think this should also have an activation roll to so that it doesn't work all the time and make the character effectively immortal.

Re: Non-Phase Segments - what is happening then? Like what other people have mentioned I've always seen this time as either the time it takes to fully set-up/finish your action or recover from the previous action. While you can fire a couple of shots with a pistol in a couple of seconds(ie, like rapid fire), they wont be very accurate (I've been to firing ranges a few times so I can tell you that it takes a normal person a couple of seconds to line up a decently accurate shot). Also think about how long it would take you to move X meters (more than a second I can assume) and also shake off getting hit by someone. If someone punches you, even if it doesn't do much damage, you still generally have to regain your balance or reset your fighting stance (unless you're trained, which is why martial artists have high speed in general). It's not only the time it takes you to complete the action but the time it takes to set up and reset from the action as well as processing the fight and determining the best course of action. Just look at any MMA fight. A good portion of the time neither guy is acting since they're trying to pick the best attack to use. I think you're over-analyzing it but understanding the 'why' is always a good thing.

Re: New Everyman skill That's another thing to consider: how readily available are sources to find the info? If you're talking about a real-world campaign, even kids have smartphones that can access the internet and pull up data just like this on basic facts. In this case, do it as an everyman skill KS: Wikipedia and then put it as an OAF focus (smartphone).

Re: Scorpion Wire - How to do? I had a player do something like this with a flying claw attached to a chain. We did it with a form of stretching and put some limitations on there. One of them was that any throws using it had to be towards the player since he'd be pulling them. It worked out pretty well so something like that would fit.

Re: New Everyman skill What I've done in my latest campaign was give people two KS as everyman skills that are relevant to their background, one at 11- and one at 8-. So if someone has a background that they worked as a mechanic I would allow them to have a KS: Cars (11-) (being able to identify make/model/etc at a glance as well as random facts such as any defects that a specific year of car might have) as well as maybe an KS: Motorcycles (8-) for the same thing. Or if someone lived abroad for a year in Japan I'd allow any combination of: CuK: Japanese Culture, AK: Tokyo (or whatever city they lived in), KS: Japanese Video Games/anime, KS: Japanese Government, etc. This limits how broad you're willing to be on 'general knowledge' at any given time (which is something I see people about what fits in there) but gives them some of the general knowledge aspect, just more tailored to the character. Also, general knowledge can vary widely from person to person depending on where and how they grew up, as Laundry Knight pointed out. Someone who grew up in an isolated town may not be as knowledgeable about the world but they might be more adept at knowing things about local wild-life or lore. It's kind of a murky area and unless you put up guidelines I'm sure you'll see people trying to use that at any point possible.

Re: AoE Damage Sink defensive power I agree that it seems that a force field/wall would be the way to go with this since that would reduce the damage, is capable of encasing the explosion partially or entirely (protecting any targets you might see fit), and would also be the simplest solution just come up with a size and effect then you can put on whatever limitations you see fit (you mentioned instant, only working on earth/stone, etc). It would probably also be cheaper since I don't see the need to put any advantages on it since they're ranged and conform to any shape by default and, while force walls can be pricey, all the limitations should drop the cost by at least -1.

Re: Precognition I was mostly using Destiny as an example of the power so I'm not too worried about building her exact skill set. As of right now I think using Overall Levels outlined in Psyber624's post along with a myriad of talents to simulate the effect is best. I agree that a couple of seconds would be the limit to the power's effects, otherwise it would be a nightmare to manage. The idea is that the character would be able to know that one of the PCs is planning on hitting them with an energy blast moments before they can fire it off, giving them enough time to come up with some kind of defense (diving prone, blinding them with an attack, shoving something else in the path, or taking them out before they can fire). I think having it linked to Perception would be a good way to balance it and give it some chance of failure since being able to know every attack would be very powerful and a little frustrating for the players. Plus it would give them some kind of chink in the armor that they could possibly exploit. However I don't think she herself would need to perceive the attack. I see this ability firing off if someone was planning on taking a shot at her from a building a mile away so I'd probably give her Danger Sense linked to the ability as well.

Re: Precognition

One of my players asked me how I would build a specific power and I had no clue what the best method would be so I wanted to pose it to the board, since you guys have a wealth of ideas. I'm not sure what the best way to call it but we'll go with Precognition even though that implies long term predictions. For those of you who are familiar with the Marvel Comic Villain, Destiny, I was wondering how to build her abilities. She had extreme precognition where she, in spite of her blindness, could use her precognition to determine what people were doing around her by seeing their actions and reacting to them before they occurred. So she could determine that someone was going to pull a gun and shoot at her before he did so, giving her time to react to it before the guy even got it out of the holster. What he was asking was how you could build a power that would let a character know what kind of attack someone else was planning on using and on whom before it happens. I had told him that stuff like Danger Sense, Combat Luck, Defense Maneuver, and some of the sensory powers (360 degree perception) Man would mimic Destiny's combat potential but I had no idea how to do something like the precognition part. I know that there's Clairsentience and that you could buy precognition through that but that always seemed like it was best suited for fortune telling and other vague visions of the far future rather than 3-4 seconds into the future in the middle of combat. I'd also like to note that this is purely hypothetical and we're more interested in how it would work in theory rather than actually trying to build the power on a PC. This kind of ability would probably irritate a GM to no end and I wouldn't allow it, however the devil inside of me would be interested in trying to get a villain to use this kind of ability. In any case, I'm looking for ideas on what the best way to simulate this ability is.

Re: How to Build : a Lucky Stealer Power

Re: How to Build : a Lucky Stealer Power On a somewhat related note, how would you guys simulate someone who can hex someone with bad luck? One of my PCs asked me about it and the best I could think of was buying it as Luck on your PC and then assuming that any successful luck roll caused bad things to happen to others rather than good things happening to you, but I was wondering if someone had a better idea on how to cause someone to have bad luck.

Re: Detect Correct Answer If that's the case then I would probably do it as a KS: Everything as was mentioned before since you're looking for facts and information. Put enough points into it where you'll reasonably succeed every time it's used and then put some stiff limitations (charges that take a day to recover (or something similar), Focus, etc).

Re: How to Build : a Lucky Stealer Power

Re: How to Build : a Lucky Stealer Power From the sound of it I think transform would probably be the best bet since you're talking about altering inherent things about a character (reputation, luck, etc). This sounds like it would fall into the Minor transformation category since you'll probably be doing things like OCV/DCV penalties as well as changing reputations. Aside from that you just slap on an AOE effect (probably explosion since I think you would probably have worse things occur the closer you get to the character) and make it persistent. This would probably make the cost massive though since transformation already tends to be expensive but if you're doing an explosion (+1/2), Continuous (+1), 0 END (+1/2), and Persistent (+1/2) you'll be spending a TON of points on it.

Re: Clothes only TK

Re: Resistant Defence/Defence and Defence Powers: Active Point Limit The active point limit is usually for powers since most people wont put 90 points into any specific stat. With that in mind: 1) In the case of armor or force field, all defenses are factored into the active point cost. So if you had a force field (each point of Def costs 1 active point) you could do 45 PD/45 ED for 90 points, or 30 PD/30 ED/ 30 Mental Defense, 60 PD/30 ED, or any combination thereof. Advantages also come into play here so if you wanted to put 0 END on the forcefield you'd get lower defenses to meet the cost (I think 30 PD/30 ED with 0 END (+1/2) costs 90 off the top of my head). 2) Most powers that provide defense (armor, force field, etc) provide resistant defenses as well. So that's factored into the cost of them and shouldn't need to be counted separately. 3) Kind of similar to question 2. 4) These are all separate powers and are counted differently. The active point limit is for a single power so that someone doesn't spend 120 points making a 20D6 EB with armor piercing or something of that nature that will unbalance the game. It's meant to make people diversify by purchasing multiple powers rather than dumping all their available points into a single power. So you could, in theory, put 90 active points into forcefield and then 90 points into absorption. This is where you need to have some policing by the GM since it's possible to buy multiple defensive powers and make your guy nigh invulnerable to damage. If you're worried about defenses and what reasonable values should be so that your PCs aren't immune to damage (or fall over from every attack on the other extreme) I found that the best way to do it is to find the average damage done by your characters and use that as a basis for how much damage you'll be seeing. An 8D6 attack has an average of 28 damage with a maximum of 48 so putting your PD/ED at 20-25 would be reasonable since that means you'll be taking very little damage on average but not be immune to it. You want battles to be dynamic and, while it's fun to wade into a fight and have bullets bounce off of you, it takes away that 'we almost died out there' feeling. Anyways, that's how the active point breakdown would typically work with regards to powers. I've never needed to put set limits on statistics since a 90 point limit on those is very high and most people wont get close to that (that would mean buying 30 dex for a total of 40 dex, which is insane or spending 90 points on STR would give you 20D6 punches). You'll have to play those by ear and kind of draw the line if it looks like someone's trying to go overboard (like buying 45 PD/45 ED) on a per case basis. The best way to test this is by running a couple of practice fights with pre-made NPCs in order to see exactly how powerful certain powers/stats are in conjunction with each other and how much a reasonable amount of defense would be. A lot of this is based on the number of points you're building your PCs on.

Re: Stop Hits

Re: Detect Correct Answer I guess the main sticking point is whether it detects knowledge (what's the correct way to neutralize this pool of acid) versus truth (the labyrinth example you gave). The first one would cause the user to think a bit about the situation and give him some information to help him solve a problem on his own while the second one would flat out give him the answer. The first one sounds like an interesting ability but the second one would be a terrible idea. Could you imagine walking into a murder mystery and asking the amulet who the killer is? It spoils the campaign. But the idea of asking the amulet how much force would it take to crush a man (ie determine who physically could cause a specific wound) then it would be a more interesting tool that requires a bit of reasoning on the part of the player as well as some creative thinking (which I think should be rewarded).

Re: Is Speed underpriced? I don't know exactly how it happened but in every champions campaign we fell into the mold of basic guys (thugs, cops, slow supers) were speed 3, Trained guys (basic supers, SWAT, Elite mercs) were speed 4, Agile guys (spider-man, captain america) were speed 5, and speedsters were speed 6. I've never really had people who got higher than that (with the exception of a speedster hitting 7 speed I think well into the campaign). When dealing with 250 points most people I know never really wanted to blow a large amount of points into it without having some character basis for it. It was generally where the people with 5 speed or so would also have 25-30 dex (ie. Martial artists, agile combatants, etc) so they invested upwards of 70 points to get their character that fast, which was a pretty hefty chunk of their 250 points. Speed is also sort of a relative stat because you only get the benefit of it by having your guys acting more often than your opponents. Otherwise, as many people have mentioned, you burn through your endurance faster since that post 12 recovery is twice as far away. One lazy way to balance it is tune your villains to whatever 'average' speed the PCs have. If everyone has 5-6 and they aren't speedsters, then you might have to put your basic villains up to that level to have them put up a good fight. The other way is to put some kind of cap on their speed, either hard (nobody can purchase more than 5 speed) or soft (using something like Derek Hiemforth said where you scale the cost up the more you purchase) and let people figure out a more realistic number. I put a speed cap in my latest adventure because my last one had every PC with 5 speed, even ones that should have been slower. How I did it was that you could only put up to 15 points into the speed stat with the rest being figured off of your dex. So people with 15-24 dex were capped at 4 speed, 25-34 dex were capped at 5, and 35 dex could buy 6. It worked for my group since most of my players play for a concept rather than raw power. Thankfully nobody tries to break the game during creation by buying 8 speed or something. In any case, as the GM, you can balance it however you want. What I said in the first paragraph is a good starting point and you should assign a speed cap to people based on their character concepts. If someone is playing the Hulk, you shouldn't allow them to be buying 6 speed (I would think 4 would be a solid number for him). So, before your PCs build their heroes, give them some guidelines and then discuss an appropriate speed value for their concepts. As for villains, give them enough to fit their concept as well as put up a good fight.

Re: Healing Vs Undead I'd agree with this since it seems to fit the bill the best. While the susceptibility would work it wouldn't scale with the amount of healing (as mentioned before) and it's a little unusual to have 1D6 of healing do 3D6 of damage while 6D6 of healing does the same. Since there's nothing specific I can see in the rules that let you turn a positive benefit into a negative one it sounds like you'd have to homebrew it. Asking the player to pay extra for an effect like that (one that's highly conditional depending on the campaign) isn't the best way to go so I think that the easiest option is to come up with an appropriate custom disadvantage and state the effects of it. How I'd do it is either convert it to normal damage (as if you were using the simplified healing rules, which could also work if you wanted to deal stun damage with it (assuming the targets even have stun)), or do it as a drain where you deal 1 body for every 2 points rolled on the dice (literally the reverse of healing). Either of these will scale with the amount of healing the user has and I think would best fit the original idea (I'm assuming you're thinking like in Final Fantasy or other Video Game RPGs).

Re: Stop Hits The Ultimate Brick source book has something similar with an HKA to simulate breaking your fist on the guy.