transmetahuman

Re: Classic WWYCD: Socks To Be You... I don't have any PCs, but I just had to chime in... What *I* would do is go looking for the hangers, and try to hitch a ride with them to someone's closet.

Re: Marvel's Ultimate Universe

Re: Movement in a Jetliner! I thought this was going to be something along the lines of "If Captain Justice is in an airliner moving at 150", and he tries to fly towards the cockpit with his 12" Flight, is he slammed into the back of the plane?"

Re: Martial Arts vs Unusual Opponents Whereas I'd read somewhere (unremembered so unattributable) that they were developed in a society which forbade weaponry to peasants (or maybe all non-nobility). It could have been a combination of things, of course - basic, rudimentary MA for use against the critters; evolved and human-specialized against the guys with weapons.

Re: Would you play… I could easily make a base character interesting enough that I wouldn't care what power set he got, at least if they didn't put me at a massive disadvantage compared to the other players and NPCs, and weren't *too* far from a standard archetype. Call it a certain minimal trust in the GM. The big problem I see is getting and keeping the group together. Why does my at-first-mundane character stick around with these strangers? Would he become a crime-fighter, or something else? Would they? I could maybe see an origin event that made the PCs stay together, but it would probably take something (like a common threat) that basically destroys the character's previous life & relationships - and then a lot of the decisions you seem to be looking for in a game like this would be railroaded. Or you could orchestrate character creation so that the PCs are all friends, but then presumeably they weren't crime-fighters before, and might not have any really good reasons to become a team of them. Of course it doesn't have to be a crime-fighting game, but there has to be *some* reason the PCs stick together and have adventures.

Re: How often is the Skill: Acting used by your characters? Off on a tangent for a moment, since I don't have a game to chime in about (sob)... When you GMs have an NPC who is trying to deceive the characters, how often do you roll against their Acting skill? If the NPC fails it, how do you represent that in your roleplaying of the NPC's interactions with the PCs? I'm thinking more about long-term deception here, infiltration (where it's more likely a major plot element), than a simple "[Pirate voice] Yarrr, I have the map to Captain Entrail's lost treasure! [OOC] He doesn't sound convincing." I guess the crux is that the GM *is* using his own personal acting ability when directly playing an NPC. If the NPC rolls bad, do you "take a dive" with your personal acting roll, so to speak? Or do you just break character to tell the players outright? Or just not roll the NPC's Acting at all... especially if the successful deception is a major plot element?

Re: Making the math easier So, a 60 point power with a +1/4 advantage becomes a 240 point power with a +1 advantage? You're going from: 60 points becomes 75 points (125%) to 240 points becomes 480 points (200%) Or maybe I'm not understanding what you're doing here.

Re: New Power build: Supernatural Invisibility You would have to buy ranged for the UBO aspect of it, though. The advantage, not the sense modifier. UBO is normally touch range, right? I think that's what he was referring to.

Re: THE ULTIMATE MENTALIST -- What Do *You* Want To See? I'd like to see Mind Scan expanded and generalized; the mechanic seems like a good way to model "seeker" type spells, location tracers, and any kind of ritual magic that doesn't require the target to be present (voodoo dolls, etc). Maybe a discussion of how it might work for other classes of things besides "minds", along with something comparing and contrasting the Mind Scan mechanic with the Detect mechanic and power - when to use which, and what exactly they can do. EDIT: I guess this'd probably be a better fit for a Mystic book, come to think of it. If it's not already in one (I don't own any yet).

Re: New Power build: Supernatural Invisibility Were you looking for a 100% official build, or more wondering how to price it? Me, I'd probably just use Selective and call it a day. Or use a special, one-off advantage, maybe at +1/4; I don't think it's really worth +1/2. But I get loose and funky that way when the rules need to be seriously shoehorned to fit a concept, and that's not everyone's style.

Re: Rethinking mental powers I've thought about the mental damage as parallel to physical damage thing before; I really didn't like the way that totally different mental powers all took advantage of the damage done by each other. Why would reading someone's mind make him vulnerable to someone else's mental illusion? Actually, in the version I was thinking of, I discarded that instantly - the idea I tried to work up was more along the lines of keeping seperate damage tracks for each attack. I decided the record keeping wasn't worth the consistency, and I think there were other problems. As for the opposed rolls, that's probably the mechanism I'd use if I was making a new game, but I don't really see what exactly you're getting out of it to justify a major rules change. What makes that mechanism so much better, mechanically?

Re: You cannot defeat me! Gizmo: Cheese wheel? Heh.

Re: Magic special effect I'm with David Johnston - lots, even most, powers have both a "source of power" sfx and a "type of manifestation" sfx; even if they're not explicitly listed you can tell by the description. Edit: TMI, and not what the OP was asking about.

Re: Costumes in a Real World Game A lot of personal-effect type powers (invisibility, intangibility, skin-hugging force fields, etc.) might work inconveniently if clothing isn't included in the effect. Some worlds use unstable molecules or a nova-conjured bio-cloth or EctoWeave or whatever to explain how modesty is maintained (and how any such supers live in northern states), but you could just say that (a lot of) these kinds of powers in your world just seem to treat light, skin-tight clothing as part of the person - but not heavier/looser clothing. Because of this, people with these kinds of powers are more or less forced to wear "superhero-like" costumes if they want to use them effectively. Once they started to, the association with comic book superheros became even more ingrained, or the "look" was otherwise popularized by these trendsetters.

Re: The things you pick up from Cartoon Network Yeah, c'mon, Venture Brothers rocks! I only catch TV accidentally at work, so I'm not sure what shows are on which channel, but I'm also a fan of Kim Possible, Powerpuff Girls, Ben Ten, Jake Long American Dragon, and Jackie Chan Adventures. Shao-Lin (sp?) Showdown is growing on me, too. *Are* there any cartoons that don't have super-powered beings in them anymore? Oh yeah... that Ed Edd & Eddy yawn fest that some channel shows 50 times a day. I'm almost scared at how much the "superpowered" meta-genre is saturating things - I'm enjoying it, but I'm worried about the inevitable backlash.

Re: Superpowered Worlds That's brilliant! Doesn't solve all the problems I was thinking of (requires the cooperation of the taxpayers, for example) but a really nice "bit" to add to a culture of shapeshifters. Repped! Another thought I just had - if the shapeshifters are the only sapient species on their world, the ability to morph precisely enough to impersonate a specific animal/person wouldn't have much reason to evolve. Maybe if their reproductive method needs the help of other "mate-for-life" type spacies, or if the same mechanism which lets them copy species traits naturally works in a way that specific appearance is an automatic side-effect. But it's more likely to evolve if they share the planet with other sapients.

Re: Superpowered Worlds I'm thinking you couldn't pay me enough to be in charge of taxation and government on a world full of shapeshifters like the Skrulls or whatever Chameleon Boy's race is called. I guess anything we'd recognize as social order implies that the race themselves developped a way to tell each other apart; this might be useful for the heros if they can find out how...

Re: Help with a power: look like a statue Bah. You don't make robo-hoovers or vehicles pay for the ability to "stand" perfectly still, do you? And you can look like whatever you want, if it fits your abilities. You can look exactly like a pimento loaf, for free, if that's all you ever look like. I say just give it to him, gratis.

Re: A couple of flying manuver/power questions for you guys Suggestion One: Maybe put Useable By Other Simultaneously on her Flight? You'll probably need GM permission, and I'm not sure what the weight limit on an "Other" might be, if it's addressed at all. Suggestion Two: I don't have my book handy to look up the Grab stuff, sorry.

Re: Do patents work differently the Champions Universe?

Re: Adjustment powers vs. Megascale Amen to this. Halleluhiah, brother!

Re: Opinons --- Value Of Limitation On A Disad I like the "Myopic" paired with "Not Myopic, Only In Hero ID (-1/4)" combination, myself. It's not how much time you spend in one form or the other, it's the way you can usually switch IDs when it's really important to do so. If it's only worth -1/4 to not have your resistant PD available in Joe Schmoe ID, why wouldn't the same apply to your "power" to see well? You can do the same thing with glasses as an OAF on the "not myopic" ability, too.

Re: Worship the Destroyer The whole "normal people are lower life forms" doctrine might run into problems, depending on how 'mutant detectors' and such work in the world. Do children who haven't manifested yet detect as powered or unpowered? This was inspired by Manic Typist's post about orphanages & such - children should be well cared-for at least until it can be determined they are definitely baseline. And what about people who gain powers later in life? But mostly, how does a guy without any inherent powers (I don't have his write-up, but I thought Dr. D was a Doom clone?) become the center of a religion worshipping the inherently powered? Or is powered in your version?

Re: Villain SIDs

Re: Villain SIDs Pursuing this a little off-topic, can anyone come up with a plausible system for a reasonable facsimile of the United States in a superhero world to have, that lets secret ID/nongovernmental superheroes stop the bad guys and get them convicted, but doesn't tie them (the heroes) up in court? The only thing I can think of is a special court system for metahuman crime, which uses telepaths, retrocogs, or something similar to convict captured criminals without any testimony from the heroes necessary. I'd really like to keep things at that Scooby-Doo/Spider-Man level, where all you have to do is catch 'em and the cops/Primus/whatever come and cart them off... but I'd kind of like to have something at least semi-plausible, too.