transmetahuman

Re: [GM Advice] PC's Buying Defences vs. Adversaries Attacks Yup, make 'em justify it. That said, I personally would let any hero buy power defense with experience - it's a pure game construct with no real world justification, so "heroic toughness against paranormal attacks" is okay by me.

Re: Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind. I trip over that whole "recognizing people out of context" thing in real life all the time. In fact, if they'd ever said something about Clark using Super Voice Modulation or something to disguise his voice when he's in costume, I actually wouldn't have to suspend disbelief very much at all... except the part about him keeping his distinct voices straight 100% of the time under stressful conditions. Makes you wonder what happened whenever Clark called anyone on the phone. "Hello?" "Superman?!?" "No, this is Clark Kent. I just sound exactly like him. Just picture my glasses, okay?"

Re: [Campaign] Third Eye Investigations I'm really interested in this kind of game; I'd love to read more. What are the PCs like? How did you describe the kinds of PCs you wanted in the game to the players - what restrictions on character concept do you have? How clueless is the general population about the existence of the supernatural/paranormal? What about the government/military? And, ya know, keyes-bill/UNITY-style session recaps or plot summaries are always appreciated on here.

Re: Need Spell ideas... The way you say he "just got" the spell pool makes it sound like an already-established character. What kind of powers does he already have? How did he acquire spellcasting ability? Is it tied in to his existing powers somehow?

Re: Don't Buy Everything In a Good Story (Topic: Supers and the Law) Haha, I just re-watched this last night, and I remember thinking the same thing. On the other hand, none of the villains in the movie - even in the past - had any super-powers. Just the radioactive silk-spinning commie in the cartoon in the special features disk, and the "commentary" makes it clear that she didn't really exist. Err, didn't exist in the Incredibles world, of course. Bomb Voyage, Syndrome, various thugs and giant robots - that's it that I remember (Frozone reminisced about a villain he defeated because he started "monologuing", but I can't remember if he mentioned any powers). There might have been something I missed in the headlines, and I think I remember one of the hero files in the special features mentioning a flirtation with super-villainy, but it's just barely possible (if not the least bit plausible, not to mention palatable - superheros need supervillains to fight!) that everyone who gets super-powers becomes a hero. More likely, they kept powered supervillains out of the script in order to prevent the exact hole-poking that we're engaged in right now. God what an awesome movie, though! Dash's little exclamations whenever he did something especially cool... perfect!

Re: The Invisible World Game mechanics aside, I keep trying to come up with a plausable, consistent way a "secret magic" world could work. Even granting magic that can do anything, what internal rules would be in effect? You can't just have a blanket "Ignore the supernatural!" mind control without explaining why, then, all those occult bookstores have customers and every newspaper runs astrology columns. Even "Ignore any evidence of the supernatural!" doesn't work - people believe they've seen plenty. Another issue is how to make it so that neophyte PCs, magically gifted but clueless about the conspiracy/effect/whatever it is, become immune. If I was a cabal of mages setting up a world-spanning enchantment to hide my powers, I wouldn't put a clause in there that says, basically, potential rivals are immune! If it's a natural effect, there ought to be some kind of magical rationale for it besides "it just is". The WoD games had at least a half-arsed explanation* - but that whole technomage-paradigm-ascendant thing falls apart when you realize that more than half the people in the world believe in ghosts, spirits, astrology, crystals, etc. (according to some surveys I've seen, anyway). I'm not saying it can't be done, just that I haven't figured out an internally consistent rationale that satisfies *me*. Anyone want to take a shot at it? Remembering that, at least for the sake of argument, that most people *do* claim to believe in the supernatural? * Forgive me if I'm misrepresenting WoD's explanation; I've only learned what I pick up online, never played the game.

Re: Calvinball I thought of Suprise when I read this, too. I wouldn't use game mechanics for the definitions at all, only the way the character defines the power. A bolt of plasma and a burning stream of napalm and a focussed microwave beam might all be the same 8d6 EB, but they'd count as different uses/powers/Rules. This doesn't sound like it'd be a big limitation - but there's a hidden one. It's hard to put those advantages on your powers with precision when you're defining them verbally with sfx. Just how do you define your ability if you want it to be x2 Armor Piercing? I wouldn't let the character say something like "I get the ability to shoot a microwave beam - that PENETRATES ARMOR, REALLY WELL!". I'd make them define the sfx, and determine the game mechanics from that. Maybe that microwave beam is armor piercing against metal, and it ends up being a smaller dice attack when you waste it against your spandex-clad foe. Thinking about it, I would *not* want to be the guy GMing a PC who has this power - but it'd be a cool one for an NPC.

Re: A strange Detect I don't think Clairsentience can enter into it at all without some serious houseruling. You need to know a location to target CS. Mind Scan would need some augmentation to get around the fact that you don't know the mind you're scanning for, and to "detect" the association between that mind and the machine you're targetting - but it's also limited in that you can only use it on a very small and variable group of minds: "People who are operating a machine I can see". Detect would need a bunch of adders and wonkiness, I think I'd go with Mind Scan. I'd just combine all the positives and negatives, compare the overall utility to straight MS, and come up with one ballpark modifier - probably a limitation. Depends on what relationship he has to have with the machine in order to use the power, that needs to be defined.

Re: Can this Detect even work? I would never allow a completely metagame Detect like this. Think of it from the character's point of view - what does *he* think he's detecting? If you can't define your Detect in terms of the world you're in, without referring to game rules, you can cause all kinds of conflicts with SFX. I'd take the same approach to Adjustment powers. You have to be able to define the effect without referring to game mechanics. Even a mystic sense has to be looking for something defineable in IC terms. You detect places where people will teleport to? Fine, you're going to detect every place that anyone will ever teleport to, whether they've memorized it or just bamfed to it from across the street (actually, I wouldn't allow that because I don't allow causality violation or any kind of precog, but for the sake of argument). Actually, even if I did allow precog, I wouldn't let a Detect do that anyway, any more than I'd let you have a Detect: People who are going to commit crimes, or a Detect: Memories, Discriminatory- use Precog or Telepathy, respectively. At the same time, though, I'd do the same thing with the teleporters and make them define the mechanics of the fixed or floating locations. And there probably would be a more-or-less standard version, which you *could* buy a Detect for, since I agree that mobile memorized locations and not knowing where you're starting the 'port from both sort of imply a psychic imprint or something. But there are all kinds of different powers that use the same teleport mechanics in completely different ways.

Re: Mystic Team Vehicle? Didn't mean to; I thought it was an intentional homage - that I only picked up on because I was already thinking along those lines. Teleporting, dimensionally trancendental "bases combined with a vehicle" is a neat idea. Still, I personally would go for a modern vehicle fully loaded with mystic options, like autopilot animation, unusual movement forms and/or speeds, shapeshifting/disguise (anyone remember the Chan Clan's car/truck/van/boat?), extradimensionally roomy interior, defenses against detection and tracking, and anything else you'd want in *your* car if you were a mage. Hmm. Like the ability to move sideways when parallel parking... little retractable legs maybe? Or the ability to "fold" down to wallet size. George Jetson eat your heart out. I don't think most mages want to draw attention to themselves with dirigibles and such - but that's just me.

Re: Mystic Team Vehicle? ...heh. Maybe it used to have an adaptable glamour on it, to blend in to its surroundings - but now it's stuck in the form of a blue British police call booth...

Re: No Size Penalty An argument could be made that range penalties, size penalties, and hit location penalties are all the same thing, and that any justification for any of them should logically give you all of them. I'd probably price No Size Penalty at +1/4, and note that (for any rationale I can thing of) you won't get bonuses for big targets either. If you're going to include hit location in with size (and realize that certain players are gonna argue that it ought to be, automatically), I'd make it a lot bigger than +1/2 unless you don't use those rules, in which case the point is moot. On the other hand, you have to be able to see it to aim at it, so maybe CSLs "Only To Offset Size (+/or Location) Modifiers up to a certain point" might be the way to go.

Re: Opinions On Limitation Level For A "Cargo Only" T-Port I don't think you do - any more than you need a Trigger (as opposed to a lower-case "trigger") on an Independant OAF gun, or fireball wand. It might be a nice option to have, though; maybe a radio or tv-remote style trigger built into some of em. But using them the way these guys plan to, a trigger is probably not too useful.

Re: Super Bases and the Gm's who love them What are the characters who'll be using it like? Are there any scientists? Do they have lots of minions?

Re: Teleport Questions, megascale and fixed location I don't think it fits the mechanics of a floating location, and it's a little too much more flexible and more useful than a fixed location. I'd still let a character do this, though - I'd just eyeball a price for an appropriate "location" adder (probably no more than +10), and the limitation "Only to that location" (maybe -1 or so? maybe just -1/2 - it's still a pretty flexible & useful power, especially in an age of cell phones). Remember to make him define where he arrives in relation to the phone on the other end - in the caller's ear? straddling the handset? three feet away? What happens if the other end is a speakerphone, or worse, conference call? Mwahahaha...

Re: A Presidential candidate has MS The question becomes, how *much* does the public know about the supernatural? And how has the political and national defense system altered to accomodate that knowledge? If the power brokers and intelligence agencies of the world know about this stuff, I don't think it's gonna be Michael Moore that first finds out about it. If the spooks are all pawns of evil, Moore will very quickly have a discrediting breakdown. If they're not, there'll be more evidence gathered about Bush's involvement than the word of one documentary director, and certain people would already be acting on it.. In Angel, I got the impression that the big guys mostly knew about it, but were either in on it (giving them a reason to keep quiet), or "had no proof" to start changing the system. Actually, the whole world was pretty loopy that way - if there was enough proof around that something like the Initiative could be created, a LOT more would be changing about the world. I can't imagine a reason so many people would keep quiet about that kind of thing, and if one was presented in either series, I never heard about it.

Re: I Need Some Help With A Power Build Bingo.

Re: Best Way to Simulate a Thrown Hammer? I think they put "Can't be spread" and "Full power only" into a limitation together because neither quite justifies a -1/4 limitation on its own. So a -0 limit is probably what the powers that be would consider the appropriate value for "Can't be spread" by itself, unless you can come up with some other minor, -0 limit. to bundle it with. I'm curious why you used Restrainable instead of a Focus limitation. If it flies back to his hand (like a certain thunder god's hammer), the recoverable charge limit doesn't seem appropriate.

Re: Distinctive Special Effects Conversely, someone with an axe to grind (or just looking to confuse the trail) goes out and buys some red bolos, or collects a few of the batarangs that must litter Gotham, sprinkles 'em around a crime scene... I wouldn't give points for it unless it's a real compulsion - ie Psych Limit. It's circumstantial evidence that wouldn't convict in court.

Re: A complete? list of energy types Shouldn't Earth / Rock / Sand and Plant Matter (or Organic Matter) have those little (s)'s after 'em? Plus, Wind / Tornado / Air and Explosive / Kinetic / Concussive force, though not solids, usually work vs. PD instead of ED.

Re: what to do with a psychic gorilla Depending on which point in his development the process that changed him happened (or if he only retains dim memories of his pre-sapient life), he might well identify more with humans than with gorillas. He's more like us than he is like them, after all. He might try to find humans that accept him before undertaking the huge effort to duplicate all the research & experimentation that led to his existence. With his strength, intelligence, and psionic abilities, he might not find it all that difficult to be appreciated in a world with much stranger things running around. Especially if he approaches outlying, fringe people who aren't as tied into the whole social fabric. Then, as the defender of his new family/tribe/friend/whatever, he can find himself in conflicts that can put him on either side of the good/evil line - whichever way you want to play it.

Re: New JLU Tonight I didn't get a second episode. Must've been some conflict I didn't notice in the DVR scheduling.

Re: Super Prisons without Super Tech I started a [thread=35721]thread[/thread] about just that, since it definitely falls under "super-tech". It seems like very few people have tried something like this in their games. One potential problem with this, whether it's all one prison, or dimensionally seperate cells; mystically or technologically created: the bottleneck is that the prisoners will still need feeding, water and plumbing, medical care, and (if it's all one prison) protection from each other. That means you'll still need some kind of guards, and will need to periodically re-open whatever entrance is used, and interact with the prisoners. Possible ways around some of this: the pocket world has a much slower rate of time flow (but then it might seem to voters like the prisoners are not receiving enough punishment); multiple entrances, some of which are too small for anything but resupply (or shrinkers...); resupply at unpredictable intervals (but some supers are supernaturally patient)... Bottom line, it'd help, but it still won't work for every metahuman out there. And it sounds expensive as hell to maintain, though every other option does, too.

Re: Too many points? I like the "save 'em for later" and "rarely-used artifact/power" mentioned up-thread. As a GM, I like to use Luck and Unluck as placeholders for point discrepencies from things that happen in-play - as the character's point total adjusts, the Un/Luck is lost (this works better for Unluck, though, and you sure don't want 140 points in Luck!). An overall level or two can suck up some of those points. One more possibility that few players think of: take fewer (or even no) disadvantages than the campaign max.

Re: Beastly Distinctive Features Personally, I would never take- or allow- clothing as a DF. But I'd certainly give it to the beastie types the original poster asked about.