CTaylor

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction It has to do with immunity. If you buy "does knockback" on a power that someone is immune to, they don't suffer any part of the damage, including the knockback. See above for the NND and desolidification examples.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Again, he's not immune to the damage, he's just defended against it. It's the difference between high defenses and an NND that doesn't affect you, or a stun only attack against an automaton that takes no stun damage. Immunity is different than protection. And yeah a touch flash would make more sense conceptually, and there aren't many people who are so totally numb they cannot feel any contact whatsoever.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Knockback isn't an additional power on top of the main power, it's a part of the power, a side effect of sorts. If the power cannot have any effect on the character (as in, they are immune to it, not they are too tough for it to affect) then the knockback can't either. No matter how much knockback you rolled, if you hit a desolid character with a blast they ignore, they ignore the knockback too.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Think of it this way: if you build an NND that does knockback, people who have the defense (say, wearing bright colored clothes, or standing on your head) won't feel a bit of the effect, and thus will suffer no knockback. It isn't that they have lots of defenses, its that the power its self has a loophole: have this defense and it does nothing. You can't deafen someone who already has no hearing. Lots of flash defense wouldn't protect you from the kb; that's the equivalent of the energy blast example you give. The reason this happens is because of how the power is built not how the power is conceived. If you meant to build a loud shockwave, deafness won't matter - but you build that with an energy blast or telekinesis or some other such construct. That doesn't stop the hearing flash clap power from being cool. It just has a loophole.

Re: So what concepts are you tempted to play on the MMORPG anyway? That's going to depend a lot on the character creation and powers portion of the game. When City of Heroes was being developed, they planned on giving people a lot more flexibility toward building a character, but abandoned it when the final release was done. So far this game hasn't shown much about how you actually make a character and it might change a lot by the release in any case.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction The only drawback with the hand clap built with hearing flash is that deaf people are immune to it, somehow. Probably building it as Dispel Running (3 points per D6 again) would work better: even for people who don't run it will go off, and on those who do it will slow or even halt them mid run.

Re: Spell of gods comunication You can just use a contact, although it's going to have to be pretty spendy given the power and utility of a deity. The GM should set the frequency roll too.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Its not 60 points, but a teleport (only where you could run to) triggered by AE attacks for a speedster is a nice effect: they just run away before the boom hits them.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Technically, according to the rules, if you buy an AE attack that is always no range, you'll hurt yourself every time. Rationally, that's silly; hole in the middle should be used to protect OTHERS near you, not yourself, I think. But that's another discussion. I'd build it as a cone anyway: it doesn't hit everyone everywhere, just people in front.

Re: Bestiar(ies) questions That still doesn't answer my question. I asked why the KA doesn't do more damage with a move through, not why the damage can't go over the cap. Is the damage capped already for the rhino? Look at a few items and how much body they have a few times before you decide 3D6+1 KA isn't enough, though. Think about it, the average damage of that much is 12 1/2 body; that's going to do in a human with one hit, it will severely damage a car. Just how powerful do you think a rhinoceros is? That maxes out at 19 body and 95 stun, does that seem light to you? If so, you need to step away from the 450 point superhero games a bit and look at ordinary animals again.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction That's a terrific build and every big bruiser tank I build now will have it; I hadn't even thought of building the knockback/knockdown effect that way. *bam* with rep hammer

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Vestnik's idea is one I used a lot too, especially back when it was 3 points per D6. You could make a really effective green lantern-like character with that. 60 points buys a lot of HTA at 3 points per. And I wasn't trying to give abusive powers, just really interesting effective ones.

Re: Bestiar(ies) questions why doesn't the move through do more damage with the KA? Is there some limitation on it that prevents that from happening? Just because it cannot use strength to increase the damage does not mean it cannot use velocity. And 5D6-1 is absurdly high damage, you'd rip open a tank. That's just silly.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Back before 5th edition rules specifically prohibited it I liked the recursive drain build (worked with transfer and absorption too). You made the drain add part of the points it took to its "maximum effect" points, and you could drain an infinite amount of power. By making part of the points go into the drain its self, it snowballed and got bigger and more powerful. You'd start out relatively weak, but could eventually defeat anyone, anywhere, no matter what. The based on ego KA was another favorite I used for my campaigns big villain. His assassin has invisibility, desolidification, and a killing attack based on ECV. Which thus required resistant ego defense, which nobody buys. Spendy, but very lethal. I remember posting those on Red October long ago.

Re: Calm the Storm Heh, see above.

Re: Campaign: Classic Champions Universe I love the old classic champions universe, it had a fun, comic book feel without needing all the angsty blow up the world feel of modern stuff.

Re: Spreading Good WIll So you're saying he's broke now, then, because almost nobody in the city works any more since there's some sap who'll just give them money?

Re: What to do about Hydras Oh sure, its going to cost you, but there should be a limitation on the lack of ability to move around independently as well. You pay for the duplication because it is so flexible in combat, then limit it because it isn't as flexible as full duplication normally is.

Re: Calm the Storm Actually my response was too short yesterday because I didn't have time, but Rose did a good job explaining part of what I was thinking: There's a difference between a natural event and a power a character uses. A natural storm should be cheap to turn off, or change to something else. A character's power should be more expensive. I would allow a Change Environment to turn natural weather off, but I'd require an adjustment power such as dispel or suppress to shut off someone's power. And while I agree that it is more expensive to completely ignore a power, it is much cheaper to effectively ignore a power. You don't have to have 12 ED to ignore a 2D6 energy blast, 7-8 points will do so in most cases. And other powers make it even cheaper. For 12 power defense I can shrug off a 30 point major transform. For 12 flash defense I can ignore a 30 point Flash.

Re: What to do about Hydras When I built a hydra I built it with duplication, each head being a separate creature but you could just build it as a single creature with lots of attacks, holding some of them for the next segment. By the way, I think a duplicate that has one body is worth a limitation. By that I mean a Hydra who is built as a duplicate can't move around separately and independently like a normal bunch of duplicates can: they're all heads tied to the same body and that's worth a limitation.

Re: Calm the Storm Let's just say the defense and ability to cancel a power is always cheaper than the power in Hero.

Re: Calm the Storm Not really. You can make a storm for the same price as a sunny day; you just can't make a really horrific wracking storm that causes physical damage and combat penalties for as cheaply as a sunny day. And since the rules are about how it affects the game in terms of character interaction that makes sense. Making it be sunny instead of rainy is largely indifferent to character interaction. Making a hurricane instead of a rainy day is very important. Thus, the sunny day should be fairly cheap, and the hurricane expensive. In fact, in my opinion, making a sunny day should be pretty darn cheap for the benefits and impact it has on the game. That's a very minor result - if you make people pay over a hundred points just to create a balmy day something's wrong with the system.

Re: Calm the Storm I understand that's what you are insisting, but I don't believe that's necessarily accurate or even relevant. If a storm is a big change environment, all you need to do is alter that environment to something else and it stops having all of those effects. See, I'd argue a sunny day is just a sunny day, it's not a series of powers that are accompanying a sunny day as a special effect. Not everything in Hero, I would argue, is a series of powers and special effects, some of the world is just the world. A planet's gravity isn't a huge telekinesis pulling people toward it, that's just gravity. The earth its self isn't a huge summon of stones you can dispel, it's just the earth. A storm is just weather.

Re: Calm the Storm Why do you need the strength to negate the winds? They area RESULT of the storm, you just need a power that makes the weather stop being a storm, an the results vanish. You don't have to make a power to stop raining when you stop a rainstorm, all you need is to stop the rainstorm. The weather will fix its self.

Re: Calm the Storm Seems like the combat adders and such are needless, all you need is just a big effect to change the weather from stormy to calm. All those combat effects are from the storm, not the calm and you're reversing them. It should be fairly cheap: megascale with a bunch of levels of lasting to make it a weather trend instead of a freak calming period.